Jeffrey Zeldman's Blog, page 52
June 29, 2012
Responsive Typography
“NOT EVERYTHING always works in your favor when you design for the screen. Interaction design is engineering: it’s not about finding the perfect design, it’s finding the best compromise.”
June 28, 2012
Facebook goes native
“IF I WERE advising them on these decisions, I would have had them look at what people actually want from Facebook — fast access to their friends’ photos and posts — and … helped them design an HTML5 web experience that actually works for mobile.”
.net magazine: Facebook iPhone app to go native By Tanya Combrinck on June 28, 2012
June 20, 2012
Responsive and Mobile Now
A FEW GOOD LINKS from a day-long workshop by Luke Wroblewski:
The EMs have it: Proportional Media Queries FTW! by Lyza Gardner
Responsive IMGs Part 2 — In-depth Look at Techniques by Jason Grigsby
Multi-Device Layout Patterns by Luke Wroblewski
by Jason Weaver
Responsive Video Embeds with FitVids by Dave Rupert
RESS: Responsive Design + Server Side Components by Luke Wroblewski
RESS, Server-Side Feature-Detection and the Evolution of Responsive Web Design by Dave Olsen
June 19, 2012
Interacting Responsively (and Responsibly!)
AT AN EVENT APART Boston, “Scott Jehl discussed ways we can improve web performance by qualifying capabilities and being smart about how assets are loaded in browsers [and] shared a … new tools he helped create that can help address these issues.”
Enjoy Luke Wroblewski’s notes on Scott’s talk.
June 15, 2012
Divorce never sleeps
SO THE EX just moved to Manhattan’s most iconic private housing community. It is a large residential complex of oversized, renovated apartments set in an 80-acre private park. The sprawling collection of red brick buildings abuts the East River and the neighborhoods of Gramercy Park, the East Village, Alphabet City, and Kips Bay. It is a minute’s walk from anywhere you’d want to be on New York’s East Side. Yet it feels nothing like the grid-bound island of Manhattan. It is more like a dream suburb set in a manicured woodland.
I’ve been to the development twice since my ex moved there about a week ago. The first time I experienced a mild vertigo as I entered the maze of circling paths and identical red brick apartment towers. It was as if gravity itself could disappear without Manhattan’s rigid street grid.
The second visit was tonight. An early, handmade father’s day present and a quick goodnight kiss for my daughter before leaving on a business trip tomorrow. Then the girl got on her new bicycle — her first real bike, complete with training wheels — and the three of us began strolling the development’s safe, sprawling grounds. I noted fountains, a library, a huge green filled with picnicking families, a play center for young children, a study center for older children, and a basketball court before I stopped ticking off, and feeling slightly overwhelmed by, the development’s endless parade of private amenities.
“They’re going to put a coffee shop over there,” my ex said, pointing beyond a grove of hydrangeas.
Within a few minutes, we had run into one of Ava’s favorite school friends and her parents and were strolling with them while the girls biked in tandem, chased fireflies, and played tag with some younger kids. In my Manhattan, play dates must be arranged with the skill of a social director and the finesse of an event planner. Fail, and your kid has no one to play with that day. But this strange pocket of the city is like a small town: simply by going out the door of their apartment building, kids find each other and play in complete safety. No scheduling necessary. For adults, too, apparently, constant, pleasant social interactions are available simply by walking out your front door. No need for Foursquare, Twitter, or even a phone.
My ex introduced me to my daughter’s friend’s father. “This is a great place to raise kids,” he said — not knowing who I was, not realizing I was the father of the kid his kid was playing with, not knowing the lady his wife was talking to used to be my wife.
Divorce keeps breaking your heart.
You think you’re past it. You no longer sit bolt upright at 2:00 AM, asking yourself what you could have done to save the marriage. You no longer worry that your kid will become a junkie because her parents divorced. You no longer imagine the neighbors finding your dead, naked body in a room full of flies, cats, and pizza boxes. You no longer dread your lawyer’s call.
