Things I Like
-
It might seem counterintuitive that you will perform better at work if you spend more time with your kids, leave work early to volunteer at a local nonprofit, or take an hour out of your workday to go to the gym. But that’s just what happens.
-
I’ve stopped mindlessly checking Twitter. I’ve stopped using Facebook on mobile at all. I don’t refresh my inbox. I don’t fill awkward silences with technology. I’m mindful of the affect of my tech behavior on the people around me. I’m much more present, and I’ve grown incredibly irritated at my friends when they have their phone out for absolutely no reason.
I haven't used a phone regularly for about a year and a half. Like this post, I use an iPad mini for all my roaming about data needs. And as this post states, it means I don't pull it out in public a lot, people notice, that side effect has been great.
-
The team at Codrops have put together a fantastic resource on CSS. What is great about this is that it is about CSS and not about a preprocessor. We need to remember and understand the underlying elements of what we are working with to understand how to use CSS. I'll use this a lot, along with MDN. Thanks Codrops!
-
My goal is to live a balanced life, where the work I do is important, where the time I have with my family and friends is plentiful, where I can grow and improve and do fantastic work. I don’t need the big stage to do these things.
I think a lot about balance and about what success means for me, even more, what does work mean? I really like the idea of getting off the “paved road” that Corey talks about. But I also wish that it didn't feel like I had to explain myself so much to people in my life. Viewing life differently means people ask questions and it gets tiring.
-
We’re among the first generations expected to maintain connections with every single person we’ve ever met, thanks to the Internet. The weight of our swollen social networks can be super stressful, let alone a distraction from knowing who you want to focus your time on.
-
Our users want a usable page as quickly as possible—within a second, ideally—so we want visible text as close to that goal as we can. There are several approaches you can take to work around these issues, but the most important thing you can do is to move away from the default way we’re told to load fonts.
-
I am, ever so slowly, coming to use a bit more of Sass than just variables. I like these snippets not just for ways to do things easier/faster but also for giving me ideas for what is possible in Sass.
-
Jeremy's design principles are wonderful, lots of good ideas in here. I particularly like that he has all kinds of different organizations principles laid out so you can compare and contrast them.
-
When the Apple Watch was announced, I was gutted that they'd decided to stick with that word because consumers will apply the same mental models to a smartwatch as to an analogue one. It's like calling a smartphone a pocket watch, or a computer an electronic abacus.
-
An utterly fascinating breakdown of data on how CSS is actually being used. Lot of tidbits that I found really interesting. Also, the conclusions tell me that people who really care about CSS are few and far between and there is a spot for them to help clean up the mess. In addition they say:
The best thing a company can do (especially true the more people are involved in writing CSS) is to run a CSS Audit. This will help identify past mistakes, and integrate tooling into your workflow to prevent mistakes moving forward.
If you need help with that, let me know, cause I love doing them.
-
This is a giant, wonderful cartoon about climate change and our economy. Go, read it, think about it, it's so good.
-
Making is not a rebel movement, scrappy individuals going up against the system. While the shift might be from the corporate to the individual (supported, mind, by a different set of companies selling a different set of things), it mostly re-inscribes familiar values, in slightly different form: that artifacts are important, and people are not.
-
I essentially told them the things I have to remind myself: it’s okay to take time. Rushing doesn’t improve things, it might even slow you down. Focusing on a few things and doing them well is worthwhile. Sharing what you learn—even while you’re still figuring things out—is even better.
-
A dozen years ago, companies like Teehan + Lax and Adaptive Path were unique. They thought differently and communicated the value of their perspective through great work and compelling language. Firms like these created and popularized the language of user experience design. They made it possible for their clients and the digital industry at large to think differently. Hundreds of firms followed their lead over the last decade, but they copied the mindset of these formative companies. They didn’t create new language and ideas to challenge what they saw in the digital world. When an entire design industry follows a single mindset, commoditization quickly sets in. This is good when you want to buy more of the same, but not when you want something different. It’s no surprise that in-house design is so strong today. Agencies have fallen into the trap of competing with them, instead of providing a valuable contrast.
-
This isn’t anything new. If you think about it, sites that used the Flash plug-in to deliver their experience were on the web, but not of the web. They were using the web as a delivery mechanism, but they weren’t making use of the capabilities of the web for universal access. As long as you have the Flash plug-in, you get 100% of the intended experience. If you don’t have the plug-in, you get 0% of the intended experience. The modern equivalent is using a monolithic JavaScript library like Angular. As longer as your browser (and network) fulfils the minimum requirements, you should get 100% of the experience. But if your browser falls short, you get nothing. In other words, Angular and its ilk treat the web as a platform, not a continuum.