Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Smashing Newsletter #34: HTML5 Diagnostics, Android Apps, Map Collection, Educate Your Clients

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Smashing Magazine Newsletter

Issue #34
Tuesday, May 24th 2011
Readers: 57,306


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Table of Contents
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1. HTML5 Diagnostics With CSS
2. "If Then" Statements for Online Tasks
3. Test Your Android Apps on the Most Popular Devices
4. David Rumsey's Map Collection
5. Educate Your Clients
6. Showoff: Easily Share Localhost
7. Drawing Your Happiness
8. Smashing Cartoon: Online Reading Experience
9. New on Smashing Magazine


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1. HTML5 Diagnostics With CSS
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Whether you are working with a third party CSS code, or explore weird CSS quirks in your own code, often you have to dedicated some time for lengthy debugging sessions. But there is a little helper for you: Holmes makes it easy to find errant mark-up.

Essentially, the tool a diagnostic CSS style sheet that highlights possibly invalid or erroneous mark-up. Just add a single class, and it will create a red border around errors, a yellow border around warnings and a gray border around deprecated styles. In addition to the downloadable CSS style sheet, there's also a Holmes bookmarklet that lets you apply holmes.css to any page in your browser. (cc)

http://www.red-root.com/sandbox/holmes/


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2. "If Then" Statements for Online Tasks
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"If then" statements are common in the programming world, but a bit less common in our daily lives, even though they could simplify things. Being able to trigger one action when something else happens would be a huge time-saver for people who have to perform repetitive tasks. Wouldn't it be great to send a new mock-up via email and automatically upload the image on BaseCamp, share it via Dribbble and post it on Facebook? Being able to trigger actions based on regular activities would be a dream come true for many people.

That's where ifttt (if this then that) comes in. Just create simple "if then" actions based on common activities, and let ifttt automate them. Trigger an email when the weather forecast predicts rain so that you remember your umbrella. Send a tweet every time you add a new bookmark to your Delicious account. Do any number of tasks based on channels and triggers. You could automate all of these actions from a single source, rather than relying on various widgets and plug-ins to get the job done. The service is currently in private beta, but you can request an invite. (cc)

http://ifttt.com/


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3. Test Your Android Apps on the Most Popular Devices
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Google Android is creating more diversity in the smartphone market but is also plagued by fragmentation woes. And this fragmentation has become frustrating for many developers. Testing applications on various devices is a nightmare, especially because you just don't have access to all those devices.

DeviceReady is a service that helps developers test their Android apps on more than 25 devices. Using the submission tool, a developer navigates through the various screens of their app, with their actions being recorded. The app is then run on actual physical devices (not emulators), and the developer gets back a stack of screenshots for each device to see exactly how the app looks and performs on each device. The tool isn't perfect, but it's a good start. (tb)

http://www.deviceready.com/test-android-apps-on-multiple-devices/


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4. David Rumsey's Map Collection
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David Rumsey's Map Collection is a large collection of maps of the world from 1700 to the 1950s. The project was started over 25 years ago and contains over 26,000 high-resolution images of maps, with new ones added regularly. A good number of historical maps are also mapped to Google Earth and Google Maps. so you can track them on current geographic data.

The project provides access to carefully catalogued high-resolution images of maps, as well as a variety of tools for comparing, analyzing and viewing items in new and experimental ways. The website is updated monthly. (ik)

http://www.davidrumsey.com/


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5. Educate Your Clients
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Clients sometimes approach Web design projects with specific ideas in mind. Many of them have read an article here or there or spoken with a self-proclaimed expert who told them that one rule or another of Web design was unbreakable. And so your client comes to you insisting that everything be kept "above the fold" or that you should do something that just doesn't make sense to professional designers any more (and perhaps never did).

Enter Wee Nudge. It's a collection of helpful articles, broken down by topic, that give you the information you need to convince clients that their way isn't necessarily the only way to do things. Articles are from leading sources in the Web design and graphic design industries, including A List Apart, AIGA and more. (cc)

http://weenudge.com/


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6. Showoff: Easily Share Localhost
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Demonstrating your ongoing projects could be a huge pain. In general, your best option is to upload the files to a server somewhere. You could prepare a video or send over a huge package of files or just .zip it somewhere on project collaboration website. But waht if just want to quickly show someone a project you're working on without sending over the large files?

