Are your legs a bit restless during eternal Caturday?

New this week: the #IndieWeb community deployed a major modern update to the design, usability, and cross-device support of the https://indieweb.org/ home page and wiki in general! In brief:

* Updated MediaWiki install, updated themes, better mobile device support
* New default theme: Vector (2022), the same as English Wikipedia
* Lots of CSS fixes for content, sidebars, etc.
* Home page content simplification and more pleasing design update

Lots more details on the 2024 homepage and design update project page:
* https://indieweb.org/2024/homepage

This was a community effort, with many people pitching in with major & minor contributions, spending weeks, days, hours, or a few minutes here and there helping out.  From server work, to PHP coding, to HTML+CSS (re)coding, to testing variants of MediaWiki themes, browsers, and devices.

Huge thanks in particular to @PaulRobertLloyd.com (@paulrobertlloyd@mastodon.social) for both driving this design update (e.g. said project page) and doing the heavy lifting of debugging, patching, and testing the latest MediaWiki Vector theme, documenting before & after screenshots, and @AaronParecki.com (@aaronpk@aaronparecki.com @aaronpk) for all the server-side software updates, PHP/IndieAuth wrangling, and critical devops too.

Go try the new https://indieweb.org/ on any browser, on any device, and share your experience!

#IndieNews

This is post 11 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

https://tantek.com/2024/046/t1/the-ephemeral-web
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#IndieWeb #IndieNews #100PostsOfIndieWeb #100Posts
It's been a while, here are some more cat photos. They are growing so fast!
📗 Want to read How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis ISBN: 9781668002841

Hello again, micro.blog! I dropped off here in 2020 due to technical issues apparently, but I think I’m back?

Short intro: gRegor, he/him, San Diego, try to make people laugh (or groan from puns), software developer, IndieWeb enthusiast, and COVID cautious.

Digging Paramore’s cover of “Burning Down the House” and looking forward to the other covers on the upcoming Stop Making Sense tribute album.

Want to watch: Home Page.

Currently available on iTunes and free on Tubi TV.

A couple of days ago in an informal discussion in the #indieweb chat channel about how different people view #Mastodon, the #fediverse, or #Bluesky, and services like #Bridgy & #BridgyFed quite differently, I noted¹ that one big unspoken difference was how things on the web last over time, from the traditional persistent web, vs the newer and growing ephemeral web.

There is the publicly viewable #OpenWeb that many of us take for granted, meaning the web that is persistent, that lasts over time, and thanks to being #curlable, that the Internet Archive archives, and that a plurality of search engines see and index (robots.txt allowing). The HTML + CSS + media files declarative web.

Then there are the https APIs that return JSON "web", the thing that I’ve started calling the ephemeral web, the set of things that are here today, briefly, gone tomorrow. I’ve previously used the more provocative phrase js;dr (JavaScript required, Didn’t Read) for this #ephemeralWeb, yet like many things, it turns out there is a spectrum from ephemeral to persistent.


One popular example on that spectrum that’s closer to the ephemeral edge is anything on a Mastodon server running v4 (or later as of this writing) of the software. (I’m not bothering to discuss the examples of walled garden social media silos because I expect we will continue to see their demise² over time.)

For example, the Internet Archive version of the shutdown notice for the queer(.)af Mastodon server, is visibly blank:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240112165635/https://queer.af/@postmaster/111733741786950083

Note: only a single Internet Archive snapshot was made of that post.

However if you View Source, you can find the entirety of that #queerAF post duplicated across a couple of invisible-to-the-user meta tags inside the raw HTML:

 "**TL;DR: Queer[.]AF will close on 2024-04-12** …"  

[.] added to avoid linking to a dead domain.

Note: such meta tags in js;dr pages were part of the motivation to specify metaformats.

To be clear, the shutdown of queer(.)af was a tragedy and not the fault of the creators, administrators etc., but rather one of the unfortunate outcomes of using some ccTLDs, country-code top level domains, that risk sudden draconian rules, domain renewal price hikes, or other unpredictable risks due to the politics, turmoil, regime changes etc. of the countries that administrate such domains.


Nearly the entirety of every Mastodon server, every post, every reply, is ephemeral.

When a Mastodon server shuts down, all its posts disappear from the surface of the web, forever.

Perhaps internet archeologists of the future will discover such dead permalinks, check the Internet Archive, find apparent desolation, and a few of them will be curious enough to use View Source tools to unearth parts of those posts, unintentionally preserved inside ceremonial meta tags next to dead scripts disconnected from databases and an empty shell of a body.  

All reply-contexts of and replies to such posts and conversations lost, like threads unraveled from an ancient tapestry, scattered to the winds.


If you’re reading this post in your Mastodon reader, on either the website of your Mastodon account, or in a proprietary native client application, you should be able to click through, perhaps on the date-time stamp displayed to you, to view the original post on my website, where it is served in relatively simple declarative HTML + CSS with a bit of progressive enhancement script.

Because I serve declarative content, my posts are both findable across a variety of services & search engines, and archived by the Internet Archive. Even if my site goes down, snapshots or archives will be viewable elsewhere, with nearly the same fidelity of viewing them directly on my site.

This design for longevity is both deliberate, and the default for which the web was designed. It’s also one of the explicit principles in the IndieWeb community.

If that resonates with you, if creating, writing, & building things that last matter to you, choose web tools, services, and software that support the persistence & longevity of your work.

