Musings of Old Man Joe

There and back again!

internet

WordPress and the change in website design.

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I have been working on websites for better or worse since the late 1990’s. Of course then it was through yahoo and the website was much more basic than today.

Yahoo website from 1999

Image of Yahoo.com from 1999
web.archive.org

Of course a lot has happened since then; the thing that changed the way webpages are made was the iPhone in 2007, and the arrival of the tablet and iPad. The arrival of these new technologies precipitated responsive design, which means the sections or parts of a website will stack so they will fit in a smaller screen size.

In December 2018 Gutenberg was released for WordPress. This is a block based system to allow the website to be responsive. Other responsive design tools to mention would be bootstrap and masonry and there are many more all tailored to allow for responsive design. The difference is that these other tools are mainly used by developers and not for the general blogger. Before this block editor, much of the design aspects you would have to work with were HTML (the skeleton of the website), CSS (the styling of the website), and Javascript (the functionality of the website). Now in wordpress you have all the design elements on the side of the page, so no code necessary (or mostly no code). Since the initial release of Gutenberg there have been updates that have slowly improved the way the blocks worked, (I am no expert in Gutenberg, just a humble user) but I must say that it’s only recently I feel it is reaching it’s full potential.

Recently Gutenberg and wordpress have been talking about Full Site Editing . The reason I am actually writing this post about this is I don’t think bloggers, or I could say people who use the tools but don’t read about them as such, understand how much this is changing the way we create websites. My read on full site editing is the blogger or developer will have access to not just the page or post but also the page templates, widgets, menu, pretty much the whole site.
My understanding was that using the customiser meant you didn’t need a child theme, as the changes didn’t impact the wordpress core theme, but the customiser is being removed which in a way is sad as it’s being removed only as it’s becoming mainstream in use.
I believe that you will still need a child theme & the development of the child theme with full site editing isn’t there yet, but many developers are working on this so I expect a result soon.

Before windows 95 you were using DOS to use a computer, windows 95 changed all that! Block full site editing is going to do the same thing for website design, and it’s a big thing!

I have been creating and hosting websites for many years and I see the changes and wonder what the future will bring. Will there still be a market for freelancers to design websites if you don’t need to learn code any more? Or is it more that website design is in a transition? Now more then ever with people making their living on the internet & working from home, will easier tools create a new market for people to interact with the web?
Of course website design is more than just the website, it’s also managing the site back end in regards to hosting, software updates, and making sure its secure. So the freelancer is going to be around for quite some time. And because the changes are happening so quickly, if you have 15 websites some will be older themes than others and will require a different skill set to maintain.

So in one way things are getting easier, and in another way, more complicated, and that’s technology in a nutshell.

Apple decides privacy, what next?

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Why Apple chooses Privacy.

It may come as a shock to some who think Apple should have complied without question the US Governments request to develop a back door in its software to allow hacking into their products. Here are a few reasons it should definitely not do so. First is the effort to draw a line in privacy because once that door has been opened it’s really hard to close it again, and enough government eavesdropping through the NSA & GCHQ (the NSA’s British younger cousin). Edward Snowden exposed the high level of intrusion into private citizens electronic data, while most of the stuff the governments looked at was just metadata, the fact that it was all done in secret in democratic societies is disturbing.

After this revelation people are skeptical of any government intrusion or allowing the NSA to have a way of reading personal information without due process. In asking Apple to give the NSA this back door it would not only open your private information to the governments of the USA and GCHQ, which in turn means Europe. But in the creation of the back door the Chinese and any other oppressive dictatorship would also like access to the back door to spy on its citizens. So there is more at stake than just getting info off one iphone used in California. Apple has factories in China,  would they feel that as they created the back door it might be in it’s best business interest to share it with the Chinese Government?

As the NSA found a way to get into the data on the terrorist iphone without Apples help, it would seem there is always a way to get something done if you have enough time. In the interest of hackers and oppressive governments who are trying to access western government facilities and businesses the game seems better played if the objective is not made easier by less encryption because the intelligence & law enforcement have become lazy and wish to legislate information rather than detective work.

When I die, who will I leave my cloud content to?

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cloud computing

Like many people these days I have purchased movies and shows through the cloud and I have content on a server in many places I have never visited nor am I likely too.

I like the convenience of having stuff I can access on my devices anywhere I like, it’s cool. I was very reluctant to just go all cloud as I am still the fan of having a hard copy of my media. It’s a trust issue and although I have committed quite a bit of money to cloud only purchases not being able to just download a copy to a hard drive does still perplex me.

