ShopTalk Show

This week we're joined by Emily Lewis and Lea Alcantara of the CTRL+CLICK Cast! We talk about keeping up with new technologies, Expression Engine VS Wordpress, CMS alternatives to Wordpress, the creative process for designing for the web, how to find work/life balance, and more. Q & A: 20:01 For years I have primarily used ExpressionEngine as my CMS of choice. While I still love EE, it isn't right for every project, so I am looking to brush up on my Wordpress chops. Do you have any recommendations on a few sites or other online resources that you use to keep on top of WP developments? 25:04 Is Wordpress usually the best CMS to use for client work? Are there better alternatives out there? 41:58 When you're just beginning a new design - when that completely blank Photoshop canvas is staring back at you - what is your thought process like? 49:22 As a business owner, freelance creative who works from home, I often have trouble balancing my work life with my family life. Can you offer insight on how you balance work life and family life? Sponsors: 40:48 E4H: Responsive Web Design Summit - Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web's most notable experts in responsive web design and web performance for an all-new, three-day online conference, the RWD Summit 2015! Bring the experts to your desktop March 10-March 12, 2015 from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off your ticket! 46:12 Beanstalk - Beanstalk is a complete workflow for private teams to write, review and deploy code. In November they launched their updated Code Review workflow. It’s a complete rethinking of how teams collaborate. Their review process is designed to start the discussion early and integrates directly with your branch, resulting in more feedback from your team. Head over to beanstalkapp.com/shoptalk to get 50% off your first month! Show Links: CTRL+CLICK Podcast Emily Lewis Follow Emily on Twitter Lea Alcantara Follow Lea on Twitter Bright Umbrella Converge SE Conf WP Tavern Chris Coyier: Digging Into Wordpress Susan Robertson: Overwhelmed by Code Perch CMS Craft CMS Cameron Moll: Why I Passed Up the Chance to Work at Apple If you're looking for a job, head over to the Shoptalk Job Board. We just posted a bunch of great new jobs! If you're enjoying our show, please take a minute to leave us a review in iTunes. We really appreciate it, and thanks to everyone who has already left a review!

Vitaly Friedman is the founder of Smashing Magazine. Vitaly shared his experiences with traveling and working remotely, and online publishing. We also discussed Microsoft's new browser, designing for VR, holograms, and more. We talked about (roughly in order): News’n’Links’n’Drama: 24:43 Microsoft's new browser, Spartan Q & A: 36:31 I’m planning to start blogging about web development. Do you have any tips on how I can drive traffic / increase visibility of my blog posts. Are there any web sites where I could submit my blog posts in an attempt to increase visibility? 41:01 I currently use MAMP. I no longer want to use MAMP. Help me. 48:06 How do you organize your LESS/CSS files and optimize them at Smashing Magazine? How about Javascript? 56:23 Microsoft today announced HoloLens, its augmented reality-type headset, and there's the secretive Google funded Magic Leap project. There's also the world of VR: Sony is working on Morpheus and Samsung is partnering with Oculus. How will the web be consumed on these devices? How do today's web developers stay relevant, or will the role die off/merge with something else? Sponsors: 35:23 E4H: Responsive Web Design Summit - Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web's most notable experts in responsive web design and web performance for an all-new, three-day online conference, the RWD Summit 2015! Bring the experts to your desktop March 10-March 12, 2015 from 9AM to 4PM (CT) Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off your ticket! 51:32 lynda.com - Kickstart your new year and challenge yourself to learn something new with a free 10-day trial to lynda.com! Check out some super great courses like: Jeffrey Zeldman: 20 Years of Web Design and Community Word Press Essential Training Code Clinic - an innovative series where each month lynda.com issues a code challenge and authors share their solutions using a variety of different programming languages Whether you want to set new financial goals, find work/life balance, invest in a new hobby, ask your boss for a raise, find a new job or improve upon your current job skills in 2015; lynda.com has something for everyone! Get a free 10 day trial now! Show Links: Vitaly Friedman Follow Vitaly on Twitter My name is Vitaly, and I am homeless. Smashing Magazine WOFF 2.0 Improving Smashing Magazine’s Performance: A Case Study Web Design Weekly MAMP Vagrant Browser Sync Moz VR If you're enjoying our show, please take a minute to leave us a review in iTunes. We really appreciate it, and thanks to everyone who has already left a review!

