Summer Reading Issue

Presenting the second annual ALA Summer Reading Issue—a deep pool of editor’s picks from the recent archives of Web Dev Notes, sprinkled with some of our favorite outside links. This summer’s picks are arranged in clusters that echo the design process, and like all good summer reading, they travel light. (This issue is also available as a Readlist, suitable for reading on Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Readmill, or other ebook reader.) Dive in!

Establishing an ethos#section2

We’ve become keenly aware the web has moved beyond the desktop: to screens large and small, to data connections both strong and weak. Has our understanding of web design moved along with it? The following articles brilliantly sidestep the dogma—app vs. native! responsive vs. device-centric!—and speak to the why of our new, multi-device discipline.

—Ethan Marcotte, technical editor

The Best Browser is the One You Have with You#section3

By Stephanie Rieger | March 13, 2012

For a Future-Friendly Web#section4

By Brad Frost | March 13, 2012

The Web Aesthetic#section5

By Paul Robert Lloyd | September 25, 2012

Column: Windows on the Web#section6

By Karen McGrane | January 23, 2013

From elsewhere#section7

Video: The Mobile Web is Dying and Needs Your Help, a talk by Paul Irish at Breaking Development Orlando, April 9, 2013

Getting to the core: content#section8

What will it take to prepare our content for diverse destinations? How can we make information easy to find, save, explore, and enjoy—on any screen? What’s the right pace for your product? These articles will help you make your content—and the interactions you design around it—ready for mobile…and everything else, too.

—Sara Wachter-Boettcher, editor-in-chief

Future-Ready Content#section9

By Sara Wachter-Boettcher | February 28, 2012

Content Modelling: A Master Skill#section10

By Rachel Lovinger | April 24, 2012

Everything in Its Right Pace#section11

By Hannah Donovan | August 14, 2012

Uncle Sam Wants You (to Optimize Your Content for Mobile)#section12

by Karen McGrane | November 05, 2012

Column: The Future is Unevenly Superdistributed#section13

By David Sleight | February 07, 2013

Column: Better Navigation Through Proprioception#section14

By Cennydd Bowles | March 07, 2013

From elsewhere#section15

Responsive Navigation Patterns, a Github collection by Brad Frost

Adapting our designs—and our workflows#section16

The web is evolving, making the rigid parameters we once worked within blurry and elusive. This means the roles, tools, and processes of a designer must also change—the days of working only in Photoshop are behind us. The following articles will arm you with new techniques to take you from the designer who creates pixel-perfect comps to the designer who can adapt.

—Yesenia Perez-Cruz and Tim Smith, acquisitions scouts

Style Tiles and How They Work#section17

By Samantha Warren | March 27, 2012

The Infinite Grid#section18

By Chris Armstrong | October 16, 2012

Responsive Comping: Obtaining Signoff Without Mockups#section19

By Matt Griffin | October 16, 2012

Column: Font Hinting and the Future of Responsive Typography#section20

By Nick Sherman | February 22, 2013

From elsewhere#section21

Made to Measure by Allen Tan for Contents Magazine, fall 2012

Media Query-less Design, Content-based Breakpoints & Tweakpoints by Dave Olsen, March 05, 2013

Video: The Revenge of the Web, a talk by Stephen Hay at Mobilism, May 16, 2013

Testing our assumptions#section22

It wasn’t long ago that we only felt like we needed to keep up with a handful of desktop browsers and a few predictable screen resolutions. We know better now: users expect a cohesive experience across dozens of browsers and hundreds of devices—from portable gaming systems to 50-inch televisions, from high-definition to grayscale screens, and over a huge range of connection speeds. With all these unpredictable contexts comes a host of new questions: what do we do about raster images? How do we stop the trend of increasingly massive page weights? We don’t have all the answers just yet, but the more data we gather through testing and experimentation, the closer we will get to them.

—Mat Marquis, technical editor

Responsive Images and Web Standards at the Turning Point#section23

By Mat Marquis | May 15, 2012

Testing Websites in Game Console Browsers#section24

By Anna Debenham | September 11, 2012

Mo’ Pixels Mo’ Problems#section25

By Dave Rupert | September 25, 2012

Vexing Viewports#section26

By Lyza Danger Gardner, Stephanie Rieger, Luke Wroblewski, and Peter-Paul Koch | December 18, 2012

The Era of Symbol Fonts#section27

By Brian Suda | March 12, 2013

From elsewhere#section28

Video: The Immobile Web, a talk by Jason Grigsby at Breaking Development Orlando, April 16, 2012

Responsive Design on a Budget by Mark Perkins, Clearleft Blog, January 16, 2013

Setting a Performance Budget by Tim Kadlec, January 28, 2013