Category: Links of Interest

Another week, another article roundup! I’ve been very intrigued with this debate over front-end MVC’s such as Angular, Ember.js and Backbone. You may see an uptick in articles about this subject over the next few weeks.

As always, if you have any feedback on Article Roundups, leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

1. AOL is shutting down its Apple blog TUAW
   As The Verge says “There goes another one.”
2. Simple CSS-Only Row and Column Highlighting
   clever trick!
3. Extensibility
   Jeremy on Web Components. I find myself aligning with his opinions.
4. Your favourite app isn’t native
5. Adobe is suing Forever 21 for pirating Photoshop
   duh. If you are a big company, spend $50/month.
6. 1 out of 6 internet users in the US don’t have broadband access
7. iPhone Screenshot Maker
   I’ve been looking for an iPhone screenshot tool for some time. This one adds a nice iPhone frame around your screenshot.
8. WordPress Theme Creation With Underscores – Tuts+ Course
   This is the defacto “blank theme” for developing WordPress themes from scratch. It’s in Tuts+, but they offer a 30 day free trial.
9. Introducing CockpitCMS – a CMS for Developers
10. @extend Wrapper a.k.a Mixtend
    interesting technique
11. Hobo for Mac – The best way to manage Vagrant and vagrantfiles on your Mac
    This is really dead simple. Easy enough where you could pass this VM onto a PM or Designer with no issues. One thing I’m not sure about is how you keep your WordPress code updated for those users.
12. How you can help to improve WordPress
13. YouTube drops Flash for HTML5 video as default
    Yah, standards!
14. Updates for the F12 developer tools in the Windows 10 January Technical Preview
    Some updates to the ever-improving F12 Tools in IE.
15. Microsoft reveals its Internet Explorer successor will support extensions
    Kinda have to these days.
16. My thoughts on Squarespace (and other site builders)
    ICYMI
17. Fun with line-height!
    Vertical rhythm is something I have really taken to, and line-height is fundimental to it.
18. CSS Level 4 Selectors to Watch Out For
19. The ultimate guide to SVG
    SVG is IE9 plus and polyfills are pretty easy. If you aren’t, you really need to be using SVG. No need for responsive images.
20. 5 Beautiful and Responsive Footer Templates
21. illustrator-svg-exporter · GitHub
    Exporting SVG’s in Illustrator kinda sucks.
22. Facebook’s new app for developing countries is just 252KB
    #optimization
23. Visiting an Angular site with Opera Mini.

Hope you enjoy this week’s links. I’m taking a little different approach by adding more links, but also trying to comment more on them. Let me know what you think.

1. Angular momentum
2. Tour of a Performant and Responsive CSS Only Site
3. How to Teach Yourself Web Development
4. Project Spartan and the Windows 10 January Preview Build
   It’s finally here. No more rumors.
5. Other Ways to Make Money as a Freelancer
6. Some Ideas for Checkout Effects
7. WordPress › RICG Responsive Images
8. These 7 things are slowing down your site’s user experience (and you have no control over them)
9. Getting to Know LibSass
   LibSass could be the future, with not having a dependency on Ruby. But it still doesn’t support “&”. That will come with time.
10. 5 Web Design Tips You Probably Haven’t Heard Before
11. GSS: Layout Reimagined
    Another grid system?
12. WP Migrate DB Pro
    I use this all the time to migrate DB’s from QA to STAGE and PROD.
13. WP101 | Post Status
    I saw that MediaTemple auto-installs this with their managed WordPress hosting. Not a bad idea to install on client sites.
14. A Vision for Our Sass
15. Even More Essential Plugins for WordPress Theme Development
16. Wake Forest University :: Front-End Developer Position
    Any Winston Salem folk looking or a job.
17. Using <picture> in WordPress
18. Learn Git – Learn Version Control with Git
    If you don’t know Git, this could be a good place to start.
19. Adactio: Journal—HTTPS
20. Reports on Internet Performance
21. Blog change: Now using encrypted connections
    Encryption is a good thing.
22. New Sonos logo design pulses like a speaker when scrolled
    I’m getting dizzy just looking at it.
23. Microsoft reveals Windows 10 will ship with two browsers | The Verge
    Interesting MS is breaking IE off for “legacy” use. Maybe this will finally help sunset IE as we know it.
24. Hands-on: Microsoft’s HoloLens is flat-out magical
25. Microsoft officially announces Project Spartan, its new web browser for Windows 10 | The Verge
    Details still coming in on this. Is it running the Trident rendering engine that IE does? If so, this probably doesn’t mean much for us developers.
26. Unsold Google Glass Units To Be Donated To Assholes In Africa | The Onion
27. 852247 – [a11y] Expose pref to force page zoomability via settings
    Oo, you can disable user zoom? Not good for users.
28. Why We Banished the Hamburger Menu From Our iPhone App | Redbooth Blog
    @smashingmag thoughts on the article: “A yet another case study showing that tabs at the bottom work better than horizontal navigation at the top.” https://twitter.com/smashingmag/status/556007261001502720

