Tags: identifier

UA gotta be kidding

Brian recounts the sordid messy history of user-agent strings.

I remember somebody once describing a user-agent string as “a reverse-chronological history of web browsers.”

Are your Anchor Links Accessible? | Amber Wilson

I really like the way that Amber doesn’t go straight to the end solution but instead talks through her thought process when adding a feature to her site.

WICG/ScrollToTextFragment: Proposal to allow specifying a text snippet in a URL fragment

It looks (a more complex version of) fragmention might be coming to Chrome.

Let’s talk about usernames

This post goes into specifics on Django, but the broader points apply no matter what your tech stack. I’m relieved to find out that The Session is using the tripartite identity pattern (although Huffduffer, alas, isn’t):

What we really want in terms of identifying users is some combination of:

1. System-level identifier, suitable for use as a target of foreign keys in our database
2. Login identifier, suitable for use in performing a credential check
3. Public identity, suitable for displaying to other users

Many systems ask the username to fulfill all three of these roles, which is probably wrong.

P8TCH | Commando Nerd Patches for iPhone Scanning

Nice QR code patches (I don't mean something that patches code, I mean a patch that you sew).