Lab

The lab at mishmash.no/lab/ is where the site tries things in the browser: the research soundscape, the people network, and whatever a work package wants to show next. A lab page is an ordinary page with the lab layout and a lab block in its frontmatter, and the lab index lists every such page by itself.

Adding a piece

1. Copy site/lab/_template/ to site/lab/<short-slug>/ and rename index.md as you like.
2. Fill in the frontmatter: title, permalink (/lab/<short-slug>/), description, and the lab block with authors, date, status, data and ai.
3. Put the piece itself in the body: a container the script draws into, a <noscript> line, and the scripts at the end. Stylesheets go in site/assets/css/, scripts in site/assets/js/, and the page loads them with custom_css and a <script> tag.
4. Commit on a branch and open a pull request, so the checks run before the piece is public.

The lab block is shown at the top of the page. data says what the piece draws on and where it comes from; ai says how AI was involved, in one sentence. Both are part of the site's commitment to declare its sources and its use of AI; see Page Metadata and the AI colophon.

What a piece must do

• Work without JavaScript to the extent of saying what the reader is missing.
• Pass the accessibility scan like every other page: controls are buttons, images have text, colours have contrast. A piece that is inherently visual can add a text or table alternative, as the research pulse does.
• Load nothing from third parties that tracks readers. Data files belong in the repository or come from the sources listed in Web Philosophy.
• Start sound only when the reader asks for it.

search: false in the frontmatter keeps a piece out of the site search.

Showing a heritage object

Any page, not only a lab page, can show an object from a Norwegian collection in place:

{% include heritage.html source="nb" id="3ab035574c80dd3baa18330fc9b3bc66" %}
{% include heritage.html source="dimu" id="3df10c96-b33b-45c1-92bf-d9211ce574c8" caption="Optional caption instead of the object's title" %}

nb takes the item id from the National Library's catalogue (the last part of an nb.no/items/ address); dimu takes the artifact uuid from DigitaltMuseum's API, which also serves the National Museum; europeana takes a Europeana record id such as /502/_011023280005; kulturnav takes the uuid of a KulturNav authority (a person, place or term) and shows its description instead of an image. The reader's browser fetches the metadata and image from the collection, the rights statement is shown as the collection gives it, and a link leads back to the source.

A Europeana record of type sound or video gets a player instead of a picture, with the collection's preview as the poster where there is one. The player carries preload="none", so nothing is fetched and the collection learns nothing until a reader presses play. Use openly licensed material: what is played comes from the collection's server, and the licence line under it is the reader's only guide to what may be done with it.

See mishmash.no/lab/heritage/ for the examples: three pictures, an authority, a recording and a film.

Related

• Site Features for the pieces that exist
• Student Development for the wider student tracks