A few weeks ago, I started a new job at Codemate (yay! More on that in a future post). Among many other things, this was the occasion for me to learn more about a technology I had been avoiding so far: Docker, and the whole concept of containerization. I usually prefer to focus on user-facing work, and leave sysadmin and ops to others – but I also have a sweet tooth for any and all automation, especially the type that can save developers time and headaches. It was definitely time to dive deep!

This blog post is my overview of the resources I looked at and the things I learned over the last few weeks.

I love dataviz, especially when it is both full of insights and easily accessible to a wide audience. Here are some examples of particularly engaging visualisations I collated, ordered by technique used.

Here is a talk I gave at Wagtail Space 2018. The video recording is available on YouTube. The talk was 90% demos so the purpose of this presentation is to share the links.

Discussing rich text capabilities in a CMS is an exercise in compromise. Authors want the flexibility to be creative in their content. Developers want to ensure said content fits in the box. This can feel like fighting over the bed covers with a spouse: everyone initially means well, but things turn sour and we all wish for a bigger duvet. Or a more understanding spouse.

I believe the fundamental problem is one of control – for end users, control over content formatting, and predictability of the overall system. And for developers, control over content processing and rendering. Let’s crack open the rich text black box, and give everyone their fair share of the duvet.

Have you ever worked with rich text editors? You know how frustrating of an experience that can be. Users enter content without much confidence in how the editor will preserve it. Developers have to harden their sites to handle the unstructured soup that is rich text. Designers see their layout completely destroyed by the cheer variation in shape and length. A recipe for frustration.

It’s time to add some noodles and flavour, give some structure to our bland broth and enjoy rich text again.