Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
These upcoming Kafka covers by Peter Mendelsund are really lovely. These beautiful stark shapes and colors make them unexpected, but also totally on the mark. Also, they make use of FF Mister K , a typeface based on Kafka’s handwriting. That’s one of the few appropriate uses for a handwriting font, and it really works here. via Jacket Mechanical … Read the rest here
I’m on a workshopping roll. Fresh from running my Responsive Enhancement workshop in Belfast , I’m now heading to Düsseldorf for Beyond Tellerand where I’ll be running the workshop on Sunday (and if you can’t make it, don’t forget that you can book the workshop for your own workplace too). As part of the process of building a responsive site from the content out rather than the canvas in, I talk about beginning with the individual components divorced from any layout context. Or, as Mark puts it, “start with the bits.” That’s the way I’ve been starting most of my projects lately: beginning with the atomic units of content and styling them first before even thinking about layout. This ensures that those styles are extremely robust—because they don’t depend on any particular context, they can be safely dropped into an part of a part. I’ve been calling this initial collection of markup snippets a pattern primer… Read the rest here
One of the fun fringe events at Build in Belfast was The Standardistas’ Open Book Exam : Unlike the typical quiz, the Open Book Exam demands the use of iPhones, iPads, Androids—even Zunes—to avail of the internet’s wealth of knowledge, required to answer many of the formidable questions. Team Clearleft came joint third. Initially it was joint fourth but an obstreperous Andy Budd challenged the scoring. Now one of the principles of this unusual pub quiz was that cheating was encouraged. Hence the encouragement to use internet-enabled devices to get to Google and Wikipedia as quickly as the network would allow. In that spirit, Andy suggested a strategy of “running interference.” So while others on the team were taking information from the web, I created a Wikipedia account to add misinformation to the web… Read the rest here
Back on Tuesday, A List Apart opened the 2011 edition of The Survey for People Who Make Web Sites , the fifth annual effort to learn more about the people who work in the web industry. If you haven’t taken it yet, please do so! It should take about ten minutes I’m proud to have been a part of this effort since its inaugural launch back in 2007. It’s a major undertaking, mostly in analyzing the data and turning that into a detailed report, but it’s more than worth the time and effort. Before the Survey, we really didn’t know very much about who we were as a field of practice, and without it we wouldn’t have as clear a picture of who we are today. There have been growing pains, of course, chief among them UCCASS , the survey software we’ve been using since the outset. Its limitations and lack of updates finally pushed us to find another platform, and we chose to move over to Polldaddy . … Read the rest here
I spent last week in Belfast for the Build conference , so I did. The fun kicked off with a workshop on responsive enhancement which was a lot of fun. Toby has written a report of the day outlining all of the elements that came together for a successful workshop. The day of the conference itself was filled with inspiring, uplifting talks full of positive energy …except for mine. My talk— All Our Yesterdays —had an underlying sense of anger, especially when I spoke about the destruction of Geocities. If you heard the talk and you’d like to explore some of the resources I mentioned, here’s a grab-bag of links: Stock and Flow by Robin Sloan. … Read the rest here
Divya Manian , one of the super-smart web warriors behind HTML5 Boilerplate , has published an article on Smashing Magazine called Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value . I’m afraid I have to agree with Patrick’s comment when he says that the abrasive title, the confrontational tone and strawman arguments at the start of the article make it hard to get to the real message. But if you can get past the blustery tone and get to the kernel of the article, it’s a fairly straightforward message: don’t get too hung up on semantics to the detriment of other important facets of web development. Divya clarifies this in a comment : Amen, this is the message the article gets to. Not semantics are useless but its not worth worrying over minute detail on. The specific example of div s and sectioning content is troublesome though… Read the rest here
I’ve never been so vain as to think I’ll have much impact on the world. I never wanted to be president. I never wanted to be a doctor. I’ll almost assuredly never go to war to fight for my freedom and the freedom of others. Way too much responsibility. … Read the rest here
I’m in Belfast right now for this year’s Build conference , so I am. I spent yesterday leading a workshop on responsive enhancement —the marriage of responsive design with progressive enhancement; a content-first approach to web design. I spent a chunk of time in the afternoon going over the thorny challenges of responsive images. Jason has been doing a great job of rounding up all the options available to you when it comes to implementing responsive images: Responsive IMGs, Part 1 , Responsive IMGs, Part 2 —an in-depth look at techniques, Responsive IMGs, Part 3 —the future of the img element. Personally, I have two golden rules in mind when it comes to choosing a responsive image technique for a particular project: The small image should be default. Don’t load images twice (in other words, don’t load the small images and the larger images)… Read the rest here
