RWD Weekly #282
Hello and welcome to RWD Weekly edition #282.
This week there were a couple of articles that called attention to AMP and the way in which it is possibly gaining traction under false pretences. These articles are our features this week and did cause a bit of a stir when The Register picked up one of the stories and ran waaay to far with it. The lead of the AMP Project rightly defended the post, however, the positioning of one of the tweets in the response seems to have AMP deviating away from the positioning that I had thought they were holding.
When AMP first became a thing Paul Bakaus, who is an incredibly bright and brilliant developer, positioned it in the same way as jQuery, and in that way AMP was here to help us get over the performance issues today but to fade away into the distance as sites became more and more performant without the restrictions and requirements that AMP places.
It’s an interesting time.
Oh, and before we get into the links don’t miss the FREE .design domain name for all RWD Subscribers down below…. that’s a saving of $35!
Headline
Seven into seven.
Ethan writes about how we look a the systems and technology we choose to use in our projects. We shouldn’t just implement tools without considering WHO benefits from them rather than WHAT benefits there are. Ethan puts this lens on the AMP project (in particular, but it also extends to FB Instant Articles and Apple News) and how it impacts the Open Web.
The meaning of AMP
Jeremy backs up Ethan’s article this week with a fairly scathing article on AMP and how it is being positioned. I’m trying my best to be as even minded as I can but I find myself siding with the ideas of both Jeremy and Ethan. I want a faster web, but not one that relies on AMP. The article looks at the way AMP is marketed and positioned vs how Jeremy believes it actually applies itself.
Sponsor
Reasons.London
Reasons to: is the award-winning international design and code conference with a festival vibe. I attended my first this year in Brighton and have already snapped up my ticket for London next March. It literally has changed the way I work and caused me to become more creative in my day to day life.
Articles
The Web began dying in 2014, here’s how
A harrowing tale of what could happen to the web with a continued rise of Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Expo: Towards Rapid VR Prototyping
When we first bought a 360 camera for work (the Samsung360 model from last year) it took me a while to explain to some of the creative team how shooting in 360 was different from standard film making… that they no longer had control of the shot so the person watching needed to be led to watch certain areas. VR has similar issues when you’re trying to sketch out and prototype interfaces. With that in mind what better way to do this than directly within VR itself… and this is exactly what the team at Shopify have done.
Samsung Internet v6.2 now Stable!
Samsung web browser has had an upgrade and is now supporting CSS Grid Layout.
The Story of CSS Grid, from Its Creators
Tutorials
Animating Clipped Shapes
I love it when people share how the built things! This covers how you can use SVG and clipping paths to make some pretty unreal visual designs on the web.
WordPress + PWAs
Surma talks you through (and provides a github project to download all the code) how you can set up your wordpress site to become a PWA.
Quick Wins For Improving Performance And Security Of Your Website
SSL certificates, Compression with Brotli, HTTP2, WebP images, plus much more…. this post has got a lot of great ideas to make your site better.
Tools
Vue Design System
Vue Design System is an open-source tool for prototyping UI design systems built by @viljamis. It provides you and your team a set of organized tools, patterns & practices to build upon, so that you can get started with the actual design system faster.
Mindshow
Mindshow lets you make animated movies in VR! Personalize your show by choosing a world to inhabit and decorating it with props.
Tailwind CSS
A Utility-First CSS Framework for Rapid UI Development. Be prepared to use a tonne of classes on this one.
Webpack Monitor
The Ultimate Optimization Tool For Modern Web Development
flipping.js
This is a great little library, especially if you’re looking to animate changes between CSS Grid Layouts.
Frappe Charts
GitHub-inspired simple and modern charts for the web with zero dependencies (other than its own JS library of course).
MasterpieceVR
Easily create 3D forms using volumetric shapes. Model with intuitive tools that allow you to explore variations of expression and add detail as you sculpt.
Snag the hottest new domain name for designers
.design domains were just released and some of the best ones are still available. Normally cost $35 but Responsive Design Weekly subscribers get them now for FREE
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Code Pen
How to calculate the frequencies of musical notes
Turning a codepen into a musical instrument.
Finally
That’s it for this week.
Massive congratulations to all the Houston Astro fans out there and commiserations to the Dodgers fans…. I had a lot of late nights watching it here in the UK.
See you next week!
Cheers,
Justin.
