Dispatches From The Internets

While perusing the latest Costco email, I stumbled onto a pretty sweet looking mini-greenhouse and decided to click through to read more about the product. Unfortunately for me, I was on my phone and Costco is not particularly savvy about how they handle the redirection of mobile traffic to their “mobile friendly” site. Instead of landing on the product page as I should have, I was redirected to the mobile landing page.

Apologies for not posting links last week…between the holiday on Monday and spending all of Tuesday without power, I got a little behind. Here are some highlights from the last two weeks:

• Surviving Logo Design in the Real World
  An interesting write-up on logo design in the real world (which is often messy).
• spin.js
  A loading image without the image. Neat idea as you’re probably using JavaScript to load the content anyway.
• WebShot
  A handy little app for capturing scrolling webpages on iOS.
• BrightFarms
  Rooftop hydroponic greenhouses for supermarkets… brilliant!
• OpenDNS and Google working with CDNs on DNS speedup
  They’re working on a new extension to the DNS protocol that that aims to more effectively direct users to the closest CDN endpoint.
• MacVim
  Grab it on Github.
• Build Faster Mobile Websites with Adaptive Images
  A nice writeup of @MattWilcox’s technique and why it’s a more flexible way to go than Responsive Images.
• Scientist left speechless as vast glacier turns to water
  Not good. Not good!
• U.S. Solar Company Bankruptcies a Boon for China
  If it brings the cost of solar down, I’m psyched… I just wish U.S. solar companies were doing better.
• twitter-text.js
  JavaScript code for parsing the text of tweets and auto-linking usernames, hashtags, etc.
• Seriously, stop with the booth babes
  I could not agree more. The next time I hit the tradeshow floor, I’ll give it a shot.
• 10 Great Things Courtesy of Labor Unions
  Unions have given us some great things… they aren’t always perfect, but they certainly aren’t the scourge many paint them as.
• The Rise of E-Readers
  Interesting to see how eReaders affect our book consumption.
• The Semantic Grid System
  This is probably the smartest use of LESS I’ve seen yet.
• “CMS - the software UX forgot” - Karen McGrane at Content Strategy Forum 2011
  Sounds like it was an amazing talk and a rallying cry to build better CMSes.
• The Dark Art of Pricing
  Great insights from Jessia Hische!
• Accessing & Modifying CSS3 Animations with Javascript
  This is exactly what we needed!
• How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line
  Website visitors tend to care more about speed than all the bells and whistles we want to add to our websites.
• Vycon Plans to Tap Speeding Subway Trains for Immense Amounts of Kinetic Energy
  Imagine if subway systems could pretty much power themselves. This could be huge.
• JavaScript Garden
  A nice little resource for the tricky aspects of JavaScript.
• 10 Great Mobile Brand Experiences
  A good survey of great experiences out there.
• Popcorn.js
  A JavaScript framework for HTML5 Video.
• 11 Reasons why responsive web design isn’t that cool
  Some of his points are valid, but most only if viewed in light of a very narrow interpretation of responsive web design.
• Raspberry Pi
  An ARM Linux box for $25? Sign me up!
• Why Separate Mobile & Desktop Web Pages?
  @LukeW on the choice to offer separate mobile & desktop web pages on Bagcheck. Personally, I think there is a middle ground.
• Brendan Eich on Dart
  I agree that Google could (in fact) fork the development community with their alternative to JavaScript. Could be tumultuous times ahead…

Last week, Steve Jobs resigned and Twitter launched a resource for quickly building prototypes and apps. Here’s the roundup of those and other links you’ll want to check out:

• OMB Extends Ban On New Federal Websites
  Agencies must list the sites they’ve already shut down and describe how they’ll improve the remaining ones.
• At O’Hare Airport, Unused Land Is Going to the Bees
  What an awesome program. I’d love to see something like this take root at CHA.
• Experimenting with line-height in input fields
  I love it when browsers save us from ourselves.
• Across the Globe, Solar Power Just Keeps Getting Cheaper
  I can’t wait until solar for the home becomes more affordable. That… and geothermal.
• 360° Long Road (Zurich)
  Amazing use of video, panoramas and audio. Bravo!
• Turntable Kitchen’s Pairings Box - Food & Music, together at last!
  Fingers crossed Kelly will think this is as cool as I think it is.
• US nuke plants ranked by quake risk
  Hooray, Sequoyah (here in Tennessee) is number 4.
• Jobs resigns as Apple CEO
  You knew it would happen one day.
• Bootstrap
  A great new resource from the folks at Twitter.
• FlexSlider
  A responsive jQuery slider.
• Graceful Degradation and How it Tricks You
  A great post from Neils Matthijs.

