At the beginning of the year, Remy wrote about extracting Goodreads metadata so he could create his end-of-year reading list. More recently, Mark Llobrera wrote about how he created a visualisation of his reading history. In his case, he’s using JSON to store the information.

This kind of JSON storage is exactly what Tom Critchlow proposes in his post, Library JSON - A Proposal for a Decentralized Goodreads:

Thinking through building some kind of “web of books” I realized that we could use something similar to RSS to build a kind of decentralized GoodReads powered by indie sites and an underlying easy to parse format.

His proposal looks kind of similar to what Mark came up with. There’s a title, an author, an image, and some kind of date for when you started and/or finished reading the book.

Matt then points out that RSS gets close to the data format being suggested and asks how about using RSS?:

Rather than inventing a new format, my suggestion is that this is RSS plus an extension to deal with books. This is analogous to how the podcast feeds are specified: they are RSS plus custom tags.

Like Matt, I’m in favour of re-using existing wheels rather than inventing new ones, mostly to avoid a 927 situation.

But all of these proposals—whether JSON or RSS—involve the creation of a separate file, and yet the information is originally published in HTML. Along the lines of Matt’s idea, I could imagine extending the h-entry collection of class names to allow for books (or films, or other media). It already handles images (with u-photo). I think the missing fields are the date-related ones: when you start and finish reading. Those fields are present in a different microformat, h-event in the form of dt-start and dt-end. Maybe they could be combined:

<article class="h-entry h-event h-review">
<h1 class="p-name p-item">Book title</h1>
<img class="u-photo" src="image.jpg" alt="Book cover.">
<p class="p-summary h-card">Book author</p>
<time class="dt-start" datetime="YYYY-MM-DD">Start date</time>
<time class="dt-end" datetime="YYYY-MM-DD">End date</time>
<div class="e-content">Remarks</div>
<data class="p-rating" value="5">★★★★★</data>
<time class="dt-published" datetime="YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm">Date of this post</time>
</article>

That markup is simultaneously a post (h-entry) and an event (h-event) and you can even throw in h-card for the book author (as well as h-review if you like to rate the books you read). It can be converted to RSS and also converted to .ics for calendars—those parsers are already out there. It’s ready for aggregation and it’s ready for visualisation.

I publish very minimal reading posts here on adactio.com. What little data is there isn’t very structured—I don’t even separate the book title from the author. But maybe I’ll have a little play around with turning these h-entries into combined h-entry/event posts.

I think about design principles a lot. I’m such a nerd for design principles, I even have a collection. I’m not saying all of the design principles in the collection are good—far from it! I collect them without judgement.

As for what makes a good design principle, I’ve written about that before. One aspect that everyone seems to agree on is that a design principle shouldn’t be an obvious truism. Take this as an example:

Make it usable.

Who’s going to disagree with that? It’s so agreeable that it’s practically worthless as a design principle. But now take this statement:

Usability is more important than profitability.

Ooh, now we’re talking! That’s controversial. That’s bound to surface some disagreement, which is a good thing. It’s now passing the reversability test—it’s not hard to imagine an endeavour driven by the opposite:

Profitability is more important than usability.

In either formulation, what makes these statements better than the bland toothless agreeable statements—“Usability is good!”, “Profitability is good!”—is that they introduce the element of prioritisation.

I like design principles that can be formulated as:

X, even over Y.

It’s not saying that Y is unimportant, just that X is more important:

Usability, even over profitability.

Or:

Profitability, even over usability.

Design principles formulated this way help to crystalise priorities. Chris has written about the importance of establishing—and revisiting—priorities on any project:

Prioritisation isn’t and shouldn’t be a one-off exercise. The changing needs of your customers, the business environment and new opportunities from technology mean prioritisation is best done as a regular activity.

I’ve said it many times, but one on my favourite design principles comes from the HTML design principles. The priority of consitituencies (it’s got “priorities” right there in the name!):

In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity.

