Archive: Miscellany

Where to start

Paravel founder Trent Walton on the transition to building responsive web sites properly:

I believe this starts with a shift in perception. Whether massive or minute, this shift usually involves letting go of a lot of assumptions that center around desktop-centric browsing.

I found myself nodding a lot to Trent’s post. There’s no one simple solution for implementing responsive web design, but trying to just take an existing desktop workflow (e.g. fixed width psd comps, jamming a few CSS media queries on existing work) won’t do it justice.

How I launched 3 consoles (and found true love) at Babbage’s store no. 9

I couldn’t put it better than Ars Technica writer Lee Hutchinson’s own tag line: a minimum wage gig in the 1990s turns into pretty much the Best Job Ever. Fun read and makes me a bit nostalgic for those earlier days of gaming in my teenage years.

MQtest.io

Sometimes you want a super quick way to both identify core dimensions on your open web browser and, especially for mobile devices, what critical dimensions like device width, height, and pixel ratio should be. That’s exactly what this web site does; bookmark it and keep it for reference later.

The MineCraft problem: the PS4 and next Xbox need flexibility, not power

Ben Kuchera, writing for The PA Report:

I took my son to Math and Science night at his school last night and saw three kids playing MineCraft on tablets or phones. They discuss what’s happening on their respective servers at lunch. It’s a huge hit, and an innovative platform.

It also would have been impossible on any existing console.

MineCraft may have ultimately come to the Xbox 360, but the game breaks many of Microsoft’s rules.

Fashionably flexible responsive web design

Influential designer Andy Clarke gives a great talk, and his slide deck all about responsive web design has a lot of smart ideas I’ve never considered before. Granted it’s not nearly the same as a live talk or full day workshop, but it’s worth a quick scan for almost any web designer or developer who wants to refine their responsive skills.

Video games don’t create violence in society, they reflect it

In case you thought all top selling games were first person shooters, here’s Brian Crecente for Polygon:

And perhaps that’s the more important point: Not all video games are for everyone and not all of them are violent. The game industry produces a surprisingly eclectic mix of titles.

Nearly 18 million copies of Minecraft have been sold. While last year’s top-selling games included Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, half of the top games of 2012 weren’t violent. Those non-violent games include sports titles, dancing games, even a Lego game. And that’s just counting games sold in stores in the U.S. When you start to look at mobile gaming, where Angry Birds remains the king of the platform, overtly violent games become even less prevalent.

In conversation: Steven Soderbergh

There’s a reason that this long interview with Vulture‘s Mary Kaye Schilling is getting so talk online. It’s because it’s great, candid, and moves in directions I never would have expected (e.g. Soderbergh loves reading US in airports).

iPhone 5 web app startup images

If you’re writing a web app and care at all about the iOS market, startup images are important. Yet when searching around for more detailed help on my Blue Drop weather app, it was hard to get a definitive answer on both code and image requirements for different iOS devices.

But when I stumbled on Taylor Fausak’s site after a few Google searches, the answer was obvious. On this post Taylor goes over proper startup images for just the iPhone 5, but he also wrote earlier about how to handle other iOS devices.

An inside peek into the Polygon design process

The new gaming site Polygon made a big splash when it launched late last year, and deservedly so. Not only is the editorial content solid, but its web design is bold and well thought out. This post is a very detailed breakdown of the initial design planning workflow, with initial mood boards, wireframes, and sketches.

How does auto positioning work in CSS?

Steven Bradley of Vanseo Design examines how exactly auto in the context of CSS offset works. It’s an issue that can easily mess up the location of absolutely positioned elements, especially, as Steven highlights, for drop down menus and popups. Worth a read for almost anyone who works with CSS and page layout regularly.