Link archive: February, 2013

Device lab

These device holders/stands look really nice, and they’d be a real help keeping my spaghetti cables in check.

Impact of Responsive Designs

I heartily concur with Luke’s call for sharing of data:

If you’ve had success with a responsive design, my plea to you is to please share what you’ve learned.

I’m going to see if I can get some Clearleft clients to open up.

Prototyping Responsive Typography

Some handy tips for starting off your responsive designs from the type out.

Izilla Open Device Lab, Newcastle, NSW - Open for Testing!

I believe this may be Australia’s first open device lab. I hope it’s the first of many.

Alice and Bob in Cipherspace

A clear explanation of the current state of homomorphic encryption.

gaia/build/ua-override-prefs.js at master · mozilla-b2g/gaia · GitHub

And this is why user-agent sniffing not a future-friendly technique. A new mobile browser comes along, and it has to spoof a fake UA string to all of these sites.

It’s a Red Queen arms race.

Protip: All browsers that support SVG background images also supports multiple background images.

A very hand tip from Ben on using SVG background images with a PNG fallback for IE8 and below.

Support Scrunchup

If you’re coming along to the Responsive Day Out and you’ve got some tech books you no longer need, bring them along. We’ll collect them and distribute them to schools.

Design Staff — Helping startups design great products

Some great stories from the front lines of product design, gathered together in one handy spot.

Sadly, this is not The Onion

It’s not funny, because it’s true.

Knobfeel - Feels good man!

Reviews based entirely on the feel of the knob.

Designing with context : Cennydd Bowles

A great meaty piece from Cennydd, diving deep into the tricky question of context.

Scarfolk Council

Dispatches from the disturbing town of Scarfolk, where it is permanently the 1970s:

Scarfolk is more than its famous sewage treatment works, it’s more than its high security mental facilities; it’s more than its world renowned covens; it’s more than its fine reputation which it rebuilt after a spate of grizzly serial killings…

It’s funny and creepy in equal measure. Actually, the creepiness may be the larger measure.

Swatch you doing?

A cute and fun way to put together a colour palette.

Inside the Battle of Hoth: The Empire Strikes Out

A damning analysis of the Empire’s military strategy at the battle of Hoth, complete with illustrations. The comments are good too:

Guys, cut Palpatine some slack. He’s still in his first term as Emperor…

Forty Years of Movie Hacking: Considering the Potential Implications of the Popular Media Representation of Computer Hackers from 1968 to 2008

An in-depth look at the portrayal of hackers on film.

SimpleBits / Food for Thought

What Dan said.

YOU HAD ONE JOB!

Funny and painful in equal measure.

Ensia

A lovely new responsive(ish) website dedicated to science and the environment.

The Vanilla Web Diet by Christian Heilman

I like the sound of the book that Chris is writing for Smashing Magazine. It sounds like a very future-friendly approach to front-end development.

Editorially: Write Better

A collaborative writing tool built by a dream team. I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s very nice indeed.

Brighton Science Festival Edo Wonderpark Hack Day

There’s going to be mini Science Hack Day at Lighthouse as part of this month’s Science Festival in Brighton. Come along — it’ll be fun.

taskrabbitsinlove

Dan is collecting all of those product demo videos aimed squarely at young white single males with iPhones.

Ladies in Tech

A great new site from Jenn and Yesenia: celebrating and supporting female speakers in technology.

Barebones — An initial directory setup, style guide and pattern primer by Paul Lloyd

Here are some nice patterns that Paul uses for starting points in his own projects.

Responsive typography demo

This is a pretty wacky experiment in altering font size based on the user’s distance from the screen (allow the page to access your camera and enable the “realtime” option for some real fun). I don’t know how much real-world application this has, but it’s a cute’n’fun exercise.

The dictionary of obscure sorrows

Ennuitastic.

Nick Cave Winning Competition Entries - a set on Flickr

Local music shop Resident Records ran a competition to win 20 pairs of tickets to an exclusive warm-up gig by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. To be in with a chance, you had to recreate an album cover. These are the winning entries.

You’ll spot Jessica’s creation in amongst them. We’re off to see Nick Cave tonight!

You like apples? by Electric Pulp

Some insane numbers on the return on investment that a bit of responsive optimisation can bring.

Bluetooth gloves

I think this is kind of brilliant.

What your Twitter bio says about you by Robert Stringer

The truth …it burns!

Cover-Up’s open device lab

The guys at Cover Up are great: they make accessories for tablets and e-readers, so they have lots of those devices. They’ve made them all available for web developers to test on. Like I said: they’re great!

The Pastry Box Project | 6 February 2013, baked by Tim Brown

Speaking as a very lazy person, this really resonated with me.

Overcoming laziness can feel like moving the moon.

A primer to front-end SVG hacking by David Bushell – Web Design & Front-end Development

Everything you ever wanted to know about using SVG today.

You can’t create a button by Nicholas Zakas

Related to my rant on links that aren’t actually links: buttons that aren’t actually buttons.

Search in a Giphy

A search engine for animated gifs. Oh, yes.

No, I’m not going to download your bullshit app by Tom Morris

I share Tom’s frustration with news apps that should be websites:

I wouldn’t download a BBC app or an NPR app for my computer. Why would I want one on my phone?

Submarine Cable Map

This year’s TeleGeography map of the undersea network looks beautiful—inspired by old maps. I love the way that latency between countries is shown as inset constellations.

Stratocam

Communal satellite eyes. A Mac screensaver is also available.

Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns by Steve Yegge

A classic of writing on the fundamental differences between programming languages.

“The Post-PSD Era: A problem of expectations,” an article by Dan Mall

I really like Dan’s take on using Photoshop (or Fireworks) as part of today’s web design process. The problem is not with the tool; the problem is with the expectations set by showing comps to clients.

By default, presenting a full comp says to your client, “This is how everyone will see your site.” In our multi-device world, we’re quickly moving towards, “This is how some people will see your site,” but we’re not doing a great job of communicating that.

Test your app under slow network speeds

Some handy tips for simulating slow network speeds on your machine.

The Creeping Garden

I, for one, welcome our slime mould overlords.

The slime mould is being used to explore biological-inspired design, emergence theory, unconventional computing and robot controllers, much of which borders on the world of science fiction.