06.25.13 |
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Ben Kuchera, writing for The PA Report:
Microsoft doesn’t allow developers to self-publish their games on the Xbox 360, nor will it be allowed on the Xbox One. There’s been much talk about this limitation, but few really understand what it means, or why that decision not only screws over indies on the Xbox One, but the PlayStation 4 and PC as well. Microsoft, in one very broad stroke, has made it much harder for smaller developers to operate in gaming as a whole.
Occasionally I questioned if some of the examples here were a bit hyperbolic. But I’ve been reading so many reports of this from different sources that there’s clearly a lot of truth here. As a article commenter points out, it’s ironic the Microsoft tried this experiment back with 360 and the XLIG. Seeing where they started and where they are now…pretty crazy.
06.21.13 |
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A great animated gif Tumblr blog that almost any front end developer can identify with. I especially love that The Wire reference used for “when asked to do an HTML email”.
06.21.13 |
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The legendary Jeremy Keith, talking about best practices for responsive web design:
And here’s the key: try to come up with as few major breakpoints as possible. That might sound crazy, since we’re talking about responsive design. After all, we have media queries, so let’s use about 12 of them, right? No! If a linear layout works for every screen and is appropriate for your particular concept, then there’s no need for different layouts.
I’ve learned this the hard way in my early responsive work; you find writing more and more media queries easy, and next thing you know your responsive code gets out of control. Follow Keith’s advice here; simpler is generally better.
06.20.13 |
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Kevin Whipps writing for iPhone AppStorm:
The thing about Vesper is that it’s great to use and sure is pretty. But if my notes are trapped on my iPhone, it’s pretty much useless to me.
Bingo. Kevin also goes after Vesper’s creators for their lack of Markdown support; not as critical in my mind as syncing, but it’s still a problem.
06.19.13 |
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If you love gaming and follow gaming news online, you probably already know about the Giant Bomb crew’s amazing skill as critics, writers, and podcast hosts. But if you don’t, or even are vaguely into games but dig well edited videos, the work Giant Bomb’s Vinny and Drew put into this one is staggering. One hour of top notch analysis, funny asides, great editing and lots of behind the scenes footage.
06.19.13 |
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There’s been a lot of debate on the iOS 7 visuals, especially among designers. I myself fall a bit in the middle – there’s some icons I can’t stand, but largely I’m trying my best to reserve judgement until I actually get a stable beta build on my phone. But designer Khoi Vinh correctly identifies one major problem I have with iOS: the typography. Helvetica Neue Ultra Light was never meant to be used this across the board, especially at such small sizes.
06.18.13 |
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John Teti, writing for The Gamelogical Society on Microsoft’s E3 presser:
If the people on Microsoft’s Xbox team thought of their audience as human beings, they would have acknowledged some of the elephants in the room—like the Xbox One’s extraordinarily confusing used-games scheme or the privacy concerns regarding the always-on Kinect camera, which have only become more urgent as the nation realizes how thoroughly we are being surveilled. If they wanted to speak to people, Microsoft’s executives would not have ticked every box on their Buzzword Bingo card twice over. They know this talk of an “entertainment revolution” is bullshit, and we know it’s bullshit. Yet still they make us sit through this inane emperor’s-new-clothes charade, as they talk at length to nobody in particular.
For a few hours after Microsoft’s presser, right before Sony started presenting, I had already slightly moved away from leaning Microsoft for my next console. All I could think was, you’re not going to address anything the gaming public have been piling on you? Then fuel the fire with endless violent sequels on shooters, and racers we’ve seen before? Little to any indie presence? And then set the price at $500? The presentation was well paced, and there were a few exclusives I could get on board with. But John identifies exactly what left such a bad taste in my mouth.
06.18.13 |
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A common hassle for any developer who writes CSS3 is knowing when to prefix (e.g. -webkit-transition, -o-transition, etc.). When does a vendor fall out of date? Cutting edge Sass developers already have a pretty clean solution for this via pregenerated mixins like Bourbn or their own custom solutions. But if you don’t have that, this Sublime Text plugin is the next best option. Check it out.
06.17.13 |
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The always reliable Harry Roberts on CSS optimization writes a lot of solid points here. But it ultimately comes down to this:
Make sure any classes you write aren’t loose; make sure they’re always well named, and scoped if they need to be.
To put it another way, as I’ve always told classes I’ve taught and colleagues I’ve mentored, good CSS class names are underrated. Choose wisely.
06.17.13 |
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Especially on the eve of iOS 7 fairly radical visual redesign in a more colorful, minimal, and “flat” direction, it’s worth looking at Yahoo’s latest web framework for inspiration. I dig the framework’s simplicity, it’s heavy use of prefix classes and normalize.css.