We all change and grow over time, and these posts reflect a different era from my life. To view selected highlights chosen because they have a bit more relevance than the other posts, please view the featured archives.
First? Or best?
I fell asleep last night around 3 a.m. I'd been up late working on the web design book I'm writing. This book has kicked my butt and is easily one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do.
When I wrote the proposal for the book last fall, I laid out the unique niche my book would target, and how no other books had targeted that particular niche.
I’m writing this post in Editorially, one of my favorite web apps of all time.
This tool I’ve grown to love excelled at simplicity, getting out of the way to let me focus not on words or fonts, but on flow. On Editorially, the terrifying reality of a blank white document didn’t seem so scary. Instead, Editorially invited you in, whispering, “Calm down, this is a safe place to settle in and write.”
I’m really excited about the global sprint weekend for Drupal this weekend, so I wanted to share how I started to get more involved with Drupal, as well as some great resources that I’ve found helpful.
I started working with Drupal over five years ago now. At the time, I preferred to hand-code HTML and CSS for sites that I built, although I wrote some custom backend code with PHP and, yes, ColdFusion. I’m a team of one in my organization, so front end, back end, UX, information architecture, content strategy, those are all on my plate.
We’re going to be bringing our daughter to Disney World for her first time pretty soon, so I have Disney on my mind on Blue Beanie Day 2013.
One of the things I love about Disney is how imagineers work hard to “plus” their creations, even when they’re already great.
They ask, how can we take an attraction that is already beloved, like Pirates of the Caribbean, and “plus it” with something fun and new? And soon enough, clever scenes of Captain Jack Sparrow join the fun.
I think that’s a great way to think about web standards.
Web standards promised that we could develop once, deploy everywhere. I can’t help but wonder about that premise after reading @bradfrost’s post, Device Fatigue.
I believe in web standards. I have spent a good part of my last decade working to write standards-based code that validates.
First of all, huge congratulations to Mat Marquis, Jason Grigsby, Scott Jehl, Ethan Marcotte, Florian Rioval and all the other web geniuses who are working to make responsive images much, much easier for those working with responsive web design.
Today is a milestone. The Responsive Images Community Group of the W3C has now published their proposal for responsive images, the picture element, as a W3C draft. Make sure to read the draft of the picture element. It’s a great step towards a better web.
The old Devi Knight lifts his sword from Darth Twitter’s then watches his opponent with a serene look on his face.
“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
—Wayne Gretzky
The web is changing.
Before, our biggest worries were the diversity of browsers. How do we get CSS to work across both IE6 and Firefox, let alone Safari.
While cross-browser design is still a challenge, those difficulties have eased with time. Modern versions of Internet Explorer are relatively on par with other browsers.
The web controversy du jour: Opera confirms WebKit prefix usage.
Many others have written wisely on why this does or doesn’t break the web. So let me put this more simply.
The new iPad has arrived, most notably with a retina display with four times as many pixels as the previous display. The new iPad has 2048 by 1536 pixels, for an amazing resolution of 264 pixels per inch.
The increase in resolution, and thus the increase in file sizes, has some concerned. Stephanie Rieger wrote last week in “Not In My Best Interest,” that “Sure, the fonts are so crisp they could cut glass, but absolutely everything else on screen is fuzzy.”
There are understandable concerns with delivering graphics with huge file sizes over limited mobile bandwidth. Even over home wi-fi, the graphics are large and will take time to load.
Despite the legitimate practical concerns, I think what some are missing is something easy to lose sight of:
The opportunity to create a magical experience.