Link archive: September, 2012

Airlift

This looks handy: a video-sharing service designed specifically to work with Silverback

Photo Album - Imgur

At least one of these will probably drive you crazy.

Encouraging Better Client Participation In Responsive Design Projects | Smashing Magazine

Andy’s talk from the Smashing Conference in Freiburg.

Responsive Sausage Dog

The Boston Globe’s got nothing on this!

Your brain on pseudoscience: the rise of popular neurobollocks

I like this skewering of the cult of so-called-neuroscience; the self-help book equivalent of eye-tracking.

The Past 100 Years of the Future

This (free!) PDF looks like it could be a nice companion piece to Chris and Nathan’s recent book:

Human-computer interaction in science-fiction movies and television.

It’s a work in progress. You’ll notice a lot of placeholders where the images should be. That’s because the studios are demanding extortionate rates for screenshots.

Beauty and Ugliness in Type design | I love typography, the typography and fonts blog

A fascinating look at what happens when you mash up beauty and ugliness in one typeface.

Learnable Programming

It’s a long one, and it’s kind of meta, but if you have any interest in the idea of programming, this in-depth knowledge bomb from Bret Victor is well worth your time.

NoPassword

I like this passwordless log in pattern but only for specific use cases: when you know that the user has access to email, and when you don’t expect repeat “snacking” visits throughout the day.

Notfound.org

This wouldn’t be appropriate for every site but I still think it could be a damned fine use of otherwise-neglected 404 pages: including information about missing children.

Brian Eno & Peter Chilvers at The Apple Store, Regent Street

Well, this is quite something. Matt will be interviewing the creators of Bloom in London this Friday. You might have heard of that Eno chap.

The Flat Design Era — LayerVault Blog

Pointing out a growing movement away from three-dimensionality towards a flatter aesthetic.

What is the medium? – David Bushell – Web Design

I’m really enjoying these thoughts prompted by Paul’s article in A List Apart. I particularly the idea of taking a long-zoom approach to progressive enhancement: evolving the aesthetic of web design over time.

Five Simple Steps - Pocket Guides

These short pocketbooks from Five Simple Steps look like they’ll be very handy indeed. Shame they won’t be available in dead-tree format: I bet they’d be really cute.

Apple’s .mobi insanity - QuirksBlog

Wow. This might be the stupidest behaviour from a browser that I’ve ever come across: mobile Safari behaves differently depending on the top level domain of the site! Madness!

Mind you… it’s kind of poetic justice for having a ridonkulous .mobi domain in the first place.

A List Apart: Articles: Mo’ Pixels Mo’ Problems

The kickass articles just keep on comin’. This one from Dave is a great overview of options for dealing with images in responsive designs.

A List Apart: Articles: The Web Aesthetic

A really great article from Paul that simultaneously takes a high-level view of the web while also focusing on the details. A lot of work went into this.

You, A Rocket Scientist? | Fast Company

Nice! A feature on Ariel and her spacehacking ways.

Q&A with Jeremy Keith - Charlotte Front-End Developers (Charlotte, NC) - Meetup

Do you live in Charlotte, North Carolina? If so, you might be interested in this event that I’ll be Skyping into.

Shadow is now Adobe Edge Inspect | Adobe Edge Inspect Team Blog

Oh, dear. Adobe Shadow gets a new name and a hefty price tag. Yesterday it was free. Today it is $119.88 per year. It’s useful but it’s not that useful.

So, lazy web, who’s working on an open-source alternative?

Don’t confuse design testing with device testing — Stuff

Andy makes a good point here, point out the difference between device testing and design testing:

When I’m designing, it’s incredibly important for me to quickly gain an affinity with how my design feels when I hold it in my hands.

These are not device testing issues, they are design questions and there’s a huge difference between how an interface feels to use on a smartphone size display and whether the HTML, CSS and Javascript actually works on any particular make or model.

User Experience Euphemisms | 90 Percent of Everything

Funny because it’s true.

Establishing An Open Device Lab | Smashing Mobile

A great article that looks at everything you need to know to set up a communal device lab in your town.

