Dispatches From The Internets



Rebuilding a PHP App using Isomorphic JavaScript with Eleventy & Netlify

Painting of a cute red robot looking at itself in a full-body mirror.

Back in the early days of the iPhone, I created Tipr, a tip calculator that always produces a palindrome total. This is an overview of the minimal work I did to make it a modern web app that can run without a traditional back-end.


303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is Incredibly Problematic

Pop art style illustration of a white woman holding her hand up to say stop.

Before I get into this, let me start with this preface: I am not a legal expert by any means. I never even watched Law & Order. That said, I am keenly interested in the law and how it relates to bias and discrimination, particularly if that intersects with technology, especially the web. Which brings me to the subject at hand: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. I tweeted about this case, which is currently before the Supreme Court of the United States, the other day, but felt like I owed it a lengthier—and perhaps more enduring—discussion. So here goes…



Thoughts on the proposed Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act

A photograph of a sledgehammer leaning against a pile of bricks and rubble.

Last month, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Representative John P. Sarbanes (D-Md.) introduced the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act—I’m gonna call it the WS3A for short—simultaneously in the U.S. Senate (S. 4998) and House of Representatives (H.R. 9021) to explicitly bring websites—and other forms of digital media that didn’t exist when the ADA was signed into law—into the purview of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). I am definitely in favor of this effort as it removes the ambiguity that currently exists in U.S. law as to whether websites are governed by the ADA. The WS3A is a reasonable framework, but there is still a lot of work to be done when it (hopefully) passes.



Spellcheckers exfiltrating PII… not so fast

Photograph of a cute robot taking an apple from a pile of apples.

A recent post from the Otto JS research team highlighted how spellcheck services can inadvertently exfiltrate sensitive user data, including passwords, from your site. To be honest, I found the post a tad alarmist and lacking when it came to recommending solid protections. Consider this your no-nonsense guide to protecting your users’ sensitive information.



Bring Focus to the First Form Field with an Error

In a green field filled with only yellow flowers, a cute robot has found a single red flower, digital art

While filling out a long form the other day, I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t submitting. Turns out I’d forgotten to fill in a field, but I didn’t know that because it had scrolled out of the viewport. This is a common problem on the web, but easily remedied with a little bit of JavaScript.