the dissident frogman

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I did say “Go ye and clicketh on everything, and then asketh questions about it.”

And so you did.

And so I answereth.

what token?

I bet you didn’t know you had one:

My password token is not valid?

Without more details on what happened to you exactly, I can only speculate:

1. Something is horribly, horribly broken and we are all going to die¹ because it is the end of the world².
2. The password token expired. They do die too, but I mean expired as in past its validity date. Yeah, like Nancy Pelosi.

I’ll assume that we’re talking about the password reset process—there are other “tokens” involved in the inner workings of this site, but I’m quite sure that’s the only one instance related to passwords.

Again, I’m only speculating as I would need more information to figure out what happened, but there are two things to look out when resetting a password:

• Not wait too long once you receive the reset email. The tokens expire normally after one day, at which point one has to start the reset process again.
• Make sure that the reset link in the email is either clicked or copied and pasted in your browser without error.

If that doesn’t do it, please contact me by email, with as many details as possible. Because it might be the end of the world after all.

Install who?

Perhaps I’ve just been elected something somewhere.

Or I simply need a chair:

What is the “Install the Dissident Frogman” that now comes up on my Chrome options?

PRAISE THE LORD! I could kiss you, on the mouth³ just for asking that question.

As I was writing, reading, and re-writing the return announcement post, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something in the product description.

There it is.

—So what is it?

—It’s PWA.

—What’s PWA?

—It is Nerdish for Progressive Web App.

—That doesn’t sound any less Nerdish to me.

—You are so right!

PWA is a set of technologies used to make a web app—or site—work a bit like a native mobile app and there is no getting out of Nerdish, is there?

In short—and hopefully not too Nerdish terms—this lets you “install” parts of the site on your device (computer, phone, tablet), and use it in a separated instance of your browser and even—in some cases—when offline.

These things can be quite sophisticated indeed, as their goal is to provide both developers and users with an alternative to the so-called “native” apps that are, for one thing, dependent on the good will of Apple and Google if you want to get on their phones (hello Gab & Parler), as they can only be obtained and installed from their app stores. But that’s beyond the scope of this site and this article.

My implementation of this technology is not that extensive—quite the contrary, as I’ve only set it up for the most basic features (no, sorry, you won’t be able to see the site when you’re offline).

When you install:

• An icon is added to your phone/tablet/PC’s home and/or apps screen
• When launched, this opens the site in a single distinct “window” that is in fact a separated instance of your web browser but without all the clutter of its interface.
  • On a phone, the site looks like any other app, using all the space available.
  • On a computer, it opens in a simple window.

You then use the site normally. Bit of a let-down, I suppose.

Here’s a few screenshots (on a Windows 8.1 PC)

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In addition to providing its own dedicated window and launch icon, this PWA also install a very small amount of resources (images, stylesheets) required to display a distinctive page when you’re offline (rather than the stupid and unhelpful error that any web browser returns when it can’t access anything), as well as a second page of which I won’t say anything because it’s kind of an “Easter egg”⁴ and I was hoping you’d find it by yourself and by accident and would be a bit entertained and now I’ve kind of ruined the surprise anyway.

So what will happen if you Install the Dissident Frogman? Not the end of the world, for sure (it’s already started)

Not.A.Question

Any color you want, so long as it is black:

I much prefer black text on a white background.

Yes, I suppose I did pull a Henry Ford here, didn’t I?

In my defense, I can only say that everything you see here, the coding, the graphics, the writing and the rest is a three (unpaid) men’s job—me, myself and I—and with human resources of such magnitude at our disposal, we had no other options but to make hard choices when it comes to… Just about everything throughout the development process.

Developing two diametrically opposed designs just wasn’t in the realm of the possible for little old me.

I understand your disappointment however, and the only suggestion I can offer is that you switch on your web browser’s Reader View (or the equivalent on your browser. It’s called “Immersive reader” on Microsoft Edge, for instance). You will lose all the new design’s flourish, but the text will be black on white.

One top tip for Firefox users, as I’ve found it to be rather fickle with whether it chooses to offer the reader’s view option or not. You can force the Reader View on any page by prefixing the address with:

about:reader?url=

Here’s a real example: to force reader view on this post, type (or copy and paste) in Firefox’s address bar the following:

about:reader?url=https://thedissidentfrogman.com/blog/link/at-the-worst-of-times-the-masked-mime-returns/

You will then see the page like this: