Reading List, October 2017
On to the list!
I haven’t experienced imposter syndrome, and maybe you haven’t either
I cannot count the number of posts I’ve read about Imposter Syndrome™ over the past five or so years, but this one by Rachel Smith is the first I’ve read trying to distinguish it from symptoms of humility.
I kind of wish we could talk about how we all experience:
- humility’s advantage
- the beginner’s mindset
- the motivation that comes from self doubt
They aren’t nearly as sexy sounding as imposter syndrome, but at least we wouldn’t be labelling normal and healthy feelings like they are some sort of psychological affliction!
Once you read Rachel’s post, you start to read all the others with a different perspective. Here’s another one that published a few days after Rachel’s that acts as a good companion because it further defines the diagnosis and ways to deal with the symptoms.
Rebuilding slack.com
Any post the talks about CSS Grid is catching my eyes these days. I’m genuinely excited about the feature and it’s potential for removing frameworks as dependencies on web projects. This post by Mina Markham goes deep on how the Slack team integrated Grid into their marketing site, including super helpful tips on how they addressed fallbacks for older browsers using progressive enhancement using CSS @supports as a starting point.
The other key takeaway from this post is a swell mixin for fluid typesetting. Not only does the shared technique help address responsive font sizing, but it also acts as a one-stop shop for setting the context for the content, such as setting a link to be a button. As Mina describes it:
Typeset is a mixin that acts as single source of truth for all typography settings. For each type style, a new line is created inside the mixin that contains the name or purpose of the style, followed by a list of settings for each style.
Dang, that’s slick. While I don’t use LESS for CSS preprocessing, I’d be down to see a similar mixin for Sass.
A Lifetime of Nerdery
This is Chris Coyer’s lifetime journey, starting with the family he was born into and how his accumulation of experiences led him into web design. As someone who works remotely and independently, I often miss opportunities to talk to and relate with others the same way that you might with co-workers in an office. This post reads a lot like a deeply personal conversation with a colleague over coffee and gave me something to relate to. Plus, I really dig the accompanying photos and the overall presentation. It’s a lot like a presentation turned into a post, which I guess it is.
A Five Minutes Guide to Better Typography
There is very little new information on typography in this post, but I really like (1) how it is presented and (2) that it is a one-stop shop that collects all the information on best practices. Plus, there are a few bonus tips on grammar, which is something near and dear to my heart, having come from a copywriting background.
Guide to CSS Gradients
I have to shamefully promote myself a little, right? This is a guide I put together for CSS-Tricks. It forced me to revisit the very basics of using the CSS gradients which was a healthy exercise because it showed me just how much I had forgotten or what I take for granted. It also forced me to learn about Conical Gradients, which are super interesting and in the current working draft of the spec.
The Story of CSS Grid, from Its Creators
CSS Grid has been written up a ton (some by myself included) but rarely do we get a peek inside the making of such a significant web feature. This post is a true journalistic piece on the history of CSS Grid from it’s inception to the currently day workings into solving subgrid, complete with commentary by the very folks who were and are at the ground level of its implementation.