This week we’re joined by Tom Dale. Tom is a former Apple software engineer who worked on MobileMe and iCloud. He also helped create Ember.js and co-founded Tilde.io with Yehuda Katz. We took a deep dive into Ember.js, Javascript frameworks, and working with open source projects. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 16:24 I’m not so experienced with JavaScript, so I really don’t quite understand the potential benefits from using a JavaScript Front End Framework. Could you describe it with your own words and give some examples for real-world use cases? 25:45 I’m thinking about learning a JavaScript framework. So far I’ve been recommended to look into Angular and Ember. Which one is better? 58:07 How did you get started in open source software? What’s the best advice you have for encouraging others to get started as well, namely designers, writers, etc? Sponsors: 24:28 E4H: Responsive Web Design Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in responsive web design and web performance for an all-new, three-day online conference, the RWD Summit 2015! Bring the experts to your desktop March 10-March 12, 2015 from 9AM to 4PM (CT) Now that the growth of the mobile Web has outpaced the desktop, Web designers and developers are at a crossroads. The race to keep up with every new device dimension and interface could easily dwarf the pain of dealing with browser quirks, but only if we let it! Take a day to discover the newest Responsive Web Design techniques and change the way you build the Web. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off your ticket! 54:21 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: Audio & Music Production Logic Pro X InDesign Typography with Nigel French Writing for the Web with Chris Nodder Selling on the Amazon Marketplace with Peter Kent And so much more! Learn everything you need to know to be a great developer! Get a free 10 day trial now! Show Links: Tom Dale Tom Dale on Twitter Tilde Skylight.io Yehuda Katz Sproutcore Ember Inspecter Extension Vine Bustle Brandon Hays – Tame the Big Ball o’ Mud The Frontside Podcast Why there’s no Rails Inc. – DHH Dan Webb New Relic If you’re enjoying our show, please take a minute to leave us a review in iTunes. We really appreciate it, and thanks to everyone who has already left a review!

This week we’re joined by Jed Schmidt. Jed is a javascript developer and resident web nerd at UNIQLO in NYC. We take a deep dive with Jed into Javascript and front-end frameworks. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 16:10 In spirit of keeping markup separate from style, separate from behavior, what are your thoughts on using the HTML5 data attribute as a selector for javascript, rather than the typical classname or id? 28:32 How do you deal with handling the cache of JS and CSS files when rapidly iterating a design for a client? 31:56 I work for a company and my main responsibility is taking a PSD and converting it into a fully responsive HTML + CSS template. Would Grunt be an appropriate addition to my workflow or is it geared towards JavaScript projects? 39:26 What are your thoughts about supporting browser zoom? Do you have any advice on a good policy to give clients on what’s covered as a bug if it doesn’t look right when a user zooms? 45:38 I’ve been recently learning more about Meteor, but I’m wondering what are your thoughts on these frameworks. Do you think they are going to replace front-end javascript frameworks (Angular, Backbone, Ember) + server side framework (Rails, Express, Django) or do you think there’s a reason this separation exists between front-end and back-end? 56:40 How do jQuery Page Loaders work? How can I utilize CSS animations (even SVG at some point) on a page loader? Can you ask jQuery to paint a progress bar for each % of the website it has loaded? Would that slow down the loading? Sponsors: 25:48 E4H: Responsive Web Design Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in responsive web design and web performance for an all-new, three-day online conference, the RWD Summit 2015! Bring the experts to your desktop March 10-March 12, 2015 from 9AM to 4PM (CT) Now that the growth of the mobile Web has outpaced the desktop, Web designers and developers are at a crossroads. The race to keep up with every new device dimension and interface could easily dwarf the pain of dealing with browser quirks, but only if we let it! Take a day to discover the newest Responsive Web Design techniques and change the way you build the Web. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off your ticket! 37:00 Adobe Typekit – Typekit is a subscription font service that brings thousands of fonts from foundry partners into one library for quick browsing, easy use on the web or on your desktop, and endless typographic inspiration. Typekit now brings beautiful type to your desktop with the power of Adobe Creative Cloud. Choose the fonts you need, and then use them wherever you need them—whether that’s on the web, synced to your desktop, or both. Check out their typography practice page, and then sign up for a free trial! Show Links: Jed Schmidt Follow @jedschmidt on Twitter UNIQLO Bitwise Operators 24 Ways Polygon Game Knockout JS Angular JS React JS Getting Started With Grunt Gulp Broccoli JS Gobble Node Package Manager Intro to Meteor Discover Meteor Learning React.js: Getting Started and Concepts Bonobos Pace by Hubspot Orbital Bootcamp Fund NEW!!! Shoptalk Show Job Board! If you’re enjoying our show, please take a minute to leave us a review in iTunes. We really appreciate it, and thanks to everyone who has already left a review!

