> You read code when you're programming. The only difference is the mix of characters you'll see near each other. General readability matters -- when is it OK for a regular font to be unclear about which character (a zero or 'O') you're looking at?
The difference in mix of characters reflects on the design decisions made for the font type. Target use is important. Some types are great for titles, some for text bodies, some for logos. It makes sense to me that code is another category.
Yes, readability is important, but it's not binary. The level and aspects of readability required for a novel body are not the same as for an article title.
Differentiating between zero 0 and uppercase O is critical for code (and work terminals, and perhaps data tables), but IMHO isn't interesting when designing for text bodies. Same goes for 'rn' and other issues that have ever annoyed only programmers.
Pretty cool! Reminds me of the UI on medium.com (selecting text on view mode allows sharing and commenting, and on edit mode pops up a floating format toolbar).
I really like your idea, but what about content being changed/updated, instead of deleted?
For some use cases it would make sense to show the cache (when the original quote is no longer there), while for other it'd make sense to forward (some style update, or an important addition).
- Allow someone to manually view the cached version at any time if they wanted to.
- Show a splash page giving the user to view the original or the new version (complete with a diff highlighting changes?)
- Code some heuristics, similar to Instapaper and the like: if the content of the page changes, display the cached version, but if it's just the layout that changes then display the new version. Or look for dates on blog posts, or words like "Updated: " or similar.
- Give the website owners control: let them submit their site to be linked against, and give them some metadata tag that they can use to flag updates. This sidesteps the rights issues too (the website owner gives permission) and it could also be used as a CDN essentially, or a backup in case of server failure, or if the website is hosted in an unfriendly country etc.
I think it's definitely doable in theory at least.
It occurs to me--this is exactly what http://semver.org/ is for! Content changes are new "major versions"; edits are "minor versions"; errata are "bugfixes." You could link to a page @14.1.2, or @14.x, or @latest.
Off the top of my head, this move also means that most, or at least some, of the Opera developers who worked on its rendering engines, will now be contributing to WebKit and V8.
This might mean even faster development cycles for WebKit, the integration of new features that were not on top of Google's and Apple's lists, and some new complications introduced to the inner politics of the WebKit and V8 projects.
Twitter's IPO? Not quite yet...