Notices by Eric Eggert (yatil@toot.cafe), page 2

@philsherry @alcinnz There are bug fixes in every release of WebKit, but sure. https://webkit.org/blog/13691/webkit-features-in-safari-16-3/

@philsherry @alcinnz Did I say that? I’m happy to have arguments, but “WebKit has not fixed my pet bug” is not one of them. All browser engines have long-standing bugs. That is actually an argument against the complexity. 🤷🏼♂️

@alcinnz It was always a mediocre idea to make the web something that has to compete with native apps instead of making it the best place to retrieve and share information. We stagnated in HTML for more than a decade now, after WHATWG took over to innovate and then did effectively nothing for semantics. So much wasted time.

@alcinnz Yeah. I think people don’t realize how much Google is bullying features into the “open web” and then screams and complains that other browsers don’t support it.

The kerfuffle around “cohorts” for tracking shows that they don’t care about W3C or anything.

@LovesTha @owa Other browsers that don’t work with Google products and that render websites slower because Google’s ad code is programmed in a way that delays other browsers? They have done it on the desktop. Normal users don’t care and when Google tells them that “Chrome ja the bee’s knees” on every property they visit, they will use it as they did on the desktop. It’s the end of browser diversity for most people.

@owa Yay, looking forward to Google being finally able to ship Chrome-only features in docs, maps, mail, and YouTube. Finally they can use their monopolies to their full potential! Looking forward to be sold ads to even more efficiently because Google is finally able to track my every move. This will finally bring the golden age of browser diversity (unless you want to use any Google service, then use Chromium). Freedom!

Google astroturfing open web folks into fighting to broaden their reach and strengthen their monopolies is a genius bit of web policy. I hope the open web can survive it.

Websites are designed for the owners of the website these days, or for managers who want things to blink and shine.

Websites for users are different. They are clear, to the point, streamlined. Their owners remove obstacles that prevent websites from being usable. Make it quick, and lean, and usable. Just gain, no pain.

https://ericwbailey.website/published/modern-health-frameworks-performance-and-harm/

Me: I don’t want to think about new WCAG Success Criteria anymore.
Also me: Maybe I can make a blog post ranking the new WCAG SCs?
(To be published.)

Counting the seconds until we’ll see <button role="strong"> or some such nonsense…
https://www.tpgi.com/screen-readers-support-for-text-level-html-semantics/

Why do some accessibility advocates insist that not having information at all is somehow better than having information with poor accessibility? Flawed information can be made accessible. Non-existent information cannot.

Person 1: “Let’s make something fun on the web!“
Person 2: “Here are 17 ways to overthink this and make it harder than it needs to be!”

Illustrations with flexbox: https://micro.yatil.net/2023/01/13/illustrations-with-flexbox.html

Endemic means “this is now at a consistent level of risk for the foreseeable future”. Why do people treat it like “there is no risk”? Endemic should mean to stay vigilant, mask, get vaccines. Adjust to constant danger. This is not an exception anymore.

For vulnerable people, which is, thanks to COVID, soon everybody will need to stay isolated even more now that everyone else decided their life isn’t worth anything anymore.

I’m so disappointed.

Just weeks after WCAG 2.2 went to Candidate Recommendation, the Working Group now lets you give feedback on the “testability” of Focus Appearance.

https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/2901

(I will not complain about having all information in a Google Doc, because nobody cares. 😩)

Expertise is not to know everything.
It is to know what is important. It is to know where to look up details. It is to mediate between concurrent needs. It’s to explain and filter the relevant information to others. It’s (especially!) knowing where its limits are.

@alcinnz The sad thing, from my point of view, is that we lost a lot of time making web apps things that the web is not really for and in the meantime also weakened the strengths of the web.

Creating a website now has so much more steps than 20 years ago, everything is complicated, and we have introduced compiling for a lot of web projects.

🤷♂️

It’s the same people arguing for more browsers on iOS all the time and when you ask them about the systemic consequences, the best response was “we’ll see what happens”. Sure, you do that.

Show those great PWA, make the case, nobody’s adopting PWA’s on Android. The PWA that I used on macOS from Chrome did not allow for simple OS interactions. Dropping a file onto the PWA icon in the dock to open that file in the PWA? No chance.

1. Browser competition on iOS would be nice.
2. It probably would mean that Google would release Chrome.
3. There is a non-zero chance for Google to require Chrome when using YouTube, GMail, even Google Search.
4. What we know about web developers is that they give a damn about browser diversity. If Google would only support one browser, cross-browser development would dwindle fast.
5. There is little to gain and a huge risk for monoculture. It’s trading one downside with another.

Pedestrian friendly cities must, of course, also be accessible to disabled people. Accessible transport leaves space for individualized transport for those who need it. I’m sure we can do two things at the same time.