Topic: Uncategorized

It’s all about us this week at ALA. From steps to sleep to social activities, we’re counting every kind of personal data you can think of. But what’s all that data add up to? How could we look at it—and ourselves—differently? In this week’s On Our Radar, we ask ourselves—and our self—the tough questions.

That old monitor you’ve got lying around? Time to put it to work. Susan Robertson reminds us of how important it is to test our designs on older screens and ensure the things we build work well for everyone.

The future is here, for better or for worse—and this week, the ALA staff has been thinking about what that means: for our code (the impending arrival of HTTP/2), our content (publishing on Medium), and the cost of constant noise.

Why did we all start using btn? Anthony Colangelo considers whether a lack of clarity is worth the benefits of brevity in our code.

This week, the ALA staff is thinking about color accessibility, the process of building a vocabulary, the current state of web typography, and the lessons we can learn from skater culture. In other words: it’s all about inclusion.

A decade ago here in Web Dev Notes, we published a radical article by Peter-Paul Koch arguing for custom attributes in markup. Today, Mat Marquis takes a look back at how times have changed, and shows how PPK’s idea has worked its way into the web.

New content projects present a classic chicken-and-egg problem: should we start with the words, or focus on the structure they’ll take? There are benefits and challenges either way, but Eileen Webb has recently become a believer that starting with structure creates a better workflow for developers, designers and content creators alike.

Ready for something new? We’re excited to announce ALA: On Air, community-focused events where our readers can get to know our authors, staff, and others who are shaking up our industry. Mat Marquis shares all the details, and has specifics on our first event, Designing for Performance, coming up on February 26.

Ready to use a style guide generator for your next project? Susan Robertson did the research and shares a number of options to try out, depending on your workflow. If you haven’t created a style guide before, hopefully one of these tools will make generating your first one just a bit easier.

What can we learn from the Mars rover about building the web? Anthony Colangelo describes NASA’s new modular approach to mission planning, and suggests a similar strategy for our work on the web. The details of our work may change, but building with thoughtful modularity can help us reap the benefits of the future.