I’m happy to see all the new subscribers over here and hope you enjoy my list already. For those who don’t know: I don’t have any ads in the newsletter and fully rely on my donators and supporters. So if you like what I write each week, please consider giving a small amount to keep this list running :)
Now enjoy your weekend and catch up with what happened over the last week. And if the weather will be as good at your place as here in south Germany, get outside and enjoy the nature a little bit. Web development updates can wait a few days and your soul and body will be grateful…
News
Typekit has added WOFF2 support to its stack, which means you can save up to 30% on your web font kit’s size. To activate WOFF2 support, just republish your kits.
Mozilla will change the way you write add-ons. Writing a Firefox extension has always been a massive effort compared to Chrome. Now, Mozilla is introducing WebExtensions, largely compatible with Chrome’s extension model, making the whole workflow much simpler, faster and more secure.
According to the latest StatCounter data, UC Browser is still on the rise and has already passed IE Mobile and Opera. Soon, it might pass Android’s native browser. If you’re not already, you should start testing your websites and apps in UC Browser.
TheNextWeb tested iOS 9’s content-blocker feature and found that it simply blocks all clutter and ads that are normally displayed on a website. Because this is enabled for all users, it will likely have a big impact on the revenue models of ad-driven websites.
UI/UX
The in-depth article “UI Mechanics of a Date Picker” breaks down the importance of small details in that little UI widget on your website, the date picker.
Anna Yeaman has collected a lot of emails and created an analysis of “Typographic Patterns in HTML Email Newsletter Design”. If you’re sending email newsletters, then this study is interesting and provides good defaults.
Brad Frost has talked a lot about death to bullshit already. Now, he’s published it as a web project with an interactive demo. So, if someones want you to integrate an auto-appearing overlay, modal or fade-in banner, let them test the experience for themselves on this website.
Surely, this one isn’t for everyone, but people who want to build a diagram or graph from some code or a simple list will love the mermaid diagram syntax visualizer, which shows you a live diagram of what you type.
Ana Tudor is always good for mathematical constructions of visual modules. Over on CSS-Tricks she shares a breakdown of how to fit SVG shapes into a container properly. If you struggled to understand viewBox and the box-module handling of SVG, this post is for you and you also get a mathematical refreshment for free.
If your website has SVG icons, then you’re probably using a sprite sheet. But it wouldn’t be SVG if it was easy. Turns out you should always use a wrapping HTML element (such as a <div>) set to display: none, instead of setting it directly on the svg root element.
“The @font-face Dilemma” by Chris Manning shares current methods of web font integration and compares old font loader methods with the newer font observer technique.
I have posted several articles on agile workflows. I myself often work agile for projects, and yet I don’t want to hide “More Agile, More Problems,” in which Steven Hoober talks about his experiences in over 200 agile projects.
“Bushfires, Heatwaves and Early Deaths: The Climate Is Changing Before Our Eyes”—and we still don’t care. It’s time to recognize that everyone is involved and can do something, even if it’s only a small change.
Noah Stokes’ “On Passion” sheds new light on the overused term “passion”. Follow your passion, but do it wisely, and don’t turn everything into your passion — it wouldn’t work.
“Who Benefits the Most From Open-Source Software?” Baldur Bjarnason asks this often avoided question and gives some answers you might not want to hear. The sad truth is that developers’ efforts are too often abused by companies that do not give back.
