Welcome to This Week on the Front End, our weekly roundup of news from the world of the front-end web.
You can check out the other editions under the frontendnews tag, and don’t forget to check out our weekly JavaScript and .Net roundups too!
News and Views
SitePoint has just launched a new, free video course for learning HTML and CSS. A great place to point family or friends wanting to learn web design.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who hates the way operating systems are killing off file hierarchies. Rock on, DropBox!
Here’s a nice post on why it pays to give away your words for free. (PS—“for free” is bad English, but meh …)
And here’s an interesting look at the characteristics of minimalism in web design.
CSS
Louis Lazaris has done it again, digging up a whole bunch more things you probably didn’t know about CSS—or if you did, you should be too modest to admit you knew about.
Here’s a nice intro to Sass (but man, check out the URL on that baby 
).
Here’s an argument for you to wean yourself off Sass and try PostCSS instead. (What? You never even tried Sass? Well didn’t you save yourself some trouble then. 
)
Smashing Mag challenges you to create a table of items in this article on quantity ordering with CSS.
Eva Ferreira presents a fascinating talk on animations, called Newton meets CSS.
And Chris Coyier explores CSS layout techniques.
JavaScript
Charts. You can’t live with 'em, you can’t live without 'em. Or something. Anyhow, here are some handy JS libraries to help you with that.
If you’re comfortable with HTML, CSS and a bit of jQuery, you’ll enjoy this comprehensive introduction to React.js.
Here’s an article about 7 surprising JavaScript features. (Yeah, very surprising. Who knew JS had features?)
Design
Ryan Scherf explains why our web designs are becoming boring, and what we need to do about it.
Here are some insights into what happens when an Apple guy explores material design.
Here are five rules for better design.
It’s the week of fives, because here’s 5 simple UX principles to guide your product design.
Here’s a designer’s guide to creating logo files.
Everybody needs a hero, right? Here’s an interesting look at the history of the hero section.
UX and Accessibility
Haha, seems you were wrong all along. Scrolling web pages rock, baby.
Here’s a look at the importance of where buttons are placed on a page.
SVG
Here’s a really cool article on the seven stages of SVG. It gives some really nice insights into animated SVG, and no doubt some inspiration, too.
Performance
Here’s a rhetorical question: Are your websites too slow?
Video, anyone? Here’s a handy video on using CSS Stats to remove bloated CSS.
Podcasts
A great podcast by the Podcast Dude this week examining what’s keeping you from starting a podcast.
The Coolness
Here’s a cool animated page demo.
Off the Wall
As they say, those who ignore history are doomed … to ignore it—or something. Well, here’s a cool video describing what graphic design was like before Photoshop. Wow, that’s twenty-five years ago! Weren’t there, like, dinosaurs back then or something? Anyhow, here’s the vid:
If you have any links you’d like me to put in the next edition, please just message me [If the dog barks, it’s just 'cause he wants to play].
If you enjoyed any of these articles, or if they got you thinking, tell us about it below. Otherwise it gets lonely in here!