Duncan Stephen

Human-centred decisions

Category: Web

  • How come I end up where I started?

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    How come I end up where I started? Adriaan Pels ran the popular Radiohead fan site At Ease for 20 years. The costs of running the website got out of control before his web host unexpectedly pulled the plug last year. I used to be a very active participant on the At Ease forums, but […]

  • Stylish browser extension steals all your internet history

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    Stylish browser extension steals all your internet history If you use the Stylish browser extension, you ought to have a read of this. It might make you want to uninstall it immediately, as I did. It appears that last year Stylish began collecting users’ data, including their full browser history, and even the contents of […]

  • ✨🎧 tenori-off

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    ✨🎧 tenori-off I really love this take on the Tenori-on synthesiser, built in Javascript and very webby. I especially like how you can simply share the URL to send your music to someone else. 5/5 would Tenori-off again.

  • It’s time to rebuild the web

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    It’s time to rebuild the web A reflection from Mike Loukides on Anil Dash’s recent piece on the missing building blocks of the web (which I also wrote about a few weeks ago). His remarks on the state of RSS particularly resonate with me. Ever since Google killed off Google Reader, I have relied on […]

  • We are all trapped in the “Feed”

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    We are all trapped in the “Feed” Om Malik summarises the problem with the big social media companies whose algorithms are causing us to drown in junk content. Many have forgotten, but services like Digg helped popularize the idea of what I call intellectual spam. Headlines, followed by vapid content, meant to attract the likes. […]

  • The cult of the complex

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    The cult of the complex Jeffrey Zeldman becomes the latest voice to bemoan the increasing and unnecessary complexity of modern web development. As a designer who used to love creating web experiences in code, I am baffled and numbed by the growing preference for complexity over simplicity. Complexity is good for convincing people they could […]

  • The internet is going the wrong way

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    The internet is going the wrong way A short and snappy summary of why and how the internet has gone wrong. The Internet is a place for the people, like parks, libraries, museums, historic places. It’s okay if corporations want to exploit the net, like DisneyLand or cruise lines, but not at the expense of […]

  • More frequent posting

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    More frequent posting More on the idea of writing more regularly. In the Marshmallow Challenge there are two groups of individuals that tend to produce the best results. (Un)surprisingly, structural engineers do well (as you would hope!) but the other highest scoring groups are actually 2nd graders. Yeah, 2nd graders. Not project management teams, or […]

  • Good writing and analytics don’t mix

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    Good writing and analytics don’t mix If you want to be a good writer then you can’t worry about the numbers. The stats, the dashboards, the faves, likes, hearts and yes, even the claps, they all lead to madness and, worst of all in my opinion, bad writing. Recently I have been thinking a bit […]

  • I don’t know how to waste time on the internet anymore

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    I don’t know how to waste time on the internet anymore I did not know what to type into the address bar of my browser. I stared at the cursor. Eventually, I typed “nytimes.com” and hit enter. Like a freaking dad. The entire world of the internet, one that used to boast so many ways […]

  • Hand-coded digital artwork “Francine” is skewing your online reality

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    Hand-coded digital artwork “Francine” is skewing your online reality I never used to see the point in stunts like “I created Bart Simpson in pure HTML and CSS, look at me!” But I have to admit that the work of Diana Smith is seriously cool. It is all the more awesome when you consider how […]

  • Design navigation for clarity and fidelity

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    Design navigation for clarity and fidelity There is nothing worse than a vague, meaningless link. Well, there is. It’s a link that promises much more than it can deliver. I call that sort of link a dirty magnet. Left out of Gerry McGovern’s list of dirty magnets is my personal favourite — Further information. Think […]

  • The decline of Flickr shows how the web has lost its open spirit

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    Share is a word we hear a lot these days. “Share to Facebook” really means, “Lock away in Facebook”. But sharing on Flickr really meant sharing — with the world.

    Photographer in a city

  • Google AMP for Email: What it is and why it’s a bad idea

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    Google AMP for Email: What it is and why it’s a bad idea I have been following the controversy around AMP fairly closely. A lot of people whose opinions I respect are against AMP generally, although I still cautiously think AMP is generally a good thing. At least, it is in my view clearly better […]

  • Why we need to bring back the vision of the read-write web

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    Fundamental ideas about how the web should work have been lost. But we need to bring these back if the web is to fulfil its potential.

