Link archive: October, 2011

What’s slated for CSS4 Selectors? - destroy/dstorey

David gives a quick rundown of some of the selectors we can expect to see in CSS4.

#816: Revert mobile-first media queries and remove respond.js - Issues - h5bp/html5-boilerplate - GitHub

This thread on whether HTML5 Boilerplate should include Respond.js by default (and whether the CSS should take a small-screen first approach) nicely summarises the current landscape for web devs: chaotic, confusing …and very, very exciting.

Welcome to Small Demons

Turning text into hypertext. Pivot on people, places and things mentioned in books. I really, really like this.

Foundation: Rapid Prototyping and Building Framework from ZURB

A framework for banging out ready-made responsive designs.

This Is Why I’m Broke

To quote Jessica: “Seems stupid but it’s kind of a good idea.”

Sly Mongoose: A Responsive Digital Comic Proof-of-Concept

A responsively designed comic. Yeah, you heard me right. Responsive. Comic!

Productivity Future Vision (2011) - YouTube

This vision thing commissioned by Microsoft shows a future-friendly networked world where content flows like water from screen to screen.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet on Vimeo

If you live in the States, please, please, for the love of the internet, write to your representative at fightforthefuture.org/pipa

the understatement: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

A damning indictment on the lack of any upgrade path for most Android phones. It’s disgusting that most customers have contracts that are longer than the life cycle of their phone’s operating system (and crucially for me; their browser).

Newsstand Is Promising, Yay! But Enough with Issue-Based Publishing (Global Moxie)

Josh nails it: publishers need to stop thinking in terms of issues:

Publishers and designers have to start thinking about content at a more atomic level, not in aggregated issues. That’s how we already understand news as consumers, and we have to start thinking that way as publishers, too. This is why Flipboard, Instapaper, and other aggregators are so interesting: they give you one container for the whole universe of content, unbound to any one publisher.

Bangkok Underwater - Alan Taylor - In Focus - The Atlantic

Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl seems even more prescient now.

What We Don’t Know | CSS-Tricks

This is a great encapsulation of what I’ve been banging on about at conferences for a while now: let’s stop pretending we know the capabilities, network speed or viewport size of a site visitor’s browser.

Aryeh Gregor on being an editor and the W3C process — Anne’s Blog

This encapsulates the difference between the WHATWG and the W3C: a concern for interoperability matched against a concern for procedure.

First Responder | Rob Weychert

Rob documents how he approached his first responsive design.

Follow the lives of four Londoners during World War 2 via Twitter – Network’43

A nicely-designed project to highlight everyday life in a three-week period in England in 1943 by imagining how four people would have used Twitter.

The trouble with font classifications | Clagnut § Design thinking · Typography

Richard would like your help. Take a few minutes to run through a card-sorting exercise to help classify fonts in a more meaningful way.

Jeremy Keith (adactio)

I’ve been using Tumblr to store interesting quotations (and cat videos). Findings looks like it could be a good alternative for the quotations (though less good for cat videos). The Kindle integration looks interesting.

Just keep going — Owltastic — writing about web design by Meagan Fisher

A very honest post from Meagan that I can relate to (and Jessica too, I suspect).

Understand The Web · Ben Ward

Given some recent hand-wringing about the web as a “platform,” it seems appropriate to revisit this superb article from Ben. The specifics of the companies and technologies may have changed in the past year but the fundamental point remains the same:

Everything about web architecture; HTTP, HTML, CSS, is designed to serve and render content, but most importantly the web is formed where all of that content is linked together. That is what makes it amazing, and that is what defines it. This purpose and killer application of the web is not even comparable to the application frameworks of any particular operating system.

Why are you fighting me? - Blog | Andy Hume

Andy responds to Joe Hewitt’s recent despondent posts about the web. I tend to agree with Andy: I think comparing the web to other “platforms” is missing the point of what the web is.

See also: http://benward.me/blog/understand-the-web

zomigi.com » Essential considerations for crafting quality media queries

A wonderfully in-depth article from Zoe on all the practical aspects of using media queries for layout.

The Next 6 Billion | Web Directions

John reinforces the importance of universal access above the desire to build only for the newest shiniest devices:

Universality is a founding principle of the web. It is the manifesto the web has been built on, and I believe one of the key drivers of the almost unimaginable success of the web over these last two decades. We ignore that at the web’s peril.

Hello Again | Rob Weychert

Rob is back.

Dive into HTML5… on HTML5 Doctor | HTML5 Doctor

The HTML5 doctors are hosting a copy Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML5 at http://diveinto.html5doctor.com/ and they plan to keep it updated via Github.

