Hey everyone!
Adam at SitePoint HQ here. For those unaware, I send out a daily newsletter called Versioning, full of links to great content on SitePoint and the wider web. I’ve been doing it since May, and the response has been really great. I thought it might be worth seeing if anyone here was interested in a forum edition of the newsletter, with the opportunities for discussion that brings.
So without further ado, here’s the next edition of Versioning, due out early morning (Pacific Time), Wednesday Feb 4. (This is a sneak peak!) If this works OK, we may start to do this a bit more in the future. And if you’re interested in signing up to the newsletter, you can do so here!
Go With the Flo
General web
Sandstorm [github/sandstorm-io], presumably inspired by the Darude song of the same name [youtube] is an open source platform for personal servers, so you can run web apps without worrying about walled gardens etc.
Microsoft open sourced CoreCLR [blogs.msdn], in case that’s what you’re into.
Here’s an interesting, widely-shared post, an allegory for the problem of (over)use of asynchronous functions [journal.stuffwithstuff].
And here’s an intro to NoFlo and Flow programming [rawkes].
Animaniacs
Design
Wired has 15 predictions for design and tech in 2015 [wired].
Here’s an interesting piece on using variable fonts for responsive typography [alistapart].
Here’s a look at how Yelp’s engineers implemented animation in the mobile web [engineeringblog.yelp].
And here’s an explanation of how FiftyThree, the company behind popular app Paper, implemented fluid text inputs [making.fiftythree].
Twitter has a nice little animation whenever you fave a tweet (using the official apps or the web interface). Here’s how to get the same effect using CSS animation [cssanimation].
Codrops now has a pretty handy CSS reference section [tympanus].
Boot Strap In
SitePoint
First up on SitePoint today, here’s a guide to deploying to Heroku using Gulp, Node and Git.
Then there’s a look at using vector graphics in Sass.
And here’s an article on wrangling Bootstrap tabs into playing nice with Masonry, a JavaScript grid layout library.
We’re pretty keen on everyone learning to code for fun and profit, but not everyone learns best online or through reading books. If that’s you, here’s an opportunity to learn coding in a hands-on, intensive way, with coding school HackReactor.
Once you have the skills and you’re looking to put them to use, here’s a guide to negotiating for the best rate as a freelancer.
The BudGit
News/business
Lots and lots of companies use Slack for their office communication. Which is potentially a bit of a privacy nightmare, really. Here’s an interview with the person who handles that nightmare for Slack [fusion].
The White House put the 2016 budget on GitHub [github/whitehouse]. So if you want a slice of that sweet cash, just submit a pull request.
Turns out that Firefox deal worked out OK for Yahoo [gs.statcounter].
Compare Notes
Off-topic
Alternote [alternoteapp] is a really pretty note taking app that integrates with Evernote.
Phone Expander [mashable] looks like it’ll be just what the doctor ordered, assuming your doctor is concerned with a lack of free space on your iPhone.
Air Display [avatron] lets you use an iDevice as a secondary display for your Windows or OS X computer.
DrawAttention [drawattention] turns your laptop lid into a whiteboard.
Commits.io [commits] turns your code into a pretty poster. Assuming your code is pretty to begin with, of course.
Earth Primer [earthprimer] looks like a really cool way to learn about the science of Earth.
Medium had a really interesting bug when displaying Polish characters [medium/medium-eng] The culprits included Communism, Auto-save, and Windows. So, the usual suspects.
So there’s a guy out there who has made more than 47,000 edits to Wikipedia, all fixing incorrect uses of the phrase ‘comprised of’ [medium/backchannel]. Pedants every where salute you, sir.
That’s it for today. We’ll being spending the rest of the day watching our grammar — we suggest you do the same. See you again tomorrow!
(PS, once again, sign up for the newsletter here.)