This week we’re joined by Sophie Shepherd. Sophie is a Senior Designer at Happy Cog Austin, organizes the Austin Dribbble Meetup, and teaches at Girl Develop It. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 19:40 How do I choose the right font for my website? 28:20 I have been doing web design and development for a while and I’m wondering whether I should start blogging. Would you recommend hosting a blog with Github+Jekyll or go with a standard WordPress blog? 35:00 I teach web design and development at a community college in Michigan. We have a Special Topics class that allow us to teach just about anything. This Spring semester I have a class on Emerging Web technologies. What sort of topics should be discussed in a class like this? 42:19 When dealing with overlays, do you prefer to have them centered on the screen, or offset from the top? 52:00 What’s your experience/opinion on R&D within companies, and should everyone has its own project? (For example: how Grunt fits in the company workflow) 58:40 I work with WordPress and create custom themes using a Bootstrap grid. I can develop roughly quickly, completing a site in 3 to 5 days. My coworker uses the same WordPress theme for all the projects, but gets praise for his quick turnaround time. Should I sacrifice my opportunity to grow for job security, or perhaps start looking elsewhere? Is this a new business trend, quantity over quality? Sponsors: 26:20 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: Audio & Music Production Logic Pro X InDesign Typography with Nigel French Writing for the Web with Chris Nodder Selling on the Amazon Marketplace with Peter Kent And so much more! Learn all the things! Get a free 10 day trial now! 48:11 CodePen – CodePen is an HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code editor in your browser with instant previews of the code you see and write. It is a searchable trove of your own creations, and a world of other people’s creations. A place to troubleshoot, to teach, to learn, to test, and to grow. CodePen PRO takes things further with features like Collab Mode which allows you to pair program in real time and Professor Mode for allowing a group of students to follow you as you teach code and chat with each other. You can get a free 14-day trial of the Pro account – go sign up now! Show Links: Sophie Shepherd Follow Sophie on Twitter Serial Parody Dribbble Meetup Austin Girl Develop It Austin Jekyll CodePen Radio Grunt Travis CI If you’re enjoying our show, please take a minute to leave us a review in iTunes. We really appreciate it, and thanks to everyone who has already left a review!

