3 Easy Tips for Fast-Loading Website Images

To improve website loading times, here are three quick tips. They all involve images, which have the biggest impact on page-load speed, and they're all super easy to implement.

Using Fathom Analytics With ExpressJS & Helmet

How to set up CSP and other HTTP headers set by Helmet, to enable Fathom Analytics on an ExpressJS web app.

Best Open Source Documentation

Having written a fair bit of technical documentation, this tweet requesting recommendations for the best open source docs caught my eye: What's the best documentation you've ever seen for an open source project? (And what makes it so good?) — Erin Kissane (@kissane) September 26, 2016 Thankfully lots of people were keen to suggest good examples … Continue reading Best Open Source Documentation →

Song: Oh! Selector ♪

http://www.youtube.com/embed/77T2keQGLSc Downloads Get high quality versions of this song from iTunes and Bandcamp.Also, free not-quite-so-high quality downloads are available from SoundCloud and Last.fm. Lyrics Now when I was a young boy startin' out in this industry I remember this pearl of wisdom that the internet gave to me. To manipulate or decorate something on a web page First ya gotta grab … Continue reading Song: Oh! Selector ♪ →

Responsive Is Not Just Visual: Three Useful Web APIs

Mobile users are on the go. They’re rushing to get a train or busy meeting people. They don’t have much time and they’re on a slow connection. Right? The answer of course is not necessarily. So-called mobile browsing could include shopping online while tucked up in bed, sending messages while watching TV or giggling at … Continue reading Responsive Is Not Just Visual: Three Useful Web APIs →

Song: On the Web ♪

The other day Joe Leech tweeted that he’s “thinking about writing a sit-com about web designers. Best friends Mark Down and Rich Snippets and their hilarious adventures.” Well a sitcom needs a cheesy theme tune so here’s my crack at writing a short song for it. Now all we need are a script, location, actors, production staff… … Continue reading Song: On the Web ♪ →

My Two Favourite (underused) HTML5 Media Features

Both of these are stable, simple and useful, yet they don’t seem to be used much in the wild (yet). Maybe it’s just lack of awareness so here are a couple of demos to hopefully generate a bit of interest. Page Visibility API In first place it has to be the Page Visibility API. Supported in all … Continue reading My Two Favourite (underused) HTML5 Media Features →

Twitter Bootstrap Without jQuery

※ NOTE: The script mentioned here is no longer maintained and probably out of date. The more I use Twitter Bootstrap, the more I like it. The only thing that puts me off is needing jQuery for a few simple interactions such as hiding and displaying elements. jQuery’s an excellent library but if a site doesn’t make full … Continue reading Twitter Bootstrap Without jQuery →

Web API Design: A Definitive Guide

“Web API” is a confusing term. It can refer to interfaces to be implemented by web software such as browsers, for example the W3C geolocation API, etc. It can also refer to how a web service exposes its data, and it’s in this context that Brian Mulloy has written what I hope will become the bible of REST-based … Continue reading Web API Design: A Definitive Guide →

Free HTML5 Template

After being asked for a bit of advice by a colleague, I decided to make a very simple starter template for creating an HTML5 page. You can download it here: Download HTML5 template Notes The tricky part is making sure it works in older browsers, for which I used the following two steps: 1. Normalize.css(Click on … Continue reading Free HTML5 Template →