css
What do I need to read to be great at CSS?
100 Bytes of CSS to look great everywhere
Changing Our Development Mindset
So many little design helper sites!
Whostyles
A Definition by Kicks CondorThe 'whostyle' is a way of styling syndicated hypertext from other writers. This could be a quoted excerpt or a complete article. A feed reader could use a 'whostyle' to show a post without stripping all of its layout.
This page is a truly naked, brutalist html quine
An Article by Leon BambrickI decided to make a truly naked, brutalist html page, that is itself a quine. And this page is it.
Viewing the source of this page should reveal a page identical to the page you are now seeing. Nothing is hidden. It's a true "What you see is what you get."
this vs. that
A Website by Phuoc NguyenAn Interactive Guide to CSS Transitions
A Reference Work by Josh W. ComeauIn this tutorial, we'll dig in and learn a bit more about CSS transitions, and how we can use them to create lush, polished animations.
CSS at the Intersection
A TalkThroughout the talk I discuss the mental models we construct in tech, the cognitive dissonance we experience when confronted with new ideas, specifically about CSS.
We know CSS has a separate mental model because we keep hearing the same debate rage on: “Is CSS broken or awesome?” This talk is about enabling teams to communicate and accommodate these different mental models. I share examples of effective tools, and how they change the way designers and developers interact.
The Great Divide
An Article by Chris CoyierOn one side, an army of developers whose interests, responsibilities, and skill sets are heavily revolved around JavaScript.
On the other, an army of developers whose interests, responsibilities, and skill sets are focused on other areas of the front end, like HTML, CSS, design, interaction, patterns, accessibility, etc.
Craft and Material in Digital Design
A little bit more about the stone
In the documentary Rivers and Tides, artist Andy Goldsworthy repeatedly struggles to stack stones into a sculptural cairn. Over and over the stones fall. Each time, Andy’s sculpture stands a little taller before the moment of failure. At a penultimate moment in the episode, the ever-patient Goldsworthy begins to look exasperated. He’s just staring at the rocks scattered on the ground, studying them intently. A curious passerby has watched him fail a few times, and Andy tells the man, “Every time, I learn a little bit more about the stone. I’m learning how it works.”
It is how we come to understand our medium
There is such a unique quality to experiential learning, through direct experience with a material. It cannot be substituted through lectures or books. It must be felt. It must be earned through time well spent, through making and failing and re-making. It is how we come to understand our medium.
If you’re a digital designer who doesn’t understand basic principles of computer science, or has never written a bit of code, or has never built a website, what are you doing? What can you say about the material you shape?
The idea that designers in the information age shouldn’t waste their time with this skill baffles me. It is woefully misguided advice.
A digital designer who has not learned the nature of their medium is a designer unprepared to argue for their vision. This is a designer who is unable to push back against the criticism of skeptical engineers. This is a designer who risks offering opinions instead of solutions.
If you are crafting experiences in the digital space, you should know what’s required to implement your ideas. You should try implementing it yourself, (if only to build empathy with your developers!)