The old days

It was on these forums that the experts hung out. I was always amazed over the amount of answers I got there and one day I wanted to be a person who gave answers as well. I always tried to see if there was some small question that I could maybe help out with but usually I hardly understood the problem good enough to even give a hint to a possible solution.
Times changed. I went to school to become a pro in the area and when activity got low I stopped hanging out on the forums. Instead I started to go to friends or colleagues for feedback.

A new place for the cool people

A couple of months back I heard of something called Forrst. My rss-feeds were buzzing about it and appearantly it seemed to be a very cool place to hang out on for developers and designers. That is if you were cool as well. It was invitation only. I filled out the application form but thought that since I’m not Chris Coyier on CSS-tricks or Ryan Carson from Carsonified my chances were zero. I was simply not cool enough. Dang it!
I gave up. No invite was coming. Then I started to follow the buzz on Twitter. Turns out people were having invites to give away to us less fortunate. (I still thought it was all about coolness…) I started to answering these people and after a while I got the following tweet:
“@kolombiken I like your portfolio, send me your email address and I’ll give you an invite.”
Do I need to tell you I was happy?

You should apply

Forrst was, is, exactly as I imagined it to be and more. So many talented and passionate people all in one place. You are able to upload snaps of your design or code. Ask questions, share links and the best part: get lots of feedback! It was just like in the old days on my forums but with a much better interface.
So let me just tell you this: If you are a designer or developer or both and you have a true passion for the web. Forrst’s the place to be! Fill out their application form today.

Uhm yea, right, sending in applications doesn’t work? Well, turns out I was wrong on that one. Some weeks after I was invited I got an email in my inbox. It was an official invite to join Forrst.

/Ida

Ps. For you Forrsters I’m kolombiken.

So this is my recommendation if you want a book to read this summer! And yes, there’s a ’second edition’ of the book and that’s the one you should go for.

Have a really nice summer everyone!

Best regards,
Simon

“The clarity, even genius, of REWORK actually brought me to near-tears on several occasions.”
-Tom Peters, New York Times bestselling author of IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE

The only reason my tears were pouring was because i was allergic to the inc (honestly!). But then again, the book wasn’t really written for my target audience (i still think that Tom Peters guy is a softy though). Rework is, just as i like it, a quick read. Those 280 pages has a lot of white space and art work and an average chapter is about 1.5 pages.

If you are a reader of 37Signals blog ”Signal vs Noise” or have heard any of Jasons talks, then you’re probably familiar with the concepts presented in this book. And even if you are familiar with Jasons and Davids concepts I still think Rework is a good buy. It’s nice to have their thoughts distilled down and gathered in one place.

So, are their ideas that radical? No! Not at all. Most of them are in my opinion pretty obvious. But do companies really work in this way? Do they encourage their employees not to work overtime? Do they trust their employees enough that they can make independent dessisions? Do they recommend their competitors if they feel their products is not a perfect fit for the customer? I think most of them probably don’t. And if you work on a place like that, you should plant this book on his desk or bathroom. Or maybe if you work on a place where your boss micro manage every move you make and have his own bathroom you should get out of there and start something on your own.

If you are an entrepreneur, or a “starter” as Jason like to call it, then this book is a must. But remember to, as I’ve said before, read it with your critical eye. It’s easy to just swallow everything as absolute truths. Especially when they write in such confidence. As they themselves put it “get inspired, don’t copy!”

So what’s this post about? Well, just telling you what’s going on.
It would be super-cool if some of our readers could give us some input on this.
Is there something that’s frustrating here? Something that could be better? Something missing? Any suggestions on things that you think we should work on are greatly appreciated.

In short: feedback bitte!

*Tilted head with puppy-eyes begging for comments*

/Ida

Ps. The header image is revealing a tiny bit on what’s up…

Or wait… there’s a solution for this. And no, the solution is not to make one hundred gradient-box-images of different sizes. It’s not even to slice up the box in pieces and put it together using the CSS background-image property.
This is how to do it.

1. Create border-image

Create a small gradient image in you fav image program. (Like Photoshop). Image should be the size of your border times three. In my example 2×3 = 6px. I.e. 6px x 6px. Apply a gradient and crop out a little hole in the middle. Save the image as a png with transparency.
Note that the image below is zoomed in 1600%.

2. Apply CSS

Apply the following CSS to the element you want to be gradient-bordered.

.your-element{
/* the first border is for that graceful degradation
in "bad" browsers */
border: 5px solid #60bec3;
-webkit-border-image: url(border.png) 2 2 2 2 stretch;
-moz-border-image: url(border.png) 2 2 2 2 stretch;
border-image: url(border.png) 2 2 2 2 stretch;
}


3. Finished!

Tada! Now it might look like below.

Or like this if we have a little more text.

FYI the following has been tested in Firefox 3.6.4, Opera 10.53, Google Chrome 5.0.375.70 and Safari 5.0.

Feel free to experient with making the image with rounded corners/bigger/smaller/gradient inside/outside. And yea, don’t forget to show it off and post a link of the masterpiece below.

That’s it for now.
Quick, dirty, getting the job done…

/Ida

“Sometimes you need to leave behind the best things to embrace something new. That is what I want to do with Boagworld and I would encourage you to do the same.” -Paul Boag

This is not the last we hear from Paul though. He points out that he will be experimenting with other formats throughout the rest of the year. So hopefully, next year, Paul and Marcus are back but in a new format. I’m hoping for a TV show!