Or put another way:

• Users, even over authors.
• Authors, even over implementors.
• Implementors, even over specifiers.
• Specifiers, even over theoretical purity.

When it comes to evaluating technology for the web, I think there are a number of factors at play.

First and foremost, there’s the end user. If a technology choice harms the end user, avoid it. I’m thinking here of the kind of performance tax that a user has to pay when developers choose to use megabytes of JavaScript.

Mind you, some technologies have no direct effect on the end user. When it comes to build tools, version control, toolchains …all the stuff that sits on your computer and never directly interacts with users. In that situation, the wants and needs of developers can absolutely take priority.

But as a general principle, I think this works:

User experience, even over developer experience.

Sadly, I think the current state of “modern” web development reverses that principle. Developer efficiency is prized above all else. Like I said, that would be absolutely fine if we’re talking about technologies that only developers are exposed to, but as soon as we’re talking about shipping those technologies over the network to end users, it’s negligent to continue to prioritise the developer experience.

I feel like personal websites are an exception here. What you do on your own website is completely up to you. But once you’re taking a paycheck to make websites that will be used by other people, it’s incumbent on you to realise that it’s not about you.

I’ve been talking about developers here, but this is something that applies just as much to designers. But I feel like designers go through that priority shift fairly early in their career. At the outset, they’re eager to make their mark and prove themselves. As they grow and realise that it’s not about them, they understand that the most appropriate solution for the user is what matters, even if that’s a “boring” tried-and-tested pattern that isn’t going to wow any fellow designers.

I’d like to think that developers would follow a similar progression, and I’m sure that some do. But I’ve seen many senior developers who have grown more enamoured with technologies instead of honing in on the most appropriate technology for end users. Maybe that’s because in many organisations, developers are positioned further away from the end users (whereas designers are ideally being confronted with their creations being used by actual people). If a lead developer is focused on the productivity, efficiency, and happiness of the dev team, it’s no wonder that their priorities end up overtaking the user experience.

I realise I’m talking in very binary terms here: developer experience versus user experience. I know it’s not always that simple. Other priorities also come into play, like business needs. Sometimes business needs are in direct conflict with user needs. If an online business makes its money through invasive tracking and surveillance, then there’s no point in having a design principle that claims to prioritise user needs above all else. That would be a hollow claim, and the design principle would become worthless.

Because that’s the point with design principles. They’re there to be used. They’re not a nice fluffy exercise in feeling good about your work. The priority of constituencies begins, “in case of conflict” and that’s exactly when a design principle matters—when it’s tested.

Suppose someone with a lot of clout in your organisation makes a decision, but that decision conflicts with your organisations’s design principles. Instead of having an opinion-based argument about who’s right or wrong, the previously agreed-upon design principles allow you to take ego out of the equation.

Prioritisation isn’t easy, and it gets harder the more factors come into play: user needs, business needs, technical constraints. But it’s worth investing the time to get agreement on the priority of your constituencies. And then formulate that agreement into design principles.

The Rise Of Skywalker arrives on Disney Plus on the fourth of May (a date often referred to as Star Wars Day, even though May 25th is and always will be the real Star Wars Day). Time to begin a Star Wars movie marathon. But in which order?

Back when there were a mere two trilogies, this was already a vexing problem if someone were watching the films for the first time. You could watch the six films in episode order:

1. The Phantom Menace
2. Attack Of The Clones
3. Revenge Of The Sith
4. A New Hope
5. The Empire Strikes Back
6. The Return Of The Jedi

But then you’re spoiling the grand reveal in episode five.

Alright then, how about release order?

1. A New Hope
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. Return Of The Jedi
4. The Phantom Menace
5. Attack Of The Clones
6. Revenge Of The Sith

But then you’re front-loading the big pay-off, and you’re finishing with a big set-up.