Showoff aims to solve this problem. Just use the show command, and Showoff creates a "tunnel" between your computer and the Web. Share the URL with whoever needs to view the local files, and you're all set. A five-minute sharing session is free (great if you just need some quick feedback). If you need to provide access for longer, you can get a one-day pass for $1, or get unlimited access for $5 per month. (cc)

https://showoff.io/


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7. Drawing Your Happiness
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Feelings and emotions can be quite difficult to describe to others. DrawHappy is an ongoing global art project by Catherine Young that attempts to share the diverse meanings of happiness with people all around the world. Over 150 drawings have been shared already, and they prove well that art does not need language to be understood worldwide; it can be understood by people of all ages, cultures and nations.

The things that can make a person happy are countless. When submitting a sketch, you are asked to mention some details about yourself and where you were while doing the sketch. The daily contributions on DrawHappy are interesting indeed and provide a positive dose of inspiration. So, what is your definition of happiness? (il)

http://drawhappy.wordpress.com/


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8. Smashing Cartoon: Online Reading Experience
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Smashing Cartoons is a regular section on Smashing Magazine. (Almost) every week we publish a new cartoon created by our illustrator Ricardo Gimenes. The cartoons are dedicated to design and Web development, but also have a comic twist about everything happening around the Web as well as give you some insights behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine. You might also want to check out other Smashing Cartoons.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/the-smashing-cartoons/


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Advertising
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09. New on Smashing Magazine
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Print Loves Web
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/23/print-loves-web/

Relationship Engineering: Designing The Happily Ever After
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/20/relationship-engineering-designing-the-happily-ever-after/

Optimizing Emotional Engagement In Web Design Through Metrics
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/19/optimizing-emotional-engagement-in-web-design-through-metrics/

Optimizing Error Pages: Creating Opportunities Out Of Mistakes
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/18/optimizing-error-pages-creating-opportunities-out-of-mistakes/

An Introduction To CSS3 Keyframe Animations
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/17/an-introduction-to-css3-keyframe-animations/

Web Designers, Get Out There and Make Something!
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/16/web-designers-get-out-there-and-make-something/

Two Cats In A Sack: Designer-Developer Discord
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/13/two-cats-in-a-sack-designer-developer-discord/

Branding On Mobile Devices And Desktop Browsers
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/12/getting-ahead-of-the-curve-branding-on-mobile-devices-and-desktop-browsers/


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10. Smashing Network Highlights
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Content SEO made easier by WordPress, Yoast and Linkdex
http://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/

Why Can't We(bbies) Be Friends?
http://designinformer.com/why-can-t-we-bbies-be-friends/

8 Things They Don't Tell You About Being a Web Designer
http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/8-things-they-dont-tell-you-about-being-a-web-designer/

Android vs iOS; A Usability Battle
http://spyrestudios.com/android-vs-ios-a-usability-battle/

How to Use Golden Section Proportions In Your Designs
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/golden-section-proportions/

Establishing a Brand Identity
http://justcreativedesign.com/2011/05/19/establishing-a-brand-identity/

Prevent White Flash While iFrame Loads
http://css-tricks.com/prevent-white-flash-iframe/

Distraction Management: How To NOT Procrastinate or Get Distracted
http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/distraction-management-how-to-not-procrastinate-get-distracted-when-designing.html

How to Create a Web Service in a Matter of Minutes
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/other/how-to-create-a-web-service-in-a-matter-of-minutes/

Long Live the Redesign
http://www.getfinch.com/finch/entry/long-live-the-redesign/

LESS Is More: Make Your CSS Coding Easier with LESS
http://www.elated.com/articles/less-is-more-make-your-css-coding-easier-with-less/

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The authors are: Iris Kopic (ik), Christina Sitte (cs), Stephan Poppe (sp), Thomas Burkert (tb), Cameron Chapman (cc), Robin Schulz (rs), Vitaly Friedman (vf), Sven Lennartz (sl), Christiane Rosenberger (research), Elja Friedman (tools), Andrew Lobo (proofreading).

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