Hey,
another week passed by and I’ll keep you up to date with the current developments, new tools, articles and other cool things that happen in our industry.
But not all things are cool and there are people that express their opinion like Robin Berjon on the DRM debate which I honor much. All of you should read that opinion and re-think their current browser choice.
News
- If you have a device spare at home or know someone who has (be honest, you know someone), Donate Your Dusty Device.
General useful links
- Did you know you can stage only parts of your changes in a file in git with
git add -p? This is the git patch mode runningadd --interactive, but bypasses the initil command menu and directly jumps to thepatchcommand. Super useful. - Choosing an Open Source Software License doesn’t need to be scary. Here is the tool that helps you out.
Tools
- Here is a Google Maps Builder that lets you customize the integration of the Google Map on your website. It generates all the JavaScript with the Maps API so you can easily use it. Also it has SnazzyMaps Theme integration.
- The open source book of modern front-end tooling (not finished).
grunt-combine-media-queriescombines your media queries in a grunt build process to save some bytes in your CSS.
Performance Matters
- You can automate your performance tests running Phantomas via GruntJS now.
- Trace how Chrome processes your website.
HTML
- If you use Icon fonts ensure that you’re using them properly so that screenreader users don’t get puzzled by the output. Also, care about the fallback, 370 million users will thank you.
JavaScript
- MPEGTS is a JavaScript HTTP Live Streaming realtime converter and player which uses WebWorker to do that.
- Libsass.js — an Emscripten experiment by Rodney Rehm and Sebastian Golasch who tried to build libsass (a Sass converter) in JavaScript. Anyway, they rocked on and here’s is the API you can use to convert Sass online.
CSS
- Jack Doyle published an article where he busts the myth of CSS animations vs JavaScript driven animations.
- Lea Verou posted a neat article how to achieve smooth state animations that don’t abort apruptly with the CSS
animation-play-stateproperty. - A small and simple Sass function to create ems from px values.
- Make the web responsive to the environment using Ambient Light Events and Luminosity Level.
Go beyond.
- The Blackphone has been announced. It’s all about privacy, secured phone calls, text messages, exchange of secured files, video chat, private browsing and VPN connections. Sounds exciting, let’s hope it also is in near future.
- While we’re talking about phones, Aral Balkan is meeting with Fairphone (by the way, it’s a great phone) and Philips to talk about his Indiephone concept.
- We know so little about ourselves. Did you know that caffeine not only keeps you out of your low points but also reduces your high points as well. Alex Sexton wrote a good piece about the productivity cycle.
Cheers!
Anselm