    Laptop, notebook and HTML & CSS book

  • Dear developer, the web isn’t about you

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    Dear developer, the web isn’t about you A call to stop the madness and focus on making the web a better platform for people, and not the technologist’s playground it’s becoming. It’s lengthy, but well worth it. There is so much good stuff here, but I particularly enjoyed this section on the obsession with JavaScript. […]

  • Design for navigational momentum and unity

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    Design for navigational momentum and unity When trying to persuade people not to overload their navigation menus, I have often drawn an analogy with road signs. These must be a model of brevity, because drivers need to be able to digest them quickly. Web users may not be travelling at 60mph, but they still want […]

  • Why the web will win

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    Why the web will win A reminder of the web’s resilience. The web is designed to be open-source, and therefore it is designed to last. Tim Berners-Lee’s 1989 proposal for the World Wide Web wasn’t the most technically sophisticated vision of the early internet, nor was it the most popular at the time. However, in […]

  • Facebook and the end of the world

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    Facebook and the end of the world When the world goes up in flames, the handful of people left in the burning ruins of civilization will shrug, look at their feet, and—from inside a deep black hole of unending ennui—mumble pathetically how ironic and silly it is that the thing that ultimately took us all […]

  • An ode to writing with a human voice

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    An ode to writing with a human voice More on the apparent decline of blogs from the Government Digital Service (GDS). This article makes the excellent counterpoint to a recent GDS post apparently attempting to address the debate around the quality of their recent blogging efforts. The measures of success cited include levels of ‘engagement’, […]

  • Small b blogging

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    Small b blogging I love this idea of small b blogging — pursuing meaningful connections over mass pageviews. You might call it anti-clickbait. Much of the content that is crammed down our throats through giant platforms like Facebook is designed to grab eyeballs, pageviews and clicks. This sort of content brings transient pleasure, but little […]

  • Strategic thinking with blog posts and stickers

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    Strategic thinking with blog posts and stickers There has been a lot of chat recently about the apparent decline in quality of Government Digital Service (GDS) blogs. That debate isn’t explicitly mentioned here by former GDS employee Giles Turnbull. But perhaps this is the blogging equivalent of a subtweet (a subblog?). The idea is basically […]

  • Unsexy fundamentals focus: User experiences that print money

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    Unsexy fundamentals focus: User experiences that print money An extraordinary example of someone trying to give a publisher a lot of money — and the publisher making that experience as difficult as possible. I’ve said before that I don’t have much sympathy for most publishers who are struggling. This is one example of exactly why […]

  • Underscores, optimisation and arms races

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    Underscores, optimisation and arms races The story of how one character — the underscore (_) — provided an early glimpse of the problems we now face with dominant tech firms exerting their power over the web. We found ourselves resistant to what felt like a coercive effect of Google’s rising domination, especially since Google’s own […]

  • Reclaiming my blog as my thought space

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    Reclaiming my blog as my thought space Dries Buytaert on reclaiming his blog. It’s just the latest of many blog posts I have read recently from people keen to share more personal content on their own websites. My blog is primarily read by technology professionals — from Drupal users and developers, to industry analysts and […]

  • A few notes on daily blogging

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    A few notes on daily blogging A striking article, partly because I find it slightly eerie that the author chose to start blogging daily on 1 October, the same day I started blogging again. I haven’t quite managed to blog on a daily basis. Although I do publish something at least once a day, I […]

  • If Google wanted to get found in Google

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    If Google wanted to get found in Google If you ever have to say you’re simple, you’re not. Because if you were truly simple then you wouldn’t have to waste time telling people you are. You’d just be simple. Only those with complexity syndrome feel the need to explain that they are simple. The more […]

  • A brutal redesign

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    When I started to experiment with different ways of blogging, I realised what I was doing was a bit off. So I decided to redesign the blog.

    Duncan Stephen logo and arrow

  • Last blog standing, “last guy dancing”: How Jason Kottke is thinking about kottke.org at 20

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    Last blog standing, “last guy dancing”: How Jason Kottke is thinking about kottke.org at 20 As some ponder the apparent resurgence in blogging, Jason Kottke looks back on the past 20 years as one of the few who never stopped blogging. But reading between the lines, it sounds like he wouldn’t bother starting up a […]

  • Word count for web pages

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    Word count for web pages Why setting a word limit for webpages may actually be a bad thing. Like speed limits, people begin to treat it like a target.

