Welcome to This Week on the Front End, our weekly roundup of news from the world of the front-end web.
You can check out the other editions under the frontendnews tag, and don’t forget to check out our weekly JavaScript and .Net roundups too!
News and Views
Christian Cantrell discusses why cross-platform literacy matters, offering a useful overview of how you can keep up to speed with the experiences of your end users.
Dreamweaver now includes the ability to test your layouts on your mobile devices. (I didn’t time the video, but it looks like it takes about 3 years to set up, though—and a degree.)
If you are jilted by a friend, how many times will you forgive and forget? After years of IE disappointments, Microsoft makes a renewed bid for your trust by outlining the advantages of Edge.
They haven’t found a way to get the bullet back in the gun yet, but Google has worked out how to recall that email you wish you hadn’t sent. [If that link goes to a paywall for you, try this one instead—thanks @Erik_J in the comments.]
In Brief
- Learnable has launched a new series of cool screencasts, so if all this reading is getting to you, sit back and be entertained!
- Looks like Google is about to launch a competitor to GitHub … presumably because of the successes they’ve had with other undertakings like Google+ …
- Apparently, it’s hard to buy concert tickets online. Huh, who’d have guessed?
- Facebook will soon be able to identify you via non-facial body parts, according to Ars.
CSS
Here’s a really great solution to adding footnotes to your content, by Hugo Giraudel. Yeah, footnotes. You young people wouldn’t understand.
SitePoint has launched its ultimate guide to Sass … for those of you who are too cool to write CSS the way nature intended.
Still looking for in intro to flexbox that doesn’t make steam come out of your ears? Try this very approachable YouTube video, by Wes Bos.
CSS Grid layouts aren’t quite ready for prime time, but that hasn’t stopped Rachel Andrew from getting down and dirty in the gutter.
Here are some cool things you can (but probably shouldn’t) do with checkboxes.
Here’s a nice demo by Chris Coyier of how flexbox (the last item) can be used to align items nicely. (Shrink and widen your browser to see the effect, and here’s the article about it):
JavaScript
There are some great, modern slider scripts competing with each other these days. (Yeah, some marketing departments still insist on these things!) Owl Carousel is one of the better ones, and it’s just jumped to version 2.
You know all that junk stored in your basement, closets and so on? Well, now you can store more stuff in your browser, with JS and local storage! Here are some handy JS scripts that enhance what you can do with the Local Storage API.
HTML
Here’s a nice YouTube video showing the process a browser goes through to “paint” a web page to the screen.
There’s growing interest in web page performance, and there are great tools out there like WebpageTest to help test performance. Here’s a nice introduction to the WebpageTest Filmstrip, one of its handiest features.
Design
Here’s a useful guide to effective navigation design, 2015 style. (Yeah, even navigation has fashions.)
Why should developers get to have all the cool skill set descriptions? What is a full-stack designer, and should you be one?.
Julie Zhuo offers some interesting views on some of the principles behind good design. (Establishing these principles isn’t as easy as it might sound.)
In the spirit of Material Design’s minimalist philosophy, we’ve reduced Material Design links this week to the minimum. That is, zero.
Content
I could be wrong, but I think you might like this! It’s an article about 7 Ways to Use the Power of Powerless Communication. (I’m really sorry if you feel I’ve wasted your time recommending this, though! Apologies in advance! I certainly meant well! )
Accessibility
Apparently, it’s OK for accessibility to nest inputs in labels. That’s not to say you should do it, though.
It’s easy to forget things like designing for color blindness, so here’s a useful reminder of the issues involved.
Video
Here are some free cover videos that you definitely shouldn’t use on your next project.
##SVG
If you are keen to try SVG on your site but don’t know where to start, here’s a really nice site that takes you by the hand.
The Coolness
I hate clever people. That’s all I have to say:
http://codepen.io/pixelass/pen/mJBGeK
If you have any links you’d like me to put in the next edition, please just message me [and have a chat with the dog, too, as he gets lonely].
If you enjoyed any of these articles, or if they got you thinking, tell us about it below. Otherwise it gets lonely in here!