One site I found from researching the book a bit is https://www.ulyssesguide.com/. It's of the web in all the right ways. Well organized and incredibly thorough, but also idiomatic in ways that obviously reflect the personality of the site's creator. Really useful too.
Jay Hoffmann
Director of Web Development, Reaktiv. But really I’m a web history geek @ http://thehistoryoftheweb.com
Web History Newsletter
I'm reading Ulysses, and take note of a few things as I go. Finding it very rich and rewarding so far, about a quarter of the way through.
Jay Hoffmann boosted:
Jay Hoffmann @Jayhoffmann on the origins of permalinks for blog posts. Decades later some sites with blog or news items still don't provide permalinks.
https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/did-you-want-that-link-to-be-permanent
Nearly started crying at how meaningful the first two sentences of this letter is.
“Every kid should grow up knowing they are loved.
Everything else is pretty close to a rounding error.”
https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-raise-children/
“In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Roy Bland captures a cynical, post-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my conscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of today’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the world. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.
Think Different? Not anymore.”
@sturobson may have solved the problem of refactoring legacy CSS. Though I have to be honest, the web history buff in me just wants to use this to do some genuine digital archaeology on some long-running codebases.
Look how cool this is.
https://www.alwaystwisted.com/articles/introducing-relicss-a-tool-for-front-end-archaeology
Anil Dash paints the parallel construction of the web happening right alongside the centralized and commoditized one. The open and free and accessible web that's always been there. Markdown helps tell that story.
https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/09/how-markdown-took-over-the-world/
Jay Hoffmann boosted:
A history of web design, from the grey web pages of 1993 to the colorful, mobile-centric web designs of 2012. A celebration of the peak years of personal websites and blogs. By Richard MacManus.
TIL lobsters aren't immortal, but they are weirdly close to it. If they live to be a certain size, they reach the top of the food chain. At that point, they continue shedding their exoskeleton until it takes too much energy to do so, at which point they more or less die of exhaustion. Jellyfish really are immortal though.
“I never want to hear any moral grandstanding from these boys ever again. The next time Tim Cook says “privacy is a human right,” the only possible response is to laugh in his face.”
https://www.theverge.com/policy/859902/apple-google-run-by-cowards
@redcrew she really was an incredible force on the web.
Jay Hoffmann boosted:
“Share information, freely. Blog.”
👏, @Jayhoffmann
https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/information-is-still-free/
It's a new year. Feels like a good time to write about blogging.
@Daojoan on the humble blog.
“It's a form that allows for intellectual exploration without demanding premature certainty. You can write a post working through an idea, acknowledge in the post itself that you're not sure where you'll end up, and invite readers to think alongside you. You can return to the topic weeks later with updated thoughts. The format accommodates the actual texture of thinking, which is messy and recursive and full of wrong turns.”
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-case-for-blogging-in-the-ruins/?ref=westenberg-newsletter
The end of the year theme among some very cool people seems to be taking back the web. Sacha Judd’s FFConf talk could be our rallying cry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29-slCtUGMY&list=PLXmT1r4krsTo5KtThq4dATD_ctsV8mdJQ&index=8
I’ve been thinking something like this recently too. That the death of the commoditized web may end up cauterizing the worst parts of it and leave room for something more unique.
As always, a great note from @fonts
“We call this quality resonance.”
RE: https://floss.social/@igalia/115652107032174705
I put together some of my notes from this chat. I had a blast, I hope we do it again sometime soon.
Jay Hoffmann boosted:
🎙️ New Episode of Igalia Chats - Web Backstories: Shadow DOM
@Meyerweb and @bkardell chat with @Jayhoffmann and @adactio about Shadow DOM's backstory and long origins
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