  • Google Chrome’s now blocks dodgy ads by default. Which is great for Google

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    Google Chrome’s now blocks dodgy ads by default. Which is great for Google An interesting piece on the conflict of interest surrounding Google’s move to block the worst ads in Google Chrome. I might have more sympathy for the publishers if they hadn’t systematically destroyed their own websites with terrible ads, reducing the trust of […]

  • Google memory loss

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    Google memory loss This is interesting. It appears as though Google is losing older documents (such as 10-year-old blog posts) from its index. I’m in two minds about this. On the one hand, Google has long been something other than a mere web search engine, and rightly so. They want to get you relevant answers […]

  • ​Mosaic’s birthday: 25 years of the modern web

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    ​Mosaic’s birthday: 25 years of the modern web It feels like the world wide web has had more 25th birthdays than I’ve had hot dinners. This article marks the 25th anniversary of the Mosaic web browser. You may not have heard for it, and I certainly never used it — it was before my time. […]

  • Web trend map 2018

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    Web trend map 2018 iA reflects on the spirit of the web that has been lost. There seems to be a weak undercurrent of old and young bloggers like us that feel sentimental or curious and want to bring back blogging. Blogging won’t save the world. But, hell, after two weeks now, we can confirm: […]

  • Fears of the IndieWeb

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    Fears of the IndieWeb I am toying with the idea of embracing the IndieWeb community and adding some IndieWeb features to this website. This article from Michael Singletary pinpoints one of potential flaws of the IndieWeb, and a reason I have been reluctant to join it. …I’m worried about the long-term survivability of this as […]

  • Legends of the ancient web

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    Legends of the ancient web Maciej Cegłowski considers the parallels between the early decades of radio, and the web. He notes how radio became a crucial propaganda tool for the fascists of the 1930s. In less than four decades, radio had completed the journey from fledgeling technology, to nerdy hobby, to big business, to potent […]

  • Accessibility according to actual people with disabilities

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    Accessibility according to actual people with disabilities We often hear about the theory of accessibility in design. But we know that the reality can often be different. So it’s great to see such a comprehensive run-down of actual digital accessibility complaints from people with disabilities. The article ends with a sage point: Basically everything that […]

  • The survival of independent motorsport websites

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    The motorsport media landscape is becoming a closed circle. But two long-running F1 websites are fighting back to fly the flag for independent publishing.

    F1 fans running onto a circuit

  • RSS: there’s nothing better

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    RSS: there’s nothing better This article summarises why social media services like Facebook and Twitter are a totally inadequate way of receiving updates from blogs and other websites. We had the perfect system all along: RSS. Yes, the technology is dated, but it remains the best at what it does and isn’t closed source or […]

  • Faux grid tracks

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    Faux grid tracks Now that we have CSS grid, people apparently want to know how to style the divisions between the rows and the columns. Here, Eric Meyer explains one way to do it. At this stage, I can’t help feeling that no matter how many features get added to CSS, it always results in […]

  • The web began dying in 2014, here’s how

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    The web began dying in 2014, here’s how – André Staltz Highly interesting article about how the dominance of Facebook, Google and Amazon is beginning to damage the web. Facebook and Google are silently conspiring to specialise in social and knowledge respectively, further increasing their dominance. Meanwhile, the weakening of net neutrality threatens to move […]

  • Brutalism and antidesign

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    Brutalism and antidesign — Kate Meyer, Nielsen Norman Group Nielsen Norman Group look into brutalist web design. I have written about this before: Can web design really learn from brutalist architecture?

  • Some principles for blogging

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    Some principles for blogging – Ben Holliday This snappy set of principles is useful food for thought as I ramp up my own blogging activities.

  • Captchas suck

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    Captchas suck – Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab …there’s something iffy and unprofessional about web site owners putting the burden of their spam problems on their users. Solve it “on your side” instead.

  • Installing progressive web apps

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    Installing progressive web apps — Jeremy Keith, Adactio In this post about a Google Chrome mobile user interface change, another telling comment that explains part of the reason why the web appears to be in trouble. The way we’ve turned browsing the web—especially on mobile—into a frustrating chore of dismissing unwanted overlays is a classic […]

  • Something is wrong on the internet

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    Something is wrong on the internet – James Bridle, Medium This article uses kids’ video content as an example, but really it is about how we all consume all types of content. The same effects that are causing these weird YouTube videos to be created are driving clickbait culture generally. The direction the internet is […]

  • How booking.com uses stress to rush your decisions

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    How booking.com uses stress to rush your decisions I was vaguely aware of the dark patterns used by Booking.com, but I didn’t realise quite how pervasive it is across the website.

  • Making the case for ‘boring’ UX design

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    Making the case for ‘boring’ UX design – Roxanne Abercrombie, Usability Geek When something works fluently and fluidly, users do not tend to notice ‘boring’. They do, however, see annoying and intrusive. I have argued previously that web design should be boring. I am an undesigner as much as a designer.

  • The open web has rough edges, but this is why we need to protect it

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    Native apps, social media networks and big content silos are slick. But the whole idea about the web — the reason it has been so successful — is that it is open and democratic.

    CSS code

  • Why it’s time to reclaim our digital lives

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    The more we come to understand about the big social media networks’ impact on society, the less appealing it becomes. It’s time we stopped letting them control our digital lives. This is why I will start blogging again.

    Computer keyboard and mouse