Top all-time · #17225
Alan J. Hogan
Personal blog · alanhogan.com · on HN as alanhwebprogramming
Alan J. Hogan writes AlanHogan.com, a personal blog at alanhogan.com about web and programming. Since 2010, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 61 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2024-11-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters cite Alan J. Hogan's tips page on rel=shortlink as a reference for finding a short URL for a page, in a thread on URL-shortening auto-discovery standards.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Alan J. Hogan writes about web design, web development; JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, PHP, Python, MySQL, programming and code; Apple macOS tips; bookmarklets; and more.
Most-linked posts?
- /tips/rel-shortlink-for-short-urls2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-03-03
What Hacker News says?
That’s real. I once wrote a quick & dirty bookmarklet to disable all GIF animation on a page because even fairly unremarkable-to-most-of-us GIFs are uncomfortable for an epileptic friend. It is still on https://alanhogan.com/bookmarklets
Comment linking /bookmarklets
on “Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle”Submitted Google Buzz is Already Dead as a story · 25 points
HN discussionNot affiliated with Keybase, but I’d love to get your perspective on those things. I don’t see a way to contact you in your HN bio. Send me a note? https://alanhogan.com/contact?reason=corporate%20IT%20dept%2... (Anyone else with relevant thoughts on what IT needs around encryption, recovery, key backup, etc, please feel free to write me, too)
Comment linking /contact?reason=corporate%20IT%20dept%20needs
on “Keybase launches encrypted Git”Submitted Offline and back again: Surviving the PHP 7 upgrade by adding one letter as a story · 11 points
HN discussionRight - for quite some time, Edge didn’t even support BOOKMARKLETS, much less extensions! April 2017: https://alanhogan.com/ms-edge-is-a-bad-browser
Comment linking /ms-edge-is-a-bad-browser
on “Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10”Submitted Capitalization of Vendor-Prefixed CSS Property Names in JavaScript as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHe took it way too far. Long lines are unreadable and 50 more bytes of CSS would fix it. I humbly submit my own blog as being pretty darn readable without bloat. It’s responsive and simple. https://alanhogan.com Edit: Here’s a relevant article: The problem with new blogging platforms https://alanhogan.com/the-problem-with-new-blog-platforms
Comment linking /the-problem-with-new-blog-platforms
on “Medium is a poor choice for blogging”Submitted The Problem with New Blog Platforms like Svbtle as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMyopia is a good word for it. A quote I like on designers avoiding the actual experiences they create: https://wellfuckingsaid.com/2016/on-designers-ignoring-those... A thing I wrote urging you to test your own work in simulated slow network conditions: https://alanhogan.com/slow-it-down-gain-empathy
Comment linking /slow-it-down-gain-empathy
on “Web fonts, boy, I don't know”Submitted The Anti-Competitive Google as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFor readability: html { font-family: system-ui; } Consider https://alanhogan.com/bookmarklets#add_css to add this to the page. Code blocks are still shown in monospaced font. BTW, monospaced font for prose is an anti-pattern that you hackers need to relinquish, but whatever!
Comment linking /bookmarklets
on “Why fastDOOM is fast”Submitted Browsers Always Assume TBODY as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wrote a small blog post on OS X must-have apps[1] back in 2009, but I realize more or less all but the most obvious (e.g., Chrome) have changed. Now: InsomniaX (like Caffeine.app, but maintained); Bartender; LaunchBar (mostly for clipboard management - easily my favorite manager); iStat Menus; Atom; Tweetbot; Dropbox; and to a lesser extent, iA Writer. (And BowTie for a Last.fm scrobbler, because it's the only one…
Comment linking /starter-mac-apps
on “iTerm2 Version 3 Now in Beta”Submitted Four Myths Web Developers Believe About HTML as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTangentially, for pages like this that don’t have any sort of max-width set, you may want to use a bookmarklet like "Force Narrow Page" available here https://alanhogan.com/bookmarklets — or of course one of the reading-mode browser extensions, etc
Comment linking /bookmarklets
on “Undocumented Catalina file access change”Submitted My testing philosophy – don't use code coverage tools, more as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSan Francisco, Local, Full Time Stack: Sass, Compass, Susy, CoffeeScript, Ruby, Rails, Python, Java, CSS, HTML5, see résumé for more Résumé: http://cl.ly/2q253s2z3f06 (Recruiting agencies: Please do NOT add me to your system) Contact: https://alanhogan.com/contact?from=hn-ww2bh I’m full-stack capable and prefer to focus on the front-end. I can function as a designer as well, and perform user testing & other research…
Comment linking /contact?from=hn-ww2bh
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?”Submitted “Quitpic” – Twitpic is taking you down with it as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIn the vein of old hardware playing music, you should absolutely check out this cover of Radiohead’s “Nude,” if this sort of thing interests you. I find it strangely moving. http://alanhogan.com/big-ideas-dont-get-any (direct link http://www.vimeo.com/1109226?pg=embed&sec=1109226 )
Comment linking /big-ideas-dont-get-any
on “System Bus Radio”Submitted The URL as a User Interface (with good & bad examples) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNot to be a horrible self promoter (it's just the ideas I care about), but my 2012 discussion of the problem with new blogging platforms still applies, from a general perspective, to Medium: https://alanhogan.com/the-problem-with-new-blog-platforms . (tl;dr is that eventually you will grow out of virtually any non-Wordpress platform, especially one you don’t control yourself.)
Comment linking /the-problem-with-new-blog-platforms
on “Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain”Submitted How to use the word “deprecation” correctly as a story · 1 points
HN discussionRecursive backronym: “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor” (originally “Personal Home Pages”) I once suggested an alternative: “Powering Hypertext & Programs” ( https://alanhogan.com/conversations/php/acronym )
Comment linking /conversations/php/acronym
on “The story behind OS X’s Unix compliant certification”Submitted Never Say “Oops” (in your website/app) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAny survey that mentions Borges in its introductory section is A-OK in my book. Edit This reminds me of an assignment my Discrete Math professor, Dr. Fishel, gave me, which shows how to create (in polynomial time) a Hamiltonian circuit in any undirected graph in which every vertex is of the order ceiling(n/2) where n is the number of vertices in the graph. A C++ implementation is provided. [2007] https://alanhogan.c…
Comment linking /asu/hamiltonian-circuit/
on “P vs. NP”Submitted What Gift Cards Say About Corporate Values: Amazon vs. Apple as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI agree Buzz was probably the best example https://alanhogan.com/buzz-is-already-dead (About the UI/UX nobody wanted) https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/technology/internet/13goo... (Failure to respect users and imagine any blowback from violating trust and privacy)
Comment linking /buzz-is-already-dead
on “Dell Autism Hiring Program”Submitted A Review of Sparrow Mail: Compelling yet Frustrating as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWhy I expected Buzz to be a failure, based on a cursory UX analysis & comparison with existing social products: http://alanhogan.com/buzz-is-already-dead (Feb. 2010)
Comment linking /buzz-is-already-dead
on “Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search”Submitted Why Twitter’s #dickbar Feels Like Betrayal as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
