Tabloid: the clickbait headline programming language

Tabloid is a turing-complete programming language for writing programs in the style of clickbait news headlines.

UI Pattern: Natural Language Form

I only just found this article about those “mad libs” style forms that I started with Huffduffer.

When Women Make Headlines

This is a great combination of rigorous research and great data visualisation.

Sentence Forms (not Mad Libs) | Adrian Roselli

Apparently the sentence forms that I kicked off with Huffduffer are making a comeback.

Uniting the team with Jamstack | Trys Mudford

This is a superb twenty minute presentation by Trys! It’s got everything: a great narrative, technical know-how, and a slick presentation style.

Conference organisers: you should get Trys to speak at your event!

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Keynote Address at ADL’s 2019 Never Is Now Summit on Anti-Semitism and Hate | Anti-Defamation League

On the internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC. The fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel Prize winner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.

LukeW | “Mad Libs” Style Form Increased Conversion by 25-40%

I was chatting with Rachel at work the other day about conversational forms, and I mentioned that I kicked that whole thing off with the mad libs style form on Huffduffer. Here’s the research that Luke later did on whether this style of form could increase conversion.

Sadly, this is not The Onion

It’s not funny, cause it’s true.

Conversational Semantics · An A List Apart Article

I love, love, love all the little details of HTML that Aaron offers up here. And I really like how he positions non-visual user-agents like searchbots, screen readers, and voice assisants as headless UIs.

HTML is a truly robust and expressive language that is often overlooked and undervalued, but it has the incredible potential to nurture conversations with our users without requiring a lot of effort on our part. Simply taking the time to code web pages well will enable our sites to speak to our customers like they speak to each other. Thinking about how our sites are experienced as headless interfaces now will set the stage for more natural interactions between the real world and the digital one.

The Case for Using Mad Lib Sign Up Forms (Hint: Mad Conversion Increases)

A look at how Huffduffer-style forms might improve “conversion”.

Whatever. Let’s face it: it’s just quite nice when a form isn’t just your typical form (which this article makes a good point of mentioning):

Where the traditional sign up form is a regular, everyday brown cow, the mad lib form is a purple cow - a shiny object. We’re naturally easily distracted by, and drawn to, what’s new or out of the ordinary! Take advantage of that.

30 Great Reads from 2012 - Readlists

Some of the past year’s best long-form non-fiction, gathered together into a handy readlist for your portable epub pleasure.

The Subcompact Publishing Reader - Readlists

A nice Readlist based on that excellent article by Craig on digital publishing:

This reader is made up of Craigmod’s essay “Subcompact Publishing” and essays linked to in the footnotes.

Guardian Truncation Team

Celebrating the work of the tireless men and women who shorten headlines so they’ll fit on your iPhone.

The Internet of Things - Readlists

Those articles about the “Internet of Things” I linked to? Here they are in handy Readlist form.

Readlists

This looks like a really handy service from Readability: gather together a number of related articles from ‘round the web and then you can export them to a reading device of your choice. It’s like Huffduffer for text.

The Daily Torygraph

There’s two years(!) of doctored headlines here. Yes, it’s puerile but it’s also very funny (to my puerile sensibilities).

Registration | Frontend 2011

A nice Huffduffer-style mad libs form gives this registration form a friendly quality.

Camptown News Greasemonkey Script — doo-dah, doo-dah « Tom Scott

Tom’s Greasemonkey script turns any seven-syllable headline into a verse of Camptown Races.

F*ck Yeah Headlines

Each weekday I find a headline on a major news site, and illustrate it without reading a word of the story.

Fight the system. « Boagworld

A rip-o...— I mean, another form inspired by Huffduffer.