I recently had to write an extended HTML template, a notorious web design pain point with its required use of tables and hacks. Thank god for MailChimp. Over at their GitHub they’ve got a few really slick html email starting points, both fixed and responsive in their design. It saved me hours of time last week.
Designer Khoi Vinh:
It’s much more common for designers to be expected to master the engineering vernacular than vice versa, but that shouldn’t stop designers from asking engineers what they know about design. Designers might hesitate to ask if the engineer understands anything about typography, color, images, branding systems and logos, but I say why not? It’s perfectly fair game to ask if an engineer understands why a given design solution works…An engineer who understands these things is a tremendous asset in shipping great products, and designers are best equipped to assess that.
BioShock Infinite has been one of the most critically acclaimed games of in the past year, and after having finished it last week, it’s justified. There’s just a certain level of polish and depth to the first person shooter you rarely encounter. But that ending…kind of crazy.
Listen to the Giant Bomb team spend over two hours breaking down BioShock‘s story, feel, and the many possible interpretations of that ending. Bomb crew member Vinnie live plays the ending for the first time as the others provide commentary. Very funny and very smart discussion.
Developer Philip Walton:
A Rails developer isn’t considered good just because his code works to spec. This is considered baseline. Of course it must work to spec; its merit is based on other things: Is the code readable? Is it easy to change or extend? Is it decoupled from other parts of the application? Will it scale?
These questions are natural when assessing other parts of the code base, and CSS shouldn’t be any different.
I think Philip goes a bit into the deep end with his class naming conventions. Nevertheless, especially with his points about code reuse and modularity, this is essential CSS reading, one of the best articles I’ve read on the subject in weeks.
A fun, breezy conversation with actor Alec Baldwin as he raids the Criterion Collection closet. Good selections.
Even smiling during outtakes, the late Dennis Hopper in his Frank Booth outfit scares the hell out of me.
A no-nonsense checklist by developers Sayed Hashimi and Mads Kristensen. Yes, you can technically use it as an actual web task manager, but the real benefit here are all the links provided, from the W3C mobile checker to JSHint and tips on making proper favicons.
I’d argue it’s hard to find someone better equipped to deliver a “State of Cinema” talk than director Steven Soderbergh. Film Comment transcribed his entire talk for reading, There’s also a full SoundCloud embed file if you’d rather listen to Soderbergh’s audio. One of his quick asides on the major studios’ financial dominance was pretty scary:
In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, 10 years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard.
Pretty damming analysis by Gamasutra‘s Matt Matthews, from overall shipments…
During the past fiscal year, the year in which the Wii U launched, total console hardware shipments actually went down rather than up. In the previous two launches, total console hardware shipments went up during a launch year.
…to upcoming Wii U releases…
While I think it’s a step forward for Iwata to show that Nintendo has a messaging problem when it comes to the Wii U, I don’t think Wii U owners — or potential Wii U owners — will be encouraged by his proposed solutions.
Iwata appears to be saying that Nintendo will reinvigorate the Wii U starting with Pikmin 3 in July and August of this year. That alone is cause for some concern, because Pikmin might be a fine game, but it isn’t really a system-seller. And on top of that, what are consumers to do with their Wii U in the intervening three months?
…and overall:
And where will all of this put Nintendo in a year’s time? Nintendo probably needs all, or nearly all, of the pieces to fall into place to reach its ¥100 billion operating profit goal…just looking at what we know now, I really don’t think Nintendo is going to make it.
Ouch.
That shot of Vader and a bunch of mattresses laying on the “chasm” below gets me every time.