I’ve written my first book! Its taken even more time and energy than I ever dreamed it would, but yesterday marked the very last chapter passing it’s final stages of being buffed and tweaked into a manuscript that people would actually want to read. I started planning this book 5 years ago, and only the combination of Five Simple Steps , Chris Mills (A.K.A “Mills of Steel”), Owen Gregory and my technical editor, Gedeon Maheux of The Iconfactory has made it actually happen. All the icon artists I contacted (bar one – but I shan’t name any names!) were enthusiastic and responsive, which made it a joy to organise. Many responses came with fantastic icon material that hasn’t been seen before – early ideas and process snapshots, as well some yet to be released. … Read the rest here
From my presentation at StarTech , here are my slides. Fake it ’til you make it shows some code and examples on how to make a web app look more like a native mobile application. This can provide a way to build quick prototypes or to build using familiar technologies. … Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
The second film in the Made by Hand series , The Knife Maker , focuses on Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn . Joel painstakingly makes beautiful knives by hand while breaking down the true meaning of craftsmanship: the people. Just two films in and this is one of the most inspirational series I’ve seen in a long time. Wonderfully shot and edited too. Next up in the series, The Beekeeper . … Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
Another great gallery from Christian Annyas: Speedometers are those kind of items you look at thousands of times during your live, without ever really noticing. You notice the speed, not the meter. And if you do notice the meter chances are you don’t realize someone actually designed it. The company probably even did some research beforehand. Research regarding the readability of typefaces, the right size of the numbers and the space between them. … Read the rest here
When I first heard that Hixie had removed all traces of the time element from the ongoing HTML spec, my knee-jerk reaction was “This is a really bad idea!” But I decided not to jump in without first evaluating the arguments for and against the element’s removal. That’s what I’ve been doing over the past week and my considered response is: This is a really bad idea! The process by which the element was removed is quite disturbing: Hixie (as a contributer) opens a bug proposing that the time element be replaced with the more general data element. Lots of people respond, almost unanimously pointing out the problems with that proposal. Hixie (as the editor) goes ahead and does what exactly what he wanted anyway. Technically that’s exactly how the WHATWG process works… Read the rest here
Take it with the usual grain of salt that should accompany any news of global browser trends, but, extrapolating out from the 2011 trend in StatCounter’s Global Stats Chrome appears set to surpass IE as the most-used desktop browser some time next summer. And that will finally end the 13 year domination of the market by Internet Explorer. Though, I’m a little sad that Chrome’s market share is also coming at the expense of Firefox. … Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
Tiles is an animation made of a large photographic collection of street tiles. By viewing this collection of photographs as a sequence, different movements and processes become visible within the frame of the tiles. Both music and animation are trying to find a balance between a thought-out arrangement and an arrangement of ‘chance’ deriving directly from the tiles. Mesmerizing. … Read the rest here
Getting older is a humbling experience. Watching other people get older is sometimes equally so. I have an older brother who is almost nine years older than I am. When my parents divorced, I was only 3 years old. My brother moved with my dad and I stayed with my mom. … Read the rest here
One of the things that makes Remy ’s Full Frontal conference so good—apart from the great content—is the venue: Brighton’s excellent Duke of York’s cinema . The cinema occasionally plays host to all-night movie marathons like all three Lord Of The Rings films (the extended editions, of course). This weekend in preparation for Halloween their was a John Carpenter all-nighter. By pure coincidence, the AV Club just published this primer on John Carpenter . … Read the rest here
It’s amazing how good industrial design can turn something mundane into a highly desirable product. I wonder what other dull, household objects would benefit from similar treatment? … Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
by Jessica Hische My love affair with candy has been lifelong, and while each year I seem to have a new favorite, there’s one variable that unites them all—they are not chocolate. I’m almost cartoonish in my ladydom in so many ways, but a lover of chocolate I am not. That’s not to say that I don’t occasionally crave a Mast Brothers’ masterpiece, but if I had to choose a desert island treat, it would likely be fruity, tart, or even flowery. Essentially any candy that you can clearly envision rotting your teeth to the core, that is what I want. … Read the rest here
I’m sure that by now you’ve already seen the infamous email from Richard Stallman —free software’s own worst enemy —detailing his somewhat eccentric approach to speaking at conferences. I particularly like the memetic variation of The Stallman Dialogues . There’s a real genius in the way that it quotes passages from the email verbatim. Y’know, I’m supposed to have a Skype call with Andy sometime next week about my upcoming talk and workshop at Build (tickets are still available for the workshop , by the way). … Read the rest here
