Dan Q

Colophon

Technical

DanQ.me is powered by:

  • Bloq, a set of DanQ.me-specific components providing custom functionality (I’ll aim to start open-sourcing them at some point!),
  • ClassicPress, a fork of WordPress (the world’s most-popular open source blogging software), running Q23, a custom theme
  • HTML5, CSS3, and a tiny amount of JavaScript
  • Listmonk, the mailing list manager
  • No analytics whatsoever

Compatibility

I aim to ensure that virtually every page works without JavaScript. JavaScript support should be considered optional.

I aim to ensure that every page works, after a fashion, without CSS. CSS support should be considered nice-to-have.

Just for fun, you should try this site in Lynx. If it’s not usable, I consider that a failure on my part.

Typography

Titles are set in Raleway (weight 700) by Matt McInerney, Pablo Impallari and Rodrigo Fuenzalida. Body text uses a geometric humanist modern font stack.

Colours

“Brand” colours are #155a93, #1d6fb4, #95b8b8, and #c5eded.

Style Guide

I’ve not always been consistent in the application of my style guide, but – mostly for my own reference – I keep some notes here to help me do so:

  • British English spelling, except when talking about technical topics that require a different dialect (most programming languages use US English spelling for keywords).
  • Posts are titled in title case.
  • Titles of creative works such as the titles of books and films are set in italics.
  • If in doubt, drop the hyphen, e.g. “email”, “rewatch”, except to improve readability e.g. between double letters (“re-engage”).
  • Quotation marks used in UK style (punctuation outside), unless for technical or readability reasons.
  • Acronyms, especially uncommon ones, marked up with <abbr title="..."> tags. This wasn’t as clever as I once thought and I’ve stopped, but many pages still do it. Sorry.
  • No strong opinion on the “Oxford” serial comma; use it or not depending on what reads-best at the time.
  • Numbers one through twelve usually written longhand, larger numbers usually written in arabic digits, exceptions made to ensure “consistent” usage within a sentence.
  • Aim for WCAG AA accessibility.

Size

I aim to deliver a home page and most individual post pages at a total compressed size of <256kb, including all text, CSS, JavaScript, and inline images (“full size” images shown when clicking on images, video and audio files that do not autoplay, etc. are not counted).