How To Stay Up To Date on Web Technology

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HOW TO STAY UP TO DATE O N W E B S T U F F

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CHRIS COYIER Digby &

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How do you stay up to date on the latest web technology?

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UMMMMMMM #SHUFFLEFEET #VAGUEANSWER #MAKEFORTHEDOOR

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I should think about that and come up with a decent answer

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AlwaysReadTheManual.com Three beautiful, illustrated hardbound books a year, each holding six articles and six personal lessons that use the maturing of the discipline of web design as a starting point for deeper explorations of our work and who we are as designers.

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Tounge-Tied T R E N T W A L T O N

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“And what is it that you do?” “I’m a web designer.” “Oh, that’s nice.”

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DAMMIT. That didn’t go the way I wanted it to. Again.

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Once more, I’ve proven to be a poor representative of the industry I’m so proud to belong to.

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How do you stay up to date on the latest web technology?

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ONE QUESTION MANY SUBTEXTS

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1 “Gimme Something Easy” S U B T E X T N U M B E R O N E

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OH HERE

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It’s not that easy

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ER WAIT

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Web Design Weekly web-design-weekly.com

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CSS Weekly css-weekly.com

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Sidebar sidebar.io

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JavaScript Weekly javascriptweekly.com

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HTML5 Weekly html5-weekly.com

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RWD Weekly responsivedesignweekly.com

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Maybe it is that easy

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2 “I’m worried about making bad decisions” S U B T E X T N U M B E R T W O

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I’m about to start a new project. I want to make smart decisions on what tech to use.

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Workflow Preprocessors Libraries Languages Frameworks Tools / Software

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HAHA BUSINESS

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Is the tech right for the project? Is it just short-term cool or long-term right? What is the fail cost?

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Will the team be into it? Can I hire people that know it? How big is the community around it?

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Watch the “Big” Players Look at Enormous GitHub Repos Be aware of tech you hear about over and over Look at Community Sizes Research Investment Costs Employ Good Decision Making

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3 “I’m getting old.” S U B T E X T N U M B E R T H R E E

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It might not be that you’re getting old. It might be that you’re getting bored.

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Find a way to get excited again. Or get out. #noshame

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Decisions, decisions.

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HOW TO MAKE A DECISION

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with Chris Coyier

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Get a good night’s sleep 1 O R T E N

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Clearly lay out all the options 2 O F T E N B O O L E A N

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Consider outcome of each of those choices 3 A L S O : I N T U I T I O N

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Pick the best one and do it 4 D O N ’ T B E A W I M P

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See how it goes 5 D R I N K goto(1);

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THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISIONS TRANSCEND TECH

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Who do you choose to work with? What is my attitude? What culture am I trying to cultivate?

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Am I letting UX drive choices? Am I building something people love? Am I writing things people want to read?

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DECISION MAKING AT WORK

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How should I go about hosting private video? Obscure Startups

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Should I start using icon fonts? Is single-color OK? Is performance better or worse? Will it speed up or slow down development? Can we deal with all accessibility concerns? Can I find ones that work for me? I can build my own? Do they look better to my audience?

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Should I use HTML5 form features? What is the browser support? Quirks to watch out for? What features do I need? What control do I have? What kind of fallback is acceptable?

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Should we use Sass? What is the cost to switch? Can we get the whole team on board? What is the learning curve? What are other people saying/doing? What other benefits/effects does it have?

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What browsers should I support? Look at YOUR data What are trending indicating? What is the cost of support? What do you gain from that support? Do the math

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FILING AWAY NEW THINGS

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IcedCoffeeScript? WTF is IcedCoffeScript?

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IcedCoffeeScript is a superset of CoffeeScript... it will interpret almost all existing CoffeeScript programs. IcedCoffeeScript (ICS) adds two new keywords: await and defer. parallelSearch = (keywords, cb) -> out = [] await for k,i in keywords search k, defer out[i] cb out

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How do you stay up to date on the latest web technology?

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What if you just stopped? Would it make that big of a difference?

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Stay as up to date as you need to

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Not out of compulsion

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I BET if you stopped reading any dev tech news for a year, you could catch up in a week. Binge on some blogs. Go to a conference or two.

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THE BOSS SLIDES

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CSS-Tricks css-tricks.com Smashing Magazine smashingmagazine.com Cognition cognition.happycog.com NetTuts+ net.tutsplus.com Web Platform blog.webplatform.org CSS Wizardry csswizardry.com BRICSS bricss.net 24 Ways 24ways.org Codrops tympanus.com/codrops HTML5 Doctor html5doctor.com

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Paul Irish paulirish.com Jeremy Keith adactio.com Martin Wolf theamazingweb.net Ryan Seddon thecssninja.com Zoe Gillenwater zomigi.com Estelle Weyl estelle.github.com Nicolas Zakas nczonline.net Nicole Sullivan stubbornella.org Dave Rupert daverupert.com Rebecca Murphey blog.rebeccamurphey.com Tab Atkins xanthir.com Christian Heilman christianheilmann.com

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ShopTalk shoptalkshow.com The Web Ahead 5by5.tv/webahead Non Breaking Space nonbreakingspace.tv The Big Web Show 5by5.tv/bigwebshow Build Podcast build-podcast.com Rails Casts railscasts.com The Industry theindustry.cc This Developer’s Life thisdeveloperslife.com The East Wing theeastwing.net BizCraft unmatchedstyle.com/bizcraft

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Elijah Manor @elijahmanor Mike Taylor @miketaylr Ethan Marcotte @rwd David Walsh @davidwalshblog Jeff Starr @perishable Lea Verou @leaverou Divya Manian @divya Ben Alman @cowboy Scott Jehl @scottjehl Mat Marquis @wilto Simon @simurai Hakim El Hattab @hakimel

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Web Design Weekly web-design-weekly.com CSS Weekly css-weekly.com JavaScript Weekly javascriptweekly.com HTML5 Weekly html5-weekly.com RWD Weekly responsivedesignweekly.com

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WHAT ABOUT THAT QUESTION

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How do you stay up to date on the latest web technology?

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“And what is it that you do?” “I work at a small web design shop and we’re building a website that sells car parts for old cars. ”

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If you’re looking for a few quick wins, there are some great newsletters you can subscribe to.