I love technology, and cannot wait for it to start really improving our lives (I’m looking at you, self-driving car!). But beyond me being lazy and wanting a free chauffeur, tech has recently hit the news with a couple life-saving abilities:
- A $34 Smartphone Gadget That Can Detect HIV in 15 Minutes
- A self-guided robot, nearly an R2-D2, that roams the halls of a hospital in San Francisco, helping care for patients
So, that’s the future, what else is happening?
Well, we here in the present are still trying to deal with responsive images… Here is a great collection of responsive images, in the wild! Look and learn!
And from SmashingConf Whistler, here is a presentation on responsive images from the man who almost single-handedly brought responsive images to a reality, Yoav Weiss.
A bevy of advanced API specification articles hit the air waves this week…
- W3C First Public Working Draft for Audio Output Devices API
- W3C First Public Working Draft for Screen Capture
- W3C Working Draft for WebRTC
- The Selection API specification
- W3C Recommendation for Vibration API
And a small collection of customized range inputs, from Ana Tudor.
I have mentioned object-fit in several previous posts, and all of them with the same reservations, but the more I see, the more I want to use it… And, you know, there is a polyfill for it…
A really fantastic, start-from-the-start Chrome DevTools article.
And a really nice intro to animating pseudo elements… Now why hadn’t I thought of that??
And now that we’ve got our animation skills all in check, have a look at this incredible animated 3D room… Grab-and-drag around, the effect is amazing… Thanks to Je Suis Encrateia for the tip!
Hmm, an open source performance timing extension for Google Chrome. Looks promising!
Stop Writing Slow Javascript. Okay… I like that it begins with telling jQuery to go home… Once in a while it is really nice to code using POJS. Not that jQuery alone is evil, or the slowness culprit, there are plenty of other best practices listed.
To get 60 fps on mobile, Flipboard basically moved their site into canvas. Extreme? Well, it worked, but it does have a “minor” accessibility issue”…
Another option for getting 60 fps (while still using the word “flip”, but not the word “board”), Paul Lewis introduces the out-there animation concept he calls FLIP… Did I mention that it’s out-there??
With some basic CSS and just a little JS, Chris Coyier creates an iBooks-like layout, complete with “page” turning… I imagine with a little time, one could create an almost page-turning-like animation, but why? I think a sliding transition might be nice, but otherwise, readability: 100%!!
Notifying the user that their action has been received is paramount to a good user experience. But when the result is not immediately apparent, how do you tell them? Here is a small collection of subtle event effects. A few are silly, of course, but most are pretty cool, and the idea is there.
And finally, I will be on vacation all of next week (in fact, I’m on my way to airport as this auto-publishes), so you won’t hear from me for a bit; take that as you will… :-) See you on the flip-side!
Happy reading,
Atg