In this week’s link round-up, we bring you the reasoning behind Typekit’s font-loading strategy, two new CSS grid systems, a fantastic mash-up of Peanuts with Jaws, and the story of a woman ejected from a Houston bar for tweeting something the General Manager didn’t like. Happy reading!

• Better web font loading with JavaScript
  The reasoning behind Typekit’s technical decisions.
• Columnal
  A responsive CSS grid system helping desktop and mobile browsers play nicely together. If only I could get past non-semantic class names.
• The Jaws-Peanuts Mashup
  Amazing! I hope he does more prints.
• Re-tabulate
  CSS-based table layouts for mobile joy.
• Nouriel Roubini on why Karl Marx was right
  Quite an interesting read. I can’t say I disagree.
• The Six Week Countdown Begins to Firefox 7
  Yet another take on the Firefox upgrade path (with a referenced quote from yours truly).
• Let the Web move you – CSS3 Animations and Transitions
  A great write-up, full of helpful advice.
• PagerDuty
  Phone call and SMS alerting for your monitoring systems. This could come in handy.
• AT&T Texting Price Hike Shows Danger of No Wireless Competition
  Thanks for the heads-up @TimKarr! Shameful, AT&T.
• Remove Oldest Revisions of a File in Git
  This may come in handy for pruning really old nightly MySQL backups.
• Confirmed: iPad 3 will have a retina display
  A 2048 x 1536 tablet. Wow. I guess they got the price down.
• Americans Elect 2012 - The first-ever open presidential nomination
  What an amazing idea!
• Golden Grid System
  Excited to play with this one…
• Sizing with CSS3’s vw and vh units
  A great roundup from @snookca.
• Restaurant Ejects Diner for Tweeting While Eating
   Wow.

• Rethinking CSS Grids
  Some great ideas from @MarkBoulton.
• Screen reader support for abbr and span on mobile
  Thanks for doing this research @iheni!
• @JonathanStark’s Starbucks Card
  An awesome idea (and API).
• Web Actions: Identifying A New Building Block For The Web
  Sounds amazing. Let’s get it done!
• Your Chrome browser might not be using HTTP anymore
  Wow. Just wow.
• Redesigning the browser window
  I’d love to see something like this.
• Forget WiFi, It’s LiFi: Internet Through Lightbulbs
  Sounds awesome!
• Bagchecking in the Command Line
  API-out. This is how we do things.
• $1 chip tests for HIV in 15 minutes flat, fits in your wallet
  Pretty amazing.
• Media Queries and Asset Downloading
  This really helps us better understand how browsers work with media queries.
• Anatomy of a HTML5 Mobile App
  A fantastic overview from @fling.
• Braid - A simple way to manage Git submodules
  Looks pretty simple. I’ll have to try it out.
• Sparse checkout example in Git 1.7.0
  I’m so glad Git has this option. I was missing it when I changed from Subversion.
• Why the ‘Ok’ Button is No Longer Okay
  Instead of giving users the Ok button to confirm the action they want to do, it’s more efficient and effective to give users a button that’s labeled with the specific action.
• A Box You Want to Uncheck on LinkedIn
  Thanks for the heads-up @ryanirelan!
• Extending native JavaScript objects. Evil or not?
  An interesting discussion of the pros and cons.
• Intranet Remains Poor Stepchild Of Corporate Websites
  No big surprise there.
• Kindle Cloud Reader
  Bye bye Apple!

As a content-focused web development firm, we’re frequently called on to design and build content management systems for our clients. More often than not, that involves using some form of in-browser rich text editor (RTE) to more easily allow users to add and edit content. Over the years we’ve used a number of different scripts and libraries to do this—everything from TinyMCE and CK Editor to our own home-grown solutions. The thing is that we’ve never felt 100% happy with any software we’ve used.

