#indieweb 2026-08-03
2026-08-03 UTC
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# 
[artlung] What all this green vs red discourse is telling me is a red or green light absent context is inherently ambiguous. It has to be sitting in some other context, with video adjacent, or an “ON AIR” or “LIVE” label to be meaningful. Without that “go and stop” or “off or on” don't communicate effectively.
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[Al_Abut] I'm coming in here lacking context probably but red is the “LED lamp” and pretty much standardized for both hardware and software when it comes to video, so leaning it makes sense that social media has standardized into what live means on those spaces too
# [Al_Abut] UX 101 - don't overthink it, stick to common conventions
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gRegor [tantek] benji uses movie posters with his watch posts. https://www.benji.dog/watched
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[KevinMarks] the techy emoji are all a bit retro 📹 📸 🔊 - emojipedia agrees that red circle means live broadcast https://emojipedia.org/large-red-circle
# [KevinMarks] another choice could be 🔛 as that isn't used for anything much, and it reminds a bit of the on air sign
# [KevinMarks] I have seen 🚨 used for a live podcast in response to events
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# tdrayson I have a pulsing blue dot (although the blue is just my website accent)
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# [social] I’ve seen that red light flashing light used as well
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# [social] Used by those streaming when announcing in social media that the live stream of a recording of a podcast (or other) is happening. But, the interface to watch and chat also have the red flashing light (much like outside a recording studio would).
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# [social] This 🚨 is what I’m talking about not the colored dot.
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[benji] [tantek] I need to fix the UX but right now /watched is the last 50 with no pagination. You can also do /watched/YYYY to see all movies watched that year and that goes back to 2022 since that's when I built Sparkles. I have the letterboxd data that I keep meaning to add to my site since that goes back to 2013 but I haven't done that yet
# [Al_Abut] [tantek] oh, I don't know where the context of “this is for viewers, not the one doing the broadcasting” came from. Maybe a co-unworking zoom? I only saw this in the scrollback: “anyone have an emoji they like for indicating an actual realtime live stream? E.g. currently live stream from the ISS”
# [Al_Abut] That sounds like “I'm thinking of broadcasting that something is live like the ISS is doing”
# [Al_Abut] But if you mean “here's a person watching that stream” then yeah green
# [Al_Abut] Just like here in slack:
# [Al_Abut] Pretty clear in that context is “is the person available and online”
# [Al_Abut] Yep. 👍
# [Al_Abut] Well, I mean sorta
# [Al_Abut] Makes sense not to be red, being green is a bit of an experiment
# [Al_Abut] Like if you're posting on your own site?
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# [Al_Abut] Interesting. Trying to make your site more live as a viewer than a broadcaster… I'm struggling to think of examples. Very novel!
# [Al_Abut] * rather than as a broadcaster
# [Al_Abut] Oh, maybe an analogy is sports?
# [Al_Abut] People used to love live tweeting games and I think Threads is trying hard to become a second screen for the NBA
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[capjamesg] Wow I have never heard “second screen” used in that context before.
# [capjamesg] Interesting.
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# [Al_Abut] I bet there's nuggets of UX inspiration there, especially since I see clues of IG trying to be more real-time too with availability and live indicators in messaging
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# [Al_Abut] Experiment! See what feels right
# [Al_Abut] My favorite Kubrick quote is: *"The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it"*
# [Al_Abut] So I'll often change my opinion wildly after trying something out
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# [Al_Abut] Oh interesting, are you trying to pipe a chat from discord to your site as a live watch along?
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[tantek] [Al_Abut] speaking about icons and meaning, not sure if you saw my overall updates to the /watch page brainstorming on what kind of thing, and I blogged about the emojis I've chosen for different experiences: https://tantek.com/2026/214/t2/watch-posts-movie-tv-emoji I figure you have opinions/thoughts on such use to communicate meaning
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Loqi [preview] [Tantek Çelik] Over the years I and others have experimented with "watch" posts, short notes that express having seen a movie or TV show, sometimes with a link, and brief review or other commentary, like earlier today:
https://tantek.com/2026/214/t1/watched-spider...
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[aciccarello] I've been thinking about changing to a serif font on my website. I've been liking seeing it on other sites.
# [aciccarello] I love typography but usually feel a bit lost making my own design decisions.
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# [mikemai2awesom] [aciccarello] google fonts has some nice ones. if you want trendy: Instrument Serif, Playfair, Playfair Display, Playfair Display SC (small caps make good lede paragraph); if you want sophisticated: Libre Caslon, Crimson Pro, Crimson Text, Spectral; if you want multi-lang support: Noto Serif; if you want old timey: all the IM Fell ones (the names have to do with what font-size it was designed for so choose accordingly).
# [aciccarello] I try to stick with system fonts. The https://modernfontstacks.com is really useful for that.
# [aciccarello] Unfortunately a lot of them fall back to the default serif on my machine.
# [aciccarello] Android phone at least
# [Al_Abut] I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple’s got the edge on built-in typography.
# [Al_Abut] [aciccarello] if you’re not comfortable with picking out fonts, one tip is to stick to a single family that has variants, so then you’ll know they go along together whatever you use, e.g. you go serif for headlines and sans for body and mono for small details
# [Al_Abut] SF family is a good one for Apple
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# [aciccarello] I don't dislike the roboto fonts so I usually stick with OS defaults. But I might want a little more character in headings.
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# [Al_Abut] Yeah, same here, so I stick to system fonts and use serifs for headlines
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# [Al_Abut] Green reads as “available/online” so much that if I saw it on a blog, I’d assume that’s what they’re signaling and asking me implicitly to contact them
# [Al_Abut] And “red as in error” is way too literal
# [Al_Abut] Just my two cents but people like hard and fast rules that apply universally and UX just isn’t like that. Red depends on context.
# [Al_Abut] Anyone that sees a red dot with a “live” and maybe a red border isn’t going to think the website is broken
# [Al_Abut] Or a website
# [Al_Abut] I read the slash watch page as applying to most personal sites.
# [Al_Abut] But also: none of this matters. You do you and see how it feels! You asked for feedback about the watch page and that’s my take
# [Al_Abut] Eh, maybe. But you can take pretty good guesses in some instances and without seeing a specific design (the context that you’re talking about) I’d guess that green would read as being available
# [Al_Abut] What I’m pushing back on is assuming that a red dot automatically means error or warning. That’s flat out wrong.
# [Al_Abut] And the longer answer to why this doesn’t matter other than hey, this is all just fun and games when it comes to the indieweb, is the larger question of timing and relevance. How likely is it that someone’s going to come to my site *exactly* when I’m watching something live?
# [Al_Abut] And even if they are, so what?
# [Al_Abut] Like, are they supposed to contact me?
# [Al_Abut] I can see that
# [Al_Abut] If your traffic is high enough
# [Al_Abut] Also regular events, like sports
# [Al_Abut] Oh nice
# [Al_Abut] That's a good one - a specific time and place and also makes a cultural splash
# [Al_Abut] You could put your preferred contact channels to, like if you’re treating your site as a funnel for where you have that conversation in real time
# [Al_Abut] Like if I was a “social media during sports” kind of guy
# [Al_Abut] Well now you’ve got my creative juices going.
# [Al_Abut] Like, I could see blogging about a watchalong coming up to promote it, then my site flips into “active” mode or something
# [Al_Abut] Almost like a cross between watch and event post types…?
# [Al_Abut] Or wait, there’s a live streaming post type too, right? (Explain MF formats like I’m 5 🤣)
# [tantek] yeah, or an event that has a livestream component or property, which is what we do on http://events.indieweb.org
# [Al_Abut] By the way, we had fun at the last movie zoom digging into how our websites handle the movie data
# [Al_Abut] I've been quietly prototyping a personal app that does some of what [trovster] does with his movie watching page, except using Trakt to normalize the data whereas he uses the movie database
# [Al_Abut] My use case is using the slick Letterboxd mobile app to track what I’ve watched and to use a combination of RSS and zip files to get my data out, even though they don’t have a public API
# [Al_Abut] (Oops, sorry loqi)
# [tantek] [Al_Abut] if you have tips on semi-regular exports from Letterboxd, we could use a "How to" section on that in /Letterboxd
# [Al_Abut] Sure! But warning - it's SO hacky.
# [Al_Abut] And I feel you about the indieweb Letterboxd replacement.
# [Al_Abut] Everything I like is so fragmented across apps that I feel the “screw it, I'll build my own” itch growing every month. Maybe it'll be my fall/winter annual indiewrbcamp project like photos were the last two?
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# [Al_Abut] Oh that's right, Trevor mentioned something about that.
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