Obviously I am not the first person to ask this question, and although I have all my images and the important stuff backed up. I get the impression many people tend to have allot of stuff in the cloud and not too much backed up. And my thinking on this is really in the future when society has moved to a much more integrated online connected society. As easy it seems to be these days to get your account hacked and more often I hear about credit cards and pins have been hacked. Purely because the banks in the USA don’t want to spend the money on a more modern system that could protect the consumer much more. Yes I mean smart chips that have saved banks in Europe millions of dollars.

In the world of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and many others, are the pictures I upload still mine? Are the movies/TV shows I cannot download to my computer just a rent? Or because I clicked yes on a new privacy agreement because I wanted to get to lunch; have I signed my stuff away? And when I die can I leave my movies/TV shows in my cloud to who I wish, or when I die so do my purchases. I don’t remember clicking on that!

How the Internet or Web is changing our world.

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We live in a mobile world, I find it easier to get my news & write my blog on my phone. We have our social networks, too many for me to be actually social. Personally I think texting is the most social program. As I’m actually having a conversation rather than just making statements.

The social thing like other online programs will change as one loses popularity as another takes the lead. Just like trendy bars in Los Angeles. They are only the flavor for a short time.
There are other ways our world is changing.

The Arab Spring would never have occurred without social networks. Groups who wish to promote their cause now have a platform. This can be good or bad depending on the cause!
I believe in free speech, but hate & violence are not free speech. The promotion of free speech while restricting hate is the challenge of the modern web.

Pornography (the industry), is actually on the decline due to the web. With so many free online sites & people willing to put their exploits on the web for free!

I see a change in our TV viewing in the near future. The only thing holding change back is the media companies. The advent of the reality show (oxymoron), was probably the worst thing to happen to TV since its inception. I have never understood the purpose in giving fools a platform just for ratings. I know it’s cheap but there is no value in it!

The web will be our answer to this, as content & software develop more of our viewing pleasure will be web based rather than just network TV. It will of course have to be paid for. My hope is we move to a one payment system for everything. Web, tv, data, because in a digital world it’s all just data! You pay for the data you use. Very simple & no throttling thank you.

I do wonder what will happen to the TV when we get all our news and shows on our mobile devises. Will the TV just be for gaming? We are in a constant state of technology transition waiting for the next leap. Only when that’s settled & people have decided what works do we know. Until then it’s just opinion, this was mine!
Thank you!!

Digital Privacy in a Mobile World.

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There are changes going on in our society. In the news we are focused on the religious political battle. But there are other changes going on, just a bit more subtle.
The tech revolution started more than a decade ago. It moves in slow steady increments for a few years, then something happens & we have a leap forward.
Windows 95 was a leap, as was windows NT for the tech administrator. Mac OS X was a leap, as was the iMac.
In recent years the leap was created by the iPhone.
In 2007 the phone industry in the US was given CPR and we moved forward about four years. Up until then I would look in awe at Japan and the wonderful phones that we would never see in north America.
So here came the iPhone. Whether you are Apple, Android, the iPhone was the start of the biggest change in how we use tech in the last fifteen years.
Now tech is much more mobile, the network providers have been led by necessity, kicking & screaming to spend vast sums of money improving their networks.
With improved web access we have Facebook, Google + and other social networks at our fingertips. These social networks have in the past, been questioned & accused of not looking after our personal information properly. Over years systems have been developed to protect our data.
The weird thing is although I see people worry about their personal data, very personal things are uploaded to these social networks. It makes me wonder what a person who grew up with these networks considers personal data. Is it just account settings.
Personally I have always felt that anything posted on the web should be considered public. Because if you feel that strongly you should probably not post it in the first place.
As more of our info becomes fodder for advertising & targeted selling. Where is the line now? I know it’s moved recently. Every time I accept a new user agreement I’m sure it’s to facilitate the control & use of my data. As a modern connected people, are many even aware of the lack of privacy. Or even the fact that to enjoy the new social technological world, it is necessary to give up so much privacy. Don’t get me wrong, I love tech & I hope the social networks continue to keep us connected to friends & family. But we need to be more responsible for our web presence. It can’t just be left to the networks.
The latest trend is cloud computing. Which does seem to be a natural next step in mobile computing. There are many advantages. Smaller networked devices that don’t need large storage capabilities with access to large amounts of data.
But as we have seen, what happens when the network has a problem. I am a big believer in backing up. Learned the hard way many years ago. And today with reasonably priced external drives it’s very easy. Technology is always in a state of transition. Only when something becomes so normal that we no longer think about it is the transformation complete.
Have a nice day!