#dev 2026-01-15

2026-01-15 UTC
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osteophage ulhar4409[d]: ulhar4409[d] https://blog.neocities.org/blog/2022/12/30/cleaner-links
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ulhar4409 yea
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ulhar4409 not *quite* applicable, considering they're using nginx
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ulhar4409 whereas i'm trying to use .htaccess files
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gRegor Not sure there's a way around that in Apache if `example/` is actually a directory
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[morgan] Ive been aware of web mentions for a while but never found a good time to put them in place, but I think with my new coffee crawl website I want to have the potential for web mentions
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[morgan] Ill follow up with queryies after I look into it more
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gRegor Oh, maybe not. I should have searched first. Maybe this directive: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_dir.html#directoryslash
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gRegor Note the security warning there
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[tantek] I disallow a plain trailing slash unless there's actually a usecase for putting something after it. e.g. my /pay page has a trailing slash, my /contact page does not (it 404s with a trailing slash)
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ulhar4409 huh interesting
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ulhar4409 ok actually, neocities nginx rules are simpler than i thought; they don't handle the "finding the right file" part, only regex-ing the request path
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gRegor [tantek], even with directories, or only the rewritten URLs like your contact.html example above?
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[tantek] directories should work fine with the trailing slash yeah
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[tantek] however if it is "merely" a top level page, then I don't bother with the trailing slash
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[tantek] similar to how our wiki works
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[tantek] e.g. https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb works and https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb/ gives a 404 because they're different
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gRegor makes sense
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[tantek] same thing on Wikipedia etc. I figure if it's good enough for Wikipedia to reject trailing slashes on page names then I don't need to worry about it
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gRegor I need to move away from trailing slash on my URLs. ProcessWire has an option for it but I didn't think about it when I set up my site ages ago. Thankfully it handles redirects for those nicely.
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ulhar4409 got redirect chain going from /test/index.html -> /test/ -> /test but having trouble getting it to display the index.html from there
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gRegor Is DirectoryIndex set?
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ulhar4409 i am not sure if that's relevant here? i think that would only apply if the request had a trailing slash, and here the client is being coerced into Not doing that; but otherwise yes
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[tantek] FWIW I found DirectoryIndex to be unreliable in lightspeed (which otherwise tries to support Apache htaccess files)
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ulhar4409 afaik i am just using regular apache (my host runs it out of the box)
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gRegor DirectoryIndex should be what makes `/` render the index.html, same should apply if you have DirectorySlashes off
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gRegor afaik, with no DirectoryIndex set, it would only be accessible by `/index.html`
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gRegor (or rather, with DirectoryIndex off)
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gRegor Most Apache setups I think default to `DirectoryIndex index.html` though, so it would be odd if it wasn't set already.
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[aciccarello] Netlify normalizes to all trailing slashes
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[jeremycherfas] Does anyone know whether `/ig.html` is some kind of vulnerability in websites? I’m seeing a lot of requests for that from my nemesis spam bots.
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ulhar4409 hmm, .htaccess works fine without the "chop index.html off the URL" rule (was redirect-looping before)
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ulhar4409 okay, i tried putting [END] on the final step and it seems to kick out of the loop
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[tantek] what is stackoverflow
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Loqi Stack Overflow is a question and answer silo, one of many Stack Exchange sites, specifically for programmers, with no IndieWeb-related examples yet, however some brainstorming about POSSE/backfeeding, and at least one community member with a profile https://indieweb.org/StackOverflow
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[tantek] sitedeaths << likely upcoming site-death: [[Stack Overflow]] per 2026-01-14 [https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-has-basically-killed-stack-overflow AI Has Basically Killed Stack Overflow] / "People were just happy to finally have a tool that didn't tell them their questions were stupid."
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Loqi ok, I added "likely upcoming site-death: [[Stack Overflow]] per 2026-01-14 [https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-has-basically-killed-stack-overflow AI Has Basically Killed Stack Overflow] / "People were just happy to finally have a tool that didn't tell them their questions were stupid."" to the "See Also" section of /site-deaths https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=107702&oldid=106210
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[aciccarello] Wow
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[aciccarello] > The number of questions per month fell from over 21,000 in January 2025 to a measly 3,607 by December. Back in the start of 2023, it was fielding 100,000 per month.
