An audit of the live site ahead of the Cloudflare move found three ways a
cache-everything rule would have gone wrong.
First, several routes named no policy at all — `/login`, `/issues.json`,
`/files/epub/*`, `/files/xtc/*`, `/robots.txt`, the error pages — so the edge
would have applied its own default TTL (Cloudflare: two hours on a 200). For
`/files/*` that means an authenticated download becoming a publicly cached one.
Those routes now say what they mean, and `security_headers` fails closed: a
response that set no `Cache-Control` gets `no-store`, so a route added later
cannot silently inherit the CDN's default. Everything cookie- or Basic-auth
gated (`/files/*`, `/opds*`) is `private, no-store` on every response, 401s and
404s included.
Second, the public pages said `max-age=300` alone. They now say
`public, max-age=300, s-maxage=86400`: five minutes for the browser, a day for
the edge, which is safe because publishing purges the edge. A request carrying
a `daily_session=` cookie still gets `private, no-store`.
Third, `/static/favicon.svg` and `/static/speculation.json` were referenced
without `?v=` while being served `immutable` for a year — editing either one
could never have reached a browser again. Both are now in the `ASSET_VERSION`
hash and referenced with the version, and `static_asset` only promises a year
when the URL actually carries `?v=`; a bare `/static/…` URL gets an hour and
revalidates against the same ETag.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Va5eMEmWEnjMXBsBob5FDW
Measured on a quiet machine behind a gzip proxy, three interleaved rounds
per variant: with the preload FCP 1.8 s, LCP 2.6 s, perf 0.95-0.96;
without it FCP 0.97 s, LCP 0.97 s, perf 1.00.
Lantern splits bandwidth between in-flight requests, so preloading the
132 KB regular face starved the 12 KB render-blocking stylesheet — and
the stylesheet, not the font, is what first paint waits on. The
metric-matched fallbacks already make the wait for the real face
invisible, so the preload bought nothing that first paint could see.
app.js gets `defer` for the same reason: Lighthouse counts the sync tag
among the render-blocking requests. It stays at the end of body, and it
is plain top-level DOM code with no readyState or DOMContentLoaded
dependence, so execution order is unchanged.
theme.js keeps its place: still synchronous, still after the stylesheet
link, so Gecko cannot paint unstyled.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MD4VWGq6mGcd8Bg67qyx9k
/static/app.css was 305 KB because APP_CSS base64-embedded both woff2
faces into it at runtime, and the browser cannot paint until it has the
whole sheet. Lighthouse mobile put FCP and LCP at 2.4 s for it.
The inlining was justified by a Firefox font-flash theory that the later
FOUC investigation (239125a) disproved: the flash came from theme.js
running ahead of the stylesheet, not from fonts arriving late. So point
the faces back at /static/Newsreader*.woff2, versioned with ASSET_VERSION
so the immutable one-year max-age stays safe. Gzipped, the sheet goes
from 304 KB to 12 KB.
That leaves first paint waiting on a font, so switch both faces from
font-display: block to swap and give them metric-matched local fallbacks
(Georgia, Times New Roman, Noto Serif, DejaVu Serif). The overrides are
computed from Newsreader's own metrics at the body optical size against
@capsizecss/metrics widths, so the fallback occupies the same box and the
swap changes glyph shapes and nothing else: every block on the page lands
at the same y-position either way, and CLS stays at 0.001.
Preload the regular face so it starts with the stylesheet rather than
after it parses; italic stays on demand. theme.js keeps its place after
the stylesheet link.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MD4VWGq6mGcd8Bg67qyx9k
Accessibility (95 -> 100). Light `--muted` #7a7568 was 4.14:1 on `--paper`
and 3.72:1 on `--paper-2`, under the 4.5:1 AA floor for normal text — and
muted is the ears line, the nav, bylines, the footer, table headers and
placeholders, so it was most of the page's small type. An audit of every
text token against both surfaces turned up one more: light `--warn`
#8a6d1f at 4.42 / 3.97.
Both are darkened just enough to clear 4.5 on the darker of the two
surfaces, at constant hue and saturation, so the warm grey and the ochre
read the same:
--muted #7a7568 -> #6b665a 4.14/3.72 -> 5.16/4.63
--warn #8a6d1f -> #7d631c 4.42/3.97 -> 5.16/4.63
Everything else already passed on both surfaces (light ink 15.54/13.96,
ink-2 7.83/7.03, accent 6.73/6.04, loved 5.44/4.89, good 5.29/4.76, down
5.96/5.36), as did the whole dark set against #151513 / #1e1d1a (muted
5.31/4.90 is its floor), so the dark blocks are untouched and stay
identical to each other. `.badge` tints sit on near-paper, so the new
token values carry it.
SEO (91 -> 100). The layout had no `<meta name="description">`. `Page`
now carries one — `DEFAULT_DESCRIPTION` for the site, so all ~26
`Page::new` callers keep their signature — with `with_description` for
the pages worth writing one for: the issue page (issue number, date and
the counts the masthead already prints), the archive, the empty-latest
landing page and sign-in. Dashboard pages keep the default.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MD4VWGq6mGcd8Bg67qyx9k
Root cause of the Firefox-only flash of blue links on the first click after
an idle spell (Bugzilla 1459305, still open): Gecko does not block the
parser on a pending stylesheet, it only suppresses painting, and any layout
flush in that window (an extension content script, a ResizeObserver, a
getComputedStyle) initialises layout and paints the unstyled body. With
theme.js *before* the <link>, nothing stalled the parser while app.css was
coming back from the disk cache, so the whole body was parsed unstyled and
one flush painted it. Chrome blocks rendering on the sheet outright, which
is why it never showed this.
