04.12.13 |
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Developer Jonathan Christopher on the big announcement that Chrome is splitting away from Webkit into its own engine, Blink:
I can’t help but be super psyched about this announcement. While a big, short-sighted part of me finds the whole Google aspect unsettling, I think I stand behind what positive byproducts of these changes. We can’t deny Apple’s direct influence on the WebKit project, and we can’t look past the changes that will happen with that project once the Google contributions cease. We need to keep in mind though that it might be inspirational for both projects which in turn benefits the world at large.
I generally share Christopher’s enthusiasm. My first reaction was largely negative: will we to have to run different testing and development patterns for Safari and Chrome? But of the “big four” tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google), Google is pushing our perception of the web forward the most. I’m excited to see what they’ll do with Blink and Chrome moving forward.
04.11.13 |
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Classic film buff Jordan Krug collects and scans contact sheets from a bunch of legendary films, posting the results on his blog. The majority are rare and unpublished. Just scanning the past few week, there’s work here from Chinatown, Rocky and Dirty Harry. Really cool stuff.
04.11.13 |
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I’ve got a lot of respect for web designer Chris Coyier. His Css Tricks is pretty much the definitive resource I head to when looking up CSS techniques. That’s when, via a pretty random Google search, I came upon this talk he gave late last year. Really great advice here, from development setup to deployment strategy. Chris is a entertaining speaker as well; you won’t get bored.
04.10.13 |
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Nice photo work profiling the many coders, testers, artists and more that worked behind the scenes at the just closed LucasArts. Admittedly the gaming studio had little output in the last six years or so. Yet during the mid 90s, it was a unstoppable force for adventure gaming: the Monkey Island series, Grim Fandango, Sam & Max and much more. LucasArts and Sierra were the gaming giants that powered the majority of my gaming in the late 80s and early 90s; a bit sad to see them shutter like this.
04.10.13 |
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A common problem we have as web developers is sharing a web site or app we’re running off localhost to others. Yes, you can always have a quick deployment strategy, but Localtunnel provides something a bit slicker and easier. Just install the Ruby gem, run a command and you’ve got a subdomain on localtunnel.com to share to your coworkers and clients. Granted, it’s no substitute for a full deployment environment, especially in the context of formalized QA testing, but especially for quick shares and checkins with coworkers, it’s a nice idea.
04.09.13 |
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Web designer Stuart Robson has comparatively more hands on experience with SASS than I do, which makes this pretty in depth SASS mixin a really useful read. At the very least, I’m struck by the importance of writing your media queries in ems, not pixels, a trend that’s really taken hold in the web development community over the past few months.
04.09.13 |
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Film critic Wesley Morris, writing for Grantland:
They were not the first to hold movies to some broad, high standard — but they were the first to do so in our living rooms. The show became famous for evaluating films in the same way the Romans passed judgment on defeated gladiators: with their thumbs. But, really, what Siskel and Ebert instilled in the civilian filmgoer was perception. Movies had a surface that could be penetrated and explored. They taught us how else to watch.
There’s been many, many tributes to Ebert’s sad passing, but Morris’s for me was virtually pitch perfect (little surprise given he’s a rare film critic that’s won a Pulitzer.) A mix of pop enthusiasm and serious politics (Ebert championed many minority filmmakers, from Spike Lee to Justin Lin), Roger Ebert changed the game of film criticism. I doubt we’ll ever see another film critic with his impact for a very long time.
04.08.13 |
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Chardin is a smartly thought out jQuery plugin that draws overlays on existing web elements, accompanied by optional instructions. It looks especially useful for interactive help within web apps.
04.08.13 |
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Author Ryan Holiday:
We’re just regressing.
It’s the one thing I find most disheartening and perhaps most frustrating about this trend. It’s something that needs to be heard, particularly by the people who wrote off these services as Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 relics—the type who said, “Well, nobody used RSS, so good riddance.”
The collapse of these services, to me, represents an alarming reduction of key services designed to improve online information from the user’s perspective.
04.05.13 |
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There’s little I have to add here: Pacino yelling, going over-the-top in all his famous roles, from “Attica!” in Dog Day Afternoon to “She’s got a…great ass!” in Heat. Delightful.