Kev aka Lomokev- Brighton street photographer: YouTube

A nice little profile of local Brighton photographer extraordinaire, Lomokev.

Street Ghosts project - Google Street View made Street Art and Public Concern

In the hippest areas for Street Art, life-sized pictures of people found on Google’s Street View are printed and posted without authorization at the same spot where they were taken.

A massive thank you by Paul Swain

Aw, this is so nice!

Device Lab DC | A (coming soon!) community mobile device testing lab in Washington, DC

There’s an open device lab starting up in Washington DC. If you’re in the area, get in touch and share your devices.

Scott Jenson | Exploring the world beyond mobile

Excellent! Scott has his own URL now. If you haven’t read everything he has written so far, start from the start and read every single post.

Make it So | Interface Design Lessons from Sci-Fi

Chris and Nathan’s book is finally out. I’m going to enjoy reading through this.

14islands: Smashing Conference take-aways

A nice round-up of some of the themes that emerged at Smashing Conference. As with An Event Apart, there was a definite focus on process.

Lab Up!

This looks like a great idea: a centralised place for listing open device labs (and hopefully getting some sponsorship from device manufacturers).

Web History, a timeline

This is right up my alley: a timeline of the history of hypertext, starting with Borges.

Max CSS

I like this suggestion. If you’re using minified CSS in production, it would be a nice gesture to have an easily-discoverable unminified version for people to view source on.

No Evidence of Disease (Idle Words)

Quite a story.

CSSquirrel : Game Break | opinions and news on web design by Kyle Weems

Hey look; Anna’s in a CSSquirrel comic! And for good reason: Kyle is as impressed as I am with Anna’s research into browsers on gaming devices.

There’s also a call for more community device labs. I approve.

DOM Enlightenment

This looks great! It’s a CC-licensed book by Cody Lindley (whose work I’ve admired for many years) aimed at teaching DOM Scripting for modern browsers. You can read the whole thing online or wait for the paper version from O’Reilly.

If all your JavaScript currently consists of writing jQuery plugins, I highly recommend you read this.

Responsive Measure: A jQuery plugin for responsive typography

Here’s something that Josh debuted at Smashing Conference: a script for responsive designs to adjust font-sizes based on a desired line-length.

Inevitably, it’s a jQuery plugin but I’m sure somebody could fork it to create a standalone version (hint, hint).

Geeks, Swords and the Snow Crash Movie: Neal Stephenson in Conversation | Tor.com

A really enjoyable interview with Neal Stephenson.

Playing with the future at the seams | Labs.info.nl

Yet another write-up of this year’s dConstruct.

dConstruct 2012 - a set on Flickr

A really great set of photos from this year’s dConstruct by Geri. Just look at the smile on my face!

dConstruct 2012 | Happy Famous Artists

A nice write-up of dConstruct that focuses on three ideas that were threaded throughout the day:

1. Digital is about beauty and about layers,
2. The power of play, and
3. The interconnectedness of things through chance.

Community Device Labs - Google Groups

Jason has set up a mailing list for open device labs. If you are running one, or thinking of setting one up, you should sign up to share ideas and knowledge.

034: With Jeremy Keith - ShopTalk

I had a lot of fun chatting with Chris and Dave on the Shop Talk Show. It is now available for your listening and huffduffing pleasure.

Nomad Device Lab

There’s an open device lab in Cape Town now. Excellent!

The Spirit of the Web – Jeremy Keith at Smashing Conference | Brad Frost Web

Brad’s notes from my opening talk at the Smashing Conference in Freiburg.

My case for the obsoletion of longdesc (Was: 48-Hour Consensus Call: InstateLongdesc CP Update) from James Craig on 2012-09-15 ([email protected] from September 2012)

James Craig is a mensch. This is how you give feedback to a working group.

dConstruct 2012 – a review : Sjors Timmer

Another thoughtful write-up of this year’s dConstruct, weaving a thread between the talks from Jason Scott, James Burke, and Tom Armitage with a detour via Italo Calvino.

klick-ass.com » Avoid the Tamagotchis – a list of Open Device Labs

A list of open device labs around the world (mostly Europe).

