Webmonkey » Humor

What if Hemingway Wrote JavaScript?

Scott Gilbertson — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:41:18 +0000

Papa don’t code. Image: Wikimedia.

It’s unlikely Ernest Hemingway would have thought much of programming. Staring at a screen all day hammering out Perl doesn’t seem like something Papa would have enjoyed. A typewriter in the Cuban sun was more Hemingway’s bag.

But what would it have looked like if Hemingway had cracked open Vim and written a few web apps? Angus Croll, an engineer at Twitter, has one answer in a great post that looks at how some famous writers might have written code. Here’s Croll’s take on how Hemingway might have written JavaScript:

Code reduced to its essentials with no word or variable wasted. It’s not fancy; maybe it’s even a little pedantic — but that’s the beauty of Hemingway’s writing. No need for elaborate logic or clever variable names. It’s plain and it’s clear and it does what it has to — and nothing more.

The whole post is funny and well worth a read, particularly if you happen to have come to programming from a background in liberal arts. Other authors Croll covers include Shakespeare, Dickens, Bolaño and my personal favorite, surrealist Andre Breton. Also be sure to check out Croll’s JavaScript blog.

Jokes for Nerds: HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS

Scott Gilbertson — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:34:35 +0000

4... 3... 2... 1...

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the endless proliferation of responsive grids, adaptive images, HTML boilerplates, CSS frameworks and JavaScript whirligigs then what you need is the HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS.

To install HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS just “attackclone the grit repo pushmerge, then rubygem the lymphnode js shawarma module — and presto!”

If you’re wondering what H9RBS.js actually is, well, you can abandon any hopes of one day being hip. But if you must know, H9RBS.js is a “flexible, dependency-free, lightweight, device-agnostic, modular, baked-in, component framework MVC library shoelacestrap to help you kickstart your responsive CSS-based app architecture backbone kitchensink tweetybirds.”

The hilarity continues on the official HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS website, and there’s a GitHub repo of course. Check out the issues page (“Need unrealistic micro-benchmarks”).

You can read a bit about what inspired developer Louis Lazaris’ pitch-perfect web development parody over at his site, Impressive Webs.

There’s Nostalgia in the Waters of Lake.js

Scott Gilbertson — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:24:31 +0000

Lake.js: It's lakes all the way down. Image: Lake.js

Remember when the best way to align table cells was with a one-pixel gif? For that matter, remember tables?

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how far the web has come in the last decade, which is why we like the otherwise somewhat useless Lake.js. Lake.js is a JQuery plugin that creates a shimmering reflection of an image, an effect that dates from the days of Geocities — back when the web was nothing but one pixel gifs and under construction banners.

The appeal of Lake.js isn’t just about nostalgia though, it’s also a nice reminder that the web no longer needs to rely on terrible Java applets (the main source of cheesy lake reflections in the early days), or any other proprietary technologies to build shimmering lake effects. Today web standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript can pull off not just lakes made of , but things that were, until very recently, almost inconceivable.

Sure some of the web’s most common tools might still be hacks (CSS floats anyone?), but at least when we want cheesy rippling water we don’t have to download a 120 MB “applet” anymore.

Also, the first person to port Lake.js to pure CSS… please e-mail us when you’re done.

Samuel L. Ipsum: Pulp Fiction Placeholder Text

Scott Gilbertson — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:12:52 +0000

Really you should be designing for the content, a practice that pretty much precludes the use of placeholder text. That said, our new rule is, if you’re going to use placeholder text, use Slipsum — Samuel L. Ipsum (probably NSFW).

Sure it defeats the purpose of Lorem Ipsom entirely by being distractingly, hilariously readable, but sometimes when you’re slogging through a boring project you need a little humor.

Slipsum comes in two varieties, regular, NSFW Pulp Fiction quotes and Lite quotes without the swearing.

See Also:

Compelling Reasons To Upgrade to Safari 5 Right Now

Michael Calore — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:08:53 +0000

Update: Apple has fixed the rendering issue shown here, but this is what it looked like at launch. Pretty funny…

Apple’s Safari 5 info page in Safari 4:

Apple’s Safari 5 info page in Firefox:

Apple’s Safari 5 info page in Chrome:

Xkcd Redesign Pays Homage to GeoCities, Which Dies Today

Michael Calore — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:42:54 +0000

Web comic xkcd is sporting a fresh redesign Monday morning, paying tribute to the free web-hosting service GeoCities. Yahoo, which bought GeoCities in 1999 for $3.5 billion dollars, is shutting down the service today after ten years of stewardship.