This week it’s another RAPID-FIRE!!! Nothing but Thanksgiving turkey hangover and hot question and answer madness! Q & A: 3:12 I have had to do a bunch of horizontal scrolling sliders for work lately. These “sliders” always through me for a loop because I am working off comps I had no part in designing. How do I keep these sliders from freaking out when the browser is resized while they are partially scrolled, and what is the definitive best way to make these from a performance and UX stand point so that I can help our designers make better choices? 10:10 When it comes to responsive web design in WordPress, I find myself using a lot of modules in the WordPress page editor to organize the sites content. Is there an easier way of doing this? 16:30 Have you ever used any prototyping tool like Fireworks or Sketch? If so, what is the best tool you’ve came across? 22:10 Where should I include the media queries for my responsive design in my CSS files? 30:14 Is there a way to use pure CSS (i.e., no JavaScript) to modify properties of a whole table-column without marking up each individual cell? 35:07 What other podcasts do you listen to? 45:30 Why are some sites targeted by hackers more than others, especially automated attacks? Do web sites end up on target lists, or are the attacks just random? Sponsors: 15:05 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: Audio & Music Production Logic Pro X InDesign Typography with Nigel French Writing for the Web with Chris Nodder Selling on the Amazon Marketplace with Peter Kent And so much more! Learn all the things! Get a free 7 day trial now! 28:29 One Month Rails: Learn Rails, 30 minutes a day for 30 days. You’ll learn how to build a fully functional web app using: Ruby on Rails HTML CSS Bootstrap Git Github Command line Databases using SQLite S3 from Amazon Web Services Heroku – the popular web service used for getting your site live on the Internet We offer all students support: The best part is: if you get stuck, there’s always someone there to help you out while you learn. (Yes, like, a real person.) Enrollment is typically $99, but if you join now you’ll get a one time discount of 25% off for joining, AND as always you’re helping support Shoptalk. Enroll now @ onemonth.com/shoptalk! Show Links: Owl Slider Royal Slider Adobe Fireworks Sketch Codepen SCSS Stylus Shoptalk Show Store (Buy shirts!) Podcasts We Recommend: Responsive Web Design CodePen Radio 99% Invisible History of Rome Pagebreak Serial Startup Podcast Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me The Moth Planet Money Radiolab This American Life Security Now Podcast Bizcraft Javascript Jabber The Web Ahead Freakanomics Podcast Stuff You Should Know Podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast When Women Stopped Coding If you’re enjoying our show, please take a minute to leave us a review in iTunes. We really appreciate it, and thanks to everyone who has already left a review!

This week it’s another RAPID-FIRE!!! Nothing but web standards southern gentlemen and hot question and answer madness! We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 2:37 A question about responsive images: I just came across this CSS approach to specifying a “focal point” of an image so when the browser resizes the image is cropped and it’s location is adjusted so that a specified point stays in the visible area. What do you think? Are there other similar solutions you like better? 5:40 I’m working on a refactor of a site I built a while ago. In that site, I’m loading a font file just for the logo which seems like it might be unneeded page bloat. My question is: is it worth the time subsetting a font for only the characters I need, or would a better approach be some sort of accessible svg? 11:40 I came across thegrid.io and watched their video. I love the concept, but how do you think this will effect the web design industry? 18:30 Is there a good replacement for css resets? 24:33 I’m wondering what your experiences are with hacking attempts and what methods you use to secure your sites and servers; specifically for WordPress sites? 38:01 I recently started to use SVGs instead of an iconfont. However I’m still struggling with the right technique. What are your thoughts on that? 44:11 I have a situation where people are creating and editing content in Google Docs, then pasting the content over to the CMS. Sometimes Docs behaves and doesn’t include a bunch of inline styles, sometimes it isn’t so nice. What is the best/most efficient way to override these inline styles? 51:56 Why isn’t there a good text editor for OS X ? I’m so tired of these multi-platform editors like Atom, Sublime, and Brackets. Are there any better options? Sponsors: 9:18 One Month iOS – One Month iOS is the easiest way to learn iOS Development using Swift. Over the course of 30 days, instructor Alfie Hanssen (Lead Mobile Engineer at Vimeo) will teach you how to build an iPhone app from scratch. The project you’ll be building is a simple photo sharing app similar to Instagram. The best part is… if you ever get stuck, One Month has live support! Each week during the course you’ll meet-up with your mentor for a 1-on-1 personalized session. And in addition, you have unlimited email access for any questions you have along the way. Enrollment is typically $899, but if you join now you’ll get a one time discount of 25% off for joining, AND as always you’re helping support Shoptalk. 36:05 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: Audio & Music Production Logic Pro X InDesign Typography with Nigel French Writing for the Web with Chris Nodder Selling on the Amazon Marketplace with Peter Kent And so much more! Learn all the things! Get a free 7 day trial now! Show Links: Focal-Point thegrid.io SmugMug Normalize.css Cloudflare Atom Sublime Text Brackets Coda 2.5 Seti UI Theme

