Robin Rendle‘s take on A New Responsive Font Format for the Web. Sounds like an interesting proposal, obvious strengths, but Robin also points out several possible pain-points.

Sticking with responsive for another sec, have a quick run through these Top Ten Mistakes while Implementing Responsive Web Design. You’re not making any of these, are you?

While Dudley Storey admits that this list of CSS Pseudo Selectors is “not yet exhaustive”, it is a pretty good start! :-) I especially like the upfront, explicit explanation of the difference between using : and ::…

Somehow I just stumbled across Mozilla Hacks’ ES6 In Depth series. Impressive! And I have a lot to learn… :-)

Sticking with new JS stuff, Dave Walsh provides a nice introduction to JS Promises.

Which will come in really handy for these next several bits…

Anybody out there have any 3rd party scripts on their site? Yeah, thought so. Ever have any of them fail, and block your entire site while it was trying to load? Yeah, thought so. So you’re going to love using Service Workers to remove SPOF! Is there anything that Service Worker can’t do???

Maximilian Stoiber‘s presentation from the vienna.js Meetup, Offline First and Service Workers, is one of the best real-life introductions to Service Workers for offline.

Or maybe you would prefer Making a Simple Site Work Offline with ServiceWorker (article and brief demo video) by Nicolas Bevacqua? Nicolas goes a little more in depth in code and support notes, but also a bit more abstract in the actual demo.

Or maybe you would prefer An Offline Experience with Service Workers (Gist code) by Brandon Rozek? It’s fun to look through multiple variations of this, because you start to recognize the pattern!

Or maybe you would prefer The offline cookbook from the master of Service Worker himself, Mr. Jake Archibald?

A short while ago Jeremy Keith added his first Service Worker to give his site offline support, and also added Add to Home Screen functionality! A pretty sweet add-on, though I do wish the dismissal of such pop-ups remembered my “X” click (nothing against Jeremy’s site, specifically, but it bugs me when I have to close that repeatedly on sites… Also, note that the Add to Home will appear on sites unless you visit it a few times over the course of a few days, so only “frequent users” receive the offer…).

You can also get “automatic” Offline Web Apps on GitHub Pages (I quote “automatic” because there are a few steps involved, but not too bad).

All of this, of course, still hinges on pretty spartan browser support for Service Workers, but as Jeremy’s article above states, “You don’t build your site on top of a Service Worker—you add a Service Worker on top of your existing site.” It is the very definition of progressive enhancement, and “as more and more browsers add support, your site will appear to get better and better”…

And, let’s not forget, you can also use AppCache (just be sure to read its compulsory sequel Application Cache is a Douchebag), if you are really masochistic, or you could add this lovely Service Worker polyfill…

So now that you’re as totally in love with Service Workers as I am, you will also totally love this Essential Reading List for Getting Started With Service Workers!

Got SSL? You should, and if you are using WP, WPMU DEV is here to help you set-up SSL for your WP site!

But what if you have a multisite installation? WPMU DEV is here to help with that, too…

There’s no question that MVC frameworks are all the rage right now. And whether you choose Angular, React, Ember, Backbone, or whatever other option, you will be greatly improving your employability for the near future. But my biggest gripe about them all has been the JS-requirement-all-or-nothing-ness of them. Well, slowly, we’re seeing the addition of isomorphic variations of each of the frameworks, and React has just announced theirs: called Universal React. The 24 Ways article walks you through installing and configuring React and its dependencies, starting your server, and initially building your pages on the server, before sending them to the client to be interacted with there as a SPA. The benefits from this approach are just enormous, and finally turn this MVC movement into a standard back-end/front-end/JS-or-no-JS approach; I love it!

And finally, with all the new coding you’re about to start doing, I have no doubt that these 10 Amazing Windows Shortcuts You Aren’t Using will save you hundreds and hundreds of work-hours… And yes, of course there is a 10 Amazing Mac Shortcuts You Should Be Using… :-)

Happy reading,
Atg

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