Brad Frost is a prolific, smart web designer with big credentials (e.g. Nike, An Event Apart), so it’s no surprise that he makes a strong case that generally web carousels are unnecessary (in Brad’s words, “carousels are organizational crunches”) or poorly implemented. It’s advice I’ll consider when I’m reflecting on the carousel that’s running on my home page…it may need a rework.
There are many excellent guides and references online for basic, “core” HTML and CSS. But for more intermediate and advanced topics like media queries and CSS3 based transformations, most great articles tend to be comprehensive yet very narrow in scope. This extended tutorial guide set up by developer Shay Howe and others is different; you’ve get a really nice starter introduction to a broad range of HTML and CSS topics.
One small quibble though; I’d argue the second lesson on “detailed positioning” is content that should be in a basic or starter tutorial, not a guide labeling itself as advanced.
Nice Branch thread where a lot of experienced web developers – David Kaneda, Harry Roberts and many others debate the pros and cons of various CMS options. Interesting to see a lot of support for both Jekyll and Perch, two options I’ve generally overlooked on my own side CMS work.
Author David Bushell’s work tutorial here for Smashing Magazine is notable, not for hitting the usual responsive design notes but his restraint. There’s a legitimate smaller scope with his example: the emphasis is on progressive enhancement and heavy lifting on CSS3 where possible, not flashy jQuery plugins. That’s a good thing.
Web developer Philip Walton:
The key to avoid getting tripped up is being able to spot when new stacking contexts are formed. If you’re setting a z-index of a billion on an element and it’s not moving forward in the stacking order, take a look up its ancestor tree and see if any of its parents form stacking contexts. If they do, your z-index of a billion isn’t going to do you any good.
Great advice. Read the rest of the article for a more through breakdown, with a simple example, of why this is the case.
Now, more than ever, good communication between designers and developers on a tech team is essential. But I have run into a lot of really smart web developers that either have no interest in or are intimidated by web design. That’s what makes this new (free) online web course so interesting: it’s a design course targeted at developers. Impressive from what I’ve seen so far.
Now that I’m dabbling more and more with Sass, I’m really excited to see the great Dan Cederholm will be releasing a whole book on the subject. (For those that haven’t read Cederholm’s CSS3 entry into the A Book Apart series, do so.)
Can’t wait to dig through these releases and give them a try.
I’m late in noticing this one, but hooray, the API docs for jQuery got a big design refresh! Responsive! Better color palette! I approve.
Dan McKinley, Etsy’s principal engineer, gives a really solid talk that supports small, incremental updates to test ideas before rolling out a massive new web feature. It’s not heavily technical and thus equally a good listen for web developers, designers, and project managers.