Reading List #11

Hello ๐Ÿ‘‹

We had a fun week, working mostly on our own projects, and a few little things for clients. By end of next week we’ll kick off a new client project, so I hope I can finish what I’m working on for picu before that.

Here’s some of the things I’ve been reading this week.

Frontend Development

๐Ÿ‘ Finally a step in the right direction for PWAs on Safari

It’s about time Apple changes it’s mind about PWAs and browser lock ins. I’d love to see more capable PWAs on iOS. This announcement seems to be at least a first step in the right direction.

Push Notifications, WebXR, and better PWA support coming to iOS

๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€โš–๏ธ It’s getting harder and harder for Google Analytics in the EU

After Austria, now the French privacy regulators ruled the use of Google Analytics as illegal in the EU under GDPR, because the collected data it collects is transferred to US servers. Will be interesting to see how this will play out, but it sure is a good time to think about privacy issues on your own site(s).

French privacy regulator rules against use of Google Analytics


WordPress

๐Ÿช„ Smart Heading Block for WordPress

This sounds like a very good idea to me: making the heading blocks smart so that they only allow you to use the correct hierarchy.

@phil_webs on Twitter โ€“ Smart Heading Block

๐Ÿ“ฆ Deep dive into Block based Themes

Ganesh Dahal with a very (very) deep dive into Block Themes in WordPress. We still haven’t had a project where it made sense to jump into the whole new Full-Site editing, and quite possibly won’t use it extensively for clients, but I’m looking forward to play around more with all the new features.

CSS-Tricks โ€“ A Deep Introduction to WordPress Block Themes


Other / Random

๐ŸŽจ What is Generative Art?

Amy Goodchild with a great piece about what generative art actually is. I really enjoy her art as well as reading this article, which covers a lot of things. Starting from philosophical questions like “what is randomness?”, on to determinism to natural systems and how “true” randomness can be achieved.

Amy Goodchild โ€“ What is Generative Art

๐Ÿค– AI generated short stories

A fun experiment by PhD student Rodolfo Ocampo, exploring creative collaboration between humans and AI. Enter two themes, people etc. and the AI generates a short story.

Narrative Device

๐ŸŒณ A film about trees

If you find a bit of time this weekend, I highly recommend watching this beautiful film about trees. Thanks Swiss Miss for the link.

Patagonia Films โ€“ Treeline


โœŒ๏ธ Ok, that’s it. Have a nice weekend!

Made with โค๏ธ in Switzerland