Mandaris

This release is mostly centered around cleaning up different edge cases in the theme. This the first time in several point releases where I’ve made a change to the HTML structure. The release before (V1.3.07) was an addition to the theme that we won’t be seeing on Micro.blog until we update Hugo. I feel a bit of accomplishment in the fact that I didn’t see a need to.

Here are all the changes from the README.md that I haven’t blogged about.

v1.3.08

• Adjust fonts
• Make the a.no-decoration more accessible by changing contrast
• Add FloatLeft css class
• Add ::selection background color to match up with theme
• Add scrolling for debug output
• Change the title and aria-label for microposts to include the date and time. In the local copy of Hugo, an empty string title is automatically added.
• Add styling to the top of the list.html to make it stand out.
• Change the date format for the time used for published times.
• Rearrange reply order options to be Micro.blog, Mastodon, and then email
• Add articleSection to list of classes for category tags on a post
• Update README.md on previous releases

v1.3.07

• Add partials for upcoming mathematics support in Hugo. This can be seen when you toggle the math parameter. This has been defaulted to false until v0.122 is available. Demos can be seen on the MathJax demo page.
• Use Modern Font Stacks. Matt Langford discussed this on the Tiny Theme page on fonts. I really liked his implementation and you should check it out!

v1.3.06

• Change the li marker color to --text-alt in order to match header color
• Change padding of body to utilize more space on smaller screens
• add text-shadow to a.no-decoration
• Change logic for the debug flags
• Create stub for theme example folder
• Temporarily add the rsvp shortcode to theme to remove extra whitespace when post is cross posted to mastodon

This is the first interview in Technical Writing Chats, a series where I speak with technical writers about their day-to-day role and how they got started in their career. Today's interview is with Ally Sassman, a Senior Technical Writer at New Relic. I sincerely hope you enjoy!

Ricky Stanicky (2024) on The Movie Database - ★★★☆☆

I really enjoy the comedies with John Cena. They’re generally fun and light. I get to spend some time just sitting back and relaxing.

I’m not looking for depth; those movies are also available if I want them.

If you’ve seen this movie, then you’ve seen it a dozen times. There are a couple twist and turns but we all know what’s going to happen from the trailers and the first 10 minutes of the film.

I have no problems with that!

Here’s the trailer that pretty much sums it up.

This got me thinking: how are curly braces used in English today? Many English keyboards, such as the Macbook Air keyboard on which I am typing this blog post, have curly braces as a character you can type with the shift key pressed. If curly braces are on our keyboards, they would have to either have some use in language, or sufficient use as a punctuation in computational contexts?

I can't recall ever seeing these outside of the context of programming.

If you’ve come to my site, you’ve seen it. Or rather, seen that it isn’t there. Most site have them, whether it’s a big banner or image that lets you know that you are on a webpage. I’m referring to the header; usually the first h1 element in the html. Open any book on HTML and it’s one of the top five elements that you learn about.

But, if this element is so basic and used so often, then how why do I not use this in my theme?

No guarantee on structure

There are different tools that you can use to write posts for micro.blog. You can post from the website, MarsEdit, Ulysses, drafts, etc. These tools usually allow the end user to write in some form of Markdown syntax. If you look up the syntax for Markdown on Markdown Guide Basics Syntax or on the DaringFireball Markdown Basics page, you will see that the first thing they point out is the # used to make a heading. The tools will use the convention of taking the first # header and using it as the title for a post.

Most of the websites that I’ve come across will use title of a post as an h2 in order to denote that its semantically lower than the h1 they would have in the header of the page.

But, what about posts without a title? What about the person who isn’t familiar or not thinking about these details as they type away on their keyboards on that great post that will finally prove that whether pancakes or waffles are the superior breakfast item¹.

Other than testing whether the content has a title, the theme does not make any adjustments. It can’t automatically change all the headers and assume that the writer meant ### instead of ## for the sub-header.

Also, If we only navigate by headers and headers are only on titled posts, then what about the micro posts that micro.blog uses?

I’m not an accessibility expert, I just hope that whoever is using the theme, will be able to navigate using the different articles and aria-labels. I really hope that not having the headers isn’t a deterrent from reading the site. If you know of someone, please send me their information so that I can improve this site.

What would it take to change?

I was thinking about changing the structure of the theme to match the convention that I had seen with other themes. I’d make the articles have h2 and just go through all my posts to make sure everything had the proper heading.

In my local testing, I found that I ran into another problem where the built in table of contents feature of Hugo defaults to using h2 and h3 tags to create its content.

It’s documented on how to change the start and end levels but this would mean that users of the theme would see a change after an update. I can’t count on them reading the readme, being able to test it before hand, or going back to a previous version.

Ten Times the Technical Transform

About a month ago, I asked @help how many people were using this theme. Manton said 10.

I was shocked!

That’s 9 more than I was expecting.

I hope these people are happy with the theme - or so I imagine - and I don’t want to change that.

Withdrawn on the World Wide Web

The last reason is more personal.

I’m on the web, but I would rather you start reading what I wrote than read about me. Based off of my own web-surfing habits and the site traffic I get, I assume that when someone comes to the site they are coming from a direct link to an article. If that is the case, I want you to get to reading as quickly as possible.

The website has a title that is read by accessibility readers and shows up in the tab of your browser.

I don’t know how much of my traffic is people new to the site, but I do have an about me at the bottom of the page. It’s kind of a “find out more from this author” that you would see in the back of a book.

For me, this is more comfortable because I have trouble writing about myself. Ask anyone who has written a resumé, and they might say its easier to express how you think of feel about different things than it is to write about how you are really good at TPS reports.

Let’s head this off

This is not an attack on sites that use h1 for the title and have it at the top. I love those sites and the people that make them. This is just me explaining the theories of my own site. It’s not conventional and sometimes I look at it and want to start over.

It’s because of that burning feeling, I continue working on it.

Just running forward.

Without a head.

There was a post in the help forums about this and I wanted to see what I can do to help.

I’m never going to “win” the email game. Getting to Inbox Zero is just a short phase between increasingly regular instances of Email Bankruptcy.

Time and attention is money and your inbox is just one way to get just that.

Or worse.

The inbox is where you get your tasks, bills, and that one chain letter that you have to forward to prevent Y2K.

But I had something cool happen to me recently.

I wrote a personal email and got a response.

It wasn’t long. Just a couple sentences.

But it made me feel good and I hope that it made the other person feel something other than dread when they look at their mailbox next time.

With all the push for making connections with personal blogs, I feel that a push for personal emails should also get a moment to shine.

So what am I going to do?

I’m making a rule that if you want a friendly email from me, send an email to email @ my domain and I’ll respond. It’s not going to be a long email. It’s not going to be deep or introspective. It’s just something that will be in your inbox amongst the crud other emails.

I’d also like to challenge you to send emails to your other acquaintances. Just reach out. You never know.

Have a great day.

I keep getting older, and the text size on Daring Fireball keeps staying the same.

I feel this soo much. It's part of the reason that I make the default font as big as it is. I understand that a user might have a default style sheet or setting. I feel that designing for a larger initial font, makes this particular theme more flexible.

Earlier this week, with a spark for building but no particular idea in mind, I started to think about the Linux manual page. Could I serve my blog posts as Linux manual pages? Herein lay an adventure.

WHOA! This completely blew my mind!