Jan Miksovsky’s blog

Writings on the craft of user interface design and development
https://jan.miksovsky.com/ (RSS)
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MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
12 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Today marks two years since I first set up an e-ink display in my mom’s apartment to help her live on her own with amnesia. The display has worked extremely well during those two years, so I’m sharing the basic set-up in case others find it useful for similar situations. Note: unless you have specific experience caring for someone who has amnesia...

Retire an old server to be a static site
22 Oct 2024 | original ↗

I was able retire an old #Heroku site by copying the content to a completely #static #website. Instead of resurrecting the source project and rewriting it, I used the #WebOrigami crawl command to retrieve the static files. The @crawl picked up all but a few exotically-referenced resources that I copied over by hand. I dropped it all on Netlify....

The basic site auditing tool in #WebOrigami can work against a site defined in many ways
10 Oct 2024 | original ↗

The basic site auditing tool in #WebOrigami can work against a site defined in many ways: a data file, files in the file system, an Origami program — or a live #website running in production. In the video I show an audit of the unbelievably massive Space Jam. For a site with 350+ handwritten HTML files, it contains surprisingly few broken...

A simple protocol lets you make the contents of your #smallweb / #indieweb site more fully discoverable and explorable by interested users
19 Sept 2024 | original ↗

A simple protocol lets you make the contents of your #smallweb / #indieweb site more fully discoverable and explorable by interested users. This can also let site A see what resources site B offers. I’ve been working on this in the spirit of the web’s simple, venerable, and immensely valuable View Source facility. View Source just lets you view a...

I made a short video walking through how I generate OpenGraph images for the pages on my blog using Origami
6 Sept 2024 | original ↗

I made a short video walking through how I generate OpenGraph images for the pages on my blog using Origami. This video is an experiment. It takes me ages to create polished documentation or videos — and that’s discouraged me from creating anything at all! I thought I’d try recording a video with only minimal rehearsal and no editing and see if...

Cat test
5 Sept 2024 | original ↗

I want to test RSS-to-Mastodon posting via MastoFeed, so here’s a test post with a photo of Mojo, who wants to come inside. Update: I couldn’t get MastoFeed to work, and ended up following these instructions for Pipedream instead.

Sample influencer lifestyle blog for Henry David Thoreau
24 May 2024 | original ↗

To demonstrate that Origami is a good language for building #smallweb / #indieweb blogs, I built a fun sample blog reenvisioning Henry David Thoreau has a modern influencer with a lifestyle blog about off-grid living. Creating a site in Origami is completely different than creating a site in any other tool I know of. Origami isn’t a blog engine...

Sample Origami site for an outdoor trekking company
18 Apr 2024 | original ↗

Each month this year I’m trying to post a sample website written in Origami, a declarative programming language at the level of #HTML and #CSS for defining websites. This month’s sample is Aventour Expeditions, a site for an outdoor travel company. It’s easy to have Origami call other template languages, so for this sample I used the Handlebars...

Using Handlebars templates in the shell
17 Apr 2024 | original ↗

It’s useful to be able to apply templates written in a language like #Handlebars to things in the shell. The Origami #CLI lets you invoke JavaScript functions defined in .js files, but you can now also identify a handler for any file extension — like OS app file associations, but for a CLI....

All City Someday: a photo blog backed by Google Drive
12 Mar 2024 | original ↗

Suppose you want a photo blog that’s not on Tumblr or Instagram. Maybe you don’t like being sold, or want to draw outside the lines, or want photos as part of your own site. What would a #smallweb alternative look like that let you post a photo and caption from your phone? I made a proof-of-concept street art photo blog that supports this...

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