xScope is well trusted tool for many web designers, but I find it’s occasionally a bit more power than what I need for day to day design tweaks. So more recently I’ve been testing out Dimensions, a Chrome extension laser-focused on quick measurements between any elements in your browser. It’s fast, effective and worth a look.
GoodBadFlicks reviews the evolution of the PG-13 rating since it’s introduction in 1984. Most of the focus is on recent years where many otherwise R rated films trim content to ensure a PG-13. Remember, with a PG-13 the desirable teen demographic can watch unrestricted. But in the process, it’s watering down a lot of otherwise great content. To quote the narration:
PG-13 is supposed to be pushing the envelope of PG, not pulling R backwards.
I’ve been a huge fan of running LiveReload via Gulp plugin to auto inject CSS and Sass into the page without forcing a reload. It significantly speeds up development and avoids me having to constantly remember to hit the reload action to ensure my changes take effect.
BrowserSync has the same mentality, but promises much more, most notably an “action sync” that mirrors scroll, clicking, and refresh actions across multiple browsers plugged into the same server.
A few overly broad generalizations aside, this brief post at Breaking the Mobile Web is a good overview of some of the largest changes that came along for the ride with the new iPhone 6 and iOS 8. Pay special note to the viewport differences and the big switch to a device pixel ratio of 3 for the iPhone 6 Plus.
Such an amazing debut from director Kenneth Lonergan. It’s one of my favorite movies from the early 2000s, highlighted by impeccable acting by Mark Ruffalo (who broke through to a wider audience after being noticed here) and Laura Linney.
Very solid mini intro to Git by Tobias Gunther over at A List Apart. You can find this content virtually anywhere by running a simple Google search, but Tobias makes a stronger case. First he succinctly lays out the reasons why Git is such an improvement over older repository systems like Subversion. There’s also some great use of visuals here to lay out what happens during core commands like ‘git reset’ and ‘git revert’.
With the keynote announcement of the new iPhone and Apple Watch this month, select parts of apple.com have undergone a significant redesign. Curious to see how Apple stacked up against its competition, I researched the front end tech behind their new home page, iPhone 6 and Watch product pages. With only the web inspector as a guide, it’s an imperfect look, yet overall I’m impressed with how far Apple has come since their last major redesign.
Like most large companies with a big e-commerce presence, Apple has historically done well with CSS and JavaScript performance basics. They use global CDNs for their image assets and minify all CSS and JS references, ensuring their page weight is minimized.
Much more was added with the September refresh. For the first time I spotted a Modernizr-like detection script that runs in the header. It illustrated Apple moving away from device specific styles and functionality (e.g. checking the browser user agent string to adjust content for iPad or iPhone) toward universal feature checks that adapt to whatever the browser supports. In addition, for both the iPhone 6 and Watch product pages, Apple delays select imagery from loading (Figure A) by a few seconds. This “lazy load” effect reduces page weight and increases page speed.
There’s also smarter use of animation as the user scrolls down each product page. Apple added CSS3 animations all over the iPhone 5S product page a year ago, but their usage has expanded significantly since then. Animations are smartly limited to opacity and 3d transforms that stay fast by leveraging the computer’s GPU.
My only disappointment was the lack of sprites for some imagery, most notably the sub “explore” menu on the product pages. Arguably combining eight or more images into a single request won’t make a large difference, but it still feels like a missed opportunity.
For the first time Apple relies heavily on media queries for a legit first class responsive web experience. Apple has used media queries in the past, but mostly for small tweaks like moving a product image from landscape to portrait orientation. Now there’s a major breakpoint to radically alter the site navigation and most imagery has fluid sizing to take full advantage of mobile device viewports. There’s also a custom responsive grid for aligning select elements. SVGs comprise the top navigation, a subtle nod that the usual 1x and 2x raster images won’t cut it for super HDPI devices like the iPhone 6 Plus.
The responsive design motif is a big step forward yet feels mildly safe: I wanted to see Apple exploit native responsive imagery (the picture element or srcset attribute of the img element), especially considering iOS8’s Safari supports srcset. Apple also uses device-width and device-height heavily in their major break points which seems unnecessary: if I navigate to apple.com with a slightly narrow browser on my laptop, it feels odd to just cut off content and add scrollbars when there’s a better optimized view available.
