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firstImpression.js: A micro-library for detecting new visitors
firstImpression.js is a micro/nano-library (1 kb minified) that answers the simple question, “Has this user visited this site before?” The detection doesn’t require much logic, so the majority of the code is just a Plain JavaScript port of the popular jquery.cookie plugin. Using it Writing and reading your own cookies is easy enough but if ...
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Responsive Ads in the Real World: Ad Server Implementation
The last time I wrote about responsive design + advertising I put together a few examples demonstrating how an ad unit could respond to its environment. The demos were fun but in the real world, ads need to integrate with an ad server. This is a slightly greater challenge but I’ve had a few thoughts ...
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Simple CSS/JS Concatenation and Versioning with PHP
Here’s a quick and easy way way to concatenate stylesheets and JavaScript using PHP. I’ll also show how to layer on file versioning so you can use far future expires headers for optimal client side caching. There are many ways to combine files to reduce HTTP requests–you can use a build tool to prepare static ...
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Watch and Compile LESS From the Command Line
Unlike SASS and Stylus, the command line compiler that comes with LESS does not include a watch option to automatically compile LESS files whenever changes are made. There are several GUI apps that provide watch functionality but if GUIs aren’t your thing or if you need something that can run on a server, you’ll want a way ...
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Responsive Ad Demos
My previous post was about some of the business challenges surrounding responsive design and advertising. I wrote it just after reading Mark Boulton’s excellent Responsive Advertising, which was written earlier this week and which you should definitely read if you haven’t already. While I still think the business challenges are the greater obstacle, the technical ...
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Responsive Design and Advertising
A few days ago Mark Boulton posted a tweet wondering why more people haven’t written about the conflict between responsive design and advertising. Having struggled with this problem in the past and having just last week abandoned a responsive approach for an ad-heavy site, I was happy to see attention being brought to the issue. Mark ...
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Photoshop Grid Templates
For the last year or two, much of the discussion about grids in web design has focused on CSS frameworks for building flexible/responsive grids. And for good reason — designers are excited about responsive design and CSS is the overlord of page layout on the web. A large number of great projects have resulted. Too ...
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Designing the Well-Tempered Web
Update 2/5/12: Check out an expanded version of this article that I wrote for Smashing Magazine In 1722, JS Bach put together a book of solo keyboard works intended as a collection of educational pieces for young musicians. The book contained 48 pieces — a prelude and fugue in every major and minor key. Now a ...
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Essential Web Tools for Online Editors
There are two ideas I’d like to share concerning the workflows of editors who manage online content. The first is that there is a core set of web-based tools that combine to form a dashboard (a sort of mission control center) around which a daily workflow can be centered. The second is that these tools ...
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