Link archive: September, 2011

Gavin Rothery - Directing - Concept - VFX - Gavin Rothery Blog

This blog by the visual effects supervisor on Moon is packed full of wonderfully geeky sci-fi movie stories.

Responsive images without Javascript - Notebook

This isn’t recommended as a robust means of delivering responsive images, but it’s still quite clever: using media queries to pass information to the server about the viewport size.

Responsive IMGs — Part 1 « Cloud Four

Jason takes a high-level look at tackling mobile-first responsive images (his next post will dig into the details). This is a really good summation of current thinking. Be sure to read the comments too: Andy chimes in with his experiences.

Browser Market Pollution: IE[x] is the new IE6 « Paul Irish

Paul paints a grim picture of our future support nightmares with multiple Internet Explorers, each one with multiple buggy “compatibility” modes.

The Deleted City

This is quite beautiful. An interactive piece that allows you to dig through the ruins of Geocities like an archeologist.

Such wanton destruction! I’ll never forgive those twunts at Yahoo.

Fuckers.

HTML5 Whiteboard Magnets / Cameron Moll / Designer, Speaker, Author

This is such a great idea: magnetic HTML elements. And now Cameron is sharing the source files so that we can all print our own.

Upperdog Labs: Video Canvas Responsive Design - YouTube

I never expected to see a cross between responsive design and AR, but here ya go:

A silly mashup of HTML5 technologies: We use the canvas to capture the contents of a video element. The canvas then identifies the blue markers and overlays an iframe on top of it. The iframe contains our website (upperdog.se) which has a responsive design.

Of Web Apps and HTML Apps : Jonathan Stark

A real-world anecdote from Jonathan illustrates some of the misconceptions around using HTML instead of going native. A lot of people don’t realise that web apps can store data offline.

SPEED SHOW

I like this ad-hoc approach to staging one-night-only internet art shows:

Hit an Internet-cafe, rent all computers they have and run a show on them for one night.

Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS

Jonathan has encapsulated his CSS methodology into a short online book. He isn’t presenting this as the “right” way to do things: he’s simply documenting what he does in the hope that it will help others.

Bruce Lawson’s personal site  : Future friendly, or Forward to Yesterday?

Bruce nails his colours to the mast of future-friendliness (and nicely summarises recent heated debates between John Allsopp, Alex Russell and Joe Hewitt).

10 Charts About Sex « OkTrends

This is may just be the best thing on the internet about data visualisation and statistics. And sex.

the average font - a set on Flickr

Take all the fonts on your operating system, superimpose them, and whaddya get? This.

Is the app economy killing online publishers? — Mobile Technology News

An excellent article that examines the supposed benefits of publishing through someone else’s app store instead of the web.

Post Web site loads too slowly - The Washington Post

Performance matters. Here, the Washington Post compares its own weak performance (hampered by ads and tracking shite) to the optimised experience of porn sites.

It’s the end of the web as we know it « Adrian Short

A truly excellent article outlining the difference between share-cropping and self-hosting. It may seem that the convenience of using a third-party service outweighs the hassle of owning your own URLs but this puts everything into perspective.

Science fiction, fantasy, design and cultural invention | Design Culture Lab

Asking what the difference is between science fiction and design fiction. The answer may be …usefulness.

Editing tips for designers : Cennydd Bowles

Good writing advice from Cennydd.

Mario Portals Test 3 - YouTube

What if Mario had a portal gun?

Secret Servers | booktwo.org

A great piece by James on the architecture, aesthetics and perception of datacenters.

Mobile Apps Must Die | Blog | design mind

Scott writes up some of the things he talked about at the Breaking Development conference: the just-in-time interactions that are inevitable in a heavily-instrumented world.

Metaphors we Program By: Space, Action and Society in Java

Linguistics and programming collide in this paper from the 18th Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group, University of Sussex, September 2006: Lakoffian analysis of the mental models of Java programmers.

FitVids.JS - A lightweight, easy-to-use jQuery plugin for fluid width video embeds.

A jQuery plugin for embedding videos in responsive layouts. Very nice …but… does it really need to require jQuery? Would somebody like to fork this and create a non-jQuery version? Thanks.

Authentical: Random factoids I’ve encountered in authentication user research so far

Dana has put together an excellent grab-bag of data on people’s password habits.

