S—A—V—E—P—U—B—L—I—S—H—I—N—Gthe true story of a little bookmarklet that will not save publishing

PAUL FORD@f!rain

Wednesday, January 9, 13

[who]

1996–2000 Blogger (Ftrain.com), copywriter. (Perl/HTML)

2001–2005 Writer: Novelist, NPR. (XML)

2006–2010 Harper’s: Editor, programmer, archivist, writer. (XSLT/Java/PHP)

2011– 2013 Activate: Director. Writer: NYMag, etc. Teacher: SVA. Advising, etc. (Python/JS)

Table of Paul Ford

who · what · when and how · where · reactions · whyWednesday, January 9, 13

[what]

Visit a web page and clickthe bookmarklet.

Tweetable sentences turn red. Everything else (including ads) stays the same. When it works.

Click a sentence to tweet it.

* A bookmarklet is a bit of JavaScript code that you save as a bookmark in your web browser. When you click it instead of going to a new page it runs some code. Bookmarklets can CHANGE the page you’re visiting.

Visit SavePublishing.com and “install” the bookmarklet. *

1

24

3

who · what · when and how · where · reactions · whyWednesday, January 9, 13

[when and how]

CoffeeScri

pt is th

e best eve

r

This will

only tak

e four h

ours!

The DOM is

horrible

Java

Script is

worse

Extend th

e native

objects

End-of-year

failu

re sc

aries

Reload re

load re

load re

load re

load

Reload re

load re

load re

load

Reload re

load re

load

Apologize to

wife

Let’s

forg

et that

ever h

appened

Release

28/Dec ####29/Dec ####30/Dec #####31/Dec #####################01/Jan #################02/Jan ##################03/Jan #######04/Jan ###05/Jan #06/Jan #07/Jan ##

28/Dec ####29/Dec #######30/Dec ##########31/Dec #########################################01/Jan ###################################02/Jan ###########################################03/Jan #################04/Jan ###########05/Jan #####06/Jan ####07/Jan ######

SOURCE: cat access_log|grep "GET /js/lib/savepublishing.js " | cut -d" " -f4|perl -ne '/^.(.{6})/; print "$1\n"'|uniq -c |perl -ne '/^\D+(\d+) (.+)/; print "$2 ".("#" x ($1/100))."\n";'

SOURCE: cat access_log|grep "GET / " | cut -d" " -f4|perl -ne '/^.(.{6})/; print "$1\n"'|uniq -c |perl -ne '/^\D+(\d+) (.+)/; print "$2 ".("#" x ($1/1000))."\n";'

Home page requests (#=1K pages) Bookmarklet calls (#=100 calls)

“BU

ILD

”“D

EPLO

Y” &c. Tweets,

enthusiasm, exaggeration, annoyance, confusion, bug reports, overall very pleasant

who · what · when and how · where · reactions · whyWednesday, January 9, 13

[where]

◎Note: Illustration to scalewho · what · when and how · where · reactions · why

Wednesday, January 9, 13

[the continuum of reactions]“This makes it too easy for people not to read things.”

“This should make it easier to tweet by identifying ‘interesting’ sentences.”

“This should now work with Readability, Buffer, Pocket, InstaPaper, Tweetbot, App.net, Tumblr, Facebook, etc.”

“I don’t know how this will save publishing but it’s okay.”

who · what · when and how · where · reactions · whyWednesday, January 9, 13

[why]

• Nothing can “save publishing”

• “A sentence should be like an arrow. The writer should take aim and try to hit a target.”

• Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance: JavaScript (CoffeeScript === bargaining)

• !$

who · what · when and how · where · reactions · whyWednesday, January 9, 13

[thanks!]

github.com/ftrain/savepublishing

Wednesday, January 9, 13