I’ve lost count of how many days we have been on the lockdown. It has been way too long. Fortunately, I am even busier with work from home. After we launched a page to let faculty and staff leave messages for the Law School graduates, I am working on the online program for graduation. Under a normal circumstance, the program booklet for graduation is about 40 pages. We’re trimming it down and put it on our site this year. I am also designing an animated banner on our homepage. The banner will scroll through all the names of the graduates on graduation day. We wanted to make something extraordinary for the class of 2020.

Since the university is part Virginia, it is affected by the hiring freeze of state employees. Even part-time employees must be resubmitted for approval to continue to work. I had to provide a statement to justify my developer’s position. It was not difficult for me to write because his role is critical to the daily operations of the law school. As classes moved online and administrative offices transitioned to remote operations, he has worked closely with me to support the law school including admissions, career services, centers, communications, and library to provide technical solutions, online training, and website updates. I hope they will extend his position.

In the past few days, my heart ached when I read letters from my son’s daycare educators. They have been furloughed this month. One of the educators had taught Đạo, Đán, and (most recently) Xuân. The other one had been hired not so long ago, but she made a good impression on the kids. At the beginning of the school year, Xuân’s class had a tough time with the constant turnovers. Xuân used to cry at drop-off. He didn’t want to go to daycare. Then he got better when the two educators came on board. He liked coming to school and participating in class activities. As they were about to settle in, the pandemic hit. Now that I am working from home and trying to take care of the kids, I have a much deeper appreciation for what they do at the daycare everyday. I wrote back to each of them to thank them for what they have done for our kids and I hope that they will return once we’re back to normal.

Peters is still killing it after all these years. His materials haven’t changed much even though he got fatter. He makes fun of his own Indian fatness in his Amazon Prime special filmed in Mumbai. His subjects range from sex, race, and self deprecation. His wordplay and improvisation help brought out interactions from the audience. The special is entertaining to watch.

Truyện được kể theo một cô gái trẻ tên Huyên. Gia đình Huyên tan rã khi em trai (nhỏ hơn cô mười một tuổi) bị cơn bão và sóng biển cuốn đi. Cô theo mẹ và người yêu của mẹ đi khắp nơi với đoàn tổ chức hội chợ. Giữa những thú vị đằng sau hội chợ của hiện tại và những kỷ niệm buồn đau trong quá khứ (nhất là về người em ruột đã qua đời), câu chuyện của Huyên về tình cảm gia đình rất xúc động. Tác giả Phạm Thu Hà chỉ mới ở tuổi 20 mà viết rất chín chắn. Với cách kể chuyện gọn gàn cùng những câu văn trôi chảy, truyện dài của Hà nhẹ nhàng đi vào lòng người và để lại những cảm xúc sâu lắng. Khuyến nghị nên đọc.

For iteration 3 of this blog, I changed the big display text to Gimlet Sans, May’s Font of the Month that David had just sent out earlier today. Because of the lovely “a” in Gimlet Sans, I switched the text face back to Fragen, by Lucas Descroix. I love the way the “a” in each typeface has similar features, and yet they are different.

I also brought back the dark mode after reading Kilian Valkhof’s “Your dark mode toggle is broken.” I didn’t implement the toggle button. The only way you would see the dark mode is when you switch your operating system to dark mode. I also added a bit three red stars as end marks for a bit of decoration. Why not?

One of the best things of having a personal website is that I get to experiment and change the design whenever I feel like it. It gives a bit of a joy during this difficult time.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a tweet encouraging users to turn off JavaScript on iOS Safari to browse the web on mobile devices. Until I read that tweet, I didn’t know that I could disable JavaScript on my iPhone. I didn’t use Safari much on my phone unless I tapped on a link in email, which would bring up Apple’s default browser. I used mostly Chrome for my own convenience. My bookmarks, histories, and passwords were all synced and managed by Chrome. I tried to deactivate JavaScript on Chrome on my iPhone as well, but I couldn’t find a way to do it.

In the past few weeks, I have been browsing the web using Safari on my phone with JavaScript turned off and it has been such a pleasurable experience. Sites, particularly news, loaded much faster and without annoying ads popping up. On some photo-heavy sites, images didn’t even load without JavaScript. I actually preferred more white space than images. Hero sliders didn’t work. I just saw all the slides stacking on top of each other.

The biggest issue I ran into was the hamburger menus. Without JavaScript, these menus simply didn’t work and I could not go beyond the homepage. Everything hidden under the three horizon lines was inaccessible. We should move away from using JavaScript for hamburger menus or avoid sweeping everything under hamburger menus for the sake of convenience. I have seen sites that used the hamburger menu for just one or two items like “about” and “contact.” For longer navigation, we can use CSS grids, flex boxes, and variable fonts to control the items. A variable font with the width axis can be useful for menu items. Its narrow width can save some space on small mobile devices. It can get wider for larger screens.

For sites with tons of menu items, I don’t know what the solution is. I implemented the anchor-link technique for the Scalia Law School website years ago. Basically, I placed the menu items in the footer for mobile devices and positioned it to the top with CSS for larger screens. It still works fine without JavaScript.

As the country confirmed over a million cases of the coronavirus, the losing president bragged, “We did the right thing. We did an incredible job.” Yes, he and his administration have done such an incredible job that the United States now has more than sixty thousand deaths and more bodies to count. Yes, they have done such an incredible job that more than thirty million Americans have filed for unemployment. Yes, they have done such an incredible job that the economy is predicted to drop 30% in GDP. He boasted, “We built the greatest economy in the history of the world.” Yes, you have done such an incredible job that our economy is as great as the Great Depression.

This pandemic was inevitable, but his unpreparedness made it as catastrophic as it is today. He even admitted himself that he was ill-prepared for it when he said, “Nobody has trained for this, nobody has seen this, I would say, since 1917, which was the greatest of them all, the greatest of this type of battle. Probably the greatest of them all, right? 1917.” Never mind the fact that he didn’t even get the history straight, his Presidency now depends on the outcome of the coronavirus in the next few months. So far it is killing his Presidency.

As his poll numbers are sliding, the losing president is losing his mind. He took it out on his campaign manager. He claimed that he doesn’t care about the polls and stated that, “I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a man in who’s incompetent.” Well, look what the people had put in the White House in the last election? Yes, a fucking incompetent. Let’s not repeat that mistake again. Seriously, are you going to vote for someone who thought it would be a good idea to inject disinfectants into your body? If yes, then you’re a fucking idiot as well.

Một ngày như mọi ngày vẫn bị cách ly ở nhà. Sau 45 năm, tôi cũng không có lời lẽ gì để bày tỏ. Thôi thì chỉ chia sẽ những hình ảnh và nhạc tôi đã phối họp để tưởng nhớ ngày Sài Gòn sụp đổ. Mời quý vị xem:

• Tưởng niệm Việt Nam
• Một chút quà cho quê hương
• Biển nhớ

Over the weekend, our Senior Associate Dean asked me to come up with a message board for the Scalia Law School’s class of 2020. Since the graduates won’t get to have a formal graduation ceremony in May, she would like us to create a special page to let faculty, staff, and administrative members post messages to the graduates. My immediate solution was to create a WordPress page with comment section enabled.

On Monday, I spun up a new site from our WordPress multisite and activated the Scalia Law 2019 theme, which is based off WordPress’s Twenty Nineteen official theme. When Twenty Nineteen first released, I created a child theme to have our own brand, which includes typography, colors, and our logo. For everything else, I depended on the parent theme. Twenty Nineteen is beautiful out of the box and it uses the new Gutenberg block editor.

Within a few hours, I created a page addressing our graduates, “Congratulations Class of 2020! An Extraordinary Class in Extraordinary Times.” I used a big cover image and made the text huge. We launched the site on Tuesday and the messages have been rolling in. I love reading them even though I am not a graduate. The messages are wonderful.

