140 lines
5.6 KiB
Markdown
140 lines
5.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Site Updates: Better Contrast Ratio and Using Xeact"
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date: 2021-12-19
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---
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Happy holidays all! As the year rolls to a close I wanted to take a moment to
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let you know of some improvements that I've done over the year to try and make
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the reading experience as best as it can be.
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## Better Contrast Ratio
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Over the years I have gotten reports that my site is hard to read. I've been
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taking them seriously but I have never really been sure what to do about them. I
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think I have found the core of the problem and I have changed the site's
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contrast ratio to hopefully have more contrast between the text of the website
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and the background.
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Here are some comparisons to before and after the change:
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<div style="background-color:#000000;padding:0.5em">
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<div style="background-color:#282828;color:#fbf1c7;padding:1em">
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This is what my site looked like before I made the changes (dark mode).
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</div>
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<div style="padding:0.25em"></div>
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<div style="background-color:#1d2021;color:#f9f5d7;padding:1em">
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This is what my site looks like after I made the changes (dark mode).
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</div>
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<div style="padding:0.25em"></div>
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<div style="color:#282828;background-color:#fbf1c7;padding:1em">
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This is what my site looked like before I made the changes (light mode).
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</div>
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<div style="padding:0.25em"></div>
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<div style="color:#1d2021;background-color:#f9f5d7;padding:1em">
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This is what my site looks like after I made the changes (light mode).
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</div>
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</div>
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Hopefully this should improve the contrast ratio a lot more. I've always wanted
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this website to look a lot like [my emacs
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config](https://cdn.christine.website/file/christine-static/blog/Screenshot+from+2021-12-19+12-06-39.png),
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but these changes should hopefully reach a balance of readability and stylistic
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choices to get across the vision I have for my website.
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## Using Xeact
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<noscript>
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Sorry, but you may want to scroll past this section. At the time of writing I
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don't currently have a good fallback set up for people that don't have
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JavaScript enabled on their browser. If you have ideas, please [email
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me](mailto:me@christine.website) and let me know them.
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</noscript>
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I want to use [Xeact](https://xeiaso.net/blog/xeact-0.0.69-2021-11-18)
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more in my website. I am trying to hit a balance of avoiding structural
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JavaScript while also allowing me to experiment with new and interesting ways of
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doing things. To this end I have created a custom HTML element that allows me to
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embed the little conversation fragments that I feel makes this blog unique. They
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are currently done by [a horrific hack I made to my markdown
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parser](https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/540ae4a3a9735d3f55ebceb1d271e472cd7f950e/src/app/markdown.rs#L38-L65).
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This also makes it hard for me to put links in the little conversation
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fragments, so when you see me do that, that's because I've written something of
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this form:
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```markdown
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[This is a test <a href="https://zombo.com">with a link</a>.](conversation://Mara/hacker)
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```
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[This is a test <a href="https://zombo.com">with a link</a>.](conversation://Mara/hacker)
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This has become an unworkable mess. With the [html
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component](https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/540ae4a3a9735d3f55ebceb1d271e472cd7f950e/static/js/conversation.js)
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I made recently, I can instead write things that look like this:
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```markdown
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<xeblog-conv name="Mara" mood="hacker">
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This is a test [with a link](https://zombo.com).
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</xeblog-conv>
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```
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<xeblog-conv name="Mara" mood="hacker">
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This is a test [with a link](https://zombo.com).
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</xeblog-conv>
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This lets me use Xeact in a way that allows me to enhance the experience of
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using my website as well as my experience in writing it. I don't really like how
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this adds JavaScript into the mix for rendering the page. I have tried to avoid
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it, but this is getting unworkable for me. When I get things to the point that I
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feel more comfortable with making it the default option (this may involve some
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custom hacking to the CSS to make it degrade more gracefully, I don't know what
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I'm doing here), I will use it more as my main way to write these asides. Until
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then, I can deal with the link syntax form. I may end up writing something to
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munge things into place.
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This also depends on you having modern JavaScript support. I can't change
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anything about that without introducing pain and suffering to my development
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workflow.
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<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
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This also breaks people reading the RSS feed, but it's already been [pretty darn
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broken](https://github.com/Xe/site/issues/388) already. Worst case this makes
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people a bit confused with the RSS feed, but until I can find a good workaround
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I think I can tolerate this weirdness.
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I am not good with CSS.
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</xeblog-conv>
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## Server-side Syntax Highlighting
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You may have noticed that code syntax highlighting has a notably different color
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scheme to it compared to the rest of the blog as of late. This is not on
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accident. I used to use [Prism](https://prismjs.com/) to do this on the client
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side. This worked great, but Prism is a huge (near 1 MB) download. I really want
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to avoid wasting bandwidth, so I added this at the markdown rendering step with
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[syntect](https://docs.rs/syntect/latest/syntect/). The theme I use
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(base16-mocha) is not perfectly aligned with my editor, but this is as close as
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I can get with their default themes until I have the energy to port gruvbox into
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this.
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Hopefully this should work in the RSS feed too.
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---
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Have a good rest of the year and stay safe! I'm gonna try and take a load off
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over the holidays, so I may end up posting less frequently. 2021 has been a lot.
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[Please get vaccinated. I want to be able to travel for conventions without it
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being so scary all the time.](conversation://Cadey/enby)
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