Glow playground

what is behind this

A handful of small lights is drifting about behind these words, and one of them will shortly come and sit on the emphasis in this sentence. Move the pointer and some take an interest for a second or two; press, and whoever is minded to comes over.

Scroll, and nothing happens to them. They live on the page rather than on the screen, so a scroll is a camera moving over them, and leaves them behind. Give them a few seconds and they come back down.

None of them cruises. One runs for a second or two, stops, turns while it is stopped, and runs again. That is how most small animals get anywhere, and why about half the time here is spent standing still. A fly turns the same way: 90° in under a tenth of a second, between straight segments and never through them. Ninety reads as something trapped in a jar, so these turn half as far. A reader who asked for no motion gets none of it — the swarm arrives already landed, one light on each emphasis, and never moves again.

The same swarm is at work on a page that is not about it:

the knobs

Each writes one attribute onto this page's main element, and the swarm is watching. That is all that joins the two files: neither has heard of the other.

what a page declares

One line, and the layout loads the two files that answer to it. A page that wants none pays for none.

critters: em

It arrives as an attribute, beside the two the knobs write. Left unsaid, the count comes off the window and off how much emphasis a screenful of the page holds.

<main id="main" data-lamps="still" data-critters="em"
      data-critter-count="7" data-critter-lure="0.5">

the two lamps

The big light is anchored twice here — the heading at the top and this block — which is why neither of them drifts. Everywhere else the first goes to the pointer as it moves. Not here: the critters are answering the cursor already, and one gesture does not need two answers.