Itsy bitsy spider in Vienna
Remain
Today I’m traveling to the fourth WordCamp Europe, organised this year in Vienna. It will probably be the largest WordCamp, i.e. community-organized WordPress conference ever. My thoughts however are very much in Britain, where my relatives and millions of their countrymen and -women will be voting today on whether the UK should leave the EU or remain a member. I find it almost unbelievable that Europe (and the UK) might be in an even bigger mess than before just because of two men’s lust for power. But it’s too late to wonder about Cameron’s and Johnson’s motives – Britain, I hope you stay with us. Don’t let the populists win.
Smart Keyboard and iPad Pro
So I went and bought a 9.7″ iPad Pro along with the Apple Smart Keyboard for my personal use (althought I’m pretty sure quite a few work emails will be written on this too). First impressions after a little use: the keyboard is the best iPad keyboard I’ve used. There are ones that are more rigid and thus probably better for typing too, but those also tend to be pretty heavy and bulky. I had a Logitech Fabric Skin Folio for my work iPad Air, and just stopped using it after a while because of how much it limited the tablet-ness of the iPad, even though it was OK as a keyboard. The added bulk was just too much. The Smart Keyboard has all the versatility of the basic Smart Cover, it’s light and can be easily removed.
Visitors from Scotland bring the best gifts
Same Job, New Family
No, not that kind of new family. Our company H1 – my employer – was acquired today by Zeeland Family, one of the most versatile marketing agencies in Finland. Me and my four colleagues Aki, Jenny, Marco and Tomi will be joining their digital team and strengthening the company’s WordPress expertise. I’m pretty excited about this! The past 4.5 years at H1 have been the best time of my professional life, and I’m looking forward to topping that.
Street art in Finlayson area
Jeremy Keith on “Regressive Web Apps”
My favourite champion of the “One Web” Jeremy Keith wrote a really good post last week, triggered by the recent Google I/O conference and the (unfortunate, in my opinion) trend toward trying to make web apps behave like native apps and considering that “best practice”.
I recommend reading the whole article (and following his blog), but I love this quote:
I’ve seen people use a meta viewport declaration to disable pinch-zooming on their sites. As justification they point to the fact that you can’t pinch-zoom in most native apps, therefore this web-based app should also prohibit that action. The inability to pinch-zoom in native apps is a bug. By also removing that functionality from web products, people are reproducing unnecessary bugs.
When you’re really into the Pope
Northern Lights in My Backyard
It’s very rare to see the Aurora Borealis down where we live, but apparently due to a geomagnetic storm yesterday, we got quite a show. The photo is a bit blurry but you get the idea!
Experimenting with the WP REST API
As a quick weekend project, I added some ajax-y goodness to my site with the help of the WP REST API plugin (set to be included soon in WordPress core) and History.pushState. There are some bugs, namely I still need to get the appropriate Jetpack gallery, related posts and share button features to load when accessed via javascript, if possible.
EDIT: I’m no longer experimenting with the REST API on this blog. Because I’m lazy, and it didn’t really bring any value to the site.