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.
An hour long talk by Google web developer and evangelist Paul Irish at a recent HTML5 developer conference. Some great tools and ideas here, from shell customization to SSH and Chrome DevTools tricks.
This is a pretty brilliant tool for anyone maintaining larger sets of CSS. The little Ruby gem parses any passed in CSS files and finds duplicated rule sets. I’d recommend using it with the -n flag to only include duplications with a minimum number of matches (in the case of my current day job, eight or more.) The savings were significant: after some cleanup I saved several hundred lines of CSS, a big win for performance and organization.
Developer and CSS Wizardry writer Harry Roberts:
The problem with leaving hacks and nasty code is obvious; it’s hacky and nasty. However, other problems with leaving this code can arise…The first bits of bad code set a precedent and make subsequent developers feel less bad about using poor code themselves. It was like that when I got here! Give developers a clean slate and they’ll really think twice about messing it all up.
What is needed is a way of allowing these hacks when necessary, but making sure that they don’t go unnoticed and unresolved.
There has been some controversy online about this, but I actually think Harry’s suggestion of a separate file to isolate and focus on crappy CSS to be refactored later is really smart. I might give it a try in an upcoming side project.
From the Forecast.io blog:
So why does it feel as if the average native app is so much better than the average web app?
The reason, I think, is this: it’s easy to make web pages. Anyone with a text editor and a browser can do it. You can learn the basics and actually publish a website in a weekend, as an amateur, without much trouble. Making a native iOS app, by contrast, is difficult and time consuming: you have to pay Apple $99; you have to download XCode and learn how to use it, along with a strange language called Objective-C; you have to create, sign, and upload certificates; you have to compile your code and figure out how to run it on your device; and you have to publish it for others to see, which requires navigating all the rules, regulations, and technical issues surrounding the App Store. All these things make for a large barrier to entry that just doesn’t exist on the web.
Developer Steven Bradley, writing for Adobe, put together one of the best overall introductions to the new flexbox CSS spec that I’ve seen. Rather than just jumping into code, Steven starts with a diagram on overall formatting and layout. It helped me visualize the basics a lot better than some of the canned demos that have floated around the internet lately.
Designer and Paravel founder Trent Walton on the strength of small teams with a skill set balanced among planning, design and development:
When various skill sets are combined in this way, people learn from each other. Rather than creating to-do lists filled with nudges and site tweaks for developers, designers could learn CSS and edit designs in the browser alongside more intensive development. Developers could hone their design sensibilities and contribute by making enhancements such as gestures, geolocation, and performance a part of the design process.
Trent’s right. The faster we mix and integrate our teams, the less “siloed” work and more “T shaped” contributors, the stronger our web work becomes.
A lot of tech companies, especially smaller ones, can struggle with an effective and organized deploy plan. Beanstalk helps solve that gap, adding some slick version control and collaboration tools in the mix. Admittedly, until I heard a shout out from Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks, I hadn’t heard of the resource, but browsing over their site I was impressed by the feature set (the side by side HTML/image preview is brilliant) and reasonable pricing.
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.
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.