Blogging and all that Malarkey

I’ve always had a soft spot for the people at Smashing Magazine and I loved being at their Smashing Conference last September, so when they asked me if I’d like to be a part of their workshop programme, I didn’t hesitate to say “yes.” This coming June my wife and I will be heading back to beautiful Freiburg where I’ll host a ‘ CSS3 for Responsive Web Design’workshop.

Back in 2009, I took what I thought would be a trip of a lifetime to Japan to speak and host a workshop at Web Directions East. I spent a hectic few days in Tokyo then set off for a place I never thought I visit, Hiroshima. I’ll never forget standing, in tears in front of the A-Bomb dome, or visiting the shrines on Miyajima Island. I met new friends and went home with stories to tell.

If you listen to Unfinished Business, you’ll know that I’m a big, big fan of Hammer For Mac, the app its developers say lets you create HTML builds & templates quicker, more efficiently & more conveniently. Hammer works for us because these days we mostly deliver static HTML and CSS templates, instead of static visuals, and we rarely develop complete sites.

In this week’s episode of Unfinished Business, Anna and I talk about Anna’s new limited company, why she needed to set up a company and how she went about doing it. Andy moans about not understanding GitHub (again) and why developer tools often make him feel stupid. After hours, they talk about an episode of Anna’s favourite cartoon, Adventure Time. (I’d like to apologise for the scratchy audio in this week’s episode. It was entirely my fault. It’s a still a great show this week and I hope the audio quality does’t spoil it too much.)

Slides from Chris’ excellent talk on CSS3 layout modules at today’s Camp Digital in Manchester. He covered, Flexible Boxes, Multiple Columns and more.

This couldn’t have come at a better time (for me.)

In this week’s episode of Unfinished Business, Anna and I talk about the benefits Stuff and Nonsense gained when we ditched daily rates and fixed project pricing and switched to estimating, working and billing in weekly patterns. I explain how agile methods can benefit designers and clients, even though I don’t really know the difference between agile and scrum. After hours, we talk about our movie of the week, Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol 2. This episode is sponsored by Typecast; quickly style type in the browser and check for readability, rendering and beauty as you work. Two of Five Simple Steps’ business related books: Web App Success and Managing Web Projects. Use the offer code UNFINISHEDBIZ30 for 30% off for an additional week.

So you’ll forgive me if I feel a certain sense of vindication now that everyone is finally doing what I’ve been banging on about for years. Jeremy is like John The Baptist, except with dry trousers. Follow the links to some of his older posts too. I like this in particular: Arguing about 640, 800 or 1024 pixels is like arguing about whether Pepsi tastes better than Coke when really, a nice glass of water would be much more refreshing. The numbers game is a red herring. A big fixed-width red herring. From August 2005. 2005 2. 0. 0. 5. Five!

For anyone who read my I don’t care about Responsive Web Design (from two years ago) and missed the original reference (from almost ten years ago) and therefore the point I was trying to make; that responsiveness should be something we build in, not bolt on.

Cennydd Bowles thinks: Users used to tap phones and click mice. But the latest high-end devices combine the two, and it’s now highly likely your interface needs to be designed with both touch and mouse/trackpad in mind. So, unless I’m sure only one applies, I’ve stopped saying “click” and “tap”. Instead, I say “select.’ That’s smart thinking, but I’m not convinced “select.’ is the right word either. I can’t imagine talking an ‘average“ person through an interface and saying “Now ‘select’ the Submit button to buy (those ape action figures).’” That’s why I’m going with “press.’ because whether on an input type is physical or virtual, keyboard, d-pad button, trackpad or mouse, that’s what people do.