web posts

in

In Mac OS Sonoma, browsers now require and the OS will ask for the “Local Network” permission to access local websites. I didn’t know why it was asking and didn’t allow it, but then couldn’t access my sites. I had to go to “System Settings”, the “Privacy & Security” pane, select “Local Network” and turn on for my browser(s) to get access again.

If it matters, my local dev setup uses domains set in /etc/hosts pointing to IPs of VMs run by VirtualBox, managed by Vagrant, set up like web.vm.network 'private_network', ip: '192.168.56.1'.

Inline emoji favicon

in

On a simple one-page site, I wanted as much as possible to be inline in the single document request. I didn’t have a favicon, and I didn’t want browsers to make that extra request. I considered just adding an empty file, as I’ve done sometimes in the past, but that would still be an extra request. So I looked up if it could be inlined. It can be done, with a data URL. And using an SVG format, an emoji can be used for a cheap actual icon.

Continue reading post "Inline emoji favicon"

Upgraded Symfony 4.4 to 5.4

in

I’ve upgraded my website to Symfony 5.4 from 4.4. I’ve continued on without Symfony Flex, as I had when updating from 3.4 to 4.4. The procedure was fairly similar to that, fixing any Symfony 4 deprecations and then updating the composer version constraints, fixing anything broken after that. I also switched from requiring the symfony/symfony repo to requiring individual components. It went fairly smoothly, aside from needing to fix a few things after the composer update.

Continue reading post "Upgraded Symfony 4.4 to 5.4"

Ansible, Vagrant, and Symfony `var` permissions

in

I have moved to using VirtualBox VM’s for my local web development. I use Vagrant and Ansible to set them up. For my site, I use synced folders to share the site files from the local machine to the dev VM. This limits what permissions can be set on the files though, and doesn’t work well for Symfony’s var folder stuff, eg cache and logs. The normal Symfony permissions for those folders use ACL’s, but those cannot be set on Vagrant synced files. My solution was to create a /var/www/var folder to store such folders for any sites on the VM, and symlink them into place in the shared folder location. I did this with Ansible so that it would be reproducible. Since I ran into some issues getting it working, I thought I’d blog about it.

Continue reading post "Ansible, Vagrant, and Symfony `var` permissions"

Vagrant network IP change

in

Apparently, an update to VirtualBox after version 6.1.26 limited the IP’s usable for network adapters on Mac / Linux hosts. They must now be in the 192.68.56.0/21 range, which is pretty limited and much less easy to remember or type than the 10.*.*.* that I had been using. I had to change my projects to all be in this range and spread out the IPs to avoid collisions between the various projects when I updated VirtualBox a while back.

Continue reading post "Vagrant network IP change"

Ideas: Cascading Behavior Sheets, a declarative alternative to JS

in

I have had the idea for some time that the web ought to have a declarative format to define behavior on elements like it does for styles (CSS). It would be an alternative to JavaScript (JS) that would be as robust as CSS, simplifying adding and defining common behaviors. There are a lot of things sites do frequently that can take a fair amount of work for a new person to implement, as well as require a payload sent over the wire. For people who don’t need complications beyond standard, this could be provided by the browser with some configuration in a simple sheet. I think there should be a Cascading Behavior Sheet (CBS) standard for the web.

Potential advantages:

  • robust forward and backward compatibility like CSS
  • simpler, easier to learn format than JS
  • little to write or think about for common functionality
  • little to send over wire for common functionality
  • more performant native implementation possible
  • declarative
  • familiar syntax to CSS devs
  • simple to connect behavior broadly to chosen selectors
  • cascade, @media, @support, etc to limit which and when behaviors apply
  • automatic handling of attaching and removing behaviors when they apply / don’t, including new DOM elements
  • maintain separation of concerns that keeping JS and CSS separate provides
Continue reading post "Ideas: Cascading Behavior Sheets, a declarative alternative to JS"

in

Porkbun DNS seems to be down and has been so for the last several hours at least. I have added Fastmail nameservers to my NS list so that things work for the moment, since I get that as part of my account there. Can’t for my client though, who I had recommended Porkbun to.

jQuery AJAX and multipart form handling

in

I recently had need to submit a web form with file fields via AJAX. The application uses jQuery and was already submitting forms just fine without file fields using the .serialize() method to pass data to a jQuery.ajax() call. That didn’t seem to handle the file fields, though. Searching the internet, I found a solution using the browser built in FormData object.

Continue reading post "jQuery AJAX and multipart form handling"