If beating you with a leather strap until you cry is what gives him pleasure and he asks you to do it despite your distress because it turns him on and then plays the victim to explain it all away, there is no soundtrack in the world that should quiet the voice in your head that yells out that love and romance were never in the picture and they never will be.
Please, my precious children, know this: Love is gentle. Love never takes. Love does not demand. Love waits for consent. Love doesn’t need helicopter rides and expensive gifts. Love is enough.
When you build a website with traditional standard DOM techniques, you get accessibility “for free” more or less, and this is without question a good thing. I’ve been a proponent of accessibility for as long as I can remember. It does not follow, however, that what Flipboard chose to do is wrong.
It is true that Flipboard’s engineering decisions prioritize animation and scrolling performance above accessibility. That’s no secret — the title of their how-we-build-this post was “60 FPS on the Mobile Web”. It does not mean they don’t care about accessibility. My understanding is that accessibility is coming — they’re working on it, but it isn’t ready yet.
When titans clash. I love that we are, as a web community, getting back to writing instead of quick messages on Twitter. The thought that both Faruk Ateş and John Gruber have put down in words is great and the conversation is what makes the web such a great platform.
Last week, I shared a blog post from Flipboard’s engineering team about their new, mind-blowing website. Not only did they create a great desktop version of their service, but they built a stunning, Canvas-driven mobile version. Their whole reason for not using the DOM (HTML and CSS) was for the sake of visual performance and user experience. 60 frames per second. In iOS, we call this butter. It isn’t something iOS developers sacrifice. It’s the expected norm. In fact, it is by and large why HTML5-driven, app-wrapped apps are so bad. With the web stack, smooth animation doesn’t happen. When a scroll view doesn’t scroll like butter, it looks jumpy. Jumpy looks cheap. Facebook suffered from this. So they went native. Basecamp suffered from this, so they are slowly going native. My bank suffers from this but they continue using Phone Gap and it is the worst app that I am forced to use.
As Gruber points out:
Blinded by ideology, oblivious to the practical concerns of 60-FPS-or-bust-minded developers and designers, the W3C has allowed standard DOM development to fall into seemingly permanent second-class status.
The DOM was never built for what we are doing with the web today. But Faruk is right about the DOM:
[The DOM makes] content easily accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime, using any device
This is what is difficult. If you want to build a great product, some sacrifices must be made. Gruber says so perfectly that “shipping is a feature.” Ship early, ship frequently is oft the motto of web companies, and one I agree with. Flipboard chose to use new technology that fits their product and by doing so increased the amount of effort needed to pull it off. If Gruber is right, that Flipboard is working hard on accessibility for their new web service, then I don’t see much of a problem here. Before last week, Flipboard was only available as an app. Last week that changed. Those that need accessibility will have to wait a bit longer.
But like Gruber and Faruk, I care highly for accessibility. This is why I took the opportunity with Ashes a couple years ago to involve a blind man in testing the app. With his help, most of the app is fully accessible through VoiceOver. Subsequently, Ashes was featured on a number of podcasts because of it’s accessibility. Making it accessible was an afterthought. Design and, as Faruk says, flashiness were crucial to making the app what it was. The design sold it. But accessibility came soon too.
I think in a year we’ll look back at the amazing, open-source library that Flipboard will have released for making Canvas accessible and forget that for a few months we had a beautiful, cool app that was inaccessible. But in the meantime, the conversation will continue.
Ending Finley.im’s third week since relaunch, the site has almost crossed 70 posts. Feature articles on music Red — of, Beauty and Rage, and culture, A Case of New Tolerance and Ignorance, were published this week and next week I’ll be posting my first game review. By and large, the posts on Finley.im are links, though. Once a week I’ll do a link roundup called 5 Top Links of the Week. So here are your Top Links!
Some of the best news comic book fans have gotten in a while. Spider-Man will be swinging into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hanging with Iron Man and Captain America in Civil War!
Always love this channel’s content, but this one and the first part are absolutely awesome and full of nerdery. What’s awesome about this one, to me, is how clear the One Ring and Sauron are an image of Satan. The Ring tells it’s bearer lies, trying to convince them that they can overthrow Sauron and be a great hero. A temptation that almost no one can resist, though the Hobbits, in their humility, are as close being able to resist it as possible.
Thompson's complaint suggests Cawper is capable of barking at 128 decibels through double pane windows. According to Purdue University research, that would mean Cawper is louder than a chainsaw, a clap of thunder and just a hair quieter than the takeoff of a military jet.
Some people will claim that there is something valuable to be gained by having multiple sexual partners before settling down for lifelong monogamy. These misguided souls completely miss the point. Sex is not a technique to be mastered but a means of communicating. Sexual intercourse is a non-verbal expression of profound commitment, openness, and trust. Having multiple sexual partners as a means of preparing for marriage is like mastering the art of lying in order to become a paragon of honesty.
Society pays a price when we teach men to be turned on by women in pain. 89% of scenes in mainstream pornography today depict violence against women and this is spilling over into the mainstream media. As a result, sexual violence is on the rise in our military, in our best universities, and on the street. When we make violence sexy, it is no wonder that these are the consequences we face.
Women, you cannot fix men that want to hurt you. Only Jesus can fix them. You, you’ll likely end up dead or wounded physically and emotionally for a long time.
This spontaneous anti-green-bubble brigade is an interesting example of how sometimes very subtle product decisions in technology influence the way culture works.
I love the intersection of culture and technology. It’s facinating to me. Strike up a conversation with me about the Apple Watch and the cultural impact of wearables is all I’ll talk about for a couple hours. Well, apparently Apple has done a great job ostracizing those that don’t have an iPhone, or at least in the view of many iPhone users. Green is mean.
I still believe that the best way to “manipulate” any App Store rankings is to have a great product and a strategy of getting the word out. I think most people would agree with the former but few are able to do the latter.
Apple has started promoting games that don't have any In-App Purchases on the front page of the App Store. Currently featured in the UK App Store and likely expanding to the U.S. store later today as part of the App Store's weekly refresh, the section is called 'Pay Once & Play' and it showcases “great games” that don't require users to pay for extra content through IAPs.
Interesting addition by Apple. Games with IAPs have long been a complaint of users. Personally, I’d prefer to pay $10 for a game and have full access than download it for free and not be able to continue without paying a ton of money or only opening the game every few days.
