This is amazing. Some of my friends at Automattic quickly put together a toolkit for WordPress that allows it to host my blogroll. There are still some missing pieces and some CSS glitches. But this is exactly where I hoped we would be at this point.#
Read this on Threads. The thing that's great about this moment is that people are just beginning to get the possibility of not being locked into silos. They don't know how to parse my posts and screen shots, because I can do something they never thought they'd be permitted to do. Well we've got some visionary and lovable techies at Masto and Blueski who want you and I to be able to do that. And we've been building on that. And will continue to do so, Murphy-willing. #
Blogroll fix. The blogroll was grabbing the up and down-arrow and Return for keyboard navigation, one of my favorite blogroll features. Put the cursor where you want, and arrow through the list. Press Return to expand, and again to collapse. Then down-arrow and repeat. But sometimes you want to use these keys for other functions. So I changed it so you have to click the blogroll to set the focus. Its border turns blueish, and the keys work as described. Press the Tab key or click outside the blogroll to take the focus off the blogroll.#
I'm working with developers again, thank goodness. I once thought I could make server products or toolkits for people I called "poets" -- motivated writers. I have given up on that, at least for the time-being. I think a properly motivated intelligent writer could get developer-like results, I've seen it happen (Brent Simmons, Dan MacTough). They make really good developers because they understand the user perspective so well, it still lives inside them. The problem seems to be motivation, and a poet knowing that they need to be super-motivated and have the time, to get anything technical to work. If they knew what was required, my 2024 theory goes, and had studied for it, the way they studied for their degree, they could not only be successful, but they could contribute to the developer process. Analogously, we all have to learn a little cooking just to get through life, but only a few people are chefs. Julia Child, a hero of mine, believed she could teach anyone to be a good-enough cook. But I bet she was frustrated by human reality. 😄#
Now that I have ChatGPT around, my Lorem Ipsum text for testing can be slightly more interesting. #
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)