Today’s Readings

Life’s been a bit busy lately, so it took me a while to make the time needed to properly read Frank Chimero’s What Screens Want, in well-thought article on how to design for screens, to get what we want and need from them. Take your time too, and read it properly.

Yet another brilliant article from , this time about using SVG templates to reduce repetitive code, ensure consistency, and ease maintainability for similar page elements. Love the concept!

And while we’re talking about SVGs, they don’t have to just sit there; SVGs can draw, dance, and interactively instruct.

Want to see something more informative from SVG animation? How about a visual representation of every eye-witnesses meteor strike since around 861 A.D.? You can even drill-down and see the strike location on a map!

Or maybe you’d prefer to do something more subtle, but still über-cool, like use SVG filters as a cross-browser replacement for -webkit-filter?

Know anyone looking to get started with HTML/CSS/JS? Try sending them to Dash. Starts with a basic project, has very easy to follow instructions, offers nice little bits of encouragement along the way, and before you know it, you’ve learned serious skills!

And now tat you’re all skilled-up, how about a little timed JS quiz? CSS Quiz? What-the-hell-language-is-this Quiz? Or maybe you’re looking to dive into the command line?

Or maybe you’re more into surveys

Or maybe you are sick of questions, and just want answers… How about a slew of CSS sizing and position code samples?

And then we have a slew of HTML elements that you may not be using, but could, and probably should!
A great series of posts regarding implementing JS scrolling.

Two inspiring time-lapse videos of Earth from the International Space Station. Love.

And from a little further out, 1,000,000 photos combined into a gorgeous animation

If you’ve been dying to dive into flexbox and use it live on your sites, but aren’t, it’s likely because you can’t be bothered figuring out all the variations and putting them together in a fallback manner to work properly in all browsers. Yeah, me too. But here are two references to help us: a thorough “cheatsheet”, and a video of Zoe Mickley Gillenwater’s presentation at from Fronteers 2013: Putting Flexbox into practice.

While we’re talking about new stuff, how about getting to know the new HTML5 element meter a little better?

Another item from the new stuff category, use Sass to create fallbacks for rem font-sizes in your CSS files.

A game using nothing but CSS, meaning 0 lines of JS. Really impressive!

DOM Monster is a bookmarklet that analyzes the HTML components in your page, offering tips and pointers to improve your page load.

And in kind of the same idea, comes responsive comments, which lets you hide responsive content until certain @media conditions are met, then react and do something. The downside of this is that all devices still download all possible content, whether it will ever use it or not…

And you might need some help determining the device state & @media status.

Or just fold it all up, stuff it under the sofa cushions, and forget about it

A lot of this is over my head, but the title makes it sound worth reading: Continuous Performance Validation in Continuous Integration Environments.

It really is like Christmas when 24ways starts publishing again… They’re not always something I find necessary to forward, but most often I do. Like this top-level article about accessibility. Did I just make you cringe? If so, good, then article is precisely for you! (And me.)

Any site redesign or migration is likely to need some form of URL redirect or rewrite. So here are a few tips and how-tos.

In response to my desire to be able to edit JS files from within the WP editor, Michael recommends WP Editor. And it works great, including allowing me to edit JS files! Unless you’re using a multi-site (which I do… :-( ). So, for all you single-siters out there, definitely give it a try! And thanks, Michael!

Speaking of WordPress, a nice tutorial on customizing custom post list page.

Hey, designers. How many times have you created a color palette in Photoshop? And how do you share that palette? Yeah, I know, but wouldn’t this be much cooler?

And on the heals of the above Colorpeek Chrome Extension, let’s see just how the Extension was made!

Apparently all one needs to land on the moon now-days is a little bit o’ JavaScript

Okay, the shit people are doing with WebGL is blowing my freaking mind

So, there is a plan to catch solar energy on the moon and send it to the Earth. Pretty out there. Just hope the lasers that shoot the solar energy back to the Earth don’t collide with all the junk that is out there

But, for our phones at least, we might not need it if 10 minutes of artificial and solar light exposure can be converted into four minutes of extra battery life… Wow!

Designing Offline-First Web Apps. Yes!

One of the email newsletters I subscribe to (I know, how old am I??) is Web Tools Weekly. Normally I sift through, but I soon found myself ready to reproduce the first several and thought, well, you can read too… :-)

Another article from 24ways tries to help us all get a better JavaScript foundation, with or without jQuery.

Several really slick design animation transitions for you. Enjoy.

Hmm, using Grunt to check code quality. I like the idea…

We all use Git, right? ;-) Well, if you do, here’s a nice article on best practices for using Git.

And finally, great, great Star Wars / Bohemian Rhapsody mash-up. Brilliant!!

And finally finally, this is exactly the process I watch my wife go through after every meal in a restaurant… Nicely captured…

Happy reading,
Atg

2 Responses to Today’s Readings

  1. I believe you meant send them to Dash, not Dart :]

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