Everything I Make With My Makerbot

Brendan is posting pictures of everything he fabs. Fab!

pushing up daisies, So The Sims 3 might have the greatest patch notes ever

Sims who are on fire will no longer be forced to attend graduation before they can put themselves out.

Cream of tag soup - Ramblings about frontend stuff

Jake Archibald has a blog now. Subscribed.

The Super-Rich Super-Heroes Respond To

I got your 1% right here.

One Hundred Percent : Jonathan Stark

An excellent point from Jonathan: both native apps and web apps require an internet connection …and both native apps and web apps can be made to work without an internet connection.

This might sound obvious, but the myth that “only native apps can work without an internet connection” is surprisingly widespread.

Aral Balkan · Google Dart, or ‘how we lost the ECMAScript 4 battle so we decided to create our own language instead’.

Aral takes the words right out of my mouth. This is pretty much exactly how I feel about Dart.

Ethan Marcotte’s 20 favourite responsive sites | Feature | .net magazine

Ethan compiles a list for .net magazine of twenty of his favourite responsive designs.

Pacific Star 3 on Vimeo

Superb science-hacking.

The Mountain on Vimeo

Beautiful timelapse.

Flickr: Nightmares Fear Factory’s Photostream

The Flickr stream for this Niagara Falls haunted house attraction is like some kind of user-generated art piece on the universality of human nature. It’s also very funny in its aggregate view.

Blackboards in Porn

Celebrating pornographers who go the extra mile when set dressing classroom porn and actually write something on the blackboard. What do they write, and is it correct?

Future of Science

As part of her with the Institute For The Future, Ariel is maintaining this great blog dedicated to open science and all-round nerdy goodness.

WSOL :: Envisioning a Responsive Future :: Design Beyond Device

A great collection of the future-friendly techniques of today: progressive enhancement, mobile first and responsive design.

Brighton Brains

This is great idea! A website for putting the digital makers of Brighton in contact with the city’s student population.

The typography-out approach in the world of browser-based web design » Blog » Elliot Jay Stocks

An insight into Elliot’s current design process which highlights the advantages of designing in the browser when you take a content-first approach.

CSS3 Secrets 10 things you might not know about CSS3

This presentation from Lea contains some CSS gems (and it’s all delivered in HTML).

Steve Jobs and the actually usable computer - W3C Blog

While others recall Steve Jobs’s legacy with Apple, Tim Berners-Lee recounts the importance of NeXT.

Responsive IMGs Part 2 — In-depth Look at Techniques « Cloud Four

Jason continues his look at responsive images techniques by diving into the nitty-gritty of the various options out there.

James Burke Classic : The Famous Rocket Takeoff Scene - YouTube

This remains one of the greatest pieces of documentary footage ever filmed.

Caleb Ogden

The process behind a responsive realignment …and the end result is very nice indeed.

That Squiggle of the Design Process | Central

A visual representation of the design process.

Everything Is A Remix: THE MATRIX on Vimeo

An addendum to the excellent Everything Is A Remix series, focusing on the influences on The Matrix.

The Ruins of Dead Social Networks - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

Reminiscences of the BBSs of yesteryear that could in time be applied to the social networking sites of today.

The New Value of Text | booktwo.org

A rallying cry from James: since when did we decide that text couldn’t stand by itself without extra layers of “interactive” shininess?

Future Timeline | Technology | Singularity | 2020 | 2050 | 2100 | 2150 | 2200 | 21st century | 22nd century | 23rd century | Humanity | Predictions | Events

A speculative timeline of future history.

Choosing the Right Words – Web Intents — Glenn Jones

Glenn has written up the discussion that followed his UXCampBrighton talk on web actions.

Innovation Starvation | World Policy Institute

A rallying cry from Neal Stephenson for Getting Big Stuff Done.

Inside the Russian Short Wave Radio Enigma | Magazine

There are echoes of “the footage” from Gibson’s Pattern Recognition in this strange tale of a cold war radio signal.

For a Future-Friendly Web | Brad Frost Web

A terrific presentation on progressive enhancement and mobile web development from Brad at Web Design Day. You can look at the slides, read the notes and watch the video.

Crap! It doesn’t look quite right, or, how I learned to stop worryi…

Looks like Lyza’s presentation at Over The Air at Bletchley Park was really excellent.

Interview with Lyza Danger Gardner - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Set my Mobile Web Sites Free - Ubelly

A great little interview with Lyza, wherein she outlines her future-friendly attitude to web development.