[gb] Studio

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[+] Open the Meta Bar Tag: webdev. There are 12 posts tagged webdev. Open the Meta Bar to choose a different tag.

Skinny Line

Simply put, this is why I build the vast majority of what I design.

The more parts of the project you can influence with your skills, the more you are able to [innovate].

Jeff Croft, Why I’m a hybrid. (Like a Liger. Or a Tigon. Or a Prius.)

Skinny Line

Skinny Line

The developer in me only would’ve tested 45 shades of blue. The designer in me would’ve used orange. I don’t know how I get any work done.

But, seriously, good challenge. The norm of the web industry is to integrate multiple disciplines (dev, copy, design) into a finished product. Open source software is a glaring omission to this norm.

I believe it’s partially the developer’s fault as well. Maybe, in this 20 years of engineering championing, we pushed too hard on the designer or the writer. It’s like at colleges where the liberal arts don’t hold as much weight as a bachelor of sciences. That sort of thinking has persisted through careers. Perhaps we’ve backed all of you into a corner and you’re pissed at us because Google has 47 blues tested. I get it.

Kenny Meyers, Where are the open source designers? copywriters? information architects? interface designers?

Skinny Line

Skinny Line

Astute analysis, as always.

Some people are all up in video’s grill though because there’s this one code, the H-2-6-9 and it’s proprietary but then there’s Ogg which isn’t proprietary but sounds like what the Vikings used to drink on pirate ships. It’s all like “I’m Ogg! I’m coming to eat your babies!” then the other one is all like I’m H-8-6-7-5-3-0-9 and I’m a robot who just wants to love. Then it turns out the audio element shows up at the end with a gun because nobody is talking about him and is all like “You’ve had the attention for too long Ogg & Robot!” and the two video codecs kill audio and learn to love each other and birth video.

Kenny Meyers, HTML5 For Drunks

Skinny Line

Skinny Line

Steve Jobs’ whole letter is a good read, but I wanted to point this out. A lot of people have pointed fingers at Apple, calling their App Store system proprietary and closed (which it is). They’ve then used that as an argument for Flash being allowed on Apple’s Touch platforms. That’s nonsense. You may not like that Apple has created a closed system, but that doesn’t make Flash any less closed. As I asked awhile ago, has Adobe ever allowed or blessed 3rd-party authoring tools? Of course not. How is their approach different than Apple’s?

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Steve Jobs, Thoughts on Flash

Skinny Line

Skinny Line

Lilly’s Table

The Beginning


I’m excited to announce a project I’ve been working on for a while with the very talented Chef Lilly from Bella Cuisine. The project is called: Lilly’s Table and it will feature fresh and creative, seasonal, meal plans on a weekly basis, directly from Lilly herself.

I think Lilly and I first started to talk about her project toward the end of last year, so it has been in the works for a while. This fun little splash page is just the beginning. Be sure to sign up for the email list, or follow @LillysTable on Twitter so that you don’t miss anything.

Skinny Line

And why it was rewritten in Rails.

(via Muxtape)

The thing that’s so wonderful about using beautiful, appropriate tools is that they become an extension of you, your body, you fingertips, and your mind. They get out of the way and let you directly interact with the problem you are solving. Everyone’s tried to remove a screw without a screwdriver; a task quickly becomes impossible that otherwise would be trivial.

Luke Crawford, The technical story of Muxtape

Skinny Line

Skinny Line

Let’s be realistic…

Here’s the one thing that’s always bugged me on some level about the “support IE6” argument: Why is there an expectation that everyone will eventually upgrade?

Why isn’t support for old browsers (any old browser, regardless of market-share), an extra line-item on everyone’s invoices by default?

Still far too high a percentage and enough to make you grown [sic]. Also, the last few pounds are the hardest to lose…

Maybe IE 8, Windows 7, and the great new browser war will help, or maybe some percentage is for lost computer souls.

Dion Almaer, I won’t support IE 6 in 2009

Skinny Line

Skinny Line

Merb gets merged into Rails 3!

Quite a Christmas Present.


I’m thinking Rails 3 will kick some serious ass.

Skinny Line

SCRUM

A valuable introduction to software project management in under 10 mins.


Under 8 mins, actually. By @hamids (Hamid Shojaee).

(via @tobi)

Skinny Line

David, talking about the new Phusion Passenger for deploying Rails apps. Up to this point I’ve settled into a Mongrel / nginx routine for our apps and liked it a lot (especially the light-weight footprint of nginx). But this looks like fun – I’ll have to give it a shot!

Once you’ve completed the incredibly simple installation, you get an Apache that acts as both web server, load balancer, application server and process watcher. You simply drop in your application and touch tmp/restart.txt when you want to bounce it and bam, you’re up and running.

David Heinemeier Hansson, Myth #1: Rails is hard to deploy

Skinny Line

Skinny Line

Web 0.2

Andy Rutledge on the effects of a down economy on Interactive Agencies


Andy has some great points. He expects small companies/freelancers in the creative/interactive profession are best positioned to weather the storm.

I think he’s right. When companies start looking for more value from their marketing and interactive media dollars, small, more agile companies and freelancers will be one of the best sources of it. This is exactly where [gb] Studio is positioned. We’re small, agile, and eager. I’m excited to see where things go over the next couple years.

Skinny Line

Building a Site for Dan

making pretty things on the internets


A screen-capture and cam-capture of me in the final coding stretch of Dan Craig’s site. I started the day with a couple pages coded in css/xhtml and finished the rest of the site, plus its integration into the cms.

Totally inspired by Carsonified’s videos of the same nature.

I recorded it months ago and just got around to the editing/uploading.

end result: dcraigmusic.com

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