GeoCities was a place anyone could start a website for free. The company sold cheap banner advertising against your content, but that didn’t matter — you finally had a place to post that Melissa Joan Hart fanpage or your fully-annotated Art Alexakis discography.

In the web’s early days, you actually had to know how to author a web page in order to publish anything on the internet. You had to have working knowledge of things like HTML, FTP, GIF and DNS. For people with these new-found skills, a GeoCities page was an essential first step into the web, a rite of passage. Next came the easy authoring tools like Dreamweaver and Blogger, then the social networks like Friendster and MySpace, which let anyone establish a web presence with a few clicks of the mouse. GeoCities, along with other free hosting communities like Angelfire, faded into obscurity.

Many of those early pages survived in all their gaudy, glitzy glory — complete with scrolling banners, animated Gifs and blink tags.

Until Monday, October 26, 2009. Rest in peace, GeoCities.

See Also:

Geocities, Identity and the Problem With Disappearing Web Services

Cartman Berates Your Flash-less Ass

Michael Calore — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:52:29 +0000

This is what you see when you visit the South Park website with JavaScript turned off or Flash uninstalled. You may also see it if you’re running Giorgio Maone’s NoScript extension for Firefox. Either way, now you know what to do, hippie.

[Thanks, Burris!]

Google to Shutter Its Free Search

Scott Gilbertson — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:46:00 +0000

In response to the overwhelming turnout for Day Without Google, the search giant has announced it will withdraw its flagship product, the Google search engine, later in April.

“We will continue to provide our enterprise search solutions and popular hosted applications, but we know when we’re not wanted,” sniffed a Google spokesperson via email this afternoon. “Google plans to concentrate its resources on continuing innovation in areas other than search.”

Google.com‘s reported 200 million hits per day dropped to fewer than two dozen hits today as a result of the 2008 DWG initiative, as web users worldwide avoided the famous search engine and used alternate engines instead. Google’s public-facing search page will be taken down “after a short transition period.” It has not yet been announced what will replace the iconic page.

Why No One is Using Your Application or Website

Michael Calore — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:57:43 +0000

Jakob Nielsen, a longtime authority on web usability published an interesting piece this morning entitled Bridging the DesignerUser Gap. While Nielsen is more thoughtful and persuasive in his argument, the cartoon above (from It’s Just a Bunch of Stuff that Happens) neatly summarizes the piece: simplify.

Nielsen tackles problems that lead to exactly the sort of failures outlined in the cartoon, including recognizing not just the gap between the designer and the intended audience, but how big that gap is.

Most of the software and tools that we love here at Compiler fall into Nielsen’s first category where the designer is the user – open source tools that power most of website’s we all love (though a considerable number of those sites probably fall in this category as well).

As Nielsen puts it:

More commonly, designers at this level are core members of the larger target audience. Open software often falls into this category: designed by geeks, for geeks. That’s why Linux, Apache, Perl, and many similar products have been so successful – at least as long as the audience remains a group of technology-obsessed users. Of course, these same products don’t stand a chance of growing their user base to include ordinary humans.

At first glance that last line is quite inflammatory, but it’s also true more often than not. And it goes a long way to explaining the popularity of Ubuntu (I would argue the most usable Linux distro) or why newcomers almost always grok Gnome much faster than KDE.

I don’t think Apache or Perl are particularly interested in making themselves easy for your mom to use, but when you spend all your time working with things as complex as Apache or Perl, sometimes you forget ordinary people and end up with overly complex software.

As it turns out, the average person doesn’t really care that iPhone apps can’t run background processes, so long as the iPhone remains simple and easy to use, which is what drew them to the product in the first place.

In a way it’s the same message that Nielsen’s been preaching for years. If you’re looking to compete with the web’s more popular sites, keep in mind the beauty of simplicity.

Mac vs. PC vs. Linux — South Park Style

Michael Calore — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:37:25 +0000

Gabe Schwarzer, the video creator who brought us the original Mac vs. PC "South Park" style parody ad is back with a sequel. Gabe wrote in to tell us his Mac vs. PC vs. Linux video is up on his website.

In the credits, Gabe notes that he used the South Park Studios app to make the characters. He also says he created the video on a PC and a Mac "because one just isn’t enough." I guess that tells us exactly how he feels about Linux — presuming the video doesn’t settle the issue in the first place.

[via Wild Tree Design]