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  Stop obsessing over HTML5 and CSS3

As web designers, we all seem obsessed by HTML5 and CSS3 at the moment. Endless posts, tutorials and discussion about them dominate the blogosphere. But how much are we learning that can be applied today? Don’t get me wrong. We all need to understand HTML5 and CSS3. And a lot of it can be used today. My point is that we seem to be spending a disproportionate about of time reading up on the subject when so many other areas deserve our attention. While others are reading yet another tut...

   Clients, Opinion, Web Designers     2011-06-24 00:55:06

  8 Things To Love & Hate About Outsourcing Employees

What is the dirtiest word in business? Chances are that the word ‘outsourcing’ comes to mind. Many Americans despise it, many business owners shy away from it and many entrepreneurs depend on it. Regardless of what side of the issue you are on, it is important to know that it exists and will continue to exist. Why? Because there are a lot of things to love about outsourcing.As a business owner and tech entrepreneur who exists in a hyper-competitive market, I have used outsourcing to...

   Employee,Outsourcing,Merits,Disadvantage     2011-11-12 10:16:13

  Info -> Design -> Build

First who we are: account managers and business developers at web design agencies. This process is geared towards bigger agencies, however it can be applied to freelance and smaller shops in theory.The important piecesWeb design projects tend to be unique in nature, however it is important to have a basic process that can be applied in most cases. This process is executed in a linear fashion starting with information and ending in code, but requires iteration loops at each step.Information ...

   Webdesign,Content,Info,Design,Build,Process     2011-11-13 08:25:21

  The seven rules of Unobtrusive JavaScript

I've found the following rules over the years developing, teaching and implementing JavaScript in an unobtrusive manner. They have specifically been the outline of a workshop on unobtrusive JavaScript for the Paris Web conference 2007 in Paris, France. I hope that they help you understand a bit why it is a good idea to plan and execute your JavaScript in this way. It has helped me deliver products faster, with much higher quality and a lot easier maintenance. 1. Do no...

   JavaScript,Feature,Tips     2012-01-18 08:21:39

  #46 – Why software sucks

No one makes bad software on purpose. No benevolent programmer has ever sat down, planning out weeks of work, with the intention of frustrating people and making them cry. Bad software, or bad anything, happens because making things is hard, making good things doubly so. The three things that make it difficult are: Possessing the diverse skills needed not to suck.Understanding who you’re making the thing for.Orchestrating the interplay of skills, egos and constraints over the course of...

   Software design,Sucks,Software industry     2012-03-19 13:10:37

  10 rules of PHP-masters

1. Use PHP only when it is necessary – Rasmus Lerdorf There is no better source than the creator of PHP, to learn what he can do. Rasmus Lerdorf created PHP in 1995. Since then, the language has spread like a wildfire rate in the developer community, incidentally changing the face of the Internet. However, Rasmus did not create PHP with these intentions. PHP was created for the needs of web development. As is the case with many other projects wi...

   PHP,Master,Experience,Advice     2011-12-16 09:38:07

  Stop Designing Pages And Start Designing Flows

For designers, it’s easy to jump right into the design phase of a website before giving the user experience the consideration it deserves. Too often, we prematurely turn our focus to page design and information architecture, when we should focus on the user flows that need to be supported by our designs. It’s time to make the user flows a bigger priority in our design process. Design flows that are tied to clear objectives allow us to create a ...

   Web design,Paradigm,Advice,User experience,Flow     2012-01-05 08:16:18

  A brief guide to tech internships

Planning to be an Intern in the Bay Area during Summer 2012? Make sure to read an Intern's Guide to the Bay Area, and join the 2012 Facebook group.  (via this guy, via this guy) Joel Spolsky, from the Joel On Software blog and StackOverflow, wrote an article with Advice for Computer Science College Students back in '05. According to Joel,  No matter what you do, get a good summer internship. As such: here’s everything you ever wanted to know about tech inter...

   Internship,Advice,CS student     2012-02-01 04:48:31

  Will We Need Teachers Or Algorithms?

Editor’s note: This is Part III of a guest post written by legendary Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures. In Part I, he laid the groundwork by describing how artificial intelligence is a combination of human and computer capabilities In Part II, he discussed how software and mobile technologies can augment and even replace doctors. Now, in Part III, he talks about how technology will sweep through education. In my last post, I ...

   Teacher,Algorithm,Development     2012-01-16 10:17:45

  Making Sites Shine with @font-face

Like many of my web designer brethren, I’m a bit of a typographic geek. And like many web designers, I’ve been frustrated (to say the least) about the historical state of web typography.At first, we were limited to a common, but very small set of “web safe” fonts. Anything beyond those fonts, we had to rely on images. Images for text not only meant we had to create and maintain dozens (if not hundreds) of images, but it introduced accessibility issue...

   HTML,Font face,Font family,Demo,Example     2011-08-19 08:16:29