Top picks — 2015 August
Internet is full of interesting, useful or funny things. I would like to share with you my top picks from this month.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Modern JavaScript Tooling
http://reactkungfu.com/2015/07/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-modern-javascript-tooling/
Collection of tools for modern JavaScript developers. I use few of them on daily basis and I’m looking forward to get my head around babel.js.
FontCDN
Google fonts are cool but browsing them is a pain. Thats why FontCDN is super cool! Quick preview and nice and intuitive link generator. Like it!
If we stand still, we go backwards
https://jakearchibald.com/2015/if-we-stand-still-we-go-backwards/
Jake Archibald and his thoughts about moving forward internet industry. So true!
Wilson Miner: “Steal This Talk”
Very cool talk about collaboration. Just share this shit!
CSS Grid Layout Module Level - First working draft
http://www.w3.org/TR/css-grid-1/
CSS is getting better. It is good to see how big progress this language had recently. Grid layout and Flexbox are the most exciting changes for me and it’s worth to follow. It’s future of layouts on every single project.
Typekit - New embed code for asynchronous font loading
http://blog.typekit.com/2015/08/04/new-embed-code-for-asynchronous-font-loading/
Finally! Async font loading on Typekit is a default now. How cool that decision is?!
GitHub Desktop
If you use git with Github, you may consider downloading GitHub Desktop to manage your projects via native app. Available for Mac OS X and Windows cam make collaboration on project way faster. Have a look at nice First Impression of GitHub Desktop on CSS-Tricks.
Speed test
https://github.com/sindresorhus/speed-test
Small npm module that you need to install globally and it shows ping, download and upload speed via speedtest.net API. Another super cool and helpful global utility by Sindre Sorhus.
PostCSS - The Future is Here
That is super introduction to PostCSS world. Good starting point for all CSS lovers that are keen to start playing around with new fancy thing.
The technology behind preview photos
https://code.facebook.com/posts/991252547593574
Facebook’s way to handle huge cover images. Very neat idea and impressive results.
Bootstrap 4
http://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/
Big thing! Bootstrap, definitely the most popular framework ever, now is available in fourth version. So many awesome changes. To list few of them: Switch from LESS to Sass, Semantic grid system optionally based on flexbox, dropping IE8 support. Bootstrap is super cool, I like it and I use it to quickly prototype things. Looking forward to dive into the code deeper.
Getting started with ECMAScript 6
http://www.2ality.com/2015/08/getting-started-es6.html
The best summary of all the new exciting things that we can find in new specification of ECMAScript 6. Very well explained and compared to ES5 syntax.
If Ever I Should Leave You: Job Hunting For Web Designers and Developers
http://alistapart.com/column/job-hunting-for-web-designers-and-developers
Jeffrey Zeldman gives us few good advices about career path. Very interesting read. I have been on many situations described in this post and I wish to had that article in front of my eyes beforehand I made some stupid decisions.
Confidence and Overwhelm
https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2015/08/14/confidence-and-overwhelm
Fantastic series of conclusions after The Web Ahead podcast with Reachel. Overwhelming in web industry is quite popular subject recently and I’m glad there is many mature developers who wants to help you and me.
DevTools Tips For Sublime Text Users
https://medium.com/@addyosmani/devtools-tips-for-sublime-text-users-cdd559ee80f8
Sublime Text is so powerful tool. Developers who are working on Google Chrome dev tools thought the same, cause most of my favourite ST parts is implemented to Developer Tools. Addy Osmani drives through all this things on his post on Medium.
The future of layout with CSS: Grid Layouts
https://medium.com/@patrickbrosset/css-grid-layout-6c9cba6e8a5a
CSS changed a lot recently. We have a things like flexbox which is awesome to build some small components of websites, but not necessarily entire layouts. Grid layouts is the future. Have a quick read about new grid feature by Patrick Brosset from Mozilla.
A Beginner’s Guide to Website Speed Optimization
https://kinsta.com/learn/page-speed/
Super cool introduction how to work with performance. It says it is for beginners but this guide is very complex. Must read for people who do not realize how important performance is.
WOFF2 support added to Typekit
http://blog.typekit.com/2015/08/26/woff2-support-added-to-typekit/
Guys from Typekit finally started to care about performance. It is second big improvement this month. Fonts server in WOFF2 format injected via async script sounds quite good, yeah? Good job Typekit!