[HN Gopher] A new blog for 2024
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A new blog for 2024
Author : ctnicholas
Score : 143 points
Date : 2024-01-02 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chrisnicholas.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (chrisnicholas.dev)
| ctnicholas wrote:
| My last interactive blog post, from a couple of years ago, went
| down really well, so thought you might like this one!
|
| Here's the last one:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987713
| samstave wrote:
| This is great! thank you - it inspires me that I need to do
| same.
|
| What are your thoughts on HTMX, how would that play when your
| using the Tailwinds stuff? (sorry, I am not familiar enough to
| perhaps use precise nomenclature on these two - but just
| curious on your thought on HTMX as it would relate to your
| post?
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| It's a cool idea but it is laggy to the point of unusable on my
| Android phone running Firefox (it's a budget phone but I don't
| have this issue with any other sites).
| DistractionRect wrote:
| Also Firefox on mobile, and I have zero issues (on this blog
| or the last linked one) on a pixel 4a.
|
| Perhaps it's related to android version, Firefox version or
| constraints imparted by your budget phone, but it's not a
| mobile layout//Firefox specific problem as far as I can tell
| (and I have like a dozen add-ons installed now that we can
| install from the full Firefox catalog).
| ploppyploppy wrote:
| Blog post, not blog?
| distcs wrote:
| But the OP is talking about creating a new blog (a website that
| has a collection of blog posts).
| cstrahan wrote:
| It's a blog post about rewriting/redesigning the foundation of
| his blog.
|
| It would be titled "A New Blog Post for 2024" if all he did was
| write a new blog post. But if you read the blog post, you'll
| see that he overhauled the entirety of his blog.
|
| Maybe an analogy would help. If you're a game developer and you
| replace the game engine of your game, you might update your in-
| game "about/credits" page to mention "in release x.y.z we
| switched from Unity to Unreal Engine" -- what you _wouldn't_ do
| is say "in release x.y.z we updated this in-game 'about' page
| to, well... mention that we changed the about 'about' page to
| now state that we changed the 'about' page".
| djfobbz wrote:
| Nice blog but it is VERY LAGGY...I'm on latest Chrome on W10 x64
| running on HP Z840 dual Xeon 64GB RAM Nvidia Quadro K4000.
| JoeOfTexas wrote:
| Blur is dangerous on larger scales.
| darknavi wrote:
| Screen space effects scale poorly!
| Kharacternyk wrote:
| The background noise is a subtle detail I would have never
| noticed on my own, but it does subconsciously make the blog
| appeal to me. Content in front of something that looks like real
| paper appears more credible than the same content on a flat
| background.
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| I agree! Any tips on how to implement it?
| rambambram wrote:
| What about a background (pattern) that has the noise already
| in it? I use https://bg.siteorigin.com/ often to create
| subtle backgrounds like the one on
| https://www.winkeljustitia.nl/
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| I was thinking maybe there's a pure CSS way to do it? That
| seems to be inline with the style of the author's blog.
| rambambram wrote:
| Pure CSS would be nice indeed.
| ChilledTonic wrote:
| It appears his full CSS is as follows:
| background-image: url(/css/noise.png); background-
| repeat: repeat; background-size: 182px; filter:
| brightness(6); opacity: 0.018;
|
| In my experimentation with it, I can't quite figure out how
| he applies the effect to the whole page without it either
| dissapearing on adjustments to the viewport or affecting the
| pages text opacity.
| alberth wrote:
| It dramatically reduces readability for me.
|
| Not a fan, even though it might look "nice".
|
| (As viewed on an iPhone)
| bitvoid wrote:
| I thought I was the only one considering the praise it's
| getting throughout the thread and others saying that they
| didn't even notice it until it was pointed out in the
| article. I had to reduce the opacity by at least half for it
| to not be so distracting.
|
| Perhaps the noise doesn't "scale" on mobile as I'm also
| viewing it on an iPhone and/or is just more apparent in dark
| mode.
| ctnicholas wrote:
| I've just deployed a change to the noise as I saw a
| screenshot from another user and it looked like an iPhone
| bug! The noise shouldn't even be noticeable.
|
| Is it looking better now?