Why mobile Web accessibility matters - best practices to make your mobile site accessible | mobiForge

There’s some great practical advice for building accessible mobile web apps here.

Eric’s Archived Thoughts: The Web Behind

This ticks all my boxes: a podcast by Eric and Jen about the history of the web. I can’t wait for this to start!

dConstruct 2012 – Our positions of power

This is my favourite write-up of dConstruct so far. I love that way that, rather than simply giving a linear description, Laura weaves together the implicit strands that were running throughout the day — a very thoughtful, considered approach.

And how about this for an opening line:

After a weekend of reflection, I’ve decided that dConstruct 2012 had the best talks of any conference I’ve ever attended.

Responsive Web Design Patterns | This Is Responsive

A great collection of layout, navigation, and interaction patterns for responsive sites, delivered by Brad.

dConstruct 2012: the alternative theme was Education - andrewjohns.net

I like this! Andrew Johns found a thread in this year’s dConstruct that ran parallel to its official tagline of “Playing With The Future”: Education.

dConstruct 2012: A quick review - andrewjohns.net

Another really good description of this year’s dConstruct that describes each talk.

Playing With The Future – dConstruct 2012 | HYPERNAKED

A lovely write-up of this year’s dConstruct:

Curated well by the Clearleft team, its speakers are always intelligent, insightful, and on the whole, world-class. Pouring out insights through divergent thought, challenging norms and touting innovation.

beta.guardian.co.uk

Those clever chaps at The Guardian are experimenting with some mobile-first responsive design. Here’s how it’s going so far.

The code is on Github.

A List Apart: Articles: Testing Websites in Game Console Browsers

An excellent in-depth article from Anna on the many gaming devices out there that have both an internet connection and a web browser.

Improving Reality 2012 : Joanne Mcneil

Note’s from Joanne’s presentation at Improving Reality.

d.construct 2012 - a set on Flickr

Eva-Lotta’s sketchnotes from this year’s dConstruct.

dConstruct 2012 - a set on Flickr

A nice set of photos from this year’s dConstruct.

Bruce Lawson’s personal site  : Scooby Doo and the proposed HTML5 element

Bruce’s thoughts on the proposed inclusion of a “content” or “maincontent” element in HTML5.

Personally, I don’t think there’s much point in adding a new element when there’s an existing attribute (role=”main”) that does exactly the same thing.

Also, I don’t see much point in adding an element that can only be used once and only once in a document. However, if a “content” or “maincontent” element could be used inside any sectioning content (section, article, nav, aside), then I could see it being far more useful.

dConstruct 2012 intersession soundtrack - Tantek

If you liked the music that was playing in the breaks during dConstruct, here’s the playlist of CC-Attribution tracks as chosen by Tantek.

Warren Ellis » How To See The Future

The opening keynote from Warren Ellis for this year’s Improving Reality. I’d like to walk into space with this man.

Unsung Heroes of Web and Interaction Design: Derek Powazek – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

Jeffrey quite rightly singles out Derek Powazek for praise.

It was his site Fray that made me realise I wanted to build things on the web.

dConstruct glowsticks on Flickr

A beautiful sight: the digital and the physical interacting through glowsticks.

The Computer for the 21st Century

A classic piece of design fiction written by Mark Weiser 21 years ago.

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.

An e-reader is more like a book than you think | Books | The Observer

James muses on the physicality of ebooks in this week’s Observer.

Lessons from dConstruct 2012 | Michel’s Exhaust

A great write-up of this year’s magnificent dConstruct and its theme of playing with the future.

Lanyrd: the early days | The Lanyrd Blog

This is a rather lovely history of the first two years of Lanyrd, starting with that honeymoon-turned-startup.

I really like the way that Lanyrd’s communications reflect the personalities of Simon and Nat: utterly brilliant, but also a little bonkers, with far more animals than would be reasonably expected.

A Front End Engineer’s Manifesto

Y’know, I’m on board with pretty much every item in this manifesto.

BBC News - Geek camp comes to Milton Keynes

Watch the video to see Jonty’s rather good tour of EMF.