A Book Apart, Front-End Next Steps
If you buy this bundle of books, you get Going Offline in some very, very good company.
Links
7738Thursday, November 8th, 2018
Designing, laws, and attitudes. — Ethan Marcotte
Ethan ponders what the web might be like if the kind of legal sticks that exist for accessibility in some countries also existed for performance.
Concise Media Queries with CSS Grid
‘Sfunny, this exact use-case (styling a profile component) came up on a project recently and I figured that CSS grid would be the right tool for the job.
What do you want to do when you grow up, kid? • Robin Rendle
Publishing on the web really is quite marvellous:
…an endless thrill, a sort of everlasting, punk-rock feeling and I hope it will never really go away.
The Commons: The Past Is 100% Part of Our Future | Flickr Blog
This is very, very good news. Following on from the recent announcement that a huge swathe of Flickr photos would soon be deleted, there’s now an update: any photos that are Creative Commons licensed won’t be deleted after all. Phew!
I wonder if I can get a refund for that pro account I just bought last week to keep my Creative Commons licensed Flickr pictures online.
Tuesday, November 6th, 2018
How to get on the #indieweb!
As well as graciously hosting Indie Web Camp Berlin on the weekend at Mozilla’s offices, Yulia has also drawn this super-cute comic.
Sunday, November 4th, 2018
When your design system fails — HeyDesigner
You could create components that strike the perfect balance between reuse and context sensitivity. But defining the components of your design system is just the first step. It has to make its way into the product. If it doesn’t, a design system is like a language with no extant literature or seminal texts.
Marissa Christy outlines the reasons why your design system might struggle:
- The redesign isn’t prioritized
- The tech stack is changing
- Maintenance takes discipline
But she also offers advice for counteracting these forces:
- Get buy-in from the whole team
- Prioritize a lightweight re-skin on older parts of the product
- Treat a design system like any other product project: start small
- Don’t wait for others. Lead by example.
- Finally, don’t compare yourself to others on the internet
Why we’re changing Flickr free accounts | Flickr Blog
I’ve got a lot of photos on Flickr (even though I don’t use it directly much these days) and I’ve paid up for a pro account to protect those photos, but I’m very worried about this:
Beginning January 8, 2019, Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos and videos.
That in itself is fine, but any existing non-pro accounts with more than 1000 photos will have older photos deleted until the total comes down to 1000. This means that anyone linking to those photos (or embedding them in blog posts or articles) will have broken links and images.
Tears in the rain.
Saturday, November 3rd, 2018
2018-11-03, 21:54 - sonniesedge.co.uk
Day one of Indie Web Camp Berlin is done, and it was great! Here’s Charlie’s recap of the sessions she attended.
Friday, November 2nd, 2018
Bruce Lawson’s personal site : Screenreader support for text-level semantics
Bruce reveals that the theory and the reality are somewhat different when it comes to the accessibility of inline elements like em and strong.
Google Walkout Organizers Explain Their Demands
This instance of collective action from inside a tech company is important, not just for the specifics of Google, but in acting as an example to workers in other companies.
And of all the demands, this is the one that could have the biggest effect in the US tech world:
An end to Forced Arbitration.
The International Flag of Planet Earth
A proposed flag for the planet.
The CSS Working Group At TPAC: What’s New In CSS? — Smashing Magazine
Rachel gives us the run-down on what’s coming soon to Cascading Style Sheets near you, including an aspect-ratio unit and a matches selector (as originally proposed by Lea).
Tuesday, October 30th, 2018
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us - YouTube
Looking back on this classic explainer video from eleven years ago, I know exactly what’s meant by this comment:
its weird that when i first saw this video it made me think of the future, and now i watch it and it reminds me of the past..
Monday, October 29th, 2018
Programming Sucks
There’s a theory that you can cure this by following standards, except there are more “standards” than there are things computers can actually do, and these standards are all variously improved and maligned by the personal preferences of the people coding them, so no collection of code has ever made it into the real world without doing a few dozen identical things a few dozen not even remotely similar ways. The first few weeks of any job are just figuring out how a program works even if you’re familiar with every single language, framework, and standard that’s involved, because standards are unicorns.
Sunday, October 28th, 2018
Phil Nash and Jeremy Keith Save the Safari Video Playback Day
I love this example of paying it forward:
- Phil Nash wrote a post on his site that really helped me, so
- I wrote a post on my site, which helped Peter, so
- Peter wrote this post on his site, which showed up via webmention on my site, and now
- this post will help somebody else …who I hope will write about it.
The Three Types of Performance Testing – CSS Wizardry
Harry divides his web performance work into three categories:
- Proactive
- Reactive
- Passive
I feel like a lot of businesses are still unsure where to even start when it comes to performance monitoring, and as such, they never do. By demystifying it and breaking it down into three clear categories, each with their own distinct time, place, and purpose, it immediately takes a lot of the effort away from them: rather than worrying what their strategy should be, they now simply need to ask ‘Do we have one?’
Friday, October 26th, 2018
Silicon Valley by the Sea: Is Brighton Really a UK Startup Hub?
Terrible title; nice article. Rich speaks his brains about Clearleft and what we like about being in Brighton.
Thursday, October 25th, 2018
‘It’s a caring environment’: how codebar is building a diverse tech community | New faces of tech | The Guardian
A profile of Codebar Brighton, with words of wisdom from Alice and Cassie.
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018
UX past, present, and future | Clearleft
This long zoom by Andy is right up my alley—a history of UX design that begins in 1880. It’s not often that you get to read something that includes Don Norman, Doug Engelbart, Lilian Gilbreth, and Vladimir Lenin. So good!