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[aciccarello] So Jan 2023 was 110k, Jan 2025 was 21k, Jan 2026 > 4k questions
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[tantek] FYI for folks who have participated in W3C Social Web efforts (or are interested in doing so!) the W3C has relaunched the Social Web Working Group: https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/social/
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[tantek] ^ [snarfed] [manton] [KevinMarks] [aaronpk]
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[manton] I’d like to be more involved with the working group. Not sure the best way to do that, but I’m available.
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[tantek] [manton] best way is for you to follow the steps here to request to be added as an Invited Expert: https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/social/instructions/
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[manton] Great, thanks.
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[tantek] [snarfed] likely same for you I presume (unless you're somehow working for a W3C Member now that I missed 🙂 )
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[tantek] and [KevinMarks]
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arekenaten Similar AI extinction is happening for tailwind https://www.businessinsider.com/tailwind-engineer-layoffs-ai-github-2026-1
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arekenaten which, I didn’t realize had a corporate arm or a paid tier anyway
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IWDiscord <a​rekenaten>
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[snarfed] thanks!
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[snarfed] re StackOverflow, iirc the enterprise side of their business is as big or bigger as the public Q&A side. public Q&A is definitely collapsing, but doesn't necessarily mean the company is dying
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[snarfed] https://www.theverge.com/podcast/844073/stack-overflow-ceo-ai-coding-chatgpt-code-red-interview
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arekenaten Maybe AI can get people to realize they might not need big css frameworks
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[artlung] yeah, decreased usage is not a site-death, and prognostication is not my favorite usage of "site deaths" without lots of caveats.
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[tantek] It's a heads-up / warning with the intent of informing people that if they had any content (questions, answers) there, now would be a good time to export and save elsewhere since we have seen plenty of such sites go dark with short or little notice
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[tantek] We can prognostication or any brainstorming about likely paths shutdown to #indieweb-random
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[artlung] Also, just because something is not my favorite doesn't mean it's not a source of interesting talk. 🙂
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[tantek] this post felt very resonant with a lot of considerations of webdevs here: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2025/12/10/boring-webthings/
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[tantek] might be applicable to /admintax in particular
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[schmarty] hmm, yes, this article feels targeted at me, for sure.
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[morgan] I resonate a lot with the article
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[KevinMarks] @arekenaten my son built a website for an idea he had using AI coding, and it managed the html and js adequately, but the CSS was a weird mishmash. It defined variables and used flex and also had a responsive section with breakpoints at 520 and 360, and defined the sizes of things in a mashup of px and em and %.
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[KevinMarks] Pick one, dammit.
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[KevinMarks] I told him to delete the responsive bit and define flex-wrap on his menus to get an approximately useful layout.
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[artlung] Ana Tudor wrote about that last year. https://frontendmasters.com/blog/chatgpt-and-old-and-broken-code/
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[artlung] Less is more with CSS and less code -- succinctness -- is a value (yet?) to be displayed by default by coding tools.
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[morgan] Ive decided to adopt two conflicting goals, one is to rest on computer stuff mostly all month/next month - really trying to engage in hobbies that are restful, but on the 28th I am giving a techie talk about web performance and specifically about the topic of the compositor to a group called PeformanceObserver. Its specifically about making higher performing CSS animations using the GPUs in our devices/browser-enabled, based from a small
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[morgan] example of CSS animations I converted from non-composited to composited. If anyone is interested in this prep, or to attend the talk on the 28th, let me know
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[morgan] https://performanceobserver.dev/events/episode-9/ < - is the link with the details/ it will be recorded
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[Al_Abut] [KevinMarks] I've had the same experience with CSS and chatbots. I've heard of others having much better experiences when they're using something like Tailwind, shadcn or other standardized libraries of components, rather than creating vanilla styles from scratch.
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[Al_Abut] Also seems to depend on how focused the task is, i.e. whether you're using it to vibe code up an entire prototype or just asking focused questions about a particular style, basically like a fancy autocomplete or inline stackoverflow bot.
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