Some great ideas from CSS Wizardry on organizing and writing CSS. Pay close attention to the recommendations on a table of contents and section titles; while I slightly differ from the section and content style listed here, both devices are a huge help once your CSS grows in size.
I admittedly was a bit skeptical when I first heard about The Dissolve. Between SlashFilm and The A.V. Club, did we really need another big film web site? And it’s from the team behind Pitchfork?
But then I dove in after its debut late last week and I’m very glad I did. The content itself is excellent, written by a lot of writers I have respect for: Keith Phipps, Scott Tobias, Matt Singer and many more. There’s something also of a happy medium ground The Dissolve is getting at in terms of its content posting frequency. There’s less constant updates a la A.V. or SlashFilm, but they make those posts count.
There’s something to be said for the site’s visual design as well. In contrast to the all white ultra modern and minimalist trend, The Dissolve is a bit mellow and old school that’s heavy on serifs and warm, off white colors. I’ve already added their features and reviews RSS feeds to my feed reader.
A compelling web data visualization over at WNYC, New York’s NPR station. Enter an address or click on the map and you’ll estimated subway travel times to everywhere else in NYC. The package is done really smartly with hex shaped data points color coded heat map style.
Rob Fahey writing for GamesIndustry International:
Here’s this approach in summary – “save AAA games by making more money from the same consumers”. If you think you can rescue AAA by following that strategy, I’d submit that you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution. AAA development isn’t in trouble because its consumers don’t pay enough money – it’s in trouble because the growth of its consumer base has stalled. After years of meteoric growth, AAA games have hit a ceiling – new people are playing games in droves, interactive entertainment has gone every bit as mainstream as anyone dared to dream, yet AAA experiences are utterly failing to encourage new audiences to jump in, to swim upstream and become fully fledged video game consumers.
Google product designer Jean-Marc Denis makes a pretty compelling argument why you should seriously think about integrating Sketch into your production workflow. It’s one of the best “why Sketch over Photoshop” posts I’ve read.
While my time is still heavily in development, when I do drop into design, I find that I’m heading into Sketch more and more often. Photoshop still gets the majority of my bulk export work however.
Drag and drop SVGs on this nifty little web tool by the Filament Group to auto generate fallback pngs and a quick demo web page. In short, if you’ve gun-shy about using SVGs on your web design given legacy browser compatibility, this should make your production work much easier and more reliable cross browser.
Ryan Aston, The House Next Door:
Davis took over the hosting reins at GameSpot after Rich Gallop left and Gerstmann was fired, and immediately slotted into the same role at Giant Bomb. He jovially hosted the Bombcast and all of their live shows, including their panels at conventions like PAX. An incredibly funny and welcoming individual, he was just as friendly as he was amusingly insulting, but he was never disrespectful and his words never corrosive or venomous. His laugh was booming and infectious. He was an easygoing individual universally described as fun to be around. As awkward as he was at being recognized in public, he remained approachable and affable, showing fans the same love he received in return. Browsing the literal tens of thousands of comments following this sad news, it’s borderline impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say about him.
I’ve taken a while before I’ve made any mention of Ryan here after his passing almost two weeks ago, but The House Next Door’s summary here gets him right: funny, smart, universally liked. As a regular listener to the Bombcast and Giant Bomb in general, he will be greatly missed.
It’s almost too easy to link to another Film Crit Hulk piece given his consistency. But this is another 10000 words easily worth your time if you’re interested in film, especially screenplays for big budget films over the summer (or have always had a bit of skepticism over J.J. Abrams’ skill overseeing screenplays.)
Here’s my favorite part:
LET’S GET HYPOTHETICAL: IF YOU (THE REAL YOU READING THIS NOW) WERE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND SOMEONE CAME UP TO YOU AND YELLED, “Quick! I’m your long-lost brother you never knew you had! Someone’s after me! We have to run!!!!” YOU WOULD BE COMPLETELY TAKEN OFF-GUARD, WOULDN’T YOU? NOW, WOULD YOU BE CURIOUS? WOULD IT BE CRAZY? WOULD IT BE EXCITING? SURE! BUT YOU WOULDN’T EXACTLY BE INVESTED. YOU WOULD BE SUSPICIOUS. YOU WOULD DISTANCE YOURSELF. MEANWHILE, IF YOUR ACTUAL BROTHER THAT YOU’VE KNOWN AND LOVED YOUR WHOLE LIFE SHOWED UP AND SAID “Quick! Someone’s after me! We have to run!” YOU WOULD BE MUCH MORE INVESTED! IT’S YOUR BROTHER, AFTER ALL. BOTH ARE YOUR “BROTHERS” BUT ONE IS A PERSON WITH WHOM YOU HAVE A SHARED HISTORY AND LOVE. YOU HAVE ALL THE RELEVANT INFORMATION TO YOUR BOND THUS THERE WOULD BE A SUBSTANTIAL ROOTING INTEREST. AND BETWEEN THESE TWO SCENARIOS, THE MORE DRAMATIC AND COMPELLING SITUATION SHOULD BE OBVIOUS, RIGHT?
Technologist Alex Kessinger on using feed readers effectively:
Reading efficiently can mean a number of things to people, and that’s fine. Some people want to read to stay up to date, others want to cover a lot of ground while not spending too much time reading. The idea is that reading efficiently covers the whole spectrum of reading goals.
Efficiency is a formula. How much did you consume, in what amount of time, and what do you have to show for it? If you read a ton quickly, but you can’t recall what you read, then you are wasting your time. If you want to have a high recall, and thus consume a small amount of material slowly, that’s fine, but this is a balancing act. You need to decide what your goal is before you can do anything to optimize for it.
Well said. This long series of posts inspired me to shake up my RSS feed reading habits. It might be a good topic for an upcoming blog post here.
I’ve written enough responsive navigations in the last few months to be skeptical when I see a simple Javascript-based plugin solution. But probing further, the developer is Viljami Salminen, and the guy’s talented. It’s also library agnostic – no awkward jQuery dependency required. Worth taking a look at for your next responsive project.