“I want ________ to be as simple as my iPod/iPhone.” I’ve said this about lots of things: my car’s dashboard, my washer & dryer, and yes, my thermostat. Meet Nest, a learning thermostat launched by a team lead by Tony Fadell, who also lead the iPod & early iPhone teams at Apple. I just may pre-order one and test it out here in the office.
Video made responsive / fluid thanks to FitVids.js
I wish there were more conferences like Brooklyn Beta, or more accurately, I wish there were more conference organizers like Cameron Koczon and Chris Shiflett. I’d like to think I know how to be kind and hospitable to a few people at a time, but these fellas have mastered the art of making 250+ attendees not just welcomed, but truly valued. This was reflected in every aspect of the conference: the way they built the schedule, the way they conducted themselves, the way they set the stage, even in the name tags.
This wondrous artifact did more than identify who I was, it provided a backstory, though that backstory wasn’t written by me. Rather than using Twitter bios, Cameron and Chris took to handcrafting bios for people they knew well and for people they’ve only ever interacted with online. This process was neither quick or automated, but it made attendees feel like they belonged which, I’d argue, is the best feeling one can have at the beginning of a conference. It set the stage for a fantastic week, and though that week is over I believe we’ll begin to see its true value as relationships and ideas initiated at that conference grow.
Also, I gave a brief talk on longevity that focused on the hazards of sitting in one spot all day. My random collection of research links can be found over at Gimme Bar.
Gene Crawford from UnmatchedStyle asked Paravel to design a page for this year’s CSS Off competition. Over 5,000 front-end developers have entered to show off their skills by taking a PSD we designed and coding it out. Entries will be judged and prizes will be awarded. Awesome!
After a morning of team planning and intensive YouTube research, we settled on building a page for a fictitious gameshow on the Knuckleodeon Network called Triple Dare. Reagan put together some fantastic illustrations, and I designed them into a layout that I hope leaves lots of room for code-out interpretation. There are quite a few places where interesting animations, transitions, transforms, and interactions could be built in. Heck, this thing could also be built responsibly... I mean responsively... I mean both ;)
Be sure to read Reagan’s post to get the low down on his illustration process. We’re all very excited to see what people come up with. Happy front-ending!
I was driving through Bastrop, TX, with the family on Sunday and decided to pull over to see the devastation caused by the Central Texas wildfires firsthand. The scene in Bastrop was similar to what I’d seen closer to home with the Spicewood fires: scorched acres as far as the eye could see.
If you’d like to help, check out txwildfirerelief.org or grab a a t-shirt from centraltxfires.org. 100% of the proceeds go to help (FAQs), and they’ve got some fantastic designs.
This extended drought has me concerned about the future out here. It’s amazing how small climate shifts can have such a massive impact. I found this video (via The Butler Bros) both interesting and alarming. Check it out.
Video made responsive / fluid thanks to FitVids.js
After reading this Fontdeck Blog post a few of weeks ago, I dropped an exciting new CSS property into the stylesheet for this blog. Wanting to test hyphenation on all my posts and pages, I applied CSS hyphenation to all paragraphs:
p {
-webkit-hyphens: auto;
-moz-hyphens: auto;
hyphens: auto;
}
During a day or so of road testing I noticed some pretty funky widows, so I fine-tuned my stylesheet to only target narrow columns, like the ones on my info page, which is a scenario where CSS hyphenation really comes in handy. Overall, I’m not sure what to think about fluid columns and widows—they’re bound to show up at varying widths. I try to avoid them at my defined max-width, but have plans to test the wp-Typography plugin in a responsive setting once we perform some server upgrades for the blog (taking our old Media Temple DV from php 4 to 5). I’ll be sure to report back when we get there.
Update (9/21/11): I’m happily using the wp-Typography plugin to prevent widows now that our servers have been upgraded. Things seem to be reflowing smoothly in my responsive layout. This plugin has loads of features, hyphenation, spacing control, character replacement, etc., that I’ll be experimenting with further soon.
I eagerly backed this Kickstarter project from Matt Griffin and Matt Braun a few months back and was thrilled to see that funding was successful. They’ve been hard at work, providing updates on acquisitions and process along the way. Now, Wood Type Revival is live and fonts are available for purchase!
I started by grabbing Gothic Open Shaded and French Clarendon Ornamented, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist getting all of the fonts they release. I’m delighted to see this come to fruition—a testament to the power of Kickstarter, our community, and a damn fine idea.
