Backlash backlash:
The nature of human nature is that it changes. It can not, therefore, serve as a stable basis for evaluating the impact of technology. Yet the assumption that it doesn’t change serves a useful purpose. Treating human nature as something static, pure and essential elevates the speaker into a position of power. Claiming to tell us who we are, they tell us how we should be.
Over the course of a semester, students at UMPRUM Academy in Prague made variable fonts. I think Krabat might be my favourite.
The latest explainer/game from Nicky Case is an absolutely brilliant interactive piece on small world networks.
A great piece from Charles C. Mann from five years ago, where you can see the genesis of The Wizard And The Prophet.
For hundreds of thousands of years, our species had been restricted to East Africa (and, possibly, a similar area in the south). Now, abruptly, new-model Homo sapiens were racing across the continents like so many imported fire ants. The difference between humans and fire ants is that fire ants specialize in disturbed habitats. Humans, too, specialize in disturbed habitats—but we do the disturbing.
I’m not great at estimation, but I still try to do it on any project I’m working, even if it’s just for my own benefit. I break down different bits of the work, and ask myself two questions:
If I were smart, I’d plot the answers on a graph. I start doing the important stuff, beginning with whatever won’t take too long. Then I’ve got a choice: either do the stuff that’s not all that important, but won’t take long—or do the stuff that will take quite a while, but is quite important. Finally, there’s stuff that’s not important and will take quite a while to do. I leave that to the end. If it never ends up getting done, it’s not the end of the world.
I guess it’s not really about estimation; it’s more about prioritisation.
Anyway, I’m working on a fun little project right now—the website for one of Clearleft’s many excellent events. There was one particular part of the design that I had estimated would take quite a while to do, so I didn’t get around to it until today. It was a layout that I figured would take maybe half a day of wrangling CSS.
I used CSS grid and I was done in five minutes. That’s not an exaggeration. It was literally five minutes.
I thought to myself, “Well, I want these elements to be arranged in two rows of three columns, but I want that particular one to always be in the last column of the top row.”
Normally my next step would be to figure out how to translate those wishes into floats and clears, or maybe flexbox. But this time, there was almost no translation. I could more or less write the CSS like I would write English.
I want these elements to be arranged in rows of three columns.
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr fr
I want that particular one to always be in the last column of the top row.
grid-row: 1;
grid-column: 3;
That was it. I was done.
I think I may need to recalibrate the estimation part of my brain to account for just how powerful CSS grid is.
Following on from Ben’s post, this is also giving me the warm fuzzies.
I, in no uncertain terms, have become a better designer thanks to the people I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside at Clearleft. I’ll forever be thankful of my time there, and to the people who helped me become better.
It is very disheartening to read misinformation like this:
A progressive web app is an enhanced version of a Single Page App (SPA) with a native app feel.
To quote from The Last Jedi, “Impressive. Everything you just said in that sentence is wrong.”
But once you get over that bit of misinformation at the start, the rest of this article is a good run-down of planning and building a progressive web app using one possible architectural choice—the app shell model. Other choices are available.
A useful design strategy exercise from Marty Neumeier.