Archive: May 29th, 2020

Type Specimens

This is a lovely new project from Mark that gets very meta, cataloging specimens of type specimens:

This project will dig into specimens from these three perspectives: as artefacts made by and for font designers to evolve type culture; as tools for font users to make decisions about choosing and using type; and as effective marketing tools.

Reading in the dark

I keep coming back to this remarkable piece of writing by Cassie. Honest, resonant, and open, centred around a perfect analogy.

CUBE CSS - Piccalilli

I really, really like Andy’s approach here:

The focus of the methodology is utilising the power of CSS and the web platform as a whole, with some added controls and structures that help to keep things a bit more maintainable and predictable. The end-goal is shipping as little CSS as possible—leaning heavily into progressive enhancement and modern techniques.

If you use the cascade for everything, you’re going to run into trouble. But equally, micro-managing styles on every element will also get you into trouble. I think Andy’s found a really great sweet spot here that gets the balance just right.

CUBE CSS in essence, is a progressive enhancement approach, vs a fight against the grain of CSS or a pixel-pushing your project to within an inch of its life approach.

Yes! It feels very “webby” to me.

Increment: Frontend

This month’s issue of Increment is all about front-end development. There are feaures from Lea Verou, Chris Coyier, Chris Lilley, Safia Abdalla, and more.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Evaluating page experience for a better web

This is excellent news for sites that were strong-armed into creating AMP pages just to get into the Top Stories carousel:

As part of this update, we’ll also incorporate the page experience metrics into our ranking criteria for the Top Stories feature in Search on mobile, and remove the AMP requirement from Top Stories eligibility.

This update doesn’t arrive until next year, but the message is clear: fast websites will be rewarded in search. I’ll be glad to see an end to AMP’s blackmail tactics.

A Guide to the Responsive Images Syntax in HTML | CSS-Tricks

Chris has put together one of his indispensable deep dives, this time into responsive images. I can see myself referring back to this when I need to be reminded of the syntax of srcset and sizes.