09.10.12 |
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In a small amount of shameless self-promotion, I’m teaching a course over at General Assembly starting tonight on core front end web development: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you’re in NYC and looking to bolster your skills for web, design, back end development, startup management, and many other tech skills, browse through General Assembly’s site for other courses. They’ve got everything from quick, 90 minute one-off classes to multi week intensives. Excellent staff and two nice spaces in the Flatiron district.
09.10.12 |
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Software developer Reginald Braithwaite on Twitter likely killing off updates for their Mac client:
Even if they have a new version “in the can,” releasing it today means people falling in love with its features and being even more resistant to using the web. It means support costs. It means sending a mixed message. If the web’s the place, why not go “all in” on it now? Why wait for tomorrow if it’s the right decision today?
And why wouldn’t it be the right decision? The web is the ultimate write-once, run-everywhere platform. Why incur the additional expense and headache of maintaining multiple, heterogenous development platforms unless a vendor forces your hand by selling a gajillion devices that don’t have a decent web browser?
I tend to agree with Reginald here. Granted, I, like almost everyone else, is pissed about Twitter’s recent antagonism toward third party clients. Yet Twitter’s own official app has to support a huge number of platforms, especially when considering the global marketplace. The web in this context makes sense.
09.07.12 |
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If you’re a web designer, developer, work in a web company or are just curious about the industry in general, ALA‘s annual survey is essential reading. It’s pretty heavily favored by responses from developers (39.4%) and designers (25.1%) yet pretty indicative of the industry as a whole.
09.07.12 |
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Excellent performance tips from the HTML5 Rocks team. I especially like the graphs that compare core rendering performance between the most popular web browsers. IE 10 has some impressive numbers here.
09.06.12 |
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Foggy is an interesting jQuery plugin for blurring page elements. Yet I can’t help but be concerned about the performance implications for browsers that don’t support the native CSS3 blur (-webkit-filter: blur) attribute. Making several copies of an HTML element to be reinserted in the DOM is often costly.
08.29.12 |
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Smashing Magazine contrasts the mobile strategy by both candidates in this year’s presidential election. Mitt Romney’s camp goes with a separate optimized mobile only site, while Obama leans on responsive design. Which is better, and why? I liked the level of detail author Brad Frost brings to this piece, a regular highlight of Smashing Mag articles.
08.23.12 |
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I’ve seen a recent tide of front end developers who are leaning against IDs in their CSS selectors. Based on the work I’ve seen recently on sites from Apple to Amazon and Smashing Magazine, ID selectors are not going away any time soon. Yet designer Oli Studholme makes a pretty compelling argument why they should.
08.21.12 |
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CSS guru Chris Coyier, on integrating CSS preprocessor language SASS into his workflow:
I can tell you that after making the jump, I am actually more productive. And I write better CSS. And the projects I work on are in better, more maintainable shape because of it. And in some cases, faster. My advice is: don’t let people get on your case. Just do what you gotta do. If you get some time to try it out, do it. And do it on a real project. Just tinkering around doesn’t count. You gotta really try it to see how it might work with your day to day.
Chris’s argument is influential now that I’m experimenting more and more with SASS. I’m a relatively recent newcomer to the language, and it’s pretty fascinating to see its effects both in the office and on side projects.
08.15.12 |
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I learned a few nice tricks here by web developer Flavio Copes, most notably the ability to debug code based on DOM modifications.
08.09.12 |
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File this under the “why didn’t I discover this earlier?” department. Instacss is a very straightforward, super quick CSS documentation repo. Up till now when I had to cross reference a CSS property, I usually ended up running a Google search with the term and ultimately navigating over to W3 Schools. W3 is still a sold resource, but Instacss is far more useful. It’s super fast with live examples and clear browser compatibility charts.