Fluid Baseline Grid - A sensible HTML5 and CSS3 development kit

A set of default styles to get started on a mobile-first responsive design.

The web is a different problem | Web Directions

John pushes back against the idea that browser innovation is moving too slow.

Test page for -webkit-font-smoothing | Christoph Zillgens

This handy matrix shows the effect of different -webkit-font-smoothing setting on various text combinations (serif/san-serif light/dark, etc.).

Future Friendly | Brad Frost Web

Brad documents his time at Mobilewood and cast his gaze to a future-friendly horizon.

Future Friendly at Mobilewood (Global Moxie)

Josh sums up the Mobilewood experience wonderfully. He also makes it clear that futurefriend.ly is just the beginning:

This stuff is hard, and we need to do it together. This is a time to be generous, and it’s a time for conversation. Let’s get after it.

LukeW | Future Friendly

Luke beautifully encapsulates the forces that drove the creation of the futurefriend.ly site. I feel like I should be standing on my chair, declaring “Oh captain, my captain!”

Things the W3C Should Stop Doing | Infrequently Noted

I was all set to bristle against an attack on the W3C from Alex …but when I actually read the post, I found it hard to disagree with. If anything, this shows just how much Alex cares about the W3C (probably more than most people).

The conversation in the comments is worth reading too.

The Great Discontent

A lovely interview site that has been beautifully and responsively designed.

Future Friendly

In today’s incredibly exciting yet overwhelming world of connected digital devices, these are the truths we hold to be self-evident…

The Transformers at dConstruct 2011 – Hubbub

Kars has written up his (excellent) dConstruct talk. Set aside some time and read through this. It’s worth it.

BBC Dimensions: How Many Really?

A nice project from BERG that aligns numbers from your own world (like the number of people you follow on Twitter) to numbers in the larger world.

Arrivals

A cute glanceable interface onto Foursquare that turns it into your own private railway station.

LukeW | Breaking Dev: Responsible & Responsive

Luke’s excellent detailed notes from Scott’s talk at Breaking Development about building the Boston Globe site.

Orbital Space Colonies (in form of geometric primitives) : socks-studio

A gallery of all your standard space stations: the Stanford Torus, the Bernal Sphere and the O’Neill Cylinder.

Louis vs. Rick

IM conversations between a cat and its so-called owner.

mobilewood - a set on Flickr

We are preparing to launch.

How the Boston Globe Pulled Off HTML5 Responsive Design

I’m sitting here in Nashville with Scott, who has been answering questions from Read Write Web about the Boston Globe launch. Here’s the resulting article.

dConstruct 2011 — My Digest — Laura Kalbag

Laura’s account of dConstruct is wonderfully written. Instead of giving a linear run-down of each talk, she has spent time looking at the overlapping themes and patterns that emerged. The result is a really great read.

Top 10: The architecture of Star Wars (pt I) | The Critics | Architects Journal

An architectural overview of the Star Wars universe. Design fiction.

beta.boston.com - Building the new BostonGlobe.com

An overview of the strategy behind the fantastic Boston Globe website.

Bringing the London Bus Network home – Blog – BERG

This is an excellent use of the Kindle as an undemanding screen. Really lovely!

The technology behind the new BostonGlobe.com on Vimeo

A slick little video that goes behind the scenes of the Boston Globe site.

BostonGlobe.com | Upstatement

A lovely responsive portfolio showcasing a lovely responsive site. Responsinception!

Big question: what do you think of Adobe Edge? | Feature | .net magazine

This is worth reading just for Andy Budd’s answer alone. Priceless.

I think I’m having a flashback and am in need of a bit of a lie down. Wake me up when 1998 is over. I didn’t like it much the first time around, so I’m pretty sure it’s going to suck now.

Web Standards Hoedown (Full HD / Radio Edit) - YouTube

It’s Opera …but it’s folk.

Mobile Web Best Practices | Helping people make mobile websites

A handy set of guidelines from Brad Frost. It’s still a work in progress but it’s got some good tips for mobile design and development.

LukeW | Breaking Development: There Is No Mobile Web

Luke’s notes from my talk at the Breaking Development conference in Nashville summarise my points nicely.

The Boston Globe — Unstoppable Robot Ninja

Ethan chronicles the story of the Boston Globe site and his part in it.

HTML5 vs Newton: The Boston Globe | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

This photograph made my day: the brand new Boston Globe site running on a Newton.

