Simon Willison's Weblog: terence-eden

1KB JS Numbers Station

2025-07-23T16:00:24+00:00

Terence Eden built a neat and weird 1023 byte JavaScript demo that simulates a numbers station using the browser SpeechSynthesisUtterance, which I hadn't realized is supported by every modern browser now.

This inspired me to vibe code up this playground interface for that API using Claude:

Tags: javascript, text-to-speech, tools, ai, generative-ai, llms, terence-eden, vibe-coding

Quoting Terence Eden

2025-07-17T14:31:38+00:00

The modern workforce shouldn't be flinging copies to each other. A copy is outdated the moment it is downloaded. A copy has no protection against illicit reading. A copy can never be revoked.

Data shouldn't live in a file on a laptop. It shouldn't be a single file on a network share. Data is a living beast. Data needs to live in a database - not an Excel file. Access should be granted for each according to their needs.

— Terence Eden, We've got to stop sending files to each other

Tags: files, terence-eden

You can use text-wrap: balance; on icons

2024-10-20T13:23:16+00:00

You can use text-wrap: balance; on icons

Neat CSS experiment from Terence Eden: the new text-wrap: balance CSS property is intended to help make text like headlines display without ugly wrapped single orphan words, but Terence points out it can be used for icons too:

This inspired me to investigate if the same technique could work for text based navigation elements. I used Claude to build this interactive prototype of a navigation bar that uses text-wrap: balance against a list of display: inline menu list items. It seems to work well!

My first attempt used display: inline-block which worked in Safari but failed in Firefox.

Notable limitation from that MDN article:

Because counting characters and balancing them across multiple lines is computationally expensive, this value is only supported for blocks of text spanning a limited number of lines (six or less for Chromium and ten or less for Firefox)

So it's fine for these navigation concepts but isn't something you can use for body text.

Tags: css, prototyping, ai-assisted-programming, anthropic, claude, claude-artifacts, terence-eden, prompt-to-app

ActivityPub Server in a Single PHP File

2024-02-19T00:20:13+00:00

ActivityPub Server in a Single PHP File

Terence Eden: “Any computer program can be designed to run from a single file if you architect it wrong enough!”

I love this as a clear, easy-to-follow example of the core implementation details of the ActivityPub protocol—and a reminder that often a single PHP file is all you need.

Via lobste.rs

Tags: php, mastodon, activitypub, terence-eden

11 barriers to coding in the open and how to overcome them

2018-11-05T20:53:43+00:00

11 barriers to coding in the open and how to overcome them

“Terence Eden, open standards lead at GDS, also gave a talk about overcoming barriers to coding in the open”—an intriguing recap of that talk revealing exactly how the UK government have been encouraging a culture of coding in the open and going open source first.

Via @edent

Tags: open-source, ukgovernment, gov-uk, terence-eden