Best of “Today I Learned” in 2022 (So Far)

TIL is a Slack emoji (a reacji, to be precise) that we use at Postlight to tag a Slack post that you learned from. It stands for “Today I Learned,” and with it we share life knowledge, pub trivia, software tips, and talk shop about product development (we also sparingly use it as a joke, like when discussing the girhalffe as a unit of measurement).

If you missed our previous roundups, check out Best of TIL from December 2021 and June 2021.  Here’s what we’re enjoying in 2022 so far.

1. A good alt decision tree

“I did an accessibility audit for a client a few months ago and learned a lot about alt tags that I wish I had known sooner. Here’s a good alt decision tree.” — Frankie Simms

2. Hyperlinking in Slack

“One of the best quality-of-life features on Slack is how you can add hyperlinks by highlighting text and hitting ⌘V. I wish everything could be this way.” — Chappell Ellison, Associate Director, Digital Strategy

3. Editing messages in Slack

“I didn’t realize this (under Accessibility) wasn’t the default until I tried to do it in a client Slack instance and failed utterly.” — Kevin Barrett, Partner, Engineering

4. Screenshot tips

“Secret tip: Do ⌘⇧4 to take a screenshot of only part of the screen, but if you hit spacebar after you hit ⌘⇧4, it allows you to take a screenshot of only the highlighted window!” — Matthew McVickar, Senior Engineer

5. Some background on the Stanley Parable

“The Stanley Parable was originally a Half-Life mod.” — Patrick Molloy, Associate Product Manager

6. A Meta-phor

“The Meta, Metamates, Me statement is a spin on the Naval doctrine of Ship, Shipmates, Self, which prioritizes the health and safety of the ship and other crew before yourself. But the metaphor falls flat when you consider that (hopefully) a failure to keep Meta afloat does not entail imminent death or injury the way a sinking ship does for sailors.” — Zachary Harris, Senior Engineer

7. Play a game while you wait

“Netlify has a new mini game that you can play while you’re waiting for your code to deploy.” — Jad Termsani, Full Stack Engineer

8. An update on rel=noopener

“TIL: rel=noopener is no longer necessary.” — Matthew McVickar, Senior Engineer

9. Cyber security team colors

“In the world of cybersecurity, blue teams are the defensive cybersecurity teams. They’re responsible for defending a business’s IT assets from hackers and malicious actors (both real and simulated). Red teams pretend to be bad guys by hacking or simulating hacking a business. They either work for the business directly or are hired as outside contractors.” — Zachary Harris, Senior Engineer

10. Fun with words

And just for fun, when you need an even fancier term for pumpkinification, there’s apocolocyntosis.

Need to learn even more? Check out our Best of TIL from December 2021 and June 2021 — there are some real gems in there!

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