#dev 2024-12-16

2024-12-16 UTC
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GWG [tantek]2: Would you describe yourself as a computer scientist, out of curiosity?
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GWG kupietz: Me too. I intend to ingratiate myself to them early on
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tantek.com GWG sounds like a better topic for #indieweb-random
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[Joe_Crawford] Google: so like us. Google search console tells me that http :// joecrawford . com was added _*"January 1, 1970"*_
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[Joe_Crawford] BALEETED
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Kupietz Hey [Joe_Crawford] glad you're here... working on some additions to the xmas lights. Will have a new codepen up soon. Made them interactive... they'll dangle if you mouseover them. Got it live on my site already, but it's a little dodgy because I'm playing with CSS filters and firefox doesn't like them, it flickers a bit.
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Kupietz LOL, Joe, you've been online since the Unix Epoch. [To the tune of Barry Manilow's "I Write The Songs":] "I've been alive forever, and I sent the very first bits... I put the bytes and the ACK/SYN together, I saved them on magnetic disks..."
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123nick idk if this is relevant, but i think this link: https://indieseek.xyz/links/ should be put more prominently in the https://indieweb.org/ site, and in other associated places (like this discord server). as someone who was interested in indieweb, i saw a LOT of things that were interesting to me but everywhere i looked i couldnt find the actual sites described in a lot of the text in the "About" section on the website and such.
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123nick [edit] idk if this is relevant, but i think this link: https://indieseek.xyz/links/ should be put more prominently in the https://indieweb.org/ site, and in other associated places (like this discord server). as someone who was interested in indieweb, i saw a LOT of things that were interesting to me but everywhere i looked i couldnt find the actual sites described in a lot of the text in the "About" section on the website and su
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[aciccarello] That seems like a cool site. I think it was mentioned recently. This is probably a better discussion for #indieweb-meta but I'm curious what could be clearer on the wiki that you couldn't find?
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123nick honestly basically that link, or atleast some examples of indieweb websites to view
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[aciccarello] Ah I see. I think the https://indieseek.xyz/links/personalpages/ section could be relevant. Some of the other links don't seem as Indieweb related IMO
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Lars-Christian I think that's a fair point. The front page of the Indieweb wiki could probably link to the indieweb webring (if that's an official thing) or similar. To make it easy for people who just want to explore just get straight into that.
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[aciccarello] There is some more discussion in #indieweb-meta about a directory page
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btrem gRegor re: https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2024-12-13/1734132696888500
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Loqi [preview] [gRegor] We have https://indieweb.org/alt#How_to_write_good_alt_text at least :)
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btrem I think the advice on the wiki is misleading. The alt attribute is not meant to _describe_ the image. It is supposed to be a textual _alternative_ (hence the attribute name) to the image.
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btrem So imagine a website with a logo of the Nike logo. What should the alt be? *Not* "Nike logo". *Not* "swoosh symbol underneath the word 'Nike'". It should simply be "Nike".
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btrem Except perhaps an edge case where the page is about logos.
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gRegor That seems in line with what the wiki says, that full section taken in context.
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gRegor In a logo example, good chance "Nike" already appears in the text nearby, so an empty alt may be appropriate
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btrem It says to imagine describing the image to someone on the phone. If I did that with the Nike logo, I'd probably include the swish.
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gRegor Right, that would be a good thing for accessibility
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btrem But an alt attribute should almost never include the word "swish" in it.
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btrem Would it?
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btrem For accessibility, I'd say simply "Nike" is best.
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btrem Take another example, the share icon used by many an app/web page, the up arrow coming out of a box. If I were describing it, I'd say something like, well, "a box with an up pointing arrow coming out of it." But that's a terrible alt attribute value. The correct alt value is "share".
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btrem That's the difference between describing the image and providing a text alternative to it.
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gRegor The decision tree linked there is helpful, talks about decorative, functional, and informative images
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gRegor Your examples are distinct from the "If it is a" text in that first green box
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gRegor in my reading at least
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btrem The tree is helpful, but the advice to "describe" the image is, imho, not. The mistaken idea that alt is to provide a description of the image leads to many a bad alt attribute.
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btrem Of everything in html, I think alt might be the single most misunderstood. And misused.
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btrem Even MDN often gets it wrong. Here's example code from the img element page: 'alt="My image file description"'. :(
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gRegor On the indieweb, the context of most images is going to be a picture of something or people, so describing the contents of the photo is good practice there, vs something like alt="a picture"
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btrem alt="a picture" would indeed be inappropriate.
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btrem re: the MDN page I mentioned. The discussion of the alt attribute, further down the page (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/img#examples), has better examples. Full disclosure: I edited that section, to correct the numerous bad examples that used to be in that section.
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gRegor Nice, was just going to say we could update that bad example :)
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btrem I gotta head off to work soon. Maybe I'll take a crack tomorrow.
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btrem Anyone here regularly post videos on their site? What format(s) do you offer?
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