February 23, 2016 — In this article, Cosima Mielke has collected tips, tricks, and tools To give you a head start into Flexbox and provide you with ideas on how to use it to master common coding challenges, that will help you get the most out of its power already today. Flexbox gives us a new kind of control over our layouts, making coding challenges that were hard or impossible to solve with CSS alone straightforward and intuitive. It provides us with the means to build grids that are flexible and aware of dynamic content. The list is by no means complete but includes the resources which we found helpful and useful. Read more…

February 23, 2016 — Was there a tool Steve Hickey could use to help people quickly model content in a platform-agnostic manner and simultaneously build an artifact that was ideal for communicating intent to a client or team? There are some great further features that can established by digging into the Jekyll docs in more detail, but what we have here are the basics of a good content modeling prototype: the ability to define different types of objects, the attributes attached to those objects, and IDs that allow us to call specific objects from anywhere. Best of all, the whole system is simple and human-readable, and outputs plain HTML for use elsewhere if necessary. Read more…

February 22, 2016 — In this article, Ben Callahan will help you be more successful with your web projects by starting at the beginning; by working from day one to help set your client’s expectations about what’s going to happen, and by working throughout a project’s life cycle to do the same. By the end of this article, you’ll find yourself more inspired to invest in your own understanding of how the web works, and more willing to invest in your teammates’ understanding. Ben hopes you’ll feel excited to try a new approach, but he also that you’ll be empowered to tear these pages up if they don’t work for you. Only you, your team and your customer can figure out the best way to approach a project. The time is now — so, get to it! Read more…

February 19, 2016 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. Read more…

February 19, 2016 — Creating the perfect website is not an easy task, nor is it a done deal. The perfect website requires time and continual work to keep it that way. Perfecting a website entails putting services in place to handle such problems. There’s always something to optimize, trends to keep up with, security issues to worry about. If you plan on being in business for years to come, prepare yourself. Don’t worry if you don’t have everything in place to make your website perfect. Start out as best as you can. Above all else, a perfect website requires experience, which you can only get by giving things a go and sticking around. Read more…

February 18, 2016 — We often want information on what users and potential users of our designs think and how they behave in the context of where they will use our design. Intercepts allow you to engage users in a variety of settings to collect data to inform your design. In this article, Victor Yocco shares a method to design and carry out effective intercepts as part of your user research. You can use the steps and information provided in this article in your own process for intercepting users! Read more…

February 17, 2016 — To help you boost productivity, save time, and, obviously, nerves, in this article, Cosima Mielke has picked some valuable Photoshop resources, plugins, and scripts for you. Some of them will speed up routine tasks so you can concentrate more on your actual work, others build a bridge between Photoshop and code so your design mockups can benefit from the best of both worlds. Read more…

February 17, 2016 — Developers are lazy by nature: adhering to the DRY principle, writing scripts to automate things we’d otherwise have to do by hand, making use of third-party libraries. The traditional approach to cross-browser testing doesn’t align well with these ideals. Either you make a half-hearted attempt at manual testing or you expend a lot of effort on doing it “properly”. Once you’ve put in the effort of knowing your enemy, you’re able to attack in three steps: reconnaissance, raid and clearance. In this article, Chris Ashton hopes to save you hours of wasted effort by describing a testing strategy which is not only less labour-intensive, but more effective at catching bugs. Read more…

February 16, 2016 — In this article, Tom Green will describe the methods he uses to get from content to responsive wireframe — and how you can, too. There is no big reveal or other excitement with the creation of content reference wireframes. You can practice content wireframing by deconstructing popular websites into their basic building blocks. Start with rough containers of information, add in the real content, and then start chiseling them into more finalized forms. In doing so, you’ll be better able to design around what users really care about: the content. Read more…

February 16, 2016 — In this article, Rachel Andrew will look at the basics of HTTP2 as they apply to web designers and developers. She’ll explain some of the key features of the new protocol, look at browser and server compatibility, and detail the things you might need to think about as we see more adoption of HTTP2. You will get an overview of what to consider changing in your workflow in the short and long term. Rachel will also include plenty of resources if you want to dig further into the issues raised. Her aim is to give you enough of the background to be able to make good decisions as you plan your move to HTTP2. Read more…