| stugrey wrote:
| My timing was perfect, saw the site, saw the noise bug,
| read the comments, checked again and it's fixed (on
| iPhone at least)
| alberth wrote:
| On iPhone, it's more than just the grey background that
| gets the noise.
|
| The noise is being applied to _everything_ on the screen
| (like buttons, sliders, etc).
|
| It might be more readable if the noise was only on the
| background grey.
|
| Just my 2 cents.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| True. Designer I worked with believes the eyes focus easier on
| text if there is a small amount of low contrast fuzz
| surrounding it. I don't know if that is based on science but it
| seems plausible at least on white backgrounds.
| sponaugle wrote:
| I agree.. I was surprised that it made a difference, but on a
| large screen it makes the text feel more anchored to an actual
| page, not just sliding on the screen. It may be less effective
| on a small phone screen where the screen is less of your total
| view.
| ctnicholas wrote:
| 100%! I tried to set it at a level where it "feels" right, but
| you don't realise why.
| kokanee wrote:
| I wonder if it looks different on different platforms. My first
| reaction looking at the site was that it looked super grainy -
| a lot of the embedded screenshots and interactive snippets are
| almost too noisy to read. I played with the setting and found
| that while I do like the aesthetic, it needs to be about half
| as strong to my eye.
| voxmatt wrote:
| This is lovely. The whole thing.
|
| I may have to revive my own blog now...
| 4pkjai wrote:
| The author and I look at this very differently. He aimed to have
| his blog up in five days.
|
| Last time I created a blog I aimed to have it up that day.
|
| IMO the text is more important than the HTML and CSS
| ljm wrote:
| I think people with an eye for design are going to be much more
| interested in showcasing that through their blog. In that sense
| it's pretty neat (and I'm curious about the Tailwind stuff used
| because I could see myself using that at work in future). Plus,
| the author's other stated goal was to try out some new hotness.
|
| Of course, I'm not a designer myself so I would see all of this
| as overkill if I tried to do it. It's enough for me to write in
| org-mode and export my blog as HTML with a nice template. A
| static file server can handle a small bunch of HTML files at
| scale without breaking a sweat, so no need for the JS take on
| SSR or AWS Lambda functions or what have you.
| warthog wrote:
| would love you to publish open-source as nextra.site blog theme
| is not cutting it in terms of customizations. Would be great to
| fork it and write from IDE
| jwmoz wrote:
| The catalyst ui would be really useful WITHOUT react.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| Maybe this will show all the React/Next.js/Server components
| haters that you can use them to very quickly build pages that are
| very performant (though used stack isn't that important anyway,
| the result depends more on the user's effort and attention to
| details).
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| And yet many of the HN comments complain about poor performance
| /shrug
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| Well, if you use CSS blur and load even the most simple HTML
| page on old Android phone or full-screen on 4K screen, lag
| happens, but that's orthogonal to what I meant.
| Retr0id wrote:
| My favourite animated blog header of all time is that of
| acko.net: https://acko.net/blog/zero-to-sixty-in-one-second/
|
| The design language is (understandably) feeling a bit 2013 these
| days, but objectively I think it's held up great.
|
| It's something I'd like to do for my blog, since I'm getting
| tired of looking at the same static header, but I've yet to come
| up with the perfect design.
| ctnicholas wrote:
| Damn, that's crazy! Reminds me of the old Windows "pipes"
| screensaver, but far nicer.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Oh yeah! I remember being impressed by acko.net more than a
| decade ago. Thanks for the link!
| dmje wrote:
| Again, because I'm boring like that: it's pretty hilarious to me
| that anyone would choose to make a new blog and not just use
| WordPress, especially when their stated aim contains this:
| "...that makes it as easy as possible to create posts".
|
| There are some moments when you shouldn't use WordPress. A blog
| is not one of those moments.
|
| Avoiding the obvious tool for the job is classic developer
| trendytool syndrome.
| skydhash wrote:
| Not really, wordpress is a bit of nightmare to code upon and
| buying plugins and themes can result in incompatibility issues
| and vulnerabilities. I think Medium is easier, but it's a
| walled platform.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Substack seems increasingly popular, though not among devs
| for some reason.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Keep in mind that recently Substack said that they allow
| Nazis and wouldn't remove them
| dmje wrote:
| Sorry to be argumentative, but it just isn't. It's PHP, and
| you probably don't need to code anything at all. You also
| don't need many plugins. Incompatibility issues and
| vulnerabilities just aren't a thing - as long as you keep
| stuff up to date and don't install a thousand dodgy plugins,
| you'll be fine.