This week we’re joined by Rachel Smith. Rachel is currently doing animation/motion design for the web at Active Theory. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 16:16 I’ve been playing around with requestAnimationFrame in an attempt to create a smoother, more efficient animated ScrollTo effect for various web projects I work on. In some modern browsers, I’m getting some stuttering at the beginning of or during the animation. Any tips on how to create smoother animations using rAF or relevant resources for this type of problem? 24:08 I wondered if you guys had any good references about animated charts and statistics? I would need to be able to have nice transitions on graphs like the classic google analytics type chart (visit/time) and also other charts like pie charts and so on. What tech would be good for this? 32:54 Do you have a helpful tip on understanding the whole WebSockets ‘pub-sub’ concept? 46:00 I am front end web developer with php experience but have never created a native phone application. Would a program like PhoneGap or ionic be a good solution for this problem or would the “hybrid” app have performance issues? 53:11 I want to know why Photoshop has become an industry standard when it comes to creating layouts for web design. What are some of the benefits of using Photoshop for layouts? Sponsors: 22:22 Environments for Humans: Javascript Summit 2014 – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in JavaScript and jQuery for an all-new, three-day online conference, the JavaScript Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop November 18-November 20, 2014 from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Join some of the Web’s most experienced JavaScript professionals as they share experiences culled from working on sites big and small. Get the tips and techniques that use frameworks to their fullest. Learn from the pros how to tackle Javascript difficulties head-on with proven methods in use by some of the most popular sites on the Web. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off. Grab your tickets now! 42:27 Adobe Typekit – Typekit is a subscription font service that brings thousands of fonts from foundry partners into one library for quick browsing, easy use on the web or on your desktop, and endless typographic inspiration. Typekit now brings beautiful type to your desktop with the power of Adobe Creative Cloud. Choose the fonts you need, and then use them wherever you need them—whether that’s on the web, synced to your desktop, or both. Check out their typography practice page, and then sign up for a free trial! Show Links: Rachel Smith Rachel on Twitter Active Theory WitnessGotham.com D3.js datavis Snap SVG Chart.js Nate Silver Socket.io Node.js PubNub Iconic PhoneGap Ionic Cordova Appcelerator Typescript CodePen Creative Cloud Extract

This week we’re joined by Marcy Sutton. Marcy is a interactive developer at Substantial in Seattle. We take a deep dive into web components, accessibility, Angular JS, AJAX, ARIA, and more! We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 17:56 Do you know of any standard way that accessibility-aware web devs will test whether their ARIA-related efforts have proven successful? Is there some screen-reader or browser-extension of choice (or just your personal recommendation)? 26:00 Our client’s accessibility consultant is telling them that they must have valid HTML in order to be WCAG 2.0 compliant. Is that true? 30:46 With the prevalence of front-end frameworks like AngularJS, there seems to be a rise in logging in via AJAX instead of a traditional post back. I’m all for AJAX in almost every case on a web app, but when it comes to login/logout, I feel the perceived load time is much better for a traditional post back. I haven’t done any A/B testing on this with real users yet, but I’d love to hear your thoughts! 42:19 My question is concerning aria attributes placed on icon fonts, and the accessibility issues that can arise if you use the wrong one. For the past year or so at the agency I work at, we’ve been using icon fonts and slapping an aria-hidden=”true” on all of them. Recently I learned of the aria-label and aria-labelled by attributes. Dave, since you’re the accessibility master, what’s the best and/or proper way to use these different attributes? 