Ezra Savard

My last links write-up was getting too long, so I broke out a few of the more software specific pieces here.

The Wealthy Western Web
One of the motivations for keeping this site static, and also reworking it with semantic HTML and simpler CSS was to support accessibility, both for those who use assistance technologies, but also for people on bad internet connections and low power devices. My work has given me a lot of experience thinking about assistive technologies, but not so much low-end devices. This piece from 2017 was a part of the inspiration for thinking more about those users in particular.

It’s been a bit long since I’ve written one of these, so this one is big. My reading pace during the summer hasn’t been as high as it was in spring however, so not too big.

A History of Purple Dyes
Starting this one off with some fashion history. For example, Tyrian Purple is a really old color and historically was produced from mollusk shells. It can still be produced that way from mollusks in Oaxaca, which are now protected.

For this post, I’ve added a sidebar to the site. The sidebar is mosty pulled from Every Layout, and is built with a flexbox. Historical photo after the break.

Today I attempted to hike Mount McCausland. It was really, really pretty. As a beginner, I also learned a few interesting hiking lessons.

As part of my efforts to learn CSS (instead of fudging through), I’ve been reading a lot. One interesting bit I’ve been reading through is Every Layout, which has been really helpful in learning the basics. Their approach heavily emphasizes leveraging browser layout algorithms and avoiding extreme specificity.

This post’s style improvement was to add in harmonic font sizing, based on Every Layout’s modular scale post. Here is a photo after the break, for posterity.

I decided to tear out my convoluted CSS and div-soup website in favour of focusing on the basics: semantic HTML5 and CSS that actually cascades, instead of specifying classes for everything and styling them individually…

Photo after the break.