Working with <input type="datetime-local"> is a lot of fun. All major browsers have standardized their UIs, and offer full support, and so the days of using polyfills or jQuery fallbacks are numbered.
Should you need support for older or more esoteric browsers, it may be best to fall back to a bunch of <select> inputs instead.
The cool thing about datetime-local is that the UI itself is localised based on the user's browser/machine language settings.
For example, in Canada:
I have a not-so-secret confession to make — I use the self-checkout line at grocery stores because they get me out of the store faster.
The choice used to be simple: at any given checkout queue, the queue for the self-checkout is usually non-existant, and I am adept enough at the interface so that it is not overly cumbersome to use.
Where I work, we run a bug bounty. We've done this for a number of years, and it's yielded great results in that bugs that could potentially affect user data are quickly and quietly dealt with at our own pace, and we retain control over the narrative (as opposed to having it disclosed publicly and dealing with the fallout.)
By far, however, the most annoying part of running the bug bounty program are the wannabe security researchers.
You know the kind;
I often have to toggle between a number of GMail accounts because even though they are managed by Zendesk, occasionally ham is caught by GMail's spam filter and never makes it to Zendesk. I've had enough important messages fall through that I became suspicious, and then discovered that I have replies and incoming leads being caught almost weekly!
Anyways, in short, GMail takes bloody forever to load anything that isn't Chrome, and the UI is not very snappy. Clicking "Use Basic HTML" at the bottom left is pointless because it doesn't actually trigger right away, and I've already waited many seconds before it sends me to that interstitial page asking me if I really wanted to use Basic HTML. Oh the horror.
In the future, just append ?ui=html or /h/, and voila!, watch your mailbox load in .5 seconds, flat.
So in the future, accessing your main mailbox would be https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/. Note the trailing slash, that's needed.
I really miss when webs
I came across an interesting problem without a good native browser solution, recently. Usually, browser APIs are so complete that this is a non-issue, but nonetheless...
The specific scenario involved a multiselect:
<select multiple id="mySelect">
<option value="1">One</option>
<option value="2">Two</option>
<option value="3">Three</option>
Four
While implementing what was supposed to be a rather straightforward use-case of second-factor authentication via WebAuthn, I ran into a surprising amount of roadblocks that made my implementation harder than it should've been. Complicating the procedure was that I initially implemented the hardware key checking using the old deprecated U2F protocol — which for the record, was more straightforward.
However, WebAuthn is the future — just look how slick this guide is! If that's not going to make you think it'll be done lickity-split, I don't know what will. Reading through that helpful guide (put together by the fine folks at DUO), I couldn't help but be struck by how "enterprise-y" it all felt. It did not bode well, and my fears were not unfounded.
I decided to put this post together as a catch-all for the problems I faced in my implementation, and direct links or write-ups to the solutions.
Mighty-Lobster asks:
Do I really need a goose neck kettle? I've seen several articles claiming that I totally need one for pour over coffee but they can't manage to articulate why it's going to help me in a language that I understand. "It helps you control the flow rate!" ... Uhm... sure. How is that going to make my coffee better? What happens if my coffee rate is wrong?
Like Mr. Lobster, I was also of the opinion that a gooseneck kettle couldn't possibly offer that much more to the coffee brewing process, compared to being careful with a regular wide-spout kettle.
While in some ways I was right, I was also quite mistaken.
It recently dawned on me just how many variables go into a cup of coffee. The same could probably be said of tea, or audio equipment, or any other hobby that people pursue. After all, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing, no?
My coffee journey has only really just begun (as of writing, November 2021), mostly as a consequence of staying and working from home, and picking up new hobbies during the COVID-19 pandemic. I don't consider myself a coffee snob, despite what all of my friends and family say, but more like a coffee snob wannabe. I could certainly go whole-hog into getting all the best equipment and single-origin beans, but I am a firm believer that a little effort will get you 90% of the way there, and everything else is chasing after that elusive remaining 10%1.
Since the original post, my Timemore Chestnut C2 and a
Every once in awhile a couple articles here and there make the rounds of social media about why one shouldn't use X email provider, whether that be Gmail, Outlook, or any other myriad of online services offering a virtual mailbox in exchange for a) your hard-earned money, or b) your personal information, please and thank you.
Most recently, Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one.
More often, you read horror stories about how someone lost access to their email – and by extension, access to a great many other online services that happen to use email as the fallback mechanism.
I'm old enough to remember when email inboxes were something ISPs provided (and as of today, they still do, if you ask for it), with miniscule quotas compared to what you can get today. I remember when Gmail launched and was invite-only, too. My first email provider was probably Yahoo! Mail, which hosted email with an ample storage quota of