Unlike past designs that relied on occasional text images or web safe fonts, Apple has transitioned mostly to modern, custom web typography. Myriad Pro is deployed at several weights throughout the site and it’s a manageable (albeit a bit higher than I’d like) download at a bit over 300k.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t crazy about several paragraphs of product detail that use the thin Myriad Pro Light against a low contrast background (Figure B). It looks great on HDPI devices (e.g. Macbook Pros with Retina Displays, modern mobile devices) but can be a bit hard to read on lower resolution displays.
Tech quibbles aside, Apple nailed their new design aesthetic for the home and product pages. They’ve done their homework in what’s common to modern design: generous white space, grid ratios, lots of vertical scrolling, “flat” layout that lacks depth and shadows, along with “full bleed” imagery that covers the entire browser viewport. Even carousels, controversial web elements that arguably lack engagement, are used well to highlight the Apple Watch. All carousel panes point to the same link and highlight the same product to avoid engagement issues. At the same time, the carousel’s huge imagery and slow transitions evoke a high-end, luxury vibe to match the aspirations of the Apple Watch itself.
Apple’s new design isn’t just a nod to modern web trends either; Apple sets off in its own direction with a few small flourishes (Figure C). First there’s Apple’s spin on the now ubiquitous “hamburger” menu icon for narrow width browsers: Apple uses two lines, not three. Also when users open the mobile navigation, the pages display a lightweight, scrollable navigation menu. It’s a big deviation from the expected “off canvas” listing where navigation covers the viewport or slides the existing content off to one side. I didn’t care much for the menu design at first, but it’s growing on me and does succeed in setting Apple’s design apart. I also really liked the “explore” on the iPhone and Watch product pages. It’s functionally a mega menu but the extra imagery and large hit targets give a more breathing room and a high-end feel.
Apple has come a long way since their last major refresh a year ago. Some issues with their responsive design decisions aside, they’ve finally caught up with most modern web practices. There’s even a few of their own “Apple-like” touches in their design to keep things fresh. Hopefully Apple will extend this design soon to other parts of the site, especially their support and e-commerce pages which are in serious need of a refresh.
If there’s something I do frequently at work, it’s take screenshots and send them to coworkers. There is your usual stable of options like Cloud and Droplr, but my storage live mostly revolves around Dropbox, and I wanted to stay in-house. Enter this great workflow by “Carlos-Sz” on the Alfred forums. I run a simple global keyboard shortcut, take a screenshot, and it’s saved a public folder in Dropbox, along with an auto generated short bit.ly link copied to my clipboard.
Wonderful brief look back over at The A.V. Club at Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express, still one of my favorite movies of all time. Whimsical, gorgeously shoot, this is essential 90s cinema that many overlooked in favor of Kar-Wai’s later In the Mood for Love. In the Mood is still wonderful, but it never quite connected with me tonally like Chungking Express did.
The Dissolve’s Scott Tobias:
French-Tunisian director Mabrouk El Mechri, working from a script he wrote with Frédéric Benudis and Christophe Turpin, pours these biographical details into a scenario that’s half hostage thriller, half Irma Vep-style meta-movie. And though the latter part is more compelling than the former, JCVD never forgets that Van Damme’s image is the focal point. El Mechri opens with the best shot of Van Damme’s career (and really, a legitimate candidate for any list of all-time great opening shots), a single take of the 47-year-old kicking, punching, shooting, and stabbing his way through a gauntlet of attackers, who come after him with guns, knives, grenades, even a flamethrower. The shot is ruined when the cheap set collapses at the end, but the young Chinese director has no sympathy for his exhausted middle-aged star: “Just because he brought John Woo to Hollywood doesn’t mean he can rub my dick with sandpaper.”
The movie has its weak points, but overall JCVD is very compelling (especially for someone like me who grew up loving Van Damme’s earlier work like Kickboxer and Bloodsport), both for that aforementioned opening fight scene and a legitimately moving six minute monologue Van Damme delivers partway through the film. There’s something about his presence that makes me root for a comeback out of direct to VOD purgatory.
