Welcome back to the second installment of my Open Tabs series. Been finding some cool stuff on my web travels lately.
PicoCSS – Minimal CSS Framework for Semantic HTML: As the name describes, it’s a minimalist approach to writing CSS on the base HTML elements on your page as a way of removing superfluous classes. Interesting methodology!
95 reasons for having your own website: A thoughtful list of reasons by Elliott Cost based around why you should have your own website. A few of my favorites: 7 to have a place to keep memories, 43 to remember that a website is just files & folders, and 77 to be in motion.
Xteink X4 Pocket eReader: An open source e-reader for about $100 AUD. I haven’t tried this device out yet but it looks interesting. Super minimal, has buttons and doesn’t lock you into an ecosystem, allowing you to buy your ebooks from anywhere. Apparently it’s also magnetic so you can stick it on the back of your phone?
Move Faster When Building – Shanif Dhanani: Here, Shanif writes up his advice on moving faster when building software. He’s got some good ideas in here about building with a small team and having a robust testing infrastructure to maintain good code quality. Definitely something I need to get better at. I worked with Shanif in the past and now he’s the founder at Nobi.ai - check it out!
Jelly UI: Kind of an interesting library of web components that have a tactile feel to them (bit of the opposite of PicoCSS above) but still interesting nonetheless. I think some of the motion is a bit unnecessary (the Button becoming quite, ahem, plump when clicked) but the OTP code input is actually quite nice and subtle. It’s got a nice feel to it.
Snitscanner by Staiola Studio: Built by Jesper GB Henriksen, I love this mini scanner tool so much. Quite straightforward, but it works and I think the results are interesting. You can upload and scan images. While nothing will replace my actual scanner, this is great for testing ideas and experimenting super fast. Also lets you export a PNG, stack multiple scans on top of each other, and adjust the scan direction.
From my desk
Still chugging along at my Moving Graphics archive. It’s quite a work in progress but over the weekend I was playing around with some sort of infinite scroll grid and extends in every direction. One drawback is it’s quite laggy with so many images, so I’ll need to figure something out here. I’d also like to begin clustering them according to color, typeface, perhaps even the business type (plumbing, food delivery, HVAC, etc.)
I’ve also been heads-down finalizing the lesson plan and materials for my upcoming DIY Portfolio Workshop. The first session is happening this weekend, 9 August and then I’ll hold the second on 22nd August once I’ve had time to fold in any feedback from my first cohort of designers. This workshop is a 1-day intensive giving designers and creatives a look inside my own creative process and how they can leverage AI coding tools to quickly spin up their own portfolio site, all driven by their own design decisions and completely self-managed. Reach out if you’d like to join on 22 August, I have a few seats left!
