Published
Weekend Reading – The Creative Process
The creative process explained
Design Objective
§ Payment Info is a single form field for collecting payment info. Inspired by Square Wallet.
§ Gina Trapani:
Better user experience almost always means more developer effort and often more complex code. That's the right tradeoff.
§ jcoglan:
Friendly reminder that "people with JS disabled" includes those on high-latency networks, bad firewalls, and browsers you don't support.
Lines of Code
§ Decoupling Your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript:
HTML classes are very similar. Instead of a CSS file defining complex selectors (which, continuing the analogy, is equivalent to knowing the HTML's internal interface), it can simply define the look of a visual component via a single class. The HTML may then choose to use that class or not use it. The CSS doesn't need to care.
In the same way, JavaScript doesn't need complex DOM traversal functions that also require an intimate knowledge of the HTML structure, it can simply listen for the user's interaction with elements that contain the agreed-upon class names.
§ This will make life easier. Random User Generator:
RandomUser is an API that provides you with a randomly generated user. These users can be used as placeholders in web mockups, and will save you time from creating your own placeholder information.
§ FlowType.JS — Responsive web typography at its finest: font-size and line-height based on element width. This is pretty interesting, automatically adjusting the font-size and line-height at different screen sizes for maximum readability.
§ A little piece of code to add conditional CSS support without browser sniffing. Detecting CSS Style Support:
Since browser detection is entirely unreliable and unnecessary, we need to find something better. Instead we will employ feature testing to ascertain the browser’s capability of computing the style and value we are trying to determine support for. The idea here is simple, if the browser can interpret the style than it must be supported, otherwise it must not.
§ So what's the difference between innerText and textContent?
§ Lou Franco:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a programmer in possession of deadline, must be in want of a meeting.
§ In which several software methodologies are compared on effort, defects and TCO:
As can be seen the various methodologies fluctuated in their effectiveness on the speed, quality, and economic dimensions. However three methodologies were near the bottom for all three evaluations.
yak frame - n. a yak shaving stack frame. ex: "I'm currently 3-4 yak frames deep"
Startup Life
§ Learning the math in How Cheap a Product Can You Have And Still Have Salespeople?
But how low can you go? Can you really build a sales team around a $299/mo product? A $2000 ACV? What about a $199 or a $99/mo price point?
§ Four unSEXY Startup Lessons.
§ Faking your way into traction:
When Paypal figured that eBay was their key distribution platform, they came up with an ingenious plan to simulate demand. They created a bot that bought goods on eBay and then, insisted on paying for it using PayPal.
None Of The Above
§ This is mighty useful: Just Delete Me – A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services.
§ PRSM – Introducing a brand new way to share everything. Now open to everyone. Your account is already setup.
§ Sayings 2.1:
- A reboot a day, keeps the crash log at bay.
- Great minds share the same news articles.
- Google wasn't built in a day.
§ Math Experts Split the Check:
Engineer: Is everyone’s money in? It seems we’re a little short…
Physicist: How short?
Engineer: Well, the total was $104, not including tip… and so far we’ve got
$31.07 and an old lottery ticket.Physicist: Close enough, right? It’s a small error term.
Stop endorsing me for PHP on LinkedIn. It was a long time ago. We all make mistakes. I'm in a better place now.
§ Dear Miss Disruption – An Advice Column from Silicon Valley:
Your mother-in-law’s dissatisfaction with your chosen profession can be solved with a very simple pivot on your part: learn to code.
Get used to the three “-ty’s.” Ambiguity. Uncertainty. Volatility… Projects collapse. Money evaporates. Customers go wiggy. Get over it. That’s the way it works.
§ The Next Billion Internet Users: What Will They Look Like? Interesting infographic about mobile vs desktop, the changing global Internet demographic, and consumer interest in wearables.
§ What might have been: Visiting Mars and Venus with Apollo-era hardware.