How To Stay Up To Date on Web Stuff

Slide 1

Slide 1 text

HOW TO STAY UP TO DATE on web stuff

Slide 2

Slide 2 text

v CHRIS COYIER DIGBY &

Slide 3

Slide 3 text

No content

Slide 4

Slide 4 text

#HOTDRAMA

Slide 5

Slide 5 text

No content

Slide 6

Slide 6 text

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

Slide 7

Slide 7 text

UMMMMMMM #SHUFFLEFEET #VAGUEANSWER #MAKEFORTHEDOOR

Slide 8

Slide 8 text

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

Slide 9

Slide 9 text

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.

Slide 10

Slide 10 text

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

Slide 11

Slide 11 text

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

Slide 12

Slide 12 text

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

Slide 13

Slide 13 text

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

Slide 14

Slide 14 text

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

Slide 15

Slide 15 text

ONE QUESTION MANY SUBTEXTS

Slide 16

Slide 16 text

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

Slide 17

Slide 17 text

OH HERE

Slide 18

Slide 18 text

.com

Slide 19

Slide 19 text

It’s not that easy.

Slide 20

Slide 20 text

ER WAIT

Slide 21

Slide 21 text

There are these newsletters...

Slide 22

Slide 22 text

Web Design Weekly web-design-weekly.com

Slide 23

Slide 23 text

CSS Weekly css-weekly.com

Slide 24

Slide 24 text

Sidebar sidebar.io

Slide 25

Slide 25 text

JavaScript Weekly javascriptweekly.com

Slide 26

Slide 26 text

Web Tools Weekly webtoolsweekly.com

Slide 27

Slide 27 text

RWD Weekly responsivedesignweekly.com

Slide 28

Slide 28 text

Web Platform Daily webplatformdaily.com

Slide 29

Slide 29 text

MAYBE IT IS THAT EASY.

Slide 30

Slide 30 text

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

Slide 31

Slide 31 text

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

Slide 32

Slide 32 text

Workﬂow Preprocessors Libraries Languages Frameworks Tools / Software

Slide 33

Slide 33 text

No content

Slide 34

Slide 34 text

HAHA BUSINESS

Slide 35

Slide 35 text

No content

Slide 36

Slide 36 text

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

Slide 37

Slide 37 text

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

Slide 38

Slide 38 text

Watch/talk to 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 (mostly: time) Employ good decision making

Slide 39

Slide 39 text

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

Slide 40

Slide 40 text

No content

Slide 41

Slide 41 text

No content

Slide 42

Slide 42 text

No content

Slide 43

Slide 43 text

No content

Slide 44

Slide 44 text

No content

Slide 45

Slide 45 text

No content

Slide 46

Slide 46 text

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

Slide 47

Slide 47 text

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

Slide 48

Slide 48 text

Decisions, decisions.

Slide 49

Slide 49 text

HOW TO MAKE A DECISION And now for a subtalk...

Slide 50

Slide 50 text

with CHRIS COYIER

Slide 51

Slide 51 text

Get a good night’s sleep. 1 Or ten. The bigger the decision the most rested you should be.

Slide 52

Slide 52 text

2 Gather and clearly lay out all the options. Often boolean: yes/no, use/don’t use, do/don’t do

Slide 53

Slide 53 text

3 Consider outcome of each of those choices. As scientiﬁcally as you can, but use your intuition.

Slide 54

Slide 54 text

4 Pick the best one and do it. Don’t be a wimp.

Slide 55

Slide 55 text

5 See how it goes. drink(5); goto(1);

Slide 56

Slide 56 text

THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISIONS TRANSCEND TECH

Slide 57

Slide 57 text

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

Slide 58

Slide 58 text

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

Slide 59

Slide 59 text

DECISION MAKING IN ACTION

Slide 60

Slide 60 text

How should I go about hosting private video?

Slide 61

Slide 61 text

No content

Slide 62

Slide 62 text

uchgyk. go to bed, self.

Slide 63

Slide 63 text

Get a good night’s sleep. 1

Slide 64

Slide 64 text

2 Gather and clearly lay out all the options.

Slide 65

Slide 65 text

3 Consider outcome of each of those choices.

Slide 66

Slide 66 text

4 Pick the best one and do it.

Slide 67

Slide 67 text

5 See how it goes.

Slide 68

Slide 68 text

No content

Slide 69

Slide 69 text

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 I have time for that? Do they look better to my audience?

Slide 70

Slide 70 text

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?

Slide 71

Slide 71 text

No content

Slide 72

Slide 72 text

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?

Slide 73

Slide 73 text

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.

Slide 74

Slide 74 text

FILING AWAY NEW THINGS

Slide 75

Slide 75 text

No content

Slide 76

Slide 76 text

IcedCoﬀeeScript? WTF is IcedCoﬀeScript?

Slide 77

Slide 77 text

No content

Slide 78

Slide 78 text

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

Slide 79

Slide 79 text

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

Slide 80

Slide 80 text

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

Slide 81

Slide 81 text

Stay as up to date as you need to.

Slide 82

Slide 82 text

Not out of compulsion.

Slide 83

Slide 83 text

No content

Slide 84

Slide 84 text

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.

Slide 85

Slide 85 text

THE BOSS SLIDES

Slide 86

Slide 86 text

A VERY SMALL SMATTERING OF VERY SMART AND INTERESTING BLOGS, PODCASTS, & PEOPLE YOU SHOULD FOLLOW.

Slide 87

Slide 87 text

Smashing Magazine smashingmagazine.com Cognition cognition.happycog.com NetTuts+ net.tutsplus.com 24 Ways 24ways.org Codrops tympanus.com/codrops HTML5 Doctor html5doctor.com HTML5 Rocks html5rocks.com A List Apart alistapart.com

Slide 88

Slide 88 text

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

Slide 89

Slide 89 text

Paul Irish @paul_irish / paulirish.com Estelle Weyl @estellevw / estelle.github.com Martin Wolf @_martinwolf / theamazingweb.net Ryan Seddon @ryanseddon / thecssninja.com Zoe Gillenwater @zomigi / zomigi.com Jeremy Keith @adactio / adactio.com Nicole Sullivan @stubbornella / stubbornella.org Rebecca Murphey @rmurphey / rmurphey.com/ Tab Atkins @tabatkins / xanthir.com Christian Heilman @codepo8 / christianheilmann.com Divya Manian @divya / nimbupani.com Val Head @vlh / valhead.com

Slide 90

Slide 90 text

Elijah Manor @elijahmanor / elijahmanor.com Mike Taylor @miketaylr / miketaylr.com Ethan Marcotte @rwd / @beep / ethanmarcotte.com/ Jeﬀ Starr @perishable / perishablepress.com Lea Verou @leaverou / lea.verou.me Scott Jehl @scottjehl / scottjehl Hakim El Hattab @hakimel / hakim.se Rachel Nabors @rachelnabors / rachelnabors.com Rachel Andrew @rachelandrew / rachelandrew.co.uk Raquel Velez @rockbot / raquelvelez.com Jina Bolton @jina / jina.me Pamela Fox @pamelafox / pamelafox.org

Slide 91

Slide 91 text

Peter-Paul Koch @ppk / quirksmode.org John Resig @jeresig / ejohn.org Jonathan Snook @snook / snook.ca Jake Archibald @jaﬀathecake / jakearchibald.com Ana Tudor @thebabydino / about.me/thebabydino Stephanie Rewis @stefsull / w3conversions.org Jennifer Robbins @jenville / jenville.com Sara Soueidan @sarasoueidan / sarasoueidan.com Laura Kalbag @laurakalbag / laurakalbag.com Veerle Pieters @vpieters / veerle.duoh.com Harry Roberts @csswizardry / csswizardry.com Dave Rupert @davatron5000 / daverupert.com

Slide 92

Slide 92 text

James Padolsey @padolsey / james.padolsey.com Tim Holman @twholman / tholman.com Mathias Bynens @mathias / mathiasbynens.be Ben Alman @cowboy / benalman.com David Walsh @davidwalshblog / davidwalsh.name Mat Marquis @wilto / matmarquis.com Simon @simurai / simurai.com Nicolas Zakas @slicknet / nczonline.net Pam Selle @pamasaur / thewebivore.com Jenn Lukas @jennlukas / jennlukas.com Kimberly Blessing @obiwankimberly / kimberlyblessing.com Lara Swanson @laraswanson / laraswanson.com

Slide 93

Slide 93 text

WHAT ABOUT THAT QUESTION

Slide 94

Slide 94 text

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

Slide 95

Slide 95 text

“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. ”

Slide 96

Slide 96 text

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