To fill the Boagworld void you can head on over to 5by5 where Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin recently started a new podcast called The Big Web show.

// Johan

Awesome people, not so awesome web sites

I’ve met people who are awesome when it comes to creating stuff on the web. At the same time their own page includes nothing more than an email… if they have a site that is. I’m including myself here. I’m not at all completely happy about the state of my own web site at the moment. An update has been on my todo-list for way too long but stuff comes in between. Stuff equals client work in my case. And I think that is what happens to most of us.
Ok, people, I can hear you mumbling. Of course there are exceptions. There are those close to über-humans who manage to do it all. Having an updated awesome portfolio/blog/about me-site while at the same time being awesome at work. And you know what? It seems like they have the time to have an irl-life as well. Yes, really.

To have or not to have a site

I have been thinking a lot lately about whether it’s important for us web developers to have an updated and good web site. The conclusion I have come to is that it depends. For me who has my own company it’s, naturally, important. At least if I want to keep getting new clients. Which I do. For someone who have a steady job that they have had for ages it might not be that important. Or?

Keeping something with your own name on

Some weeks ago I read about this guy who lost weight by tweeting. Every day he told “the whole world” how much he had lost/gained. Apparently it was a good method cause he was too embarrassed to gain so he ended up losing quite a bit. I think web developers can use the same method to keep in shape. Uhm… don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking body weight here. What I mean is keeping your skills top notch. By having a web site/blog or something similar you are showing the world your skills. There is something out there with your name on it. Might be good if you keep it fresh. Might be real bad if you let it get outdated. Just like it might be a real bad idea for a personal gym coach to put on a lot of weight.

Keeping the web healthy and growing

To take it one step further. If we all kept working on our skills I think the web could continue to be as cool and exciting as I think it is right now. I think having something on the web with your name on is one way of doing that. To try hard every day to not be a child of the shomaker might be a way to stop the web from getting outdated, old and something that stops to develop. I mean really how many shoemakers are there in your city? Exactly.

This is just my random thoughts on the subject. I would really love the hear your view. So please feel free to comment on this.
Happy healthy web!

/Ida

This short quote from the guys and girls over at Varien pretty much sums it up:

“With Magento mobile, you can easily create branded, native storefront applications that are deeply integrated with Magento’s market-leading eCommerce platform.”

There’s no reason for me to write more about it, go check it out, watch a demo and read more about it here.

// Simon

What about Apple and Microsoft?

Safari indirectly supports VP8 through the quicktime plugin. It will be hard for Apple to admit that VP8 is a better choice than H.264 considering Steve declaring his love for it in his open letter.

Microsoft said in a blog post that the only codec they natively will support is H.264. But this was before Google bought ON2 and open sourced VP8. Microsoft has announced that IE9 will support VP8 if the codec is installed in windows. This is also not optimal but it is much better than nothing. And bear in mind that IE9 will not be shipped until 2011, a lot of stuff can happen until then.

Whats wrong with h.264?

Nothing. H264 is actually (according to these sources) slightly better than VP8. But H.261 is not open source. It has over a thousand patents owned by a total of 26 companies (Apple included). H.264 is not very expensive to use but just the fact that it is not open source makes companies as Mozilla and Opera not support it, out of principle.

Supporting VP8 is Apples chance to gain back the developers trust. Pretty please Apple, do it!

// Johan

In a perfect world

Anyway, back to topic. Compared to most Art Directors and Interactive Designers people working on the backend usually have quite a lot of knowledge when it comes to HTML. They know most of the tags in use and they can often style a web site even if it’s not their job. The problem is that many of them aren’t that good at choosing the right markup that is fit for the content and of course, it’s not their job. Or at least it shouldn’t be their job. I’m having the strong opinion that every team bigger than three people working on a web site should consist of at least one frontend developer. That frontend developer should take care of the job and provide the best markup. Oh, sweet dream of a perfect world.

When backend is getting dirty with frontend

But there are times when for various reasons there is no room for a frontend developer. There might also be times when the markup provided by the frontend developer doesn’t fit the framework. Sometimes the people working with the backend need to do quick fixes that include markup. A lot of times this can result in markup that is closely connected to the visual appearance of the site. For example a label needed to be provided to a new input field. The label need to be above the input field so the person on the backend quickly put some text into a div cause he knows form experience that a div is a block element and the input field will surely get it’s own row.. wait lets put the input fields into a div as well. Now fine and dandy let’s move on. Yes, I realize that I’m generalising and that most people I met are smarter than this and they do think more than this but hey! I’m trying to make a point here… My point is that most backend people are having a hard time trying to keep the markup apart from the visual appearance. So my one sentence lesson is:

”Stop thinking about the visual appearance when you’re writing markup”

Not perfect but better

I personally think the world would be a better place if more backend people started to follow this. Of course I realize that because you don’t know everything about clearing of floated elements, positions and negative margins and other mumbo-jumbo css-talk you might need to add that extra div. But please, and this is a prayer from my deep and pure frontend heart, don’t start by thinking of how it looks. Start by thinking what feels appropriate. A label should be a label and a paragraph should be a paragraph. If more people on the backend just stopped caring about the look we wouldn’t have som many crap-markup-generating framework out there. Just saying…

No offense to nobody.
I love you.
I love the web.
Peace Out!

/Ida