events/2025-07-16-hwc-europe
Homebrew Website Club Europe/London was an IndieWeb meetup on Zoom held on 2025-07-16.
- Archived from: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/2025-07-16-hwc-europe
Participants
Joe Crawford https://artlung.com/
Ross A. Baker https://rossabaker.com/
Fractalkitty https://fractalkitty.com and https://toground.link
capjamesg https://jamesg.blogThomas Vander Wal https://vanderwal.net
mandaris https://mandarismoore.com/
Britt Coxon https://britthub.co.uk/- Template:zacharykai.net - https://zacharykai.net/
Mark Sutherland - https://marksuth.dev
Tantek Γelik
benji - https://benji.dogDavid Shanske
- ... add names
Notes
- Welcome to HWC!
- Manny has thought about audio element a bit, leaving it as is. FrESH (discussed in events/2025-07-01-front-end-study-hall#Audio_Tag_Styling_HOWTO )
- Manny wrote https://mandarismoore.com/2025/07/14/be-my-bimi.html about BIMI
- Ross A. Baker has a new paginator in Hugo with "binary search"
- See in action at https://rossabaker.com/notes/
- Documentation forthcoming
- capjamesg's post about repurposing Wiki content for other purposes https://artlung.com/blog/2025/07/15/return-to-mashups/
- James would like an alt text master guide
- How do you do alt text for comics?
- Writing a transcript of the comics?
- Example of transcripts for comics: https://www.runawaytothestars.com/
- Superimposing the text on the comics: https://falseknees.com
- Make a novel or short story adaption of the comic in prose? More work, but gives all the details a reader would need.
- Writing a transcript of the comics?
- A perspective on alt text for memes: https://adrianroselli.com/2018/04/accessible-memes-can-be-done.html
- Alt text selfies: https://alttextselfies.net/
- https://www.digitala11y.com/wai-aria-rolecaption/ role=caption
- https://veroniiiica.com/how-to-write-alt-text-image-descriptions-visually-impaired/
- Hitchiker's guide has been told as television/film/novels/other mediums; each has constraints which means they are all slightly different, but all convey the feel of the story.
- Sometimes artists want to let a work be; putting something into words may be really difficult.
- Potentially a fun challenge: share a blog post and ask a friend to write the alt text!
- One of James' blog posts on art: https://jamesg.blog/2024/09/23/fernande-with-a-black-mantilla
- I don't write rich alt text of the art because the text around describes the painting
- But what I writes may not be an exact match of the painting, so richer alt text may be valuable too
- Publishing alt text as a visible element on / next to images on our website
- Mastodon shows an "alt" button that appears over an image in the top right corner
- On Instagram some users write a visual description below an image
- Could details/summary tags be used
- We played marco/polo
- https://michaelkupietz.com/web-assets-buttons-logos-and-other-website-graphics/
- Michael made an "The eyes have it" widget that follows your cursor.
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeyes
- Sophia shared a CodePen of eyes that follow your cursor where youc an click to add another eye
Back on topic button: 
- Sophia is working on a parametric font (and may blog about it in the future!)
- Also wrote a blog post for the Carnival: https://www.fractalkitty.com/take-two-2/
- And is building a website that is a slide show using reveal.js (https://revealjs.com/)!
- reveal.js supports changing the background image on a page
- example slideshow: https://codepen.io/fractalkitty/pen/VYwemJJ
- Could there be / is there a slide show tool that lets you make web slide shows that are only HTML/CSS (no JS)?
- Not sure what this uses but it's an interesting variant: https://www.robinsloan.com/tap/tour/
- Presenting a slide show as a blog post
- Link "rel"s for presentations
- Ross A. Baker showed a setup that converts Org Mode to a slide show
- https://git.rossabaker.com/ross/cromulent/commit/7e2e00e68cf83ac87b63a9851d65f0cc64917e5b
- Will eventually be viewable at https://rossabaker.com/presentations/scala-variance
- And worked on pagination where the paginator is a binary search
- Carnivals this month
- image-rendering pixelated is useful for pixel art / small buttons https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/image-rendering
- https://smorgasborg.artlung.com/image-upsizing-with-svg/
- From last week at the Americas:
img[width="88"][height="31"] { image-rendering: pixelated }
- Challenge of someone embedding your button not looking as good on their website as yours if you use image-rendering: pixelated (because everyone who embeds it needs the tag for it to be seen the same)
- James just tried image-rendering pixelated and buttons look so much better!
- ... add notes
- https://learntheweb.courses/topics/responsive-retina-images/
- Michael notes a wish to specify DPI for an image
- Tantek notes that it could be helpful to have a "preserve pixels" mode for an image, in the image's file metadata itself
- https://michaelkupietz.com/getting-web-browsers-not-to-blur-images-on-retina-screens/
- eventually will go to my lab and probably retain state
- What is the blog post equivalent of a mashup?
- Idea for a mashup post: a photo of mashed potatoes
- "before we go too much down the starches"
- James' blog post on mashups: https://jamesg.blog/2025/07/16/mashups, inspired by Joe's "Return to Mashups" blog post: https://artlung.com/blog/2025/07/15/return-to-mashups/
- Prior writing by James on this topic: https://jamesg.blog/2024/11/12/musical-concepts-blogging
((omg Mark's cat is hilarious))
- Formatting for blockquotes (showing favicons of the person who you are quoting?)
- Matt Webb & Tom Critchlow
- You could have multiple nested blockquotes
- Writing a blog post that mashes up two people's perspectives on a topic, then writing your own perspective
- https://gwern.net/sidenote adds a Wikipedia logo (the W letter) to the end of Wikipedia links, "FF" in superscript for Firefox documentation; maybe other examples too.
