Tuesday is Link Day

Business, teamwork and marketing

Interesting article about assessing developer (and designer, I guess) performance: https://medium.com/javascript-scene/assessing-employee-performance-1a8bdee45c1a

There’s a new version of the web developers SEO cheat sheet: https://moz.com/blog/seo-cheat-sheet

Working with other: the sliding scale of giving a f**k (language warning): http://bit.ly/1Gn8XKc

Seth Godin on making faster decisions: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/05/how-to-go-faster.html

Beware of calendars: https://medium.com/@monteiro/the-chokehold-of-calendars-f70bb9221b36

“Writing for the web with style and purpose”: http://www.nicelysaid.co/

Voice and tone – writing email newsletters (and more): http://voiceandtone.com/

Performance

The big news over the last couple of weeks has been Facebook Instant Articles, which FB have been touting as the answer to – get this – slow websites. Lots of articles about this news.

Facebook has made performance a high priority for the entire web: http://alistapart.com/column/instant-web

There needs to be a cultural change (Jeremy Keith): https://adactio.com/journal/8956

Tim Kadlec: performance is a cultural problem: http://timkadlec.com/2015/05/choosing-performance/

Facebook and the media: united, they attack the web: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/media-websites-vs-facebook/ (fantastic article)

Thoughts on the business motivations behind Facebook Instant Articles: http://www.theawl.com/2015/05/what-could-go-wrong

Other performance articles

Parts 1 and 2 of a 3 part series on page weight:

1 – understanding page weight: http://mobiforge.com/research-analysis/understanding-web-page-weight

2 – measuring page weight: http://mobiforge.com/design-development/measuring-page-weight

Very detailed case study of a performance rewrite for Base Creative: http://jaicab.com/2015/05/18/making-a-difference-with-performance/

Mobile first – perhaps the PC is the limiting factor in web tech: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/5/14/mobile-first

Who initiates images downloads in IE? http://bigqueri.es/t/who-initiates-image-downloads/568

Animation performance tips: https://ada.is/blog/2015/04/26/animation-perf/

Accessibility

Practical ARIA examples: http://heydonworks.com/practical_aria_examples/

Accessibility resources: http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2015/05/accessibility/accessibility-resources

21st May was Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Videos of the talks given will soon be available at http://www.inclusivedesign24.org/

Design and UX

The 10 commandments of good web form design: http://mono.company/journal/design-practice/the-10-commandments-of-good-form-design-on-the-web/

One from the archives: applying good design principles to the humble airline boarding pass: http://petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the-airline-boarding-pass/

“Hamburger” menus mystify most people (BBC): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31602745

Hamburger wars, a presentation by Michael Ryan: http://www.slideshare.net/ryaninteractive/hamburger-wars-5-2015

Brad Frost’s call-to-arms: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/perform/

Fantastic article about why design is everyone’s responsibility: http://www.uie.com/articles/designing_without_a_designer/ (remember: design is not just how it looks, but how it works)

Sometimes we need to slow users down a bit: http://alistapart.com/article/meta-moments-thoughtfulness-by-design

Gerry McGovern say it like it is: http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/if-you-love-customer-your-organization-will-hate-you

UX is UI: https://medium.com/@mikeatherton/ux-is-ui-105460807734

Conducting an interface inventory: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/conducting-an-interface-inventory/

Using Consistency To Improve The User Experience Across Desktop And Mobile : http://usabilitygeek.com/using-consistency-to-improve-the-user-experience-across-desktop-and-mobile/

Functional animations in UX design: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/05/14/functional-ux-design-animations/

Code For America style guide (love the musical note values for layout): https://style.codeforamerica.org/

Progressive enhancement

Myth-busting progressive enhancement: http://www.sitepoint.com/javascript-dependency-backlash-myth-busting-progressive-enhancement/

Progressive enhancement for non-online experiences, in this example an airport: http://christianheilmann.com/2015/05/24/the-ryanair-approach-to-progressive-enhancement/

The true cost of progressive enhancement: https://medium.com/@AaronGustafson/the-true-cost-of-progressive-enhancement-d395b6502979

Jeremy Keith (my hero) hits the nail on the head with regard to browser support: https://adactio.com/journal/8982

Development

Solved by Flexbox – examples using Flexbox to implement tricky common layouts: https://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by-flexbox/

10 principles for effective front-end development by Harry Roberts: http://www.thedotpost.com/2014/11/harry-roberts-10-principles-for-effective-frontend-development

JavaScript for Cats: http://jsforcats.com/ If a cat can learn JavaScript then so can you.

Also: Good (re)introduction to JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/A_re-introduction_to_JavaScript

I’ve only just heard of this comic, but it’s a goodie: http://notinventedhe.re/on/2015-5-19

Thoughts on migrating to a microservices architecture: http://boringgeek.com/thoughts-on-migrating-to-a-microservices-architecture/

“Browserhacks is an extensive list of browser specific CSS and JavaScript hacks”: http://browserhacks.com/

Christian Heilmann (from Microsoft) video presentation about using the latest JavaScript features without breaking everything: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/WebPlatformSummit/2015/Advancing-JavaScript-without-breaking-the-web

This is so true; curiosity is a highly-important part of being a good developer: http://boyd.multerer.com/posts/2015/05/curious_programmer

A developer at Twitter talks about technical debt: https://phuu.net/2015/05/12/technical-debt.html

Free ebooks from Microsoft: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ebooks

An introduction to graphical effects in CSS: http://blogs.adobe.com/dreamweaver/2015/04/an-introduction-to-graphical-effects-in-css.html

PPK lights a fire under web developers’ current obsession with tools: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/05/tools_dont_solv.html

Testing

I’m not sure of the usefulness of this, but the idea is good: http://mobilewebtest.eu/

Guide to online research and testing tools: http://boxesandarrows.com/your-guide-to-online-research-and-testing-tools/

In other news

A Qualitative Study of Internet Non-Use in Great Britain and Sweden (PDF) : http://spir.aoir.org/index.php/spir/article/download/10/pdf

Remember the 5K competition? I do, and it was 15 years ago! Sheesh, I’m old… http://alistapart.com/blog/post/fifteen-years-ago-in-ala-much-ado-about-5k

Fantastic guide to the WWW from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z2nbgk7

Incognitube: the least watched YouTube videos: http://www.incognitube.com/