WordPress has been a great asset to my professional career. It has helped me provide many solutions to the needs of the school. Now that the entire network of over 30 sites is hosted on WP Engine, courtesy of the University, I don’t have to worry about the backend. I still have full control the themes, plugins, and full SFTP access. Some IT members at the Law School had criticized me for giving up hosting the server part of the sites, but there’s no way I can run the server as reliable as WP Engine. It would be a huge undertaking and I am not a server administration. If the University offers this huge service at no cost, why not taking advantage of it?

WordPress is great at solving problems that do not required original design. I could get pretty far with some changes to make the templated design suits my brand. Of course, I could create the entire WordPress theme from scratch, but that would required tremendous time and technical investments. For my own personal use, WordPress is far too complex. This blog, for instance, probably uses about five percent of WordPress’s powerful features. This blog has been powered by WordPress since 2003 and it hasn’t changed much over the years. I am still using the classic editor. I still code the theme using HTML and CSS and with only a minimum amount of PHP. I have control of every code I input. Developing a new theme, even from a starter theme, isn’t as simple anymore; therefore, I no longer offer WordPress for freelance clients. The amount of customization is just too much. Of course, I can still do it if I get big projects, but not for my typical clients.

I still love WordPress, but my development has changed. I am now happier to use WordPress as a tool to solve technological solutions instead of trying to offer WordPress as design solutions for client projects. It is a change in perspective that I have to come to term with if I continue to use WordPress. There are other choices out there, but WordPress remains a tough contender in the web space.

My choice is either WordPress or hand code HTML and CSS with some PHP to keep the pages manageable. I am missing the entire trend of static site generators. When web designers and developers moved their sites or blogs to Jekyll, Hugo, or Eleventy, I still keep my blog on WordPress. When they spent countless of hours moving from one static site generator to another or back to WordPress, I am still on WordPress.

I am excited to be working on a new website for Kristin Bair whose new novel is coming out in November. Last week, I sent her a test site to review and she tweeted:

My new website for my new novel (out in November!) is being designed by the ever-brilliant @visualgui. He sent me 1st test with questions. I want to look but I’m afraid to look. I am so weird. Not the only weirdo out there, right?

In 2009, Kristin approached me in several months leading up to the release of her debut novel, Thirsty. I don’t know for sure how she found me, but I suspect it had to do with the slideshow “Bonjour Vietnam.” Before I even designed the site for Thirsty, I asked Kristin if I could read the manuscript and she sent it to me. It was a dark yet beautiful and hopeful novel. After reading the entire book via PDF, I knew the site for the book had to take on a life of its own. Even though the site is aged now—it was before responsive design—I still love it.

In 2014, she followed up with The Art of Floating and I designed a simple, responsive landing page to promote it. I also read the second novel and loved her dreamlike writing and erotic storytelling.

For her third novel, Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything, I am redesigning her website to promote the new book as well as to bring everything together. It will be a simple, elegant website for a wonderful writer. I pre-ordered the new novel and can’t wait to read it.

The first draft for the new site went well. Her feedback was positive. We’re on the right direction. It feels great that she trusts me to bring her visions to life. I love working on a small-scale website like this. It gives me a break from my regualr work. I can’t wait to share it when we launch it.

Being a designer, I sometimes buy books based on their cover design and typesetting. I picked up this book last year at a library book sale for those two reasons. I love the way Christine Van Bree incorporated various shapes and colors of the moons with the title of the book, which set in a sans-serif typeface. For the interior pages, Leah Carlson-Stanisic and Emily Taff had done a great job of setting Bembo as a pleasurable reading text.

The memoir itself is poignant and beautiful. Anne Roiphe shares her story of being a widow. She dates other men, including widowers, but she always misses her husband. She writes about her daughters and grandchildren, but the memories of her husband are too hard to hold back her tears. She doesn’t want to be alone, but dating in your seventies is not a walk in the park. She also writes about sex or the imagination of it, which is fascinating considering her age. The honesty and devastation in her writing show that the person that died first had it easier. The one that is still living would suffer more. It’s an enlightening and hopeful read.