1. More Essential Plugins for WordPress Theme Development
2. The CSS at…
3. Angular and templating
   More comments on the Angular discussion.
4. Time to check your data usage? The average page served to mobile devices is now 1 MB in size.
   I’ve been trying to fight this for some time. The last 2 sites Matt and I have created have been 385k (hoverboardstudios.com) and 623k (superiorcampers.com).
5. Getting Started with Myth: the Preprocessor of the Future
   Sigh. Another preprocessor? Can’t we just settle on Sass already?
6. Ever Heard of Must-Use Plugins?
   Yes, I have. Always forget to use it.
7. UX is Key to Branding. Here’s Why.
8. Angular is for applications, not javascript.
   JS MVC: good or bad. This seems to be the new debate as of late. This is a response to an anti-Angular post on PPK.
9. Scroll Slow. Have Fun.
   Awesome! No JS/CSS animations. Protip: Use arrow keys instead of scrolling.
10. 6 of the Best Free Contact Form Plugins for WordPress
    The #1 feature people want outside of WordPress Core features.
11. GravityView raises the bar for WordPress video advertisements
    I love this just for the Jonathan Mann video.
12. (Ab)using CSS3’s :nth-child selector to invent new ones | grack
13. What’s New in QUnit 1.16
    Unit testing is the bomb-diggity. I just need to start doing it now.
14. Mobile First
    Interesting points on Mobile First from a hardware point-of-view.
15. Paying for Web Design vs Squarespace
    I don’t have enough room here. Post on ryantvenge.com to come…
16. MTV’s Responsive Design Boosts Metrics on Mobile & Beyond
17. Input: Fonts for Code
18. Hover.css – A collection of CSS3 powered hover effects
19. 25 Tips for Intermediate Git Users
20. Designing For Print With CSS – Smashing Magazine
    I’m always intrigued with print stylesheets.
21. How we use web fonts responsibly, or, avoiding a @font-face-palm | Filament Group, Inc., Boston, MA
    Ya know when a site loads with no text and has to wait for the font to load? Yeah, this avoids that so that a websafe font loads first, then your custom font pops in when it’s downloaded.
22. Flexbugs
    A list of current cross-browser bugs with Flexbox. A good thing to have bookmarked.
23. Mixin for Offset Positioning
24. Reinstall IE8 ievms
    Might have to look into this as an IE testing option.
25. Mobile Web is retail’s big winner and loser for holiday shopping
    Native hasn’t completely taken over.
26. A Brief History of User Interface
27. “Just”
    Some thoughts from Brad Frost on “just” doing things to get them to work.
28. Battery life: Apple’s solving for x
    “So far Apple has behaved as if the battery life of the iPad and the iPhone are perfectly fine as is, and that it would prefer to create a thinner and lighter model to one that puts the makers of external battery packs out of business. Except for that iPhone 6 Plus. That thing’s a monster.”