|
| And yes, this is what I do: maintaining 50+ sites for
| clients, so I have been round the block a few times, not just
| making this up.
| joshmanders wrote:
| "This is what I do and I am fine with all the trade-offs so
| doing it any other way is wrong and a waste of time" -
| classic developer do-as-i-say-ism.
| dmje wrote:
| It's funny, I see it as entirely the other way round.
|
| I see many on HN as being sort of "automatically
| negative" about Wordpress and php and unable to see that
| there are actually some times when they're totally the
| right tools for the job.
|
| I'd be the last person to suggest anyone use Wordpress
| for everything - yes, I happen to have a niche that is
| about this tool, and I like it and am passionate about
| it, and for what we do it's highly relevant and very much
| the right tool - but we're also very pragmatic about
| decision making.
|
| What I see so much in developer land is that certain
| trends drive strategy. It's so often not the boring,
| known, stayed tool which wins the day but the bleeding
| edge one which actually isn't as good a fit.
|
| As I say in a comment lower down here - the tradeoffs to
| me here are: no feed, no comments, no categories, no OG
| tags, no API - all of which are out of the box with
| Wordpress.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Ah, please tell me the easy way to include interactive js demos
| in wordpress like the blog post author has. It's obvious that
| the blogpost author wants a level of customization that
| wordpress can't offer.
|
| Also, trying new technologies was literally a goal of the
| project.
| dmje wrote:
| I mean, write a simple plugin that enables you to embed these
| using a shortcode, if there isn't an existing plugin that
| does it already?
|
| WordPress is insanely customisable - it's "just php". And
| sure, maybe his new skill learning could be coding on
| WordPress :-)
| brigadier132 wrote:
| > I mean, write a simple plugin that enables you to embed
| these using a shortcode
|
| Ok, so learn php when they could just use js which they
| likely already know and likely get paid to know.
|
| Wordpress and php are negative value skills, you do not
| want to advertise that you know those things as a developer
| because someone might try to hire you for them.
| dmje wrote:
| Failing to understand what "Wordpress and php are
| negative value skills" even means. I'm pretty happy with
| the work I get paid for ;-)
| digging wrote:
| It means I, for example, wish I didn't know how to use WP
| and PHP so I didn't have to work on them in our legacy
| apps. Because I don't want to write or read PHP. I'm much
| happier when I don't have to. Get paid the same either
| way.
| joshmanders wrote:
| > Wordpress and php are negative value skills, you do not
| want to advertise that you know those things as a
| developer because someone might try to hire you for them.
|
| This was unnecessary.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| It's the truth, the jobs that use php are not the ones I
| want to work in. People are saying php is actually good
| nowadays but I have no reason or desire to learn it. I
| don't want to learn or work with wordpress, I already
| know as many scripting languages as I need to know, and
| there are no companies I want to work for that use php.
|
| I'm already in the part of my career where learning
| another programming language is not what will take me to
| the next level so unless there is something unique about
| a programming language that makes it very useful I'm not
| interested in learning it.
|
| Learning how to use more tools is not necessarily better
| when you are already proficient in other more flexible
| tools.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Your personal view is not widespread though, your
| original message would have been better left off with out
| bashing PHP because YOU don't find a use for it.
|
| There's billions of dollars in revenue generated yearly
| from PHP sites. And not just "legacy" either, I'm talking
| evergreen PHP apps being built and generating revenue.
|
| It's just as alive and well if not even more alive than
| some other languages people prefer over it.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd want to prioritize PHP development as a
| new skill in 2023^H4.
| dmje wrote:
| Again, pretty hilarious given how full featured and fast
| PHP is nowadays, but ok... I'm also gonna make a little
| private bet that PHP will outlast a fair amount of the
| currently trendy tooling...
| joshmanders wrote:
| I'm with you on the anti-PHP hate, but FWIW PHP and
| JavaScript came out exactly 6 months apart from each
| other, and one is the only way to code in the browser, so
| I'd say both are pretty likely to last a long time.
