Instead of drawing wireframe boxes I've been putting cardboard ones together and filling them with lots and lots and lots of stuff I've collected over the years. There was a moment over the weekend that I realised the CSS on my site was much the same as the house — it all made sense when it first moved in but over time I've added bits and pieces to improve things, removed items, rearranged pages/rooms and I've still got all the junk that just isn't used anymore.
So once the move has happened and life resumes I'll be turning my attention back to the site for a redesign, a more simplified version that I always push onto clients and never seem to follow myself.
Enough of me though, you're here for links so links you will have!
Headline
A great insight from one of the Financial Times developers on ads and ad blocking. Aside from being a great read on the problem and offering some solutions, one of the bits I didn't know was the use of bone conduction to distribute audio content... amazing.
In todays world we often forget the tools that can really make a difference. With the Fax machine making a comeback in 2016 it's time to see how to make them responsive. Happy April Fools!
Articles
Some great tips on things to remember when designing responsively
I've always said "hate is a very strong word" and where ever possible I try and use "dislike" in its place. I think Aaron is trying to get the Love/Hate thing going in the title. I agree that the term always comes with an explanation or justification that "Yes, you need a network connectionfirst but then it's all rainbows and butterflys" or my native friends pointing out that the web needs a network and will never be truly offline first (but fail to realise the required connection to download their own apps from the app store.... all 58Mb of it).
The proposal for adding a visualViewport object on document that contains the properties of the visual viewport.
A great write up on the silly things that we sometimes do when writing CSS and a better approach.
Tutorials
Get optipng running on your server so your png assets will always be better for performance.
By including more finite declarations in your @font-face you will cut down the font downloads and ensure only what is being used will be downloaded.
Not strictly responsive but I do a lot of work on wordpress with my various sites and clients. This will help you organise the items in the admin interface to make a little more sense to users that might not go in there as much.
Tools & Resources
Minimal scaffolding for a responsive HTML5/SCSS Jekyll project
We all have them. The friends, aunt, uncle, cousin, school mate, neighbour, work colleague.... they've got a great idea and need a website... could you help out? While I usually point them in the direction of Squarespace and back away this is a great resource for anyone to improve their overall online skills OUTSIDE of the code.
JQuery lightSlider is a lightweight responsive Content slider with carousel thumbnails navigation