This conundrum was solved with the machete order. It suggests omitting The Phantom Menace, not because it’s crap, but because nothing happens in it that isn’t covered in the first five minutes of Attack Of The Clones. The machete order is:

1. A New Hope
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. Attack Of The Clones
4. Revenge Of The Sith
5. Return Of The Jedi

It’s kind of brilliant. You get to keep the big reveal in The Empire Strikes Back, and then through flashback, you see how this came to be. Best of all, the pay-off in Return Of The Jedi has even more resonance because you’ve just seen Anakin’s downfall in Revenge Of The Sith.

With the release of the new sequel trilogy, an adjusted machete order is a pretty straightforward way to see the whole saga:

1. A New Hope
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Phantom Menace (optional)
4. Attack Of The Clones
5. Revenge Of The Sith
6. Return Of The Jedi
7. The Force Awakens
8. The Last Jedi
9. The Rise Of Skywalker

Done. But …what if you want to include the standalone films too?

If you slot them in in release order, they break up the flow:

1. A New Hope
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Phantom Menace (optional)
4. Attack Of The Clones
5. Revenge Of The Sith
6. Return Of The Jedi
7. The Force Awakens
8. Rogue One
9. The Last Jedi
10. Solo
11. The Rise Of Skywalker

I’m planning to watch all eleven films. This was my initial plan:

1. Rogue One
2. A New Hope
3. The Empire Strikes Back
4. The Phantom Menace
5. Attack Of The Clones
6. Revenge Of The Sith
7. Solo
8. Return Of The Jedi
9. The Force Awakens
10. The Last Jedi
11. The Rise Of Skywalker

I definitely want to have Rogue One lead straight into A New Hope. The problem is where to put Solo. I don’t want to interrupt the Sith/Jedi setup/payoff.

So here’s my current plan, which I have already begun:

1. Solo
2. Rogue One
3. A New Hope
4. The Empire Strikes Back
5. The Phantom Menace
6. Attack Of The Clones
7. Revenge Of The Sith
8. Return Of The Jedi
9. The Force Awakens
10. The Last Jedi
11. The Rise Of Skywalker

This way, the two standalone films work as world-building for the saga and don’t interrupt the flow once the main story is underway.

I think this works pretty well. Neither Solo nor Rogue One require any prior knowledge to be enjoyed.

And just in case you’re thinking that perhaps I’m overthinking it a bit and maybe I’ve got too much time on my hands …the world has too much time on its hands right now! Thanks to The Situation, I can not only take the time to plan and execute the viewing order for a Star Wars movie marathon, I can feel good about it. Stay home, they said. Literally saving lives, they said. Happy to oblige!

Today marks ten years since the publication of HTML5 For Web Designers, the very first book from A Book Apart.

I’m so proud of that book, and so honoured that I was the first author published by the web’s finest purveyors of brief books. I mean, just look at the calibre of their output since my stumbling start!

Here’s what I wrote ten years ago.

Here’s what Jason wrote ten years ago.

Here’s what Mandy wrote ten years ago.

Here’s what Jeffrey wrote ten years ago.

They started something magnificent. Ten years on, with Katel at the helm, it’s going from strength to strength.

Happy birthday, little book! And happy birthday, A Book Apart! Here’s to another decade!

McKeever, William, author

Singh, Gurcharan, 1945- author

Seigneur, Christian, 1952- author

Hawkins, Dawn May, author

Sætre, Glenn-Peter, author

Gupta, P. K. (Pawan K.), 1943- author

Amyes, Sebastian G. B., author

Richards, Richard A., author

Odenbaugh, Jay, author

Guglielmone, Alberto A., author

Lesk, Arthur M., author

Wang, Hsiao-Hsuan, author

Van Wyk, Ben-Erik, author

Lenoir, Timothy, 1948- author

Roe, Shirley A., 1949- author

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Henderson, M. H. (Margaret Helen), author

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Hansen, Vivienne, author

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Broom, Donald M., author

Manz, A. (Andreas), author

McDonald, Roger B., author

Hickman, Cleveland P., Jr., author

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Bowman, William D., author

Willey, Joanne M

Hill, Richard W., author