§ Myth busting the HTML5 performance of transform:translate vs. top/left.

§ Do androids read electric books?: typography and new features (and upcoming) CSS features.

§ Browserhacks is a handy reference to JS/CSS hacks targeting specific browsers.

§ Dom4, a polyfill for new DOM Level 4 API: Element#prepend(), #append(), #before(), #after(), #replace() and #remove().

§ Manipulating content with CSS3 transforms: on using scale, rotate, skew and perspective.

§ The Overbite Project, a Gopher client for modern browsers. For more modern Gophery (iPhone apps, servers, etc), check out One Thing Well that apparently is having Gopher appreciation week.

§ Faruk Ate?:

“Nobody, ever.” — Everybody, repeatedly.

§ The Problem Of CSS Form Elements:

Through the years, this lack of detail in the CSS specification has forced Web developers to produce a significant number of tests and examples whose primary goal is to reduce form elements to a common visual denominator in order to get a cross-browser rendering of elements such as input, select, fieldset, legend and textarea. In this article, we will cover some of the CSS patterns used by Web developers to tame the visual layout of form elements.

§ Stop Using Small Font Sizes:

TL;DR: 16px minimum font-size for body text, 1.5em line-height for said text; max width should be 60-80 characters == 27-35em.

§ Type rendering on the web. 7 part series. Ever wondered why text looks different on different OS/browsers?

In summary, most people reading text on the web view type in one of these five ways. Mac OS X users see Core Text, Windows 7 and Windows Vista users see either DirectWrite or GDI, and Windows XP users see GDI.

§ Loader.io is a free load testing service that allows you to stress test your web-apps/apis with thousands of concurrent connections. Pretty damn awesome.

§ What’s New in Ruby 2.0.

§ Laser-guided precision phishing. For example, this fake NATO Membership Action Plan using 0-day PDF exploit, assembly-level backdoor, and Twitter for command and control.

§ Programming Wisdom

Theory is when you know something but it doesn’t work. Practice is when something works but you don’t know why. Programmers combine the two.

§ Parallel.js gives you high level access to multicore processing using web workers. Runs in modern browsers and Node.js

§ Resemble.js analyses and compares images with HTML5 canvas and JavaScript.

§ Rollbar just launched out of beta. We migrated over from AirBrake a couple of months back, and it works like a charm (we do Node and Ruby). Better error messages, daily summary, multiple logging levels, and more. Recommended.

§ the_silver_searcher — A code-searching tool similar to ack, but faster.

§ Anonymous Confessions from Programmers:

I often write just “Bug fixes” in release notes because I am too ashamed to mention the details of the stupid bug I introduced last version.

§ Stop and read. Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us.

§ The Pointerless Web:

Believe it or not, accessibility is more than just screen readers. There’s a whole group of users who only use a keyboard (without a mouse). Learn how to make the web a friendly place for all kinds of people by ensuring keyboard accessibility.

§ Embedded event processing with Node.js.

§ Redacted-Font – Keep your wireframes free of distracting Lorem Ipsum. Open source alternative to BLOKK.

§ Cohort Visualizer – A handy tool for browsing cohort datasets. If you do a lot of cohort analysis, you want to have a look at that.

§ Complex Navigation Patterns for Responsive Design. When you have no choice but a large navigation menu.

§ History of the non-blocking script loader pattern: using Frame In Frame to optimize JS scripts loading.

§ The story of Gowalla vs Foursquare.

§ PSA: disable-java.com. Apply liberally.

§ saabi/vminpoly · A polyfill for CSS units vw, vh & vmin.

§ ascii camera. You’ll need Chrome or some other modern browser with userMedia support.

§ Mosca – The MQTT server for node.js that can be backed up by AMQP, Redis, ZeroMQ or just MQTT.

§ Must read. Principles of User Interface Design:

Clarity is job #1

Clarity is the first and most important job of any interface. To be effective using an interface you’ve designed, people must be able to recognize what it is, care about why they would use it, understand what the interface is helping them interact with, predict what will happen when they use it, and then successfully interact with it. While there is room for mystery and delayed gratification in interfaces, there is no room for confusion. Clarity inspires confidence and leads to further use. One hundred clear screens is preferable to a single cluttered one.

§ MongoDB schema design pitfalls:

Remember, “schemaless” doesn’t mean you don’t need to design your schema!

§ Horse:

Ignorance of Deferred is not a valid reason

§ Using pushState to get infinite scrolling and back button working together.

§ How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?

While most of the people that we observed touching their screen used one hand, very large numbers also used other methods. Even the least-used case, two-handed use, is large enough that you should consider it during design.

§ Flowstate is a brutal writing app that produces results:

Don’t try to exit Flowstate to check your email as the app will take the big ole eraser to your text as well. Just keep writing and don’t stop until the timer is up, and you will get to keep your precious ramblings.

§ Profiling long paint times with DevTools’ continous painting mode:

Continuous painting mode is a tool that helps you identify which elements are costly on the page. It puts the page into an always repainting state, showing a counter of how much painting work is happening. Then, you can hide elements and mutate styles, watching the counter, in order to figure out what is slow.

§ Nginx gains support for WebSockets and Apress publishes The Definitive Guide to HTML5 WebSocket.

§ Making an accessible dialog box: ARIA, focus and Esc.

§ Cat User Stories:

As a Cat, I want all the doors open all the time so that… no reason. I just like it.

You had one job!

§ Lo-Dash v1.0.0 is out.

§ Asset-Rack: Asset management framework for Node.js.

§ Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech:

It doesn’t help to be an industry obsessed with meritocracy if the first reaction to an altered status quo is that OUR MERITOCRACY MUST BE BROKEN, SOUND THE ALARMS. That’s an a-hole old-timer’s club.

§ So z-index, like all things CSS, is a bit more complicated than it first seems: What no one told you about z-index.

§ Rich Siegel:

OH: “If you can put an axe through it, it’s hardware; if you want to put an axe through it, it’s software.”

§ Common Afflictions of Kitchen Appliances.

§ daryl:

['hip','hip'] (hip hip array!)

§ Tips for smooth scrolling web pages: on avoiding reflows, minimizing drawings, brs on mobile and more.

§ If there was any doubt NPM rocks, here come Peer Dependencies.

§ Because eventually we all have to deal with this … JavaScript Time Zone Conversion with Walltime.

§ Interesting. PeerJS: A Peer to Peer Networking Library in JavaScript using WebRTC.

§ Trends in interactive design 2013.

§ PBS’s Silicon Valley. From Fairchild to Intel and the moon.

§ “I made a few adjustments …” from the hilarious comment section of a recipe for making ice.

§ Visually re-engineering CSS for faster paint times.

§ Colour Blindness Check will show you what your website/image looks like for different conditions of color blindness.

§ MQTEST identifies which media queries your device responds to.

§ The Big Javascript Compatibility Table.

§ Why does HTML think “chucknorris” is a color?

§ If you use a lot of Git branches, Twig could make your life easier.

§ npm install java. Enjoy.

§ This, that or a meaningful name. I like the idea of using a meaningful name.

§ Sketch vs Photoshop. Been playing with it for a little bit, pretty slick.

§ traceroute -m 100 216.81.59.173 and may the force be with you.