#persistentWeb #longWeb #LongNow

This is post 10 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

https://tantek.com/2024/035/t2/indiewebcamp-brighton-tickets-available
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Post glossary:

API (Application Programming Interface)
  https://indieweb.org/API
Bluesky
  https://indieweb.org/Bluesky
Bridgy
  https://brid.gy/
Bridgy Fed
  https://fed.brid.gy/
ccTLD (country-code top level domain)
  https://indieweb.org/ccTLD
curlable
  https://indieweb.org/curlable
declarative web
  https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/webvision/full/#thedeclarativeweb
Internet Archive
  https://archive.org/
js;dr (JavaScript required; Didn’t Read)
  https://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead
JSON
  https://indieweb.org/JSON
longevity
  https://indieweb.org/longevity
Mastodon
  https://indieweb.org/Mastodon
metaformats
  https://microformats.org/wiki/metaformats
permalink
  https://indieweb.org/permalink
principles in the IndieWeb community
  https://indieweb.org/principles
progressive enhancement
  https://indieweb.org/progressive_enhancement
reply
  https://indieweb.org/reply
reply-context
  https://indieweb.org/reply-context
robots.txt
  https://indieweb.org/robots_txt
social media
  https://indieweb.org/social_media
silo
  https://indieweb.org/silo
View Source
  https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/view_source/index.html


¹ https://chat.indieweb.org/2024-02-13#t1707845454695700
² https://indieweb.org/site-deaths
#indieweb #Mastodon #fediverse #Bluesky #Bridgy #BridgyFed #OpenWeb #curlable #ephemeralWeb #queerAF #persistentWeb #longWeb #LongNow #100PostsOfIndieWeb #100Posts
Cubo De Cuba

at Cubo De Cuba

Want to watch: Home Page.

Currently available on iTunes and free on Tubi TV.

Twenty years and two days ago, @KevinMarks.com (@KevinMarks@xoxo.zone @KevinMarks) and I introduced #microformats in a conference presentation.

I wrote a long retrospective last year: https://tantek.com/2023/047/t1/nineteen-years-microformats

Since that post nearly a year ago, here are the top three updates & interesting developments in microformats:

1. Growing rel=me adoption for distributed verification (✅ in Mastodon etc.)
 * Wikipedia: https://tantek.com/2023/139/t1/wikipedia-supports-indieweb-rel-me
 * Threads: https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
 * omg.lol profile links by default: https://home.omg.lol/info/profile-items

2. A proposal to merge h-review into h-entry, since reviews are in practice always entries with a bit more information:
 * https://github.com/microformats/h-entry/issues/32
 
3. #metaformats adoptions, implementations, and iteration
 * There was growing practical interest in metaformats, so I updated the spec accordingly
 * A half dozen implementations shipped: https://indieweb.org/metaformats#IndieWeb_Examples
 * Active discussion for evolving metaformats to support more real world use-cases: https://github.com/microformats/metaformats/issues

Hard to believe it’s been 20 years of iterating and evolving microformats, to #microformats2, growing adoption as #IndieWeb building blocks, distributed verification (those green checkmarks) in #Mastodon and across the #fediverse, and implementing metaformats parsing to standardize parsing various meta tags for link previews into equivalent microformats2.

From last year’s activity, it’s clear there’s more use-cases, implementer interest, and community activity than ever.  Looking forward to seeing what we can build in 2024.


Post Glossary

h-entry
  https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-review
  https://microformats.org/wiki/h-review
link-preview
  https://indieweb.org/link-preview
metaformats
  https://microformats.org/wiki/metaformats
microformats
  https://microformats.org/wiki/
microformats2
  https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2
rel-me
  https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me
#microformats #metaformats #microformats2 #IndieWeb #Mastodon #fediverse

Video: Midsummer Adventures at Mt. Hood

Twenty years and two days ago, @KevinMarks.com (@KevinMarks@xoxo.zone @KevinMarks) and I introduced #microformats in a conference presentation.

I wrote a long retrospective last year: https://tantek.com/2023/047/t1/nineteen-years-microformats

Since that update nearly a year ago, here are the top three interesting developments in microformats:

1. Growing rel=me adoption for distributed verification:
 * Wikipedia: https://tantek.com/2023/139/t1/wikipedia-supports-indieweb-rel-me
 * Threads: https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
 * omg.lol profile links by default: https://home.omg.lol/info/profile-items

2. A proposal to merge h-review into h-entry, since reviews are in practice always entries with a bit more information:
 * https://github.com/microformats/h-entry/issues/32
 
3. #metaformats adoptions, implementations, and iteration
 * There was growing practical interest in metaformats, so I updated the spec accordingly
 * A half dozen implementations shipped: https://indieweb.org/metaformats#IndieWeb_Examples
 * Active discussion for evolving metaformats to support more real world use-cases: https://github.com/microformats/metaformats/issues

Hard to believe it’s been 20 years of iterating and evolving microformats, to #microformats2, growing adoption as #IndieWeb building blocks, distributed verification (those green checkmarks) in #Mastodon and across the #fediverse, and implementing metaformats parsing to standardize parsing various meta tags for link previews into equivalent microformats2.

From last year’s activity, it’s clear there’s more use-cases, implementer interest, and community activity than ever.  Looking forward to seeing what we can build in 2024.


Post Glossary

h-entry
  https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-review
  https://microformats.org/wiki/h-review
link-preview
  https://indieweb.org/link-preview
metaformats
  https://microformats.org/wiki/metaformats
microformats
  https://microformats.org/wiki/
microformats2
  https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2
rel-me
  https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me
#microformats #metaformats #microformats2 #IndieWeb #Mastodon #fediverse

Phishing Mitigation for Mastodon.social

If kittens eat twice as much as adult cats, why does their food come in cans that are half the size? 🤨

Durable Pseudonyms

#social-computing #identity #social-media

Bigscreen Beyond day 2

Want to read: The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (ISBN 9781551528915)

The Biergarten at The Standard

Outside seating getting harder to find. 🧣🧤

📕 Finished reading Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant ISBN: 9780316487740