View Source
Gary Ings’ article in HTML Review issue 3, a view source web, takes me back:
On my personal websites view source meant being able to adapt and remix ideas. Like drawing a map, elements and pages acted as landmarks in the browser to be navigated between. As a self-initiated learner, being able to view source brought to mind the experience of a slow walk through someone else’s map.
It’s also very nicely presented. Look at it on a decent web browser and be impressed.1
View Source on modern web browsers tends to reveal a whole heap of custom CSS, so it can take some digging to get down to the HTML building blocks of the article you’re reading. I’m glad I taught myself HTML in those simpler times.
Nowadays 99% of what I post here I write in Markdown2 because that’s the core of what I’m trying to communicate here: the words and hyperlinks with the occasional embedded image or video. Nobody will learn very much by using View Source on this content, I’m afraid.
[Via Pixel Envy]
But do all those presentational gimmicks really add that much to the experience of reading the article? Opinions will differ, but it’s good to see what’s possible if you’re trying.↩︎
I do still have WordPress installed on this domain and serving some of my older-but-still-relatively-recent content that was written as HTML, but that’s not the future of this site. If I can ever be bothered to get round to rescuing older posts from various corners of my file system their future will be to be converted to Markdown and I’ll kiss WordPress goodbye. (But then, I’ve been saying that for years and not following through. Don’t hold your breath.)↩︎