‘The “P” in Progressive Enhancement stands for “Pragmatism” - Andy Bell’
“Product Team Mistakes, Part 2: Selecting, Estimating, and Prioritizing Features — Users Know”
Boy, do I relate to this. I’ve either been a part of or been subjected to all of these mistakes at some point in my career.
“Patterns for Practical CSS Custom Properties Use - CSS-Tricks”
“Drive Innovative Designs Using Experience Visions - Jared M. Spool - Medium”
Everything you need to know about circles in CSS.
“Burnout - a long recovery - Andy Bell”
I know from personal experience that recovery from burnout can take a long long time.
“Mark Bernstein: Hypertext And The Age Of Trump”
Starting to look more and more like I’ll have to buy his book.
‘Capturing Luck with “or” instead of “and”’
“The general rule is optionality is strength. When there are lots of ways for things to go right, that is a strong position even if you haven’t actualized one of those ways.”
“Tech issues: The myth of inevitable technological progress - Vox”
“But the “natural evolution of technology” was never a thing to begin with, and it’s time to question what “progress” actually means.”
When the right hand shoots the foot, the left hand blames the opposition
It’s really odd to see people on the Chrome team come out so hard against Apple’s WebKit policies when their rationale is that apps are killing the web.
Google makes the OS for 90% of phones shipped. And 100% of the phones that aren’t fast enough to run modern web apps are Android. iPhones generally have enough cache space and speed to run modern web apps, even if the APIs are lacking. It’s low end Android phones that are generally locked out of using most web apps and force people to use native apps.
Android apps are killing the web, not iOS apps. But Apple’s iOS policies directly threaten Google’s business model so Apple gets blamed for the decline.
Another way to look at it: if Apple reversed its iOS policies and let Google ship a full Chrome on iOS, the trend towards native apps and away from web apps would not be affected in any way.
There is no magic API that will make the web stop sucking on low-end devices (or even mid-range devices in many cases).
“Why I Decided to Revise Just Enough Research - Mule Design Studio - Medium”
The first edition was one of the most useful software/product development books I’ve read. The second edition is a must-buy.
“Getting formatted months with vanilla JS - Go Make Things”
This is clever.
“The Intuitive and the Unlearnable - Christina Wodtke - Medium”
“Design something that is consistent with your customer’s world, not your company’s worldview.”
“Then test, test with a new use case, and redesign not NOT patch with a label, and test again.”
“On Google Reader – Jorge Arango”
“So I’m mostly not lamenting the loss of Google Reader’s functionality. Instead, I miss what Google Reader represented: a major technology company supporting a truly decentralized publishing platform.”
“Smoother & sharper shadows with layered box-shadows - Tobias Ahlin”
Clayton Christensen’s Disruption Theory is being re-evaluated again (which is good)
“Disruption Theory is Real, but Wrong – alexdanco.com”
This is a decent overview of Clay Christensen’s theories and an accurate take on its strengths and weaknesses. The ecosystem angle is a solid one.
Personally, I find that the biggest flaw in disruption theory is that it assumes that all of these disrupted companies were well run. Which is, I’m certain, a fairly unsafe bet, all things considered as modern management runs mostly on superstition and hearsay.
“Skip level meetings: What they are, and exactly how to run them - Know Your Team - Blog”
These are essential in almost all organisations. It’s incredibly easy for a boss to become insulated from the dysfunctions of their company until it’s too late.