You enjoy your ex as a friend. You and she are equally committed to your child’s well-being, and that is all that matters. You take care of yourself, you’ve learned life lessons, you’re a better dad, a better man, a better worker than you were three years ago. Life is an adventure again.
And then, bang. Your kid is laughing ecstatically in a seemingly utopian environment you did not provide for her and you are not part of. The easy adult social interactions that are unfolding belong to your ex’s new life, not yours. You are watching your family move on without you, you are discovering all over again, as if for the first time, that your family has exploded, your wife does not love you, does not need you, the world goes on without you, this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife.
June 14, 2012
See me in New York today, in Boston next week
I AM EXCITED to participate this morning in Reasons To Be Creative, NYC, where I’ll give a talk on “The End of Web Design;” and at An Event Apart Boston starting Monday, where I’ll make the case for “Content First” in web design.
Reasons To Be Creative New York
June 14–15, 2012
An Event Apart Boston
June 18–20, 2012
June 13, 2012
Live today at 3PM Eastern: Readability naked and trembling on Big Web Show
LIVE TODAY AT 3:00 PM (technology willing), tune in to 5by5 live as I interview Rich Ziade, founder, hero, and villain behind the Readability reading platform, whose latest controversial move, announced earlier today, is to give $150,000 to charity.
I’ll ask Rich to answer charges that Readability crosses a line in the emerging orbital content space which other products in that space somehow have not crossed. I’ll also ask him to explain his vision for the platform, and tell us where it goes next. Got questions for Rich? Post them on Twitter using hashtag #askReadability.
After the live session, the interview will live on eternally as Episode 71 of The Big Web Show.
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Readability ends reader fee program, gives uncollected funds to accessibility and writing charities
TODAY MY FRIENDS at Arc 90 announced that, as of June 30, 2012, Readability will no longer accept reader fees. Further, they will donate any uncollected funds to charities that support reading and writing. They’ll start by donating $50,000 to 826 Valencia and another $50,000 to Knowbility.
Readability has taken a lot of flack, and been accused of all kinds of base motives. The truth is, these people did these things because they love writers, love reading, love the web, and believe content and readers have gotten a raw deal because of the way most websites are designed.
The need to maximize ad revenue accounts for many of those anti-reader decisions, and so the people behind Readability — who love writers and publishers — tried this experiment, seeking a better way to let readers pay for content.
Had it worked, it would have changed our industry for the better, and might have saved small publishers who are drowning in this environment. It didn’t work. Not this year, not at this time. Live and learn and move on.
I salute my friends at Readability for giving a damn about writers, readers, and content and for at least trying to think of a sustainable solution to the problem of who pays for content.
June 12, 2012
Build Books With CSS3; Design a Responsive Résumé
“WE ARE ALL PUBLISHERS,” claims Issue No. 353 of A List Apart for people who make websites. Design books with CSS3; craft a responsive web résumé.
Building Books with CSS3
by NELLIE MCKESSON
While historically, it’s been difficult at best to create print-quality PDF books from markup alone, CSS3 now brings us the Paged Media Module, which targets print book formatting. “Paged” media exists as finite pages, like books and magazines, rather than as long scrolling stretches of text, like most websites. With a single CSS stylesheet, publishers can take XHTML source content and turn it into a laid-out, print-ready PDF. You can take your XHTML source, bypass desktop page layout software like Adobe InDesign, and package it as an ePub file. It’s a lightweight and adaptable workflow, which gets you beautiful books faster. Nellie McKesson, eBook Operations Manager at O’Reilly Media, explains how to build books with CSS3.
A Case for Responsive Résumés
by ANDREW HOFFMAN
Grizzled job hunting veterans know too well that a sharp résumé and near-flawless interview may still leave you short of your dream job. Competition is fierce and never wanes. Finding new ways to distinguish yourself in today’s unforgiving economy is vital to a designer/developer’s survival. Happily, web standards whiz and mobile web developer Andrew Hoffman has come up with a dandy differentiator that is just perfect for A List Apart readers. Learn how to author a clean résumé in HTML5/CSS3 that scales well to different viewport sizes, is easy to update and maintain, and will never grow obsolete.
Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart.
