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An Ajax-Include Pattern for Modular Content
Clever and useful pattern for brining in non-essential content to a page after its iniital load. i do a good bit of this on Lendle (although not with this particular technique). The intesting thing to me when this is discussed in regard to mobile, as it is here, is that the “loading…” aspect of web sites and apps is one of the thing that make people like native apps so much better. They always feel so much faster because once a view appears on screen, it’s all the—theres nothing more to load. Tradeoffs…
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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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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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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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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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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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* { box-sizing: border-box } FTW
I’ve recently started using border-box a lot, and Paul’s right: FTMFW.
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A simple responsive grid system with fluid columns and fixed gutters
Tonight, I took a stab at creating a quick-and-dirty responsive grid system with fluid columns and fixed gutters. Here’s what I came up with:
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On CSS preprocessors
Over the past couple of years, I’ve become a huge fan of Sass. It’s really the only way I write CSS now, and frankly, if anyone tried to make me write plain ol’ CSS I’d probably knee them straight in the taint.
But CSS preprocessors like Sass and LESS aren’t for everyone. At least not yet. There’s still a lot of resistance to them from the community. In fact, I resisted them for a long time, myself (here’s an old post from Nathan Borror’s blog where I outwardly hated on Sass). When you’re very comfortable with something, like many of us are with CSS, it’s hard to switch to doing it a different way.
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Categorizr: A modern device detection script
A nice concept, unfortantely implemented in PHP.
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This ain’t your Mama’s Internets
Sometimes I feel like our community (that of standards-oriented web professionals) prefers to talk about what we do in the most simplistic way possible — the way we built websites many years ago. In fact, most of us don’t actually build websites like this at all, and those on the cutting edge of modern web development have a process that looks almost nothing like what we talk about.
I took the time to outline the workflows at play:
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On Smashing Magazine’s super-responsive design
This week, Smashing Magazine, a truly great resource for web designers and front-end developers, launched a comprehensive redesign of their site, headed up by the ultra-talented Elliot Jay Stocks. Predictably, the site is beautiful, thoughtfully laid out, well-executed, and responsive. Like, really responsive.
In fact, the site has six — count ‘em, six — unique layouts, split by five breakpoints. It’s quite an impressive feat to have built a design that adapts in so many ways based on the size of the viewport it’s displayed in. But I can’t help but wonder if we’ve gone over the top, here.
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In 2012, let’s stop talking web design and start talking product design
On Christmas Eve, I said on Twitter:
“My hope for 2012 is that some of the old guard of well-respected web gurus stop talking HTML and CSS and start talking serious development. I love the way many of the old guard write and evangelize, but I’m tired of discussing basically the same stuff we were in 2006.”
I wasn’t specifically referring to Jeffrey Zeldman, but he (somewhat arrogantly) assumed I was, and responded with a sarcastic, “And a merry Christmas to you, sir.”
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On “Responsive Web Design” and the mobile context
A few months back, Ethan Marcotte, a web designer and developer I have a great deal of respect for, wrote a great piece on A List Apart entitled Responsive Web Design. The gist of the article is that, by using CSS media queries, fluid grids, and flexible images, you can craft a single HTML page that “responds” to varying viewport sizes with different layouts, unique design elements, and more.
It’s a great technique that has many, many potential uses. One use that quickly surfaced and got the attention of the web design community was the idea of using this technique to “mobilize” a site — that is, to make a single page that adapted its layout appropriately for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Back in June, I tweeted: “‘Responsive Web Design’ is way cool — but I rarely want to serve the same content to devices with different sized screens. It ignores context.” No one really paid any attention to me.
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Jeff Croft
I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.
Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, 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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