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CSS preprocessors and “view source”: is output readability important?
Earlier today, I stumbled across a podcast interview with one of my early web design heroes, Dan Cederholm. You may know Dan as the founder of Dribbble, but it’s worth noting that he’s been on the cutting edge of CSS and web design since the early 2000s — Dribbble is just the latest in a long line of manifestations of his talents.
Anyway, the entire interview is worth listening to, but I was particularly interested in their conversation about Sass (starts around 56:20). I hadn’t realized Dan was using Sass, but I was excited to hear his thoughts on it, as it seems to me a lot of the old guard of CSS gurus have not taken to CSS preprocessors the way the younger up-and-comers have. As I was listening, I was surprised to hear my name was mentioned in reference to a recent post I wrote called How I’m Implementing Responsive Web Design. Turns out, they’d discussed my techniques for RWD with Sass in a previous episode with Chris Coyier (starts around 13:30), so I ended up listening to that, as well (The Industry seems like a great show…definitely check it out).
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Responsive Web Design: Missing the Point
Nice piece by Brad Frost on adaptive design. Although it hits on several topics as well, it addresses my key issue with the trend that is “Responsive Web Design:” the dogmatism that Ethan Marcotte has put around it by insisting that a layout only qualifies as “Responsive Web Design” if it consists of fluid grids, fluid images, and media queries. The result of him shunning other techniques (multiple fixed grids, using JavaScript instead of media queries, etc.) is a community that now cares more about fitting into some arbitrary ideal (mostly to impress Ethan and each other), rather than the user experience. Adaptive layout and device-agnostic design is an incredibly important issue for users, and will continue to be, going forward. But “Responsive Web Design” in the sense of Ethan’s dogmatic prescription is overblown. There are many ways to achieve great multi-device user experiences. RWD is one of them, but by shunning all the others, we are doing our users a disservice.
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About HTML semantics and front-end architecture
Great piece by Nicolas Gallagher on smrt use of class names and other naming conventions in front-end develoment.
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Bubbles to celebrate a Mizzou loss at Sport.
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So heterosexual
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Sobriety!
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Frederic, CDT, EBJ, and Shans
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KJ Bafro
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GoTime farewell party. What the fuck is GoTime?
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One of the great photo bombs I've ever seen. Discovered while going through some older photos on my phone.
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My hair is ridic.
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Git Submodules: Adding, Using, Removing, Updating :: Chris Jean
Useful tutorial on using git submodules.
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QR codes: worst idea in the history of mankind?
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Fraser Speirs: ‘We Need to Talk About Android’
Grreat piece answering the question “what’s wrong with Android.” i have friends who love their Android devices, but I think Speirs hits the nail on the head when he notes that Android devices are probably fine as long as you’re not thinking beyond the length of your contract. With iOS, you’re buying into a platform, which is more of a long-term decision. With Android, you’re buying a device with a two-year lifespan. The distinction may not matter to you, but it does matter to a lot of folks in a lot of industries (including education, where Speirs is).
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Prix Fixe
Really nice overview of the whole CSS venor prefix kerfluffle by Jeremy Keith. My opinion, predicatably, is that i dont really care. I’m just here to make shit, not argue about academic details like this. Long as I can get my box shadows and transitions and transforms and gradients, i really don’t care what, exactly, the code looks like (Sass, of course, helps me not care).
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Emerald City Jazz Orchestra
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Measuring the Django Community: The Django community in 2012
Jacob writes about the size of the Django community in 2012. It’s pretty amazing how the little framework built in Lawrence, KS by some of the best friends and co-workers I’ve ever had has exploded in the past few years. I remember vividly being in that basement in Lawrence when Google announced App Engine and we all sat, dumbfounded and beaming with pride that it was based on Django. Later, we all were so stoked when Pownce launched on Django, because we felt like there was finally a big “app” (versus “site”) that ran on Django. Today, as Jacob writes, “the high-profile uses of Django read like a Who’s Who of the Internet. Check this list out: AMD, Canonical, Discovery, Disqus, HP, IBM, Instagram, Intel, Lexis-Nexis, the Library of Congress, Mozilla, NASA, National Geographic, the New York Times, Orbitz, PBS, Pinterest, Rdio, VMWare, Walt Disney, and the Washington Post. Not bad for a few nerds hacking in a basement in Lawrence, Kansas, eh?” Not bad at all. Those days in the basement were special, indeed.
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Reflection.app: AirPlay Mirroring to your Mac
I’m not sure I need it,but it feels pretty damn cool nonetheless. I currently use a product called AirServer to send AirPlay audio and video to my Mac, but this actually mirrors the entire display of your iOS device onto your Mac.
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Before she was Gaga: The unseen photos
A never-before-seen series of photos from a photoshoot of Lady Gaga when she was simply Stefani Germanotta.
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Most Web Design Agencies Suck
If there were ever a blog post that suffered terribly by not being written by a journalist who knows a thing or two about proper sourcing, this is it. If everything Andy has to say is true, its a shame. But the constant stream of unnamed sources really makes you wonder — especially when you add in the fact that Andy runs an agency himself and has plenty to gain by saying all the others suck.
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Scaling with EM units
Great concept that willwork neatly with some designs (and not others).
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How I’m implementing Responsive Web Design
Responsive Web Design is hard. Really hard, actually. But I’ve recently been exploring ways to make it fit more neatly into my development workflow, and I thought it’d be worth sharing what I’ve learned. I don’t have all the answers, but I am finally to a point where Responsive feels worth the extra effort — and for me, that’s saying something.
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Teller Reveals His Secrets
Terrific piece by Teller in which he explains a lot of the science of perception that goes into great magic. Loved it.
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Jam Tracks and Black Keys
As a jazz student turned web designer, I’m a sucker for articles that draw parallels between music theory and our industry. This one is simple, but it makes a great point.
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Slim - A Fast, Lightweight Template Engine for Ruby
Very cool-looking lightweight way to write HTML. Along the lines of Haml, but perhaps even simpler and cleaner. I dig it.
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The many ways to work with CSS preprocessors
There’s a fair amount of confusion surrounding CSS preprocessors like Sass and LESS, and I think some of it has to do with the fact that there are so many different ways you can use them. I thought I’d outline the different approaches, and some of the pros/cons to them.
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We, the Web Kids
Piotr Czerski’s treatise on what it means to be one of “us”, the web kids. I can’t say I agree with every single word, or that there aren’t other things I would have added, but all in all, this is pretty powerful stuff.
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Getting Airlines off the Ground
Khoi Vinh wonders aloud what a business pitch for a product akin to today’s airlines might sound like. Funny because it’s true.
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Best PJ cover band in all the lands.
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Acoustic Alice in Chains cover band. Terrific.
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How Basecamp Next got to be so damn fast without using much client-side UI
DHH on how 37signals has managed to make the next version of their flagship product so fast. Bottom line: cache everything.
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Some Generalizing about Specializing
Khoi Vinh thinks the industry is swinging back towards generalists, after having moved to be more interested in specialzation in recent years.
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I don't know what I'm doing tonight, but I know I'm ready to do it.
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Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
The smart guys at 37signals have redesigned the ddefault avatar for Basecamp in a clever, fun, and unexpected way.
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Standardizing Incompatibilities
Chris Eppstein says it’s time for something like Sass to be built into browsers. I sort of go back and forth on whether or not I agree. What do you think?
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Karaoke book and pizza oven. How are you gonna beat that?!
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Home sweet home.
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Dear every city in America: I defy you to be prettier than this:
Jeff Croft
I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with Simply Measured, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.
Some of my past clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, Django, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.
I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.
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