#indieweb 2019-08-25

2019-08-25 UTC
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vika_nezrimaya
is it ok that my theme originally built for testing and as a demo for theming framework looks so good I literally want my production site to look like this? :3
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vika_nezrimaya
Wait a sec, I'll make a screenshot so you could look at this
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vika_nezrimaya
Here's the screenshot - minimal CSS, some formatting, a tiny bit of optional JS that makes dates nicer (moment.js yay)
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vika_nezrimaya
It's still WIP, I need to make the nav look better, add webmention counters to the bottom etc
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vika_nezrimaya
but how's the overall design?
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vika_nezrimaya
oh wait, I have some unpushed changes
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vika_nezrimaya
which one's better? https://imgur.com/a/fqNtDqK
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[Rose]
Good morning IndieWeb
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[Michael_Beckwit
yo
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[Michael_Beckwit
btw [Rose] you got a new RSS follower earlier
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[Rose]
There will be a new post up soon 😉
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Loqi
woot
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[Michael_Beckwit
i went through some of my twitter people and checked for personal sites and whatnot
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[bdesham]
hmm. that seems like a useful Indie™-brand tool: something that would read your list of twitter follows and tell you which people have some other kind of feed you can follow
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[bdesham]
I'm thinking about the site some mastodon people made to make it easy to look up your twitter follows so you could follow them on mastodon too (or instead)
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[bdesham]
that's a service that each person had to explicitly put their information into, which is not ideal
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[bdesham]
you could make a rough proof-of-concept by scraping the URLs in someone's twitter bio and determining whether any of them have RSS or other feeds
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[snarfed]
people have done this before, i think more than one. check the wiki and Google?
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[jeremycherfas]
Good morning indieweb
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jgmac1106
morning all
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jeremycherfas
Still on child duty?
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[tantek]
-> chat 🙂
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[bdesham]
snarfed: I wouldn't be surprised at all 🙂
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[tantek]
I takes me so long to post a set of photos along with my written account of an experience (like an hour!) that maybe I should write down the process for doing so. Anyone else feel like "authoring" a /multiphoto post takes a long time?
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[grantcodes]
I spend time editing photos but not much time writing. I also do collections as opposed to multiphotos, so maybe that feels different somehow
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[tantek]
I can't post collections on my site (yet), so multiphotos is the closest I have 🙂 plus it translates well to an Instagram (manual) POSSE post
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[tantek]
and first four of the photos to a Twitter POSSE post thanks to Bridgy++
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Loqi
Bridgy has 2 karma in this channel over the last year (6 in all channels)
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[tantek]
There's definitely a chunk of time spent writing alt text for the photos. Basically as if I were describing the photos briefly to a friend over the phone.
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KartikPrabhu
yeah alt-text is the hard part
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KartikPrabhu
I actually like the slow-ness of writing on my site. makes it more deliberate
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[jgmac1106]
Been working on it... Just tried a few photo gallery software to speed it up.. It doesn't..
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[jgmac1106]
if your figcaption would be redundant with alt text you can leave it blank
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[tantek]
Not really. The description of a photo is different from the story that the photo is a part of
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KartikPrabhu
figcaption and alt-text and almost always different since they serve different purposes
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[tantek]
Again, the example of talking to someone on the phone works here
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[jgmac1106]
I only said "if" not always
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[tantek]
You can both describe what you saw, as well as the story about it
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[tantek]
we're talking about photo /multiphoto posts here [jgmac1106] — not descriptive captions of photos
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[tantek]
that "if" does make sense if there are visible descriptions of the photos as captions, and they're in some broader context like a newspaper article
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[tantek]
but that's pretty much never the case in /photo and /multiphoto posts
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KartikPrabhu
to speed up alt-text you might need an AI™
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KartikPrabhu
but then the AI™ might identify a cat as a muffin so.... <shrug>
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[jgmac1106]
Just made this one as I am working on my gallery views http://jgregorymcverry.com/finalscramble.html
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[tantek]
trying to finish my /multiphoto post without getting too distracted 🙈
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[jgmac1106]
My multiphoto is my distraction I am trying to avoid..
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[jgmac1106]
But tantek in terms of struggling with what to say about photos my fav trick is "write with the senses" tell me one thing you felt, tasted, heard, smled, etc
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[jgmac1106]
Memory is embodied so writing about senses sometimes comes easier plus a reader can comprehend easier
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[tantek]
[jgmac1106] I agree with that advice for the story about the photo
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jgmac1106
first writing lesson I teach from Kindergarten to doctoral seminars
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[tantek]
I think the alt text should be more literal, to give enough verbal visual information / clues that they can see it in their minds eye. Again, like you would tell someone over the phone what it looked like
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[tantek]
then yes, in addition to all the visual details, writing about the other senses too
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jgmac1106
yes alt=literal…..and agree that makes it way harder to write
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[tantek]
point being the "writing about the other sense" should go in the visible text since everyone can benefit from the addition to a photo of how what you saw actually felt, smelled, tasted, sounded etc.
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[tantek]
senses*
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[tantek]
[jgmac1106] it is definitely a new/different writing skill, though with practice it is getting easier
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jgmac1106
sometimes I just end up doing stuff in my text if I really struggle with alt <p>In the photo above you see …</p>
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[tantek]
like many things, and even many forms of writing, alt text is its own kind of microcopy, that needs practice to feel/get "good" at
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jgmac1106
like infographics…there is no way you can capture the info in alt…but you shouldn’t hide it from folks who use a screen reader
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jgmac1106
practice++
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Loqi
practice has 1 karma over the last year
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[tantek]
what drove me to do it is that Twitter finally added alt text to their photo posts, so I felt there was no excuse not to add alt text to my photos especially since I was POSSEing them to Twitter, and especially since Bridgy publish added support to set the alt text on photos on Twitter from your own alt text!
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[tantek]
it's also a very clear & practical use of the underlying technology of microformats making the alt text associated with a photo "automatically" available to consuming code. something that no alternative (microdata, RDFa, Opengraph etc.) does
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jgmac1106
yeah working on a PR for Known, currently photo title becomes alt text and the title is what gets syndicated tso I would never write a correct alt
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[tantek]
literally microformats2 is more accessibility friendly than all the others
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Loqi
hey [tantek], it seems like this conversation is more appropriate for #indieweb-dev
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[tantek]
Thanks Loqi, you're right, that was all I wanted to say on that 🙂
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Loqi
you're welcome
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jgmac1106
well I am out, I have to get this grant section rewritten today: http://jgregorymcverry.com/questionthewebresearchplan.html
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