Quote of the Day

“Joe ‘Willie’ Namath, swaggering off the field, his sideburns and apogee of sculpted sartorium, the foppish follicles pioneered by Ambrose Burnside, Appomattox, 1865.” – Not Howard Cosell

New tools for art direction on the web

I’m in Boston right now, getting ready to speak at An Event Apart. This will be my second (and last) Event Apart of the year—the other time was in Seattle back in April. After that event, I wrote about how inspired I was: It was interesting to see repeating, overlapping t…

Praise for Going Offline

I’m very, very happy to see that my new book Going Offline is proving to be accessible and unintimidating to a wide audience—that was very much my goal when writing it. People have been saying nice things on their blogs, which is very gratifying. It’s even more gratifying…

Detecting image requests in service workers

In Going Offline, I dive into the many different ways you can use a service worker to handle requests. You can filter by the URL, for example; treating requests for pages under /blog or /articles differently from other requests. Or you can filter by file type. That way, you can…

Registering service workers

In chapter two of Going Offline, I talk about registering your service worker wrapped up in some feature detection: if (navigator.serviceworker) { navigator.serviceworker.register('/serviceworker.js'); } But I also make reference to a declarative way of doing this that isn�…

Clearleft.com is a progressive web app

What’s that old saying? The cobbler’s children have no shoes that work offline. Or something. It’s been over a year since the Clearleft site relaunched and I listed some of the next steps I had planned: Service worker. It’s a no-brainer. Now that the Clearleft site i…

Expectations

I noticed something interesting recently about how I browse the web. It used to be that I would notice if a site were responsive. Or, before responsive web design was a thing, I would notice if a site was built with a fluid layout. It was worthy of remark, because it was except…

AMPstinction

I’ve come to believe that the goal of any good framework should be to make itself unnecessary. Brian said it explicitly of his PhoneGap project: The ultimate purpose of PhoneGap is to cease to exist. That makes total sense, especially if your code is a polyfill—those s…

Document

A little while back, I showed Paul what I was working on with The Gęsiówka Story. I value his opinion and I really like the Bradshaw’s Guide project that he’s been working on. We’re both in complete agreement with Russell Davies’ call for an internet of unmonetisable…

The Gęsiówka Story

While I was in Warsaw for a conference last week, I sought out a commerative plaque in a residential neighbourhood. The English translation reads: On 5th August 1944 “Zośka” the scouts’ battalion of the “Radosław” unit Armia Krajowa captured the German concentrat…

Film Photographers: Here’s Some Help With Shooting Double Exposures

Feeling stuck in a dry spell with your creative projects? Time to shake things up and pick up a film camera. Whether you're doing it for the first time ever or first time in a long time, the constraints of film will definitely get you thinking about your photos and squeeze creat…

Quote of the Day

“Mr. Simpson, I guarantee you, we’ll come up with a commercial that can save your business. You know those radio ads where two people with annoying voices yammer back and forth? I invented those. . . . Happens all the time.” – McMahon and Tate Agent

Makeup Quote of the Day

“Sir, I feel there’s something you’re not telling me. Perhaps you’d feel more comfortable talking to Snappy the Alligator.” – Mr. Smithers “Maybe.” – C.M. Burns “Hello, Mr. Burns.” – Snappy the Alligator

Around the World: Favourite Novels

I started this exercise curious to see, really, how large is the gap in my knowledge of world literature. It turns out: it's pretty huge. The majority of nation-states listed below are followed by I have never read any fiction from that country. I am, of course, limiting myself…

Rebecca West, "The Harsh Voice" (1935)

I'm reading West only in part because she's a major if neglected 20th-century author (though she certainly is) and more, if I'm honest, because I have to write this H G Wells biography thing and West loomed so large in Bertie's middle life. To that end I've previously blogged a…