Tags: resources

57

Wednesday, May 1st, 2024

Tim Paul | Automation and the Jevons paradox

This is insightful:

AI and automation is often promoted as a way of handling complexity. But handling complexity isn’t the same as reducing it.

In fact, by getting better at handling complexity we’re increasing our tolerance for it. And if we become more tolerant of it we’re likely to see it grow, not shrink.

From that perspective, large language models are over-engineered bandaids. They might appear helpful at the surface-level but they’re never going to help tackle the underlying root causes.

Tuesday, February 27th, 2024

Gathering Structures

Really good advice from Maggie on running small community events:

No one else will organise the group you most want to be a part of. Whatever weird, specific things you enjoy – perhaps doing speed sudokus while smoking robusto cigars, or hosting a chemistry analysis session on sourdough bread techniques (I’m not judging either of these) – it’s worth trying to find the others. You are the most qualified person to create environments and experiences that you will personally enjoy, and in doing so you will attract people who like things that you also like. This is a decent way to make friends.

Tuesday, February 20th, 2024

A Global Documentation Platform - Piccalilli

I was chatting to Andy last week and he started ranting about the future of online documentation for web developers. “Write a blog post!” I said. So he did.

I think he’s right. We need a Wikimedia model for web docs. I’m not sure if MDN fits the bill anymore now that they’re deliberately spewing hallucinations back at web developers.

Saturday, February 17th, 2024

Creating Your Own Website

Building a website can seem difficult, but half the battle is just getting started! We wanted to put this guide together as an easy compilation of tutorials and places to learn exactly what you need to get started.

This is a really useful guide for beginners!

We hope this guide helps make everything feel more accessible to you, because it is! The internet belongs to all of us, so be sure to stake your claim in it.

Monday, October 16th, 2023

Practical Accessibility — Practical Accessibility for web designers and developers

This online course from Sara looks superb!

I know how overwhelming and even frustrating accessibility may feel at first. But I promise you, accessibility isn’t always as hard as it seems (especially if you know where and when to start!). And my goal with this course is to make it friendlier and more approachable.

Best of all, there’s $100 off if you sign up now—that’s a 25% saving.

Tuesday, September 12th, 2023

CSS { In Real Life } | Cool Tools

I knew of most of these front-end development tools (like Utopia, obviously), but some were new to me.

Wednesday, April 26th, 2023

WPDS - Accessibility | Resources

I didn’t know the Washington Post had a design system or that the system has this good section on accessibility.

Monday, April 17th, 2023

Accessibility for designer: where do I start? by Stéphanie Walter - UX Researcher & Designer.

Stéphanie has gathered a goldmine of goodies:

Articles, resources, checklists, tools, plugins and books to design accessible products

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023

Learn Privacy

Stuart has written this fantastic concise practical guide to privacy for developers and designers. A must-read!

  1. Use just the data you need
  2. Third parties
  3. Fingerprinting
  4. Encryption
  5. Best practices

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023

Learn HTML

This is a great step-by-step guide to HTML by Estelle.

Saturday, December 24th, 2022

12 Days of Web

All twelve are out, and all twelve are excellent deep dives into exciting web technologies landing in browsers now.

Thursday, December 1st, 2022

Links for Declarative Design

At the end of next week, I will sally forth to California. I’m going to wend my way to San Francisco where I will be speaking at An Event Apart.

I am very much looking forward to speaking at my first in-person AEAs in exactly three years. That was also in San Francisco, right before The Situation.

I hope to see you there. There are still tickets available.

I’ve put together a brand new talk that I’m very excited about. I’ve already written about the prep for this talk:

So while I’ve been feeling somewhat under the gun as I’ve been preparing this new talk for An Event Apart, I’ve also been feeling that the talk is just the culmination; a way of tying together some stuff I’ve been writing about it here for the past year or two.

The talk is called Declarative Design. Here’s the blurb:

Different browsers, different devices, different network speeds…designing for the web can feel like a never-ending battle for control. But what if the solution is to relinquish control? Instead of battling the unknowns, we can lean into them. In the world of programming, there’s the idea of declarative languages: describing what you want to achieve without specifying the exact steps to get there. In this talk, we’ll take this concept of declarative programming and apply it to designing for the web. Instead of focusing on controlling the outputs of the design process, we’ll look at creating the right inputs instead. Leave the final calculations for the outputs to the browser—that’s what computers are good at. We’ll look at CSS features, design systems, design principles, and more. Then you’ll be ready to embrace the fluid, ever-changing, glorious messiness of the World Wide Web!

If you’d a glimpse into the inside of my head while I’ve been preparing this talk, here’s a linkdump of various resources that are either mentioned in the talk or influenced it…

Declarative Design

HTML

CSS

Design Tools

Design systems

History

People

Wednesday, August 24th, 2022

Lean Web Club

New from Mr. Vanilla JS himself, Chris Ferdinandi:

A learning space for people who hate the complexity of modern web development.

It’ll be $29 a month or $299 a year (giving you two months worth for free).

Monday, January 3rd, 2022

Start at the beginning: the importance of learning the basics - localghost

I’d recommend going in the order HTML, CSS, JS. That way, you can build something in HTML, add CSS to it as you learn it, and finally soup it up with your new-found JS knowledge.

Excellent advice for anyone new to web develoment.

Once you start getting into interactive website territory, with API calls and fancy stuff, that’s where you need JavaScript (JS) knowledge. More specifically, vanilla JS: plain JS with no additional frameworks or plugins. The JS that your browser understands without having to do any pre-processing. It makes working with frameworks a whole lot easier, and it’ll help you to know when not to use a framework (and avoid making users download massive JS bundles when all you need is a tiny bit of code).

Saturday, October 2nd, 2021

Tiny Helpers

A very comprehensive collection of standalone little tools for web design and development—tools that do one thing.

Wednesday, May 19th, 2021

Learn CSS

This is a great (free!) course on learning CSS from the basics up. Nicely-pitched explanations with plenty of examples.

Thursday, April 1st, 2021

Library: Accessibility resources, guides, communities, and more

A very comprehensive directory of accessibility resources.

Monday, March 22nd, 2021

A Complete Guide To Accessible Front-End Components — Smashing Magazine

Vitaly has rounded up a whole load of accessibility posts. I think I’ve linked to most of them at some point, but it’s great to have them all gathered together in one place.

Thursday, August 20th, 2020

Service Workers | Go Make Things

Chris Ferdinandi blogs every day about the power of vanilla JavaScript. For over a week now, his daily posts have been about service workers. The cumulative result is this excellent collection of resources.

Saturday, May 23rd, 2020

Lightning-Fast Web Performance: an online lecture series from Scott Jehl

Scott is brilliant, therefore by the transitive property, his course on web performance must also be brilliant.