Gecko refuses to run a parser-blocking script while stylesheets are
pending, so a synchronous script placed after the <link> stalls the parser
inside <head>: there is nothing to paint. theme.js still runs before any
body content exists, so has-js and the saved theme are applied pre-paint
exactly as before.
Reproduced with Playwright Firefox, a proxy delaying app.css and an init
script forcing offsetHeight on every mutation: a 1.2 s unstyled paint with
the old order, none with the new order, in both Firefox and Chromium.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MD4VWGq6mGcd8Bg67qyx9k
Firefox users saw a flash on the first navigation after an idle spell, and
Chrome occasionally flashed white. Nothing in the network path explained it
(assets are immutable, the stylesheet is render-blocking, a cold Firefox
load paints fully styled), so this removes every remaining way a page could
look different between its first paint and its final state:
- Both Newsreader faces are embedded in the served stylesheet as data: URIs
(CSP gains `font-src 'self' data:`; the preloads go away). A font fetched
by URL is applied after first paint whenever the browser has to bring it
back from disk, which is exactly the "first click after a while" case.
- The cross-document view transition is gone; the operator wants snappy.
- A color-scheme meta, kept in step with the saved theme, so the canvas the
browser paints before the stylesheet is the right shade.
- The theme toggle's icon and label are chosen by CSS from html[data-theme]
(set pre-paint by theme.js) instead of being rewritten by app.js.
- Dashboard table filters are rendered by the templates (shown under
`.has-js`) rather than inserted by app.js, so tables no longer jump.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MD4VWGq6mGcd8Bg67qyx9k
- Issue pages highlight Archive instead of Latest unless the issue is the
newest one (IssueView::is_latest), with a router test.
- The ears row is empty by default and says "Dashboard" on dashboard pages;
"Morning edition" only survives on the empty-state hero.
- Run page: the Feeds card table is fixed-layout and truncates long feed
names with the full title on hover instead of pushing the entries column
out of the card.
- Static assets are content-hashed, so serve them immutable for a year;
preload both Newsreader faces and use font-display: block so a cache
revalidation never paints the fallback serif first. Persisted details
state is restored pre-paint from theme.js.
- Cross-document view transitions (140 ms fade, masthead held still) and
Speculation Rules (prerender reader pages, prefetch dashboard pages on
hover) served from /static/speculation.json via the Speculation-Rules
header, which the CSP would otherwise block inline. No client router.
- Dashboard nav gets the same accent underline as the site nav; 40 px
targets for the theme toggle, account link and dashboard nav.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MD4VWGq6mGcd8Bg67qyx9k
/static/app.css, app.js and theme.js URLs now carry the first 12 hex digits
of a SHA-256 over the embedded assets, so any CSS or JS change reaches
browsers that cached the previous build without a version bump.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NHyYupFdBiR4VfoUM7NjSM
Signed-in issue pages (issue, article, world, behind) get a chapter list
that marks where the reader is. One `issue_toc` helper builds it for all
four handlers: the picks in issue order numbered across sections, then
World Briefing, Behind the paper and a colophon anchor, with
position/total over the navigable chapters.
At `lg` and up it is a sticky left column with its own sticky header
(issue number, "Chapter N of M", a 2px progress bar); below `lg` the same
`<nav>` collapses behind a sticky hamburger bar and drops down as a
panel that closes on link tap, Escape and outside tap. Without JS the
panel is simply visible; `theme.js` marks the document scripted before
paint so it never flashes open. Article pages advance the progress bar
with scroll position through `requestAnimationFrame`, and the bar is a
`<progress>` element because a percentage width would need an inline
style the CSP forbids.
Also fixes the phone "ears" row from the step 2 review: the row no
longer wraps at 390px, the dateline has a short form below `sm:`, and
the toggle and account link stay on one line.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NHyYupFdBiR4VfoUM7NjSM
Replaces the hand-written stylesheet with a Tailwind CSS v4 source
(src/web/tailwind.css) whose minified build is committed as
src/web/static/app.css and still embedded with include_str!, so the binary
and the test suite never need Node. package.json pins tailwindcss and
@tailwindcss/cli to 4.3.3 and adds css, css:watch and css:check.
Colours are semantic CSS variables swapped per theme and exposed to Tailwind
through @theme inline, so templates write bg-paper/text-ink/border-rule once
and both themes work. theme.js runs synchronously in <head> to set
data-theme before paint; app.js cycles the toggle system -> light -> dark and
persists the choice. Newsreader is self-hosted and served from
web::static_asset with the same ETag/304 logic as the other assets.
Every reader template is restyled: ears row, centred masthead with its rules,
tracked section labels, the drop cap on The Brief, "Why it's here" with its
accent bar, the segmented rating control, prev/next cards, and the colophon
as a two-column definition grid. Dashboard templates are untouched (step 3).
Also fixes a .block collision with Tailwind's display utility, the SVG
`hidden` property that never toggled the theme icon, and points the dev
seed's profile_path at ./dev so previewing cannot rewrite data/profile.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NHyYupFdBiR4VfoUM7NjSM
Users page, README and config.example updates, implementation notes, the
rollout runbook, site-layout 404/500 pages, human-readable download sizes,
dark-mode and narrow-screen polish, and a smoke test over every dashboard
route; also removes zdiff3 ancestor markers left by earlier merges.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NHyYupFdBiR4VfoUM7NjSM
Migration 0004 (users, sessions, config_changes, profile_versions, jobs,
rating_events.user_id, runs.report_json, issues.issue_json), the issue
snapshot writer and loader, the web module skeleton with layout and static
assets, axum-login/tower-sessions over a sqlx session store, password-auth
users with a CLI, the login throttle, the origin check, security headers,
and the public issue pages, archive, Atom feed and robots.txt.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NHyYupFdBiR4VfoUM7NjSM
thalladaandClaude Fable 5.1