Category: Links of Interest

1. Starting a Refactor with CSS Dig
2. Accessibility Wins
3. the origin of the <blink> tag
4. HTML Special Symbols
   There are lotsa advanced enities out there…
5. Introducing the IE Diagnostics Adapter for third party developer tools
   Wait, you can use Chrome Dev Tools on IE??? Mind blown.
6. BEM 101
7. Browser representatives on CSS [selector] performance
   In case you were still concerned, no, css selectors are rarely a performance issue.
8. Should designers learn to code?
   Good question. “Yes!” (says the developer). Seriously though, there are good arguments for both sides.
9. 7 Ways to Optimize Jenkins
   For those CI folks…
10. What is the WebP Image Format (And Why Does It Matter)?
11. WordPress to be bundled in Jetpack with mission to power 50% of the web
12. Loading CSS without blocking render
    criticalCSS has been my solution. Check out the articles I wrote in the last week about it.
13. FOUT, FOIT, FOFT
    Argh, FOUT. So annoying to deal with.
14. Using CDNs, Compression, and Minification to Speed Up WordPress
    Speed.
15. ARIA Bones: Simplifying WAI-ARIA
16. Tips & Resources for Enhanced Checkout Forms
17. How to Test for Internet Explorer on Android, iOS, and Mac OS X
18. iPhone Killer: The Secret History of the Apple Watch | WIRED
19. Command Line Power User
    zsh is awesome and really useful if you are in the command line at all.
20. WordPress Functionality Plugins
    Yes. Yes! Everybody should be doing this.
21. Theming Form Elements with Sass
22. Let Links Be Links
23. Using HHVM With WordPress
    At WordCamp Atlanta this last weekend, Nic Rosental talked about different stack configurations. a few of his stacks used HHVM and it seems to really blow other php options out of the water. Worth looking into.
24. DevTools: State Of The Union 2015
    Addy Osmani talks DevTools.
25. A closer look at Project Spartan, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer killer
26. “Project Spartan” in the Windows Technical Preview build 10049
    We can start to use Spartan (if you have a preview installed).
27. Server Side Mustard Cut
    Clever way of speeding up Mustard Cutting.
28. How to Separate the Good WordPress Hosts from the Bad
29. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Bytes
30. Loaders.css
    Some great loading animations.
31. Primer by GitHub
    GitHub’s little Bootstrap.
32. Building Better Interfaces with SVG by Sara Soueidan
    Great slides on why you should use SVG’s over other technologies.
33. Die PNG. Die! How to use vector icons in your apps.
    I’m all-in on SVG when possible. No repsonsive images and generally lighter-weight.
34. JavaScript World Domination
35. Microsoft Q&A on the SitePoint Forums
36. NHL GameCenter Live is Steadily Getting Worse – Winging It In Motown
    Normal users complaining about the UX of a web app known as NHL GameCenter Live. As an nhl fan, I can understand these complaints.
37. Use the Right Web Performance Tools for the Job

More great links for this week. I’m off to WordCamp Atlanta 2015 today! If you happen to be going, let’s meet up! Hit me up on Twitter.

1. Top skills for front-end web developer
   This is a really great plan to learn Front-End Development. And all these courses are free!
2. Should Our Agile Team Use Scrum or Kanban?
   Gotta be honest, I didn’t know what Kanban was until this article.
3. First Click: the great Mac vs. PC touchscreen debate
   This still hasn’t really played out. Touch/mouse devices are a pain for us to design for, but its the world we live in.
4. How to stand (at your desk)
   I’ve been thinking of a standing desk as I’ll be in the market for a new desk.
5. 4 simple ways to design killer call to action buttons
6. ▶ Made By: Chris Coyier (CodePen) – YouTube
   Another great video from Envato on Chris Coyier
7. ▶ Made By: Dan Cederholm (Dribbble) – YouTube
   Dan talks Dribbble
8. » Common Patterns in Styleguides, Boilerplates and Pattern Libraries Cloud Four Blog
9. Building a Custom Right-Click (Context) Menu with JavaScript
10. danielguillan/bem-constructor
    A way to keep your BEM naming conventions in check.
11. Google Chrome Reverses Course- Will Implement Pointer Events
12. Numeric Inputs – A Comparison of Browser Defaults
    A bit of an inconsistent mess.
13. jonathantneal/sanitize.css · GitHub
    Interesting CSS reset. Doesn’t seem to touch margin/padding stuff, just weird browser buggy-type stuff.
14. 14 Top Calendar and Date Picker jQuery Plugins
    The days of loading all of JqueryUI are over.
15. Microsoft relegates Internet Explorer to a “legacy engine” to make way for new browser
16. How to replace remote files with local files when debugging
    I’ve used this before and it works pretty well if you aren’t compiling anything like scss/js. There are some pitfalls with files getting overwritten but overall making css tweaking a lot easier.
17. HTTP/2 for a Faster Web | Cascading Media
    More on HTTP/2
18. The Noun Project for Mac
    Whoa! Pretty cool.
19. Microsoft is learning from its mistakes for its Internet Explorer successor | The Verge
20. People Are Already Downloading Project Spartan
21. WordPress Migrations Made Easy
    I us WPMigrateDB Pro for WordPress to WordPress, but there are some good tools in here for other CMS’s to WordPress.
22. Treat Web Performance Issues Like Software Bugs
23. Introduction to WordPress Front End Security: Escaping the Things
24. Introducing Flexbox Fridays by Lincoln Loop on CodePen
25. Chromium Blog: New JavaScript techniques for rapid page loads
26. Power Chrome
    Some shortcuts for Chrome users.
27. Nginx Guide: Introduction
    I’m all in on nginx because it’s fast, but it takes a little more care to setup initially.
28. Announcing Enterprise Site Discovery support on IE8, IE9, IE10 and new privacy enhancements
    More info on IE retirement (or lack thereof)
29. Infographic: Sketch vs Photoshop
    Sketch seems to be getting more and more popular.

I just subscribed to a handful of performance blogs today, so there will be a bit of an influx on performance this week. Cheers!

1. Google PageSpeed Double Loading: A Third Party Blind Spot
2. How to Prevent Third Parties from Dragging Down Your Web Performance
   Third Party scripts are a pain in the butt to get working quickly.
3. Is There a DNS Doctor in the House?
4. Case Study: WordPress Theme Optimization
5. Matt Griffin on How We Work: Readable Wearables
6. Probably Use initial-scale=1
   Good call, Chris.
7. Why Make Websites Accessible?
8. Some More Inspiration for Text Input Effects
9. How to Write Great Web Development Articles and Tutorials
10. 6 Node.js Static Site Generators
11. Rendering engine updates in March for the Windows 10 Technical Preview
    More improvements to Project Sparten
12. Microsoft delivers new Windows 10 preview without Spartan browser
    Boo
13. The Path to Performance // Speaker Deck
14. Skala Color 2: A More Functional and Beautiful Color Picker for OS X
    If you’ve used the OS X color picker, you’ll know that getting hex and rgba values is not easy.
15. Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand
16. Microsoft reveals how it will make money giving away software
17. Strategies for Staying on Top of Web Performance
18. Introduction to fetch()
    XHR with promises!
19. CSS Contact Form
20. Break Up With IE8
    Sooper funny
21. Enhancing Responsiveness with Flexbox presentation at RWD Summit
22. 6 Strategies for Freelancers to Take on Creative Agencies

1. What is Apple’s software problem?
2. grunt-respimg
   A responsive image workflow for optimizing and resizing your images.
3. js;dr = JavaScript required; Didn’t Read. Pages that are empty without JS: dead to history (archive-org), unreliable for search results (despite any search engine claims of JS support, check it yourself), and thus ignorable. No need to waste time readin
4. When IE gave us beautiful, fast touch interactions, and nobody cared.
5. Update to “How to Print a LinkedIn Profile as a Resume” Bookmarklet. Finally…
6. Chris Coyier AMA on Designer News
7. Push Notifications on the Open Web
8. How to Improve Your Workflow With BrowserSync 2.0
9. Understanding CSS Grid Systems from the Ground Up
10. Better modern input type detection
11. Getting started with Grunt
12. Inlining critical CSS for first-time visits
    Critical.css is awesome!
13. Improving Responsive Images with the Picture Element
14. How to get started with CSS Shapes
    CSS Shapes are really cool! Browser support is still thin, but that will hopefully change.
15. Apple Watch mockups
16. Flipside
    Animated button
17. SVG devices
    Some lightweight SVG’s to wrap around your screenshots.
18. Side Effects in CSS
19. A Simple Guide to the WordPress Quicktags API
20. WordPress 4.2 Beta 1
    We get a glimpse of what 4.2 looks like.
21. 2015 Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team
    Off topic but pretty funny if you ever knew a hockey player in high school.
22. Moving to HTTPS on WordPress
    Someday I’ll do this on all my sites.
23. Hands-on with Vivaldi, the new Web browser for power users
24. 5 rules for choosing the perfect web typeface