09.18.13 |
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Web developer Brad Frost:
It’s time for us to treat performance as an essential design feature, not just as a technical best practice.
Some may interpret Brad’s post as a shot against a traditional web design workflow. It is, and rightfully so. Too often, both in my own career and in talking with other developers, designers run off the Photoshop deep end without a lot of developer collaboration. They create something that is gorgeous, groundbreaking but in the end really slow. Or a team’s focus is just on shipping new web functionality without considering the performance impact.
Successful teams consider and optimize for performance. As Brad emphasizes, get into prototype form earl and if it’s too slow revise immediately.
09.16.13 |
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Emmet LiveStyle is a Chrome extension paired with a Sublime Text plugin that transforms your CSS workflow. Install both tools and you get no BS live bi-directional CSS editing. To put it another way, either tweak in Chrome DevTools, your Sublime Text CSS file or both, and the changes immediately take effect on your page.
Admittedly LiveStyle isn’t perfect. First you have to be committed to Sublime Text as a text editor (which I’d highly recommend, but it isn’t for everyone). Setup can be sometimes annoying; when you switch to the tool in DevTools you’re often forced to assign CSS files you’re editing manually. Also it’s in beta, so expect occasional stability problems. But for the most part when you start getting in a CSS editing groove it’s pretty awesome.
09.06.13 |
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I’ve seen a lot of tech buzz about this app and deservedly so: it’s a hell of a lot easier for developers that have HDPI to open up a special “non HDPI browser” via this app vs. trying to switch resolutions repeatedly. Well worth a look.
08.27.13 |
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Admittedly before I read this feature page on the ImageAlpha app site, I didn’t fully appreciate how PNGs could be saved effectively in a lossy or compressed format. That’s what JPEGs were for, right? But I was wrong. If you use a smart algorithm and compressor like on the free ImageAlpha app, PNGs can get their size easily stripped in half. An alternative to the TinyPNGs of the world.
08.26.13 |
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Developer Tim Kadlec, talking about the power of the web’s ubiquity:
When we use techniques that work only on top-of-the-line modern browsers, but don’t consider what happens in other browsers, we’re crippling that super power.
When we build fat sites that are incredibly slow to load on older devices or slower networks, if they can even load at all, we’re crippling that super power…
When we slam the door on people because of the device they’re using, we’re crippling that super power.
08.21.13 |
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I’m a much bigger fan of the picture element syntax but this is one big step forward for responsive imagery on the web.
08.14.13 |
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The combination of PhantomJS and CasperJS make for a fairly straightforward yet vigorous form of unit testing. The only problem I’ve had from before is just knowing exactly where to start; Google searches and YouTube tutorials can pull you in many directions. That’s why developer Danny Croft’s little mini tutorial (far from comprehensive, it just starts you off) was helpful – as long as you can install from Homebrew you should be in good shape.
08.14.13 |
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Yes, this technique written by web developer Stephen Shaw has gotten linked by almost every tech source online: Smashing Magazine, Sidebar, Hacker News, it’s all here. But it’s worth the hype. Comes down to this: as long as you set the height of an element, you can easily center it vertically with just a few simple CSS rules. Heavily cross browser compatible too.
08.06.13 |
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Nifty jsFiddle example originally tweeted by developer Lea Verou. If you want to animate a block level element from a fixed height to height: auto, rely on max-height.
08.05.13 |
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If there’s any single point to take away from Henri Bergius’ essay, it is this:
The web is its own platform, and as such it is foolish to try and mimic traditional desktop applications. It will never feel quite right whatever you do.
It is a lot better to accept this and fully embrace the unique advantages of the web platform.
I also really enjoyed his remarks regarding the workflow between developers and designers. In short, design for mobile first.