05.29.12 |
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I can’t put my finger on why, but lately I’ve been skipping a lot of Smashing Magazine articles. That changed with Dan Reynold’s breakdown of body fonts. Very true to Smashing form, Reynolds’ coverage is exhaustive. A few times it becomes too exhaustive (I have doubts on the effectiveness of font ‘apertures’), but this is awesome stuff. I knew a lot of the basics (e.g. go for moderate stroke contrast, higher x-heights), but there’s a lot of info here I haven’t seen anywhere else.
05.23.12 |
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What are the future elements or tags that best support responsive images? A List Apart tackles the debate between the Responsive Images Community Group (RICG) and a browser manufacturer proposed alternative. Essential reading for web developers.
05.22.12 |
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Jeffrey Zeldman, talking about the (semi-controversial) redesign of his own personal site:
Even our best clients can sometimes push back, and even our most thrilling projects typically contain some element of compromise. A personal site is where you don’t have to compromise. Even if you lose some readers. Even if some people hate what you’ve done. Even if others wonder why you aren’t doing what everyone else who knows what’s what is doing.
Great points here. A lot of the work I did here on nickschaden.com was based on experimentation that I could only toy with on other paid jobs. Doing something for only yourself – a personal site, side project, something else fun on Github – is sometimes our best opportunity for growth.
05.14.12 |
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I read this article and found myself nodding along to much of what Nick Thompson had to say. It was a genuine surprise, given that the Condé Nast iPad and web apps are so poor. Then I read this:
The Verge: Magazine apps are often slammed for being slow, large, and kind of kludgy. Why is it so difficult to do properly? Who’s doing the best job?
Nick Thompson: New York has an excellent app, as does Wired. I’ve also been very impressed with Esquire and Vanity Fair.
TV: Why do you think The New Yorker has been so successful on the iPad, relative to other magazines?
NT: The main reason is that people genuinely like the magazine, and they like to read it. Also, we’ve, very deliberately, kept our iPad app very clean. There isn’t much clutter; it’s really just the stories, with some added slideshows, videos, and infographics.
Naturally, the guy singles out other Condé brands. Ironically, with potentially the exception of Wired, where the extra media content fits well, it’s a disaster everywhere else he mentions, especially Vanity Fair. Slow load times, gigantic downloads and extraneous videos that slow the experience.
And I’m sorry Nick, but when there’s a 200 plus MB download for each “clean” iPad New Yorker, I’m looking elsewhere. Love the content, and I read it every week…on my Kindle, which downloads in about 20 seconds.
05.09.12 |
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Technology Review’s Jason Pontin, in a frank assessment of publishing and tablet apps:
A recent Nielsen study reported that while 33 percent of tablet and smart-phone users had downloaded news apps in the previous 30 days, just 19 percent of users had paid for any of them. The paid, expensively developed publishers’ app, with its extravagantly produced digital replica, is dead…
…I hated every moment of our experiment with apps, because it tried to impose something closed, old, and printlike on something open, new, and digital.
Last fall, we moved all the editorial in our apps, including the magazine, into a simple RSS feed in a river of news. We dumped the digital replica. Now we’re redesigning Technologyreview.com, which we made entirely free for use, and we’ll follow the Financial Times in using HTML5.
Many argue that native apps are our future. Some industries where processor speed is key (e.g. gaming) will stay native for quite a while. However, as this article illustrates, the first wave of tablet apps for publishing are a failure. I expect Newsstand to be a failure. Publishing understands the openness and fluidity of the web is the way to go and I think many more industries will follow suit to HTML as well.
05.08.12 |
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So Paydirt, a time tracking and invoicing web app, just ditched support for IE completely and landed on the front page of Hacker News. Cool, but read the fine print: 1.63% of their traffic is from IE. Repeat, less than 2%. For Paydirt’s browser distribution, this is a no-brainer. But ditching IE is impossible for most, if not nearly all web sites out there.
05.08.12 |
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When I first heard about this listening to an episode of The Industry podcast my first reaction was “wait, another to-do list app?”. This one looks pretty cool though: full syncing on iPhone, iPad and web with a streamlined interface and it apparently will be free.
It’s not out yet but I’m keeping my eye on this one once it reaches the App Store.
05.04.12 |
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Fixie is a helper JS file that interprets HTML5 tags and automatically adds the right kind of content – paragraphs, images, links and so on – in the right place. As someone who spends a lot of their day job adding in sample or filler content, this looks really helpful.
04.25.12 |
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Jonathan Snook is a very smart, respected web developer and speaker. So why the hell didn’t I check out his SMACSS style guide earlier? Pretty brilliant stuff. SMACSS (pronounced “smacks”) is loose architectural framework for CSS. It’s a way to organize large, complex websites (e.g. my day job) in ways that maximize flexibility and reusability.
It’s effectively here in free html form which you should read pronto if CSS is important to you. If you enjoy it, go the extra mile and buy an e-book. My company has, and I’ve already easily gotten the $15 sticker price back in value about an hour of usage.
04.24.12 |
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I found this extended look by Ars author Ryan Paul a bit overly friendly toward the internet powerhouse. It’s nevertheless pretty essential reading for any web developer. A few key trends of the piece are worth remembering; successful developers iterate often and test religiously. One other point I rarely see emphasized, but apparently critical at Facebook:
Instead of offices, Facebook developers work mostly in open spaces laid out like bullpens. Workstations are lined up along shared tables, with no barriers between individual workers. Each building has meeting rooms where employees can have discussions without disturbing other workers.
That last sentence is key. I’ve personally found development breakthroughs often come from healthy verbal debate in front of a white board, but doing so in the middle of an open plan can (understandably) disturb colleagues. Private spaces are critical.