How do I learn?
I hear this question quite a bit lately. Our industry feels like it’s expanding exponentially with new techniques and technologies. People feel overwhelmed and unsure how to ingest it all. I’ve found that I have 3 phases to my learning process: Reading Building Writing Reading — Superficial Learning I read a lot. I’ll click on links from Hacker News, Facebook, and Twit...
Physical Web Beacons
After hearing about the Physical Web through a second-hand tweet, I decided to look into what it is and why we want it. The Physical Web is essentially a way to broadcast a URL using Bluetooth (Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE, specifically). Devices can then listen for those beacons. The beacons can broadcast to a distance from a few centimetres away to possible 450 metres away. The Physi...
Working Remotely
I’ve been fortunate over the past decade to have been able to, in various capacities, work from home—or work in place, as some like to call it. First as a freelancer, then Yahoo!, then again when I went to work at Xero, and now back to working for myself. Shopify has been the exception to the rule in that time and while I tried to instill a culture of remote work, I don’t think I manage...
How Will Web Components Change CSS Architecture?
With the slow rise of Web Components—the breakdown of interfaces into self-contained chunks of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS—will we see an evolution (or revolution) in how we manage the way we write, build, and bundle the CSS for our web sites? Currently there are two main approaches to writing CSS: component-based and utility-based. (I’ve also seen this referred to object and functional...