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 Q26, a custom theme,
HTML5, CSS3, and a tiny amount of JavaScript,
No analytics whatsoever (why?).

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

Most text is set in Raleway Variable by Matt McInerney, Pablo Impallari and Rodrigo Fuenzalida. I prefer fonts whose letter Q is circular (or close to it), for obvious reasons.

AI

I do not use generative AI to write any blog content, except where clearly and explicitly identified (usually while talking about AI). All my content is written by a me, and I am not a robot (my partner claims to believe that I'm secretly a robot from the future, but I'm moderately confident that she's wrong, beep boop).

Most the underlying code powering my sites are human-written, but I've been known to use "spicy autocomplete" (but not "YOLO vibe coding"/"clanker-driven" coding), and I've not audited all of the libraries that I depend on.

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).