Jen tackles six aspects of web design that were true …but no longer.
- Everything must be a floating bar of soap
- Rectangles; only rectangles
- We can’t control the fold
- 12 columns is best
- We have to use a layout framework
- We are stuck in a rut because of RWD
Chrome is going to refuse to parse document.write for users on a slow connection. On the one hand, I feel that Google intervening in this way is a bit icky, but I on the other hand, I totally support this move.
This keeps happening. Google announce a change (usually related to search) where I think “Ooh, that could be interpreted as an abuse of a monopoly position …but it’s for ver good reason so I’ll keep quiet.”
Anyway, this should serve as a good kick in the pants for bad actors (that’s you, advertisers) to update their scripts to be asynchronous.
Chris runs through the process and pitfalls of POSSEing a site (like CSS Tricks) to Apple’s News app, Facebook’s Instant Articles, and Google’s AMP.
Hey, whatever you want. As long as…
- It’s not very much work
- The content’s canonical home is my website.
I just want people to read and like CSS-Tricks.
Slack ammo.
Here’s a handy graph from Paul:
Powered by data from caniuse.com and StatCounter, this page indicates the percentage of users who have a browser that natively supports various web platform features.
Disappointed in your cakes I am.
This is a really great step-by-step walkthrough of adding a service worker to a website. Mike mentions the gotchas he encountered along the way, and describes how he incrementally levelled up the functionality.
If you’ve been going through a similar process, please write it down and share it like this!
My new favourite Twitter account.
The Museum of Wi-Fi exists to preserve these vestiges of our neighbourhood battlefields.
Some are brilliantly smart, some are just purely gross. They all belong in the museum.
Seb is going to be closing out the Brighton Digital Festival with a bang.
Seb unravels all the geeky details about how your favourite retro gadgets work, including Nintendo light guns, Casio keyboards and the cathode ray tube televisions that once dominated our living rooms.
It’s going to be like Seb: The Musical …with lasers.
I’m following Remy’s experiments with great interest—his approach sounds like the holy grail:
I’m trying to build a web app that uses progressive enhancement as a design principle with state as a core value to the coding approach.
Val Head and Sarah Drasner have teamed up to offer a two-day workshop on web animation. If you have a chance to attend, do it!
Heydon asked screen readers some questions about their everyday interactions with websites. The answers quite revealing: if you’re using headings and forms correctly, you’re already making life a lot easier for them.
This is rather lovely: explore a network of nodes, each of which contains the audio of a child describing a dream.
Inspired by the concept of an 8th continent to which all children belong, RadioEight is an interactive soundscape dedicated to the hidden world of dreams.
PPK reads a Hacker News thread so you don’t have to.
I can very much relate to Jonathan’s learning process (except for the bit about reading Hacker News—spit):
- Reading
- Building
- Writing
I think I read about 20-30 times more than I write, but the writing part is still crucial for helping me get stuff straight in my own head.
A gripping history lesson of the internet and the ARPANET before it, emphasising the role of government funding.
Silicon Valley often likes to pretend that innovation is the result of entrepreneurs tinkering in garages. But most of the innovation on which Silicon Valley depends comes from government research, for the simple reason that the public sector can afford to take risks that the private sector can’t.
It’s precisely the insulation from market forces that enables government to finance the long-term scientific labor that ends up producing many of the most profitable inventions.
Today we have an internet effectively controlled by a small number of private companies.
Instead of trying to escape the bigness of the Internet, we should embrace it — and bring it under democratic control. This means replacing private providers with public alternatives where it’s feasible, and regulating them where it’s not.
There is nothing in the pipes or protocols of the Internet that obliges it to produce immense concentrations of corporate power. This is a political choice, and we can choose differently.
Jen has some ideas for a new CSS Region spec to turbo-boost Grid. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, but in the meantime, if you have feedback on this, please let her know.
Progressive Web Apps versus native is the wrong question because every step on the path to a Progressive Web App makes sense on its own, irrespective of what a company does with their native apps.
Not all of your customers are going to have your app installed. For those who visit via the web, providing them with a better experience will make them happier and generate more revenue for your business.
It’s really that simple.