| xmprt wrote:
| I don't know much about the PHP landscape but at least
| with Javascript it seems like trendy frameworks change
| every 5 years. JS -> JQuery -> AngularJS -> React ->
| Angular 2 -> React Hooks -> Next -> ... Feels like the
| "right" way to do things keeps changing.
| joshmanders wrote:
| The "right way" is subjective and the first mistake many
| people make IMO. What I think is the right way isn't
| always the right way for other people.
|
| Tooling changing in JavaScript is unique to JavaScript
| only because of the language constraints. PHP, Ruby, etc
| are all controlled by the developer, whereas JavaScript
| is controlled by the browser vendors and end users of
| those browsers. You have more things to work around,
| inconsistencies to smooth over, and more importantly
| larger ambition on the frontend than most things can
| currently support, so new paradigms and frameworks come
| out to tackle that.
|
| Also 5 years in internet time is a long time. So I'd
| probably not say it "changes so fast"
| Retr0id wrote:
| Sometimes the medium is the message. A web developer's blog can
| be a platform to show off their skills, and the blog itself is
| one way to do that.
| dmje wrote:
| Yeh, I get that - but then at the same time we have a web
| developers blog here with no RSS / feeds as far as I can see,
| no comments, no API, no OG tags - all the things one would
| expect from a blog. These seem to me a strange set of things
| to sacrifice in this context.
| pvg wrote:
| _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dmje wrote:
| Shallow because...?
|
| I was making a point that the best tool for the job can
| sometimes be the one which is widely used, hugely supported,
| cheap to host, well understood - it may not be the trendy
| choice, but "trendy" is not (in my humble opinion) a terribly
| good criteria for tech stack decisions...
| pvg wrote:
| It's not an interesting point, especially if you intend it
| as a tangential flamewar hook and, as you say yourself, you
| post it repetitively. The submission is not about 'tech
| stack decisions', it's somebody showing something they
| made. You don't have to like it or have much to say about
| it but a completely generic 'just use something else' is
| well within the scope of the guideline and a bunch of other
| ones.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Author mentioned that the reason for the new blog is to be
| easier to create posts. But doesn't mention much of what
| changed in the workflow. Seems he's using md files. But then
| what was he using before? If MD->MD, then what changed? Using
| Obsidian to be easier to edit and sync between devices?
| pvg wrote:
| The author is in the thread so if these are your specific
| questions or critiques, you should direct them there. 'It's
| hilarious to me they don't use Wordpress' is not a specific
| question or critique, it's a generic sneery putdown.
| nkohari wrote:
| Wordpress is incredibly complex when compared to a static site
| that can be served ~entirely from a CDN. A database-backed blog
| has been outmoded now for years.
|
| If you don't want a pre-built theme, you don't need the plugin
| ecosystem, and you don't need/want a WYSIWYG editor, there's no
| reason to choose Wordpress.
| dmje wrote:
| Is a blog a blog when it hasn't got comments, feeds,
| categories, tags? I'd say not.
|
| So: sure, if your cdn and static files can do all of those
| then yeh. But it can't.
| nkohari wrote:
| Eh, debating what's a "blog" and what's a "personal
| website" is splitting hairs.
|
| Most "blogs" nowadays don't have the features you're
| talking about, because very few people actually care about
| them anymore. If you really want comments, you can add them
| via something like Disqus, but so few people are using RSS
| today that it's not worth bothering with.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| Simply beautiful. I absolutely love it.
| er777 wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Ghost for new blogs
| https://github.com/tryghost/ghost
| swyx wrote:
| TIL about TWC from this post https://react-twc.vercel.app/
|
| feels like something that could be baked into JSX 2.0 bc its such
| a common need
| epiccoleman wrote:
| Catalyst looks pretty neat. I decided not to go with any kind of
| component system for the latest iteration of my blog / personal
| site, and overall I like that decision - I know how everything on
| the site works, and I just write articles in plain HTML. I really
| enjoy the flexibility I get from this approach, and it's allowed
| me to do some neat layout things on certain articles without
| having to figure out how to escape from the context of a SSG or
| whatever.
