Some times there are so many articles about roughly the same thing, that I just need to list them out… So, here:
- First, make sure your localhost dev environment is set-up properly (great tip for dynamically creating
VirtualHosts). - Next, Paul Irish helps you set-up your DevTools Workspace and learn a few tricks to make your dev work go faster, including debugging on mobile (Screencast!) and how to debug pre-processed CSS (LESS support has been added to the already-existing Sass support!).
- Next up, Addy Osmani reviews a plethora of remote development/debugging options.
- (Then Addy found out about a new option, and naturally shared it with the rest of us (such a nice guy!))
- Of course, , but this will rely on specific OS/browser set-ups.
- And Remy Sharpe offers a great update to debugging: switch from
console.logto usingwatches. - Then we can dig a lot deeper into DevTools performance monitoring!
- Next Ilya Grigorik shows how to use the Resource Timing API to check the performance of our sites at a granular level!
- Oh, and did you know that you can now add the freaking command line right into your DevTools??
- Lastly, Paul Irish shares his personal bookmark collection of all “good” conference videos!
Now that we’re all DevTools ninjas, let’s look into a few non-DevTools performance bits:
- Speaking of ninjas, the CSS Ninja collects a few “pointers” on improving your scroll speed (Ha! You’ll get that pun after you click…)
- Though, Jenn Lukas provides a few more thoughts on
:hoverthat you might want to also consider. - Then Guy Podjarny provides us with his Top 5 Tips for Making Fast RWD Sites
- And since everyone loves lists so much, here is Google’s checklist for improving mobile.
- Next, Mr. performance himself, Steve Souders, offers his thoughts on the performance of custom elements.
And now that you have this tremendous wealth of performance knowledge and know-how, is it really all your responsibility? Two recent articles (1, 2) pitch the concept that what we really need is a performance culture, where everyone, in every department, at every level, is conscious, and responsible, for their part of a site’s performance.
Okay, after all that in-depth geek-stuff, AT-AT stop and go…
CSS Variables in Firefox Nightly. Hot damn!
And before we get too excited about FF, how about this necessary table-cell / position: absolute hack?
While we’re still on CSS, here’ s nice little online tester for nth-child values. Helpful, especially since nth-child selectors are just about as close as CSS gets to Regex, right? ;-)
A couple great articles about animating SVGs (1, 2), then one about creating interactive SVGs, then wrap-up with creating sci-fi interfaces with SVGs.
And speaking of sci-fi/space-stuff, China just became the third nation from Earth to land something on the moon!! I’m sure as an American I should be sad because our space program has diminished so greatly lately, but I’m actually just excited someone is still doing something!
Chris Coyier‘s Grunt is not weird and hard” certainly made the rounds already, but with good reason: it’s a great read!
And once you’ve finished that, you can use Grunt to output your project’s style guide.
Statamic: The CMS with no database. This is awesome, uses only flat-files, so everything can be revisioned using something like Git, and no database speed issues…
And two nice articles that focus on developing with the larger screens in mind (1, 2).
It seems I can never stray far from performance… The creators of the new Chrome Experiment A Journey Through Middle-earth have created two case-study articles for us: Part 1 focuses mostly on the challenges of using WebGL across all devices, while Part 2 focuses more on the front-end, including choices between CSS or JS, adding and removing event listeners, DevTool tricks, and mobile-vs-tablet-vs-desktop choices and tricks.
I mean, performance has become such a hot topic that even IE is talking about it… (♫ Hot Topic ♬ ;-)
A JSHint Chrome Developer Tools Extension for the Sources tab. Awesome!
We all know about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and The Great Atlantic Garbage Patch, right? Well, The Plastic Bank might have just found an actual use for all that… garbage.
And when all that garbage is gone, they can always use the StEP E-waste WorldMap to track down more!
Wow, JavaScript sure has come a long way from the bad-old days, we’re now building full-stack JS environments, in this case using MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node, (MEAN, because, we always need an acronym, right??), but Addy points out that you could just as easily replace Angular with “Backbone.js, Ember.js, Polymer or any other framework without losing the single-language stack advantages it offers”, but good luck getting a good acronym from those options…
Progress bar submit buttons. Nifty.
The results of the 2013 DailyJS JavaScript Survey are in. Nice to see all my coding preferences are in synch with the masses, except for tabs vs. spaces… Is there an advantage that I’m not seeing of using spaces? It seems like it’s 4-times the number of characters, makes it really easy for your code to get out of alignment, and mostly it means I have to hit Backspace four times instead of once… I just don’t get it…
Can a 27-year old Macintosh Plus, with an 8MHz CPU, 4MB RAM, 50MB HD, and 512×342 pixel black-and-white screen, surf today’s Internet? Read all about it.
I keep trying to convince myself that I should still be riding my bike to work, even though the temps are pretty darned low now-days… Some say we should “celebrate winter bicycling“. Not sure about that, but if we did, we could even help clean the air while we’re doing it!!
The lack of support for WebP and JPEGXR certainly make them “less than attractive”, but if you could find a good way of using them, where they are supported, it could be a nice win for your users.
document.activeElement, very interesting!
And finally, for those coffee/tea lovers on your shopping list, comes a buttload of mug options; surely you can find one that is a perfect fit for someone you know…
Happy reading,
Atg