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| Link | rowid ▼ | title | contents | year | author | author_slug | published | url | topic |
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| 7 | 7 | Get Started With GitHub Pages (Plus Bonus Jekyll) | After several failed attempts at getting set up with GitHub Pages, I vowed that if I ever figured out how to do it, I’d write it up. Fortunately, I did eventually figure it out, so here is my write-up. Why I think GitHub Pages is cool Normally when you host stuff on GitHub, you’re just storing your files there. If you push site files, what you’re storing is the code, and when you view a file, you’re viewing the code rather than the output. What GitHub Pages lets you do is store those files, and if they’re HTML files, you can view them like any other website, so there’s no need to host them separately yourself. GitHub Pages accepts static HTML but can’t execute languages like PHP, or use a database in the way you’re probably used to, so you’ll need to output static HTML files. This is where templating tools such as Jekyll come in, which I’ll talk about later. The main benefit of GitHub Pages is ease of collaboration. Changes you make in the repository are automatically synced, so if your site’s hosted on GitHub, it’s as up-to-date as your GitHub repository. This really appeals to me because when I just want to quickly get something set up, I don’t want to mess around with hosting; and when people submit a pull request, I want that change to be visible as soon as I merge it without having to set up web hooks. Before you get started If you’ve used GitHub before, already have an account and know the basics like how to set up a repository and clone it to your computer, you’re good to go. If not, I recommend getting familiar with that first. The GitHub site has extensive documentation on getting started, and if you’re not a fan of using the command line, the official GitHub apps for Mac and Windows are great. I also found this tutorial about GitHub Pages by Thinkful really useful, and it contains details on how to turn an existing repository into a GitHub Pages site. Although this involves a bit of using the command line, it’s minimal, and I’ll guide you through the basics. Setting up GitHub Pages For this de… | 2013 | Anna Debenham | annadebenham | 2013-12-18T00:00:00+00:00 | https://24ways.org/2013/get-started-with-github-pages/ | |
| 96 | 96 | Unwrapping the Wii U Browser | The Wii U was released on 18 November 2012 in the US, and 30 November in the UK. It’s the first eighth generation home console, the first mainstream second-screen device, and it has some really impressive browser specs. Consoles are not just for games now: they’re marketed as complete entertainment solutions. Internet connectivity and browser functionality have gone from a nice-to-have feature in game consoles to a selling point. In Nintendo’s case, they see it as a challenge to design an experience that’s better than browsing on a desktop. Let’s make a browser that users can use on a daily basis, something that can really handle everything we’ve come to expect from a browser and do it more naturally. Sasaki – Iwata Asks on Nintendo.com With 11% of people using console browsers to visit websites, it’s important to consider these devices right from the start of projects. Browsing the web on a TV or handheld console is a very different experience to browsing on a desktop or a mobile phone, and has many usability implications. Console browser testing When I’m testing a console browser, one of the first things I do is run Niels Leenheer’s HTML5 test and Lea Verou’s CSS3 test. I use these benchmarks as a rough comparison of the standards each browser supports. In October, IE9 came out for the Xbox 360, scoring 120/500 in the HTML5 test and 32% in the CSS3 test. The PS Vita also had an update to its browser in recent weeks, jumping from 58/500 to 243/500 in the HTML5 test, and 32% to 55% in the CSS3 test. Manufacturers have been stepping up their game, trying to make their browsing experiences better. To give you an idea of how the Wii U currently compares to other devices, here are the test results of the other TV consoles I’ve tested. I’ve written more in-depth notes on TV and portable console browsers separately. Year of releaseHTML5 scoreCSS3 scoreNotes Wii U2012258/50048%Runs a Netfront browser (WebKit). Wii200689/500Wouldn’t runRuns an Opera browser. PS3200668/50038%Runs a Netfront browser (WebKit). X… | 2012 | Anna Debenham | annadebenham | 2012-12-22T00:00:00+00:00 | https://24ways.org/2012/unwrapping-the-wii-u-browser/ | ux |
| 215 | 215 | Teach the CLI to Talk Back | The CLI is a daunting tool. It’s quick, powerful, but it’s also incredibly easy to screw things up in – either with a mistyped command, or a correctly typed command used at the wrong moment. This puts a lot of people off using it, but it doesn’t have to be this way. If you’ve ever interacted with Slack’s Slackbot to set a reminder or ask a question, you’re basically using a command line interface, but it feels more like having a conversation. (My favourite Slack app is Lunch Train which helps with the thankless task of herding colleagues to a particular lunch venue on time.) Same goes with voice-operated assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google Home. There are even games, like Lifeline, where you interact with a stranded astronaut via pseudo SMS, and KOMRAD where you chat with a Soviet AI. I’m not aiming to build an AI here – my aspirations are a little more down to earth. What I’d like is to make the CLI a friendlier, more forgiving, and more intuitive tool for new or reluctant users. I want to teach it