Last week the U.S. teetered on the brink of economic collapse, but there were lots of goodies to think about and share too. Here’s a smattering of things to check out on the topics of design, development, and social commentary:

• Why designers should seek chaos and complexity first
  From order emerges chaos…
• Reckless web practices encourage idiots
  The first draft of Chapter 1 of my book went a little something like this.
• TokBox
  These guys are doing some pretty amazing stuff with webpage-based video conferencing.
• HTML5 Shows Promise, While Android Tablets Confuse, Developer Survey Finds
  More fuel for the HTML-based app fire. Via @thisisladychris.
• Useful List of International Address Formats
  Just what it says. Via @sniffles.
• Baker Ebook Framework 2.0
  Could be an interesting way to build interactive books for iOS if you don’t want to go the ePub route.
• 10K Apart (Responsive Edition)
  Now with eCSStender (and yours truly as a judge).
• Infrastructure woes take toll on US economy
  We need a major public works project!
• Debt-reduction politics: Why not let each party choose the other’s supercommittee members?
  Sounds intriguing to me.
• JavaScript - Optimising Where it Hurts
  I had almost forgotten about this great presentation. Thanks for the reminder @brucel!
• Flexbox & WebOS UI Development
  A good overview of how flexbox works and how it can be used in Enyo.
• Loading Typekit fonts asynchronously
   Awesome!

In preparation for the launch of 10K Apart (Responsive Edition) from Mix Online and An Event Apart, I’ve been feverishly working on a modest implementation of the proposed CSS3 Grid Layout module (also referred to as Grid Alignment in alternate drafts) using eCSStender. As you might imagine, it was a pretty massive undertaking, but it’s been pretty rewarding to use eCSStender for it’s original intent: prototyping implementations of proposed specifications.

Awesome stuff last week from the worlds of typography, mobile, customer service, and design.

• Responsive Images, sans markup adjustments (by @MattWilcox)
  Definitely a good start.
• CSSFrag Safari Extension
  A neat idea.
• A Quick & Comprehensive Type Guide
  Useful stuff for lovers of typography.
• Lorem Ipsum Me! Usable and quick dummy text
  Nice work Zach!
• Consumers losing patience with the slow mobile web
  Mobile is where it’s at. Are you there yet?
• True HTML5 Fullscreen Video
  Awesome!
• Ralph Nader Gets A Refund From US Airways
  And now you can too!
• Typekit improves font rendering on Windows
  Excellent news. Republish your fonts!
• On Safety: A Word From Airbnb
  A quick and timely response.
• Think Outside the Box, but Don’t Forget the Box Exists
  Consistency!
• Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces? (via @tuna)
  Excellent work Alex!
• Reviewing the user experience of HP’s WebOS TouchPad
  A great review of what looks like an awesome OS.
• Google Offers To Re-Write Your Webpages On The Fly… for Performance
  Looks interesting.
• Android Leaves Apple iOS In The Dust
  Android’s total market share in the U.S. tope 39% (to Apple’s 28%).
• Beautiful Swear Words
  Hilarious and gorgeous.
• The Racial Wealth Gap Grew Significantly in the New Recession
  We’ve known for a while now that the wealth disparities in this country are inextricably linked to racial disparities. Sadly, the new recession is only augmenting that problem.
• Progressive Enhancement 2.0
  A fantastic presentation from @slicknet.
• Unsolicited Redesigns
  Excellent reaction piece by @khoi.
• Visual Designers Are Just As Important As UX Designers
  Great thinking from @andybudd (as always)

We found some awesome links last week:

• Content Choreography
  Some great thinking from Trent Walton.
• .net Asks: How much do you value formal web design education?
  Featuring answers from yours truly and many more.
• W3C Internationalization Checker
  Destined to become a handy tool, I reckon.
• Blitz
  For load- and performance-testing your apps.
• How SEO Can Work with Content Strategy
  An excellent overview on the intersection of these two disciplines. Notable quote: “I’m a fan of optimizing for customers before search engines.”
• The Top 15 Most Popular @ Damn You Auto Correct
  I cry each time I read these.
• If the World’s Population Lived in One City
  Amazing visualization. Glad I don’t live in Houston.
• Google Labs is closing
  Stick a fork in it…
• Responsive Web Design Techniques, Tools & Design Strategies
  A good survey of the work that’s being done out there.
• Making Desktop Webapps in Lion
  Bye, bye Fluid.
• Google Deletes Last 7 Years of Digital User’s Life, Shrugs
  Proof you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket.