Web Design: Automatic for the People

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Wrap Music

Front-end

First up, 10 ways to improve web accessibility [aerolab].

The best way to implement a “wrapper” in CSS [css-tricks].

A guide to the JavaScript observer pattern [sitepoint].

Nativity Scene

Back-end/programming

If you want to crack HTTPS, hack the DoD, and make a bunch of money in vulnerability bounties 1) you sound kind of intense, and 2) read this [blog.portswigger].

How to skip the app store and make your site look like a native app [c-sharpcorner].

A guide to using a bulk category creator to learn WordPress plugin development [sitepoint].

Automatic for the People

Design/UX/product

How to build a UX system that’ll just run on autopilot [airtable].

A Brutalist UX framework [uxbrutalism].

Deere Me

News/business

Tesla’s looking to start testing an autonomous electric semi truck in “platoon” mode [arstechnica]. I’ve seen Platoon, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

If Tesla needs autonomous driving learnings, John Deere can offer them [qz].

Amazon and Tencent are backing Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone, and the device is in mass production [cnet].

Firefox 57 is coming, and it looks to be big [cnet].

How your brain reacts to video games kinda depends on the video game you play [npr].

Come to Silicon Valley, the Culture Wars have [nytimes]. (The only way I could not make that a bleak link was to do a Yoda impression.)

Not to freak you out, but here are three unexpected signals employers send, right before they fire you [sitepoint].

A bit lighter: achievement stickers for freelancers [newyorker].

Quiet, Please

Everything else

Wow, William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic Neuromancer is finally getting made into a film, directed by the guy who directed Deadpool! [hollywoodreporter] I only read the book a few years ago, and was very glad I got around to it. You should get around to it!

Spotify has a list of the top songs doctors play in the operating room [fortune]. I thought the surgery music thing was a Hollywood myth!

mute [mute.life] is a crowdsourced collection of words you should mute on social media.

Lambda School [lambdaschool] is a code school with an interesting difference - it’s free until you get a job, and then you give them a portion of your salary.

Finally, the Internet Archive has digitized a whole bunch of 78rpm records [archive]. Yes, there is ragtime, lots of ragtime, but there’s also a bunch of gems, including this version of The House of the Rising Sun [archive].

There's Versioning for Thursday. I'll be back tomorrow with a few more things for you to peruse and/or mute. In the meantime, I'm going to borrow some of the tracks doctors enjoy for surgery. I like to think what I do with this newsletter is as complex, impactful and difficult as major surgery, so I should be following their lead. Back tomorrow, assuming I don't lose the patient! (That's a dark joke, and I've lost track of the metaphor to be honest, so I'll leave the theater.)