to talk back. Interactive command lines in the wild If you’ve used dev tools in the command line, you’ve probably already used an interactive prompt – something that asks you questions and responds based on your answers. Here are some examples: Yeoman If you have Yeoman globally installed, running yo will start a command prompt. The prompt asks you what you’d like to do, and gives you options with how to proceed. Seasoned users will run specific commands for these options rather than go through this prompt, but it’s a nice way to start someone off with using the tool. npm If you’re a Node.js developer, you’re probably familiar with typing npm init to initialise a project. This brings up prompts that will populate a package.json manifest file for that project. The alternative would be to expect the user to craft their own package.json, which is more error-prone since it’s in JSON format, so something as trivial as an extraneous comma can throw an error. Snyk Snyk is a dev tool that checks for known vulnerabilities… | 2017 | Anna Debenham | annadebenham | 2017-12-11T00:00:00+00:00 | https://24ways.org/2017/teach-the-cli-to-talk-back/ | code |
| 244 | 244 | It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like XSSmas | I dread the office Secret Santa. I have a knack for choosing well-meaning but inappropriate presents, like a bottle of port for a teetotaller, a cheese-tasting experience for a vegan, or heaven forbid, Spurs socks for an Arsenal supporter. Ok, the last one was intentional. It’s the same with gifting code. Once, I made a pattern library for A List Apart which I open sourced, and a few weeks later, a glaring security vulnerability was found in it. My gift was so generous that it enabled unrestricted access to any file on any public-facing server that hosted it. With platforms like GitHub and npm, giving the gift of code is so easy it’s practically a no-brainer. This giant, open source yankee swap helps us do our jobs without starting from scratch with every project. But like any gift-giving, it’s also risky. Vulnerabilities and Open Source Open source code is not inherently more or less vulnerable than closed-source code. What makes it higher risk is that the same piece of code gets reused in lots of places, meaning a hacker can use the same exploit mechanism on the same vulnerable code in different apps. Graph showing the number of open source vulnerabilities published per year, from the State of Open Source Security 2017 In the first 24 ways article this year, Katie referenced a few different types of vulnerability: Cross-site Request Forgery (also known as CSRF) SQL Injection Cross-site Scripting (also known as XSS) There are many more types of vulnerability, and those that live under the same category share similarities. For example, my favourite – is it weird to have a favourite vulnerability? – is Cross Site Scripting (XSS), which allows for the injection of scripts into web pages. This is a really common vulnerability often unwittingly added by developers. OWASP (the Open Web Application Security Project) wrote a great article about how to prevent opening the door to XSS attacks – share it generously with your colleagues. Most vulnerabilities like this are not added intentionally – they’re doors left ajar… | 2018 | Anna Debenham | annadebenham | 2018-12-17T00:00:00+00:00 | https://24ways.org/2018/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-xssmas/ | code |
| 282 | 282 | Front-end Style Guides | We all know that feeling: some time after we launch a site, new designers and developers come in and make adjustments. They add styles that don’t fit with the content, use typefaces that make us cringe, or chuck in bloated code. But if we didn’t leave behind any documentation, we can’t really blame them for messing up our hard work. To counter this problem, graphic designers are often commissioned to produce style guides as part of a rebranding project. A style guide provides details such as how much white space should surround a logo, which typefaces and colours a brand uses, along with when and where it is appropriate to use them. Design guidelines Some design guidelines focus on visual branding and identity. The UK National Health Service (NHS) refer to theirs as “brand guidelines”. They help any designer create something such as a trustworthy leaflet for an NHS doctor’s surgery. Similarly, Transport for London’s “design standards” ensure the correct logos and typefaces are used in communications, and that they comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. Some guidelines go further, encompassing a whole experience, from the visual branding to the messaging, and the icon sets used. The BBC calls its guidelines a “Global Experience Language” or GEL. It’s essential for maintaining coherence across multiple sites under the same BBC brand. The BBC’s Global Experience Language. Design guidelines may be brief and loose to promote creativity, like Mozilla’s “brand toolkit”, or be precise and run to many pages to encourage greater conformity, such as Apple’s “Human Interface Guidelines”. Whatever name or form they’re given, documenting reusable styles is invaluable when maintaining a brand identity over time, particularly when more than one person (who may not be a designer) is producing material. Code standards documents We can make a similar argument for code. For example, in open source projects, where hundreds of developers are submitting code, it makes sense to set some standards. Drupal and Wordpress … | 2011 | Anna Debenham | annadebenham | 2011-12-07T00:00:00+00:00 | https://24ways.org/2011/front-end-style-guides/ | process |
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