Shadow DOM introduction

Shadow DOM is incredibly powerful. For the first time ever, we have proper encapsulation without the extra baggage of <iframe>s or other older techniques. Shadow DOM is certainly complex beast, but it’s a beast worth adding to the web platform. Spend some time with it. Learn it. Ask questions. I first got introduced to Shadow …

The Gradient Chart

Handy tool/methodology to decide if you should make a responsive site, or build a separate mdot-site. Review the tasks that users want to perform on Device A. List them in priority order. Repeat for Device B. Put the two lists next to each other, and draw lines connecting identical tasks. Depending on the steepness of …

Snappy & User Friendly Dropdown Menus

At every position of the cursor you can picture a triangle between the current mouse position and the upper and lower right corners of the dropdown menu. If the next mouse position is within that triangle, the user is probably moving their cursor into the currently displayed submenu. If the cursor goes outside of the …

Tiny Tiny RSS

Update 2013.03.18: Just took Tiny Tiny RSS for a spin. It works as advertised (it collects your feeds and you can stroll through them), but I found it not that great (the concept of the reading pane just doesn’t work, some frontend bugs, couldn’t get the authentication plugin to work although it was enabled, etc.). …

We’re not ‘appy. Not ‘appy at all.

The British Government Digital Service (a new team within Cabinet Office, which in its turn supports the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister) is totally getting it: Stand-alone mobile apps will only be considered once the core web service works well on mobile devices, and if specifically agreed with the Cabinet Office. Above that: Apps …

RasPlex — Plex on a Raspberry Pi

Simply put, RasPlex lets you turn your TV into a Smart TV. Similar to the AppleTV, but completely free and open source, RasPlex is basically a set-top box. Once RasPlex is stable, it will have support for legacy console game emulation (NES, SNES, etc), as well as Plex Channels (Netflix, Crackle, Youtube, etc). In due …