1. Developer Plugin: Essential for WordPress Theme Development
2. Yoast Google Analytics plugin introduces stats dashboards, with lessons learned along the way
3. Text Input Effects
   I’m not crazy about how these don’t really resemble text inputs, but love the idea of the "placeholder" flying out into the "label".
4. 10 web design trends you’ll actually see in 2015 (and how to survive them)
   We’ll see if these end up being true.
5. How to Back Up Your WordPress Database
   We all should be doing this.
6. 8 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started as a Web Developer
7. Microsoft’s Spartan: A New Batch Of Screenshots Leak
   It’s not every day we get rumors in the web dev community. 🙂
8. Options for 301 Redirects in WordPress
   Lots of options. Personally, Redirection plugin is my favorite, but if you have complex redirect patterns, things like .htaccess might be better options.
9. Apple are losing their edge also in accessibility quality
10. 10 Web Predictions for 2015
11. SEO in 2015 (and Why You Should Care)
12. The problem with CSS pre-processors
13. Exposing Additional Form Fields via Checked Radio Buttons | CSS-Tricks
14. Balance
    Some good points on Apple as of late.
15. Volkswagen bringing CarPlay to its cars later this year
    Finally, car interfaces that don’t suck. It’s nice to see Android and Apple taking over the task car comanies just weren’t up for.
16. Mailbox for Mac
    My current email client.
17. Facebook is the new AOL

Sorry, I took last week off and there are a lot of links this week. Enjoy!

1. JavaScript Comes of Age
2. PHP Tips, Resources and Best Practices for 2015
3. [E2] A showcase of beautiful landing pages
4. The Pros and Cons of Working with Freelancers
5. Things You Should Separate From Your Theme
6. A new Microsoft browser?
   More on the supposed new browser. If it runs trident, that doesn’t mean much for web devs.
7. The 12 most popular web performance posts of 2014
   I <3 performance.
8. A Good Front-End Architecture
   These tend to apply more to web apps and larger websites IMO, but still some great takeaways no matter what your project might be.
9. 10 Web Predictions for 2014: The Results!
10. Top Ten Signs You're a Designer
    So true.
11. BEM Mixins
    What a great idea!
12. Material Shadows Mixin
13. Technology resolutions for 2015
14. Powered by Movable Type
    Poor MT. Looks like there are still a few people using it.
15. Average Page Weight Increases 15% in 2014
    Wah wah
16. How To Migrate To HTTPS – Google Docs
17. Well, That Escalated Quickly
    A response to his “Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty” post.
18. 2015 Trends and Predictions for Web Design
19. iOS 2014: A Year in Review
20. Common WordPress Issues and How to Fix Them
21. Docker and Phoenix: How to Make Your Continuous Integration More Awesome
22. Cohesive UX
23. How to use video to effectively drive online sales
24. Introducing Sass-Compatibility
25. Adding Functions to Your WordPress Theme Framework
26. Sliding Header Layout
27. Has flat design gone too far?
    Just like every other trend; probably.
28. Digital Project Manager Tools | Anders Andersen
29. Fifty Actions of WordPress – Series Finale
30. Getting Started with Gulp
    The alternative to Grunt.js.
31. Introduction to Creating Your First WordPress Widget
32. UX How-To with Luke Wroblewski – YouTube
    ICYMI: All the UX videos LukeW did this year.
33. Chris Wright – Experiment: Flexbox Adventures
34. Naming Things ◆ 24 ways
35. Retake performance
36. Microsoft reportedly working on brand new web browser for Windows 10
37. Meet for Learning ◆ 24 ways
38. No More var_dump – Introducing Symfony VarDumper!
    var_dump is the console.log() of php. Very useful.
39. Points of Confusion in Agile
40. The Top UX Trends of 2014