If you’re looking for a good intro to front end semantic fundamentals, especially for non technical people, look no further. I dig the layout, the organization and its structure. There’s no fluff here – just the basic syntax with a few examples.
Gamer Pete Davison argues PC gaming is strong:
There is no other platform on which you can have such diverse experiences as the PC. iOS certainly has a good go, but as days go on it’s abundantly clear that the mobile market is shifting very much in favour of “freemium” social games rather than truly inventive experiences. On the PC, meanwhile, the fact that it is such a free market out there — and easy to develop for (relatively speaking) — means that if you can imagine an experience you want to have, you can probably do so on PC.
Pete’s makes a strong point here against consoles. As I pointed out on last week’s post on Mass Effect 3, there’s a void in terms of indie releases and originality in current-gen consoles; just compare what’s out on Steam versus the XBox Live Marketplace or PSN. Yet I think he short changes the iOS and mobile market. There’s a lot of crap, but there are some great ideas out there, and its price and distribution constitute a threat to the PC market.
Don’t count consoles out either; we’ve got a good year before Microsoft and Sony unveil their next generation devices. With the right approach, they could really bounce back against mobile and PC competition.
I’ve never attempted iced coffee at home. But I am a huge AeroPress fan – I deploy the inverted brew technique almost every morning – and Instapaper developer Marco Arment has what looks like a really cool recipe. I plan on giving this a try before summer ends.
(Yes, this is a bit off topic from what’s normally covered here, but many great developers and designers I know love coffee.)
Jordan Koschei, writing for The Industry on Dropbox’s “get free space” push to have the user complete extra steps after first signing up:
This solution is much more elegant than simply forcing users to sit through instructions. For one thing, it offers them a choice; nobody is forced to go through the steps, but most people will anyway in order to gain the reward. Furthermore, the reward is intrinsically linked to the product — it isn’t a tangential incentive like a badge, but rather more of the product itself. Rewarding appropriate use of a product with more of the same product is simple and elegant.
Dropbox’s approach is novel. I know many non technical people who still rely on Dropbox everyday for syncing critical files between multiple computers. I never would have guessed that such a hard to explain, engineering focused product would have such an elegant setup process, but they do.
Quip isn’t your average Twitter client. While you can just read your timeline, the focus here is on alternative modes: check out extended conversations, read the most retweeted tweets, and lay out all Twitter friendly embedded images in a simple grid. It’s really cool as a ‘lean back’ experience to run through on my iPad at the end of the day.
If you’re anyone that dives into CSS on a regular basis you’ve had to fish for extra colors for use on gradients, hovers, border edges, and other HTML elements. For tonally consistent options I’ve relied on colllor in the past. Yet often I just want to slightly lighten or darker a specific hex color, but don’t want to open up Photoshop just to slightly adjust a HSL curve.
That’s exactly why 0 to 255 works so well. No more Photoshop or big third party tools. Just head here, enter a hex color, and you get a full spectrum of colors from light to dark.
Essential reading for technology fans who want to avoid crushing, poorly managed corporate culture. The “curve” rating system that required ranking of team members, struck me as especially damming. Yet overall I was a bit disappointed by Kurt Eichenwald’s writing. It felt overwhelmingly one sided and at times a bit superficial. If poor practices like the curve ranking system weren’t liked by almost anyone interviewed, why did they exist? Was it Ballmer? High amounts of red tape? I wanted a bit of a deeper dive here.
Google Chrome’s start screen that shows your most trafficked sites is nice, yet lacks customization. Enter Speed Dial 2, a Chrome extension that’s been out for a while, but has gotten enough frequent updates to stay very relevant in the browser market. Speed Dial at its heart is similar to the Chrome default with a series of thumbnails for quick access to frequently accessed websites. Yet the customization here is awesome. Pick thumbnail size, number of columns rows, background color schemes, refresh rates and more.
One complaint is its memory usage. It burns up 70 or so MB on my Macbook Air. It’s still worth a try for Chrome start screen fans.
Lately I’ve been playing the popular sci-fi action/RPG Mass Effect 3 on my PS3. Overall it’s a blast, yet the game feels rushed, even a bit played out. It makes me wary of AAA console gaming for the next console generation. But is it the game? Or a reflection of a gamer in his 30s who’s been console gaming too long?
The best parts of ME3 hit me early. The core gameplay formula – a balance of straightforward combat and dialogue heavy cut scenes – remains intact. The graphics got a nice bump compared to the previous Mass Effect, especially in the facial animations. The extra fidelity adds a lot of depth to chats your character encounters on his journey. And the Mass Effect setting gives a better sense of space and presence than virtually any gaming series.
However, cracks in the ME3 facade emerge around the ten hour mark. The game has the budget of your average summer blockbuster and sadly, about as much care went into the writing. You get your obligatory sequel fan service of poorly written, coincidental bump ins with old teammates (“Grunt? What you doing here?”), halfhearted attempts at real emotion (Shepard has interactive, slo-mo flashbacks of a child lost in an early attack on Earth) and well worn, cliched lines between fighters (“It doesn’t get any better, does it?”).
Then there’s that sense that I’ve been down this road far too many times. Combat is sped up and adds grenades (thanks, Call of Duty sales!) but in the process, it becomes harder to distinguish from other third person shooters. Walks through larger non combat areas can stretch on for too long. Your combat partners still act fairly stupid; they often march straight into gunfire.
In short, there’s a general lack of evolution here, something I’ve also noticed in most AAA games I’ve played this year. In many ways, big budget console gaming parallels the Hollywood studio machine during the summer: repetitive genre works with proven plot lines aimed at a progressively younger audience.
Luckily, summer flicks have exceptions to the rule: strong counter programming (e.g. Magic Mike, Killer Joe) and blockbusters that exceed critical expectations (The Avengers). This happens in console gaming as well, but I’d argue we’re seeing those gaming exceptions further and further apart as current-gen consoles trudge on.
Nevertheless, when I contrast this with recent experiences on other platforms, I’ve got a lot of hope for gaming overall. I played the indie puzzle games Braid and Limbo on my Mac back-to-back, and it was, without exaggeration, a total joy. My iPhone also has been a nice match for casual gaming on the subway. Admittedly most iOS games are pretty poor, but a few times a year there is a game comes along that hooks me.
So where does that leave consoles? Digital distribution, combined with a thriving indie game scene, is key. I want a console that’s the home equivalent of the film scene in New York or LA: a blend of both big budget heavyweights and little indies, both readily available.
I rarely find work that’s as tedious as determining proper CSS from sprite sheets. Sprite Cow makes the process far more easy: Upload a sample sheet and click directly on individual sprites to get their proper CSS coordinates.