- "I shut down my etsy store" - Sophia
- What does it look like to do commerce without etsy?
- Shopify/Stripe don't feel better than etsy
- Two suggestions: https://payhip.com and https://ko-fi.com
- Robin Sloan uses his site and a free version of Shopify: https://www.robinsloan.com/shop/
- Could also try a page on your site and just a stripe or paypal button or both???
- Could also try asking Derek Sivers about his setup: https://sivers.com/
- Bandcamp alternative FairCamp
- WooCommerce exists for WordPress
- Now defunct but: https://dev.banchan.art/about-us
- https://prestashop.com/
- https://www.opencart.com/ (maintainer may not be helpful in GitHub Issues)
- Mark demo'ed OpenCart showing it has many features
- You could also design a /shop page on your website and use an eCommerce tool as the back-end (i.e. Stripe for payment)
- https://mayhem.my/
- https://artisans.coop/
- https://gumroad.com/
- WooCommerce can make you feel trapped in WP because your shop is set up with WP
- etsy has a discovery element: it's hard to get discovered because it's massive
- Designing for trust while giving your own personality
- Stripe documentation for payment links: https://docs.stripe.com/payment-links
- indieweb market / makers: a list of people who make independent things that you can buy
- Like Andy Carolan's stickers, the Good Internet Magazine, the Internet Phone Book, other physical things / software
- community stuff like: IndieWeb t-shirts / stickers
- This could be a fun blogging prompt ^^ write about web creators you follow who also sell things
- IndieWeb sticker/tshirt store: https://indieweb.printful.me/ (https://shop.indieweb.org)
- Should the homepage/sidebar have a link to the IndieWeb shop?
- "t-shirt" with t-shirt emoji
- Question from Sophia: Has anyone run a "junior IndieWebCamp"?
- Mark has worked with younger people in summer school to make a website as part of the school programme
- Parents have brought children to both in-person HWCs and online IndieWeb events in the past
- https://html.green/
- https://html.energy/html-day/2025/index.html
- https://html.energy
- NYC: https://html.energy/freewrites/2025-08-02-nyc/index.html
- The rain venue is the Ikea Brooklyn Living Room area?
- Offline Camp: https://offlinefirst.org/camp/
- What tools do we use to write offline?
- James uses Typora (https://typora.io); having an offline-capable website is helpful for being able to reference his own materials.
- Radical mundane claim: WE CAN WRITE BLOG POSTS WITHOUT CONNECTIVITY
- Thomas' writing process: https://vanderwal.net/random/entrysel.php?blog=2124
- IA Writer works offline
Are there 88x31 buttons for locations, like SF, NYC, Paris, Rome?
- Thomas made https://lab.vanderwal.net/sticker_sample.html with badges of different sizes during HWC today
- Flower icon is from the Noun Project
- What would a "blog travel" page look like where you collect different size buttons by web makers?
- Related: fridge magnets, laptop stickers
- You could have a code snippet that makes it easy for someone to copy your sticker
- You could animate the stickers so that they change on hover, click, etc.
- Create a /travel-stubs page that lists stubs from museums/galleries/tickets/concerts, etc.?
- Reminds me of Paul's jacket pins: https://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/info/version
- Zachary is interested in an online https://html.energy/ event
- Online events can be accessible -- not everyone can/wants to travel
- Kupietz posted the Photoshop PSD template for the "Build During An Indieweb Meetup" 88x31 button: https://michaelkupietz.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/built-during-indieweb-button.psd
- Everyone is welcome to host an IndieWeb event!
- There are opportunities for events in many axes
- A meetup for people who speak Spanish?
- A back-end study hall?
- An accessibility study hall?
- Front-End Study Hall has a finite 90 minute format.
- Tantek does espresso live streams which are informal chats that a few community members have joined
- Joe has run informal "unworking" sessions
- Lego Minifigure creator existed
- Create a Lego minifigure instruction set on your website to build a minifigure of yourself
- https://www.lego.com/en-us/minifigure-factory
- IndieWeb Example:
- see in context in blog sidebar: https://tantek.com/log/2003/01.html
- Was built using https://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini/ (needs Flash lol)
- A browser extension that lets you put stamps on web pages (like an IndieWeb stamp that links back to the wiki)
* HTML/CSS dress-up widget (would you need JS?) * https://www.lego.com/en-us/minifigure-factory * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kisekae_Set_System * https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html * A site layout that displays a playthrough of making a dish and a recipe on the other side * https://cooklang.org/ * Text as a "universal command line"? ** Alexander Obenauer's Personal Operating System - https://alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes/000/ *** Specifically: https://wonderos.org
- https://nationalzoo.si.edu/webcams/panda-cam
- Benji's website is playing Wonderwall by Oasis
- How do you find out what's not findable?
- Improv for an IndieWeb bucket hat: put a sticker on it!
- Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe: https://www.lockss.org/
- IndieWeb role playing game?
- WiFi network names
- "hahaha you dont have wifi"
"Smells like IndieWeb"
- Interest in a MicroPub pop up to discuss errata
- "Indieweb" knuckle letters
days_since_last_domain_purchase_at_HWC
- Website makers: https://bearblog.dev; https://omg.lol, Ghost as an option
- https://ghost.org/docs/migration/wordpress/
- Little Bobby Tables and SQL injection: https://xkcd.com/327/
- One of those xkcd's that some people in some industries know by number :-)
- Webhook notes on the wiki: webhook
- https://ifttt.com/ https://zapier.com are examples of webhooks or similar functionality
- Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere: POSSE
- Webhooks could be used to implement this
- https://marginalia-search.com/
- https://kagi.com has a small web search engine as well
- A "this is helpful" button could be used to order tutorials on a topic