Progressive enhancement. It works.

Mobile HTML5 - compatibility tables for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, iPad and other mobile devices

This just launched at the Breaking Development conference: another site that uses the term HTML5 to include CSS and Ajax. Still, despite its inaccurate nomenclature, it’s a useful compatibility table of device support in mobile browsers.

Pragmatic responsive design

I’ve just seen this incredible presentation from Stephanie Rieger at the Breaking Development conference in Nashville. It’s absolutely packed full of fantastically useful ideas. You really should’ve been there, but these slides can give you a taste of the presentation.

Responsive design and JavaScript - QuirksBlog

Unfortunately this article from PPK is flawed from the start: his first point (upon which all the subsequent points are based) is fundamentally flawed:

Right now responsive design is graceful degradation: design something for desktop and tablet, and remove stuff for mobile.

That’s not the way I’m doing responsive design. Responsible responsive design marries it with a mobile first approach (or more accurately, content first).

Update 2011 Conference Recap :: Freelance WordPress Developer Amber Weinberg

I’m loving Amber’s detailed write-up of the Update conference, especially her description of the panel discussion as me versus everyone else.

LukeW | RESS: Responsive Design Server Side Components

Luke proposes a development approach that marries the best of responsive design with content negotiation. It makes a lot of sense. I like it.

The Boston Globe

It’s here. A large-scale commercial site with a gorgeous responsive design. Try it on any device.

This is the first of many.

Mobile Web: Taiwan, Opera and WebOS

An eye-opening insight into web usage on mobile devices in Asia from Paul Rouget.

Mark Boulton on layouts and grid systems | Interview | .net magazine

In this interview Mark discusses the “content out” rather than “canvas in” thinking that informs his new canon.

LukeW | Why Separate Mobile & Desktop Web Pages?

Luke enumerates the reasons why Bag Check has a separate desktop website rather than one responsive URL for desktop and mobile. They’re good reasons but I think they could all be addressed with some clever conditional loading, especially seeing as the site was, of course, built mobile first.

Of Sites and Apps « James Pearce

James attempts to tackle the thorny question of what makes something a web “app” (rather than a web “site”). It reminds of the infamous definition of obscenity:

I know it when I see it.

In short, the answer to the question “what is a web app?” is “fuck knows.”

Post-dConstruct « David Goss

Here’s an interesting perspective on dConstruct from someone for whom it was their first ever conference.

My speech to the IAAC | Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent

A great speech by Ben Hammersley that ties together multiple strands of life in the 21st century.

Ole: the quest for aurorae on Vimeo

The story behind one of the winning photographs at this year’s Astronomy Photographer Of The Year that I was lucky enough to attend. This is beautiful.

dConstruct and Responsive Design - Ubelly

A look under the hood of the dConstruct website (including some nth-child selectors I threw in there).

Making the QR Code InfoDressShe Bytes - Exploring Digital Art, Technology, Design

I had a lovely conversation at the Update after-party with Georgie about the infographic dress she was wearing. It’s quite lovely.

The shape of our future book — Satellite — Craig Mod

Craig has written down his dConstruct talk, the one that completely polarised opinion. Personally, I loved it.

Events - The Future of the Past of the Web | Digital Preservation Coalition

I’m going to try to make it along to this event in London next month.

Times Higher Education - Memory failure detected

A worrying report on the state of digital preservation and the web, specifically in the UK. Welcome to the memory hole.

How Responsive Web Design becomes Responsive Web Publishing - AQ » Blog

Some interesting questions (and one or two answers) about how responsive design affects publishing on the web.

How to Barbeque a Man on Vimeo

Valuable advice from Slowtron on cooking perfect longpork.

The One Web: don’t write for devices, write for people | Opinion | .net magazine

A great opinion piece from Addy Osmani prompted by the panel discussion I took part in at the Update conference.

School surveillance: how big brother spies on pupils | UK news | The Guardian

Having just seen Anna Debenham’s superb but scary presentation at Update about the shocking state of UK schools, this is a timely piece of journalism.

Stubbornella » Blog Archive » Don’t Style Headings Using HTML5 Sections

Nicole provides a step-by-step explanation of why it will probably benefit you to add classes to your headings to ensure consistent styling without writing overly-verbose CSS.

Weightshift — Memo: The New Design

Naz shares his advice for up-and-coming designers …and the institutions that educate them.