|
| I will say, though, that there's a bit more manual labor involved
| in setting up a page and writing content than I would prefer. In
| some of my articles it would have definitely saved time to just
| write the content in markdown, and there are a few repeated
| components on each page that would definitely be nice to extract
| out.
|
| So anyway, maybe some kind of minor refactor is in order -
| although every time I consider doing this, I try to remind myself
| that actually writing / making content is the more important
| thing to spend time on. Maybe if I ever get to the point where
| I'm writing multiple posts a week it would be worth optimizing
| the workflow more.
| magnio wrote:
| I like Next.js and have used it for a few projects. However, my
| previous two blog iterations (yes, I remake my blog as often as
| writing blog post) with Next.js (page router) were less than
| ideal.
|
| Even with full static generation, Next.js still makes your site a
| React application. A page might be pre-rendered completely on the
| server, but Next will still ship JS to the client for hydrating
| ... zero dynamic content. Here, speed is not a concern for me (I
| believe the performance impact (ab)using React for text content
| is negligible), but the fact that it is just ... not ideal?, irks
| me so much.
|
| Then I turn to Zola, a more traditional SSG, but then for any
| interactivity or demo in the posts, I need to add my own vanilla
| JS, which is a hassle to maintain, and I am not a very good
| developer. (Though Zola is excellent for completely static sites,
| much nicer than Hugo IMO.)
|
| I want the site to have zero JS except the sprinkle of React
| components in the middle of otherwisr semantic DOM nodes for
| content. The fact that this was seemingly impossible in Next.js
| is just mind-boggling to me. Then I discovered Astro, which does
| exactly what I want, no more, no less. Only write markdown? Slap
| in the official Markdown plugin. Want latex math? Slap in the
| official remark/rehype plugins and katex stylesheet. Want react
| components in the middle of the post? Just import it into MDX
| files. The result? Absolutely no JS if there are no React
| components, otherwise the only JS shipped is restricted to those
| components.
|
| (That should have been the logical way to build frontend, and now
| Next.js is following Remix and Astro with its fine-grained
| component approach using RSC. Too bad the last time I tried the
| app router, all markdown plugins broke, while Astro is building
| my site beautifully.)
| maizeq wrote:
| How much JS is being shipped in that case though, and if it's
| loaded async and not being used would it ever even impact page
| paint time?
| digging wrote:
| Huh. I can't load the site on my work machine because it was
| flagged for "adult content".
| paczki wrote:
| Love this! Love the design and font are fantastic choices as
| well. I actually just started last week building film grain into
| my current WIP and it really feels like it catches the eye so
| much more. Largely inspired by trying to make super high quality
| photos feel vintage by blurring + adding noise.
|
| Exciting to see what more comes whenever you post. Digging this
| cursor blog as well.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > I'm applying a tiny amount of film grain to the body. To me,
| this makes the page feel like one consistent piece; as you scroll
| down, the noise sticks to the content, somewhat similar to seeing
| texture on paper.
|
| That's a really nice touch. It does help me with reading, kudos.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| I did the same thing a few months ago on my web page
| https://pablo.rauzy.name/ (well, not on the home page but on
| all other pages), for the same reason :). The texture is not
| noised because it is just a CSS trick with background
| properties so it is quite regular, but I feel like it does the
| job.
| SenHeng wrote:
| Just letting you know that your site is broken when viewed on
| an iPad mini. The menu in particular flashes for an instant
| then disappears again.
| Hissigh wrote:
| I have a 2017 macbook and your site made the fans spin up, i
| guess it's the animation
| tonymet wrote:
| see my comment above about Chrome Profiler
| tonymet wrote:
| The animation seems to tax the CPU. I ran Chrome profiler and
| compared to hackernews (my performance gold standard) ...
|
| Hackernews = 99.9% idle , 0 rendering
|
| Your new blog = 94% idle, 4.7% rendering + painting
|
| Someone mentioned the fans / activity monitor showing cpu usage
| as well
| kokanee wrote:
| I'm not going to dive in and play with it, but often it can
| help to add the CSS rule "transform: translateZ(0)" in order to
| force rendering to the GPU instead of CPU.
| brainzap wrote:
| yeah about that noise
| personjerry wrote:
| Is Catalyst a Bootstrap replacement? I'm so tired of Bootstrap
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