Vale

It should be illegal to have hold music with an imperfect loop, such that it cuts off for a brief moment and fills you with a fleeting period of hope before throwing you back to the wait.

A thread, because things are feeling rough at present. 🧵👇

I'm not quite sure where to go or what to do. I'm watching my peers slowly burn out, go quiet, quit the industry, or struggle on hoping it'll get better in time. Even if the storm is weathered, what comes out the other side?

Reply to @vale.rocks

'Hi. Yeah, it's me. I couldn't help but notice when I opened the folder you sent me that boss music started playing, and in the distance I heard what I think might be the eternal screams of the damned. Can you just confirm this is expected behaviour?'

Personally extremely disappointed to see Mozilla proudly and cheerfully announcing that Firefox is active again on X (formerly Twitter).

Reply to @vale.rocks

It is gutting to feel I'd see greater success if I didn't care who I worked for, gave up on my morals, and embraced the latest harmful fad. Grifting has long been a thing, but at present it seems there aren't any consequences beyond one's own conscience and that it is the optimal way to make a buck.

Okay folks. People are interested in this idea – it has legs and I want to make it happen. If you're a digital professional and interested in being part of such a freelancer collective, send me a message.

Nothing set in stone yet, but I've got concepts of a plan and would like to establish this.

It has been a while, so I just wanted to resurface this gem. A brilliant and interactive bit of work.

jgthms.com/web-design-i...

Web Design in 4 minutes

Learn the basics of web design in 4 minutes with this interactive tutorial.

Reply to @vale.rocks

Perhaps a freelancer collective is needed? A distributed agency. Different people with different specialisations sharing resources and referring work to each other based on their capabilities. Every freelancer I know is reporting difficulty finding work, and they're long established in the industry.

Reply to @vale.rocks

Businesses seem wary of investing in people or just spending money at all. I feel I have to sell the very basic concept of doing 'good work', rather than 'good enough work'. Accessibility feels like something I discuss but don't get to see through.

Things are stagnating for genuine professionals.

Reply to @vale.rocks

I don't know how to feel or what to do. Things are bad, and while I'm sure they'll get better to a degree eventually, I'm not sure how much better they'll get. What does 'better' look like when the greatest minds in the industry have left and don't come back? So much lost skill and knowledge.

You can say 'the industry is fucked and we're all doomed' and people don't even dispute it. They just look at you like:

Currently voting on conference talks based entirely on which talk is less about AI.

Reply to @vale.rocks

Many conferences are coming to their end, seeing lower attendance, and are dominated by AI talks. Of those that are surviving, many are cutting budgets or catering to smaller, focussed audiences. Most publications are seeing declining readership, and many are turning to AI for their content.

Reply to @vale.rocks

Things are dire, and I'm thinking I need to pivot, because front-end developer is a job that companies are happy to have AI complete, regardless of if it is on par with a professional's work. My work is better than sloppy AI output, but that can be hard to distinguish if one doesn't investigate.

Reply to @vale.rocks

This is a clear result of education by humans being in a struggling place, with people turning to generative AI for quick solutions (and notably not to comprehensively learn). Speaking to many folks with courses, their sales have plummeted – dropped completely to nil in a disturbing number of cases.

I love CSS, but it isn't perfect. Even the CSSWG admits so, with a published list of design mistakes.

FixCSS is a little library that tackles these mistakes and presents the CSS syntax that could have been. A fun little look at an alternate universe.

tangled.org/vale.rocks/F...

vale.rocks/FixCSS

Library to rectify mistakes in the design of CSS.

I've been asked what framework I used to make the dashboard for my Stoat bot AutoMod so fast and snappy.

It is genuinely just slick HTML/CSS/JS that communicates with an API layer I developed. The dashboard itself doesn't depend on even a single external library.

Reply to @vale.rocks

Couple all that with the erosion of rights and companies being increasingly anti-consumer. Forcing features unwanted, removing features wanted, taking away physical media, making all a subscription, taking away our control of our devices and what software we can run on them, and eroding privacy.

Reply to @vale.rocks

Pair all those issues with the dire state of everything. Computers and their components' costs continue to inflate, the USA has a fascist government, there are major ongoing wars (and new ones being started), and everything is increasingly morally ambiguous – especially in tech.

I'm afraid that one day someone will discover I don't actually know how to write HTML or CSS and that I've been using Microsoft FrontPage 97 this whole time.

A confession: sometimes I'm too lazy to type `</div>` so I just copy the closing tag from elsewhere.

There are plenty of things I'd love to see added to the web platform or improved in browsers. Especially things I want in CSS.

While we've already got so much great stuff and a lot more on the way, there are still some assorted little bits I'd love.

Here is my wishlist: vale.rocks/posts/web-pl...

Web Platform Wishlist

A list of features I'd personally like to see added to web platform standards or better implemented in browsers. Improvements to HTML, new CSS, other web systems, or wider parts of the web platform that I think could be improved or expanded on to make the web a better place for users to use and for developers to develop on.

Always confused by people/organisations who measure productivity or effort with Git commits.

There are so many different approaches to commiting that it seems a completely meaningless metric. Certainly nothing to brag about.

The use of 'he/she' really annoys me.

'They' is much more inclusive than 'he/she' and is also quicker to both say and write. Anyone using 'he/she' today is either forced to by some obtuse requirements, or is purposefully being bigoted.

'(s)he' is no better and is just as needlessly difficult.