Eyebeam

Hidden Blog Post

Posted on the front page's source code is this message from the web designer.

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///// VIEW SOURCE BLOG: 01-hello-world /////

Hello world,

Thanks for viewing source, I appreciate that you care how this works. @dphiffer
here, writing my first "secret" View Source blog post. You can ~only~ read this
if you *view source*, it does not otherwise exist in the realm of visible
hypertext. (I mean, sure, I bet you could find this text file on GitHub,
rendered as a web page, but IMO it's more fun to read this next to the `<meta>`
tags.)

The idea for this blog is to help you understand how this site is built, what
it is made out of. I learned how to build websites by using 'the source' command
on Netscape. Having the source code be visible, but also *legible* is important.

HTML source code doesn't include the range of stuff that constitutes a modern
web page; back-end code, minified assets, AJAX requests. I'm hoping that these
blog posts can help you discover and understand those otherwise hidden away
aspects of how each page on here is built.

I want you to understand how it all works and maybe you'll even decide to pitch
in and contribute your own fixes! The Eyebeam website is here for you to learn
from, and perhaps contribute to. If you know how to, you can suggest changes
on GitHub as pull requests. Maybe I'll explain how that process works at some
point. You can also submit bug reports for things that don't work for you, that
is also a super helpful way to contribute.

All of that happens on this GitHub repo:
https://github.com/eyebeam/eyebeam.org

Here is where the bug reports live:
https://github.com/eyebeam/eyebeam.org/issues

My belief is that running code is only part of the story. After you write and
test and deploy the code, things can still go wrong. All Code Has Bugs something
I have learned over the years, even for the simplest and most insignificant
computer programs. Seemingly tiny changes can cascade to break things
unexpectedly.

In the long span of its life, software needs to be maintained to continue being
useful. This View Source Blog will attempt to make the code that runs
eyebeam.org more legible and productive for future maintainers. (And also for
Future Me, for when I forget how everything works.)

Okay that is all, back to post-launch fixes for me.

The next blog post can be found by viewing source over here:
https://www.eyebeam.org/archive/

(20180308/dphiffer)