Dispatches From The Internets

Bridge The Digital Divide: Don’t Forget The Other Billion People

An excellent call to arms for reaching the underserved. When you need to center yourself with respect to your place in the world, consider these stats:

When you take a step back and look beyond the U.S., more than two-thirds of the world’s population does not have Internet access. The World Bank’s research estimates that poverty hits 700 million people in our world, which is defined as $1.90 a day or less, or 9.6% of the global population. Also 1.2 billion people (22%) live on less than $1.25 a day, and among these people just under half have electricity.

Flexbox Grid Finesse

Some wonderful examples of irregular layouts using flexbox, from the one and only Hayden Pickering.

Microsoft Edge’s JavaScript engine to go open-source

I don’t know the first thing about writing C++ or building a JavaScript parser, but I think this is a really cool thing for Microsoft to do. Seeing stuff like this makes me very happy to work there.

Breakpoint Options

A bit about the new Debugger Tab in WebKit. Looks handy!

Thoughts on Progressive Enhancement and Accessibility

A lovely post from WordPress co-founding developer Mike Little on progressive enhancement and JavaScript dependence. It’s an excellent retort to Joe Hoyle’s response to Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko’s reaction to WordPress’ announcement of Calypso and their mode to Node and a Single Page App architecture for Wordpress.com administration.

Here’s a nugget of gold:

[V]isual difficulties are not the only reason people need accessible web sites. Those with motor difficulties, who can only use keyboards or special devices like braille readers, head wands, sip and puff controllers, etc. or simply those with unsteady hands that find a mouse difficult to use like the ever-increasing aged population, all need to be able to use the web too.

Progressive enhancement needs better advocacy

I don’t know that advocacy is the issue. Perhaps a better title would be “Developers should keep an open mind” or ”The most important thing to know is you don’t know everything”.

This is a great post and Colin makes a lot of the same arguments I make in Chapter 5 of Adaptive Web Design, Second Edition. Great minds!