54:30 What do you guys think about minifying html? Sponsors: 24:25 Environments for Humans: Javascript Summit 2014 – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in JavaScript and jQuery for an all-new, three-day online conference, the JavaScript Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop November 18-November 20, 2014 from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Join some of the Web’s most experienced JavaScript professionals as they share experiences culled from working on sites big and small. Get the tips and techniques that use frameworks to their fullest. Learn from the pros how to tackle Javascript difficulties head-on with proven methods in use by some of the most popular sites on the Web. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off. Grab your tickets now! 41:05 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: Audio & Music Production Logic Pro X JavaScript for Web Designers Creative GoPro Photography and Video Techniques Up and Running with Genesis for WordPress Creating a One-Page Scrollable Website with Adobe Muse So much more. Learn all the things! Get a free 7 day trial now! Show Links: Marcy Sutton Marcy Sutton on Twitter Substantial Chrome ExtensionAccessibility Developer Tools Web Aim Tenon.io Drink Distiller Cascading Attribute Sheets

This week we’re joined by Justin Sainton. Justin founded Zao, Portland’s premier WordPress Agency. He is also the Lead Dev for WP eCommerce, and a WordPress Core Contributor, so we joined him for a Halloween-themed deep dive into some spooky questions about WordPress development! Warning: this episode contains some spookily-scary soundbytes; listener discretion is advised. We talked about (roughly in order): Errors and Omissions 19:22 Blurry text after 3D transform? You need to use only 2D transform or hide, request prop, show. Thanks to Matt Lockyer for clearing that up! 20:12 Here’s that jQuery plugin for ‘responsive cropping’. Dynamically crop images to fill available space without cutting out the image’s subject. Great for full-screen images. Thanks to Zsolt Pentz for sharing that! Q & A: 22:06 How much does A/B Testing help in eCommerce, and which tools or plugins do you use to A/B Test? 34:30 I’m working with someone on a WordPress site to clean it up and install a new theme. Here’s the problem: they’ve got hundreds of posts and pages chock full of inline styling… and there are so many s! It’s bad. Please tell me there’s a good way to strip all the cruft from these posts and pages in bulk! 38:20 I was thinking about managing CSS / JS for WordPress (as you guys were talking about recently), and avoiding extra http requests. This plugin ( AutoOptimize) may be worth a look. 41:35 I have a question about Bower and WordPress. I installed Codekit 2 and fiddled a little with Bower components, which I haven’t done before, and I installed WordPress, all good except that the WordPress files are in the bower_components folder. I’m pretty sure you are not supposed to use bower_components folder as the root for your WP projects, so what do I do? Do I take it out? In that case, what’s the point of using Bower to install WordPress?! 47:46 I’ve been working on overhauling our site using WordPress, WooCommerce and the woo canvas theme with a child theme. I’ve been nothing but happy with WooCommerce, however, I suspect Woo Canvas may be sacrificing performance for the sake of convenience. Other than saving me development time is there any security or performance advantages to using a child theme or will a lean custom theme perform better and be just as secure? 57:00 I have questions relating to WordPress and theme/plugin functionality in response to this article. While I sort of agree with the thesis of the argument I have a hard time wanting to use any plugins to create taxonomies or CPTs. What are your thoughts on this? Sponsors: 28:51 Environments for Humans: SASS Summit – A full-day deep dive into Sass–setting up from workflow foundations to learning the cutting edge Sass stuff coming in version 3.4. Join us for a day of Sass experts discussing the state of Sass and deep diving the features that make our workflow easier: from building style guides, coding complex RWD layouts, and much more. Bring the experts to your desktop November 6th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Use discount code SHOPTALK for 20% off! Get your tickets for the 2014 SASS Summit now! 45:39 Media Temple – For years, Media Temple has been the premium web hosting choice of more designers, developers, and creative professionals than any other platform. It’s all managed through their own simple, custom control panel, and backed by Media Temple’s famous 24/7 live support. Virtual Private Server solutions are also available with their DV and DV Developer hosting plans. Also, check out their new managed WordPress hosting which includes 3 WordPress installs with unlimited bandwidth! Special discount for ShopTalk listeners, use promo code SHOPTALK for 25% off your first month of web hosting. Go to mediatemple.net and enter your promo code upon signup. Show Links: Justin Sainton on Twitter Zao.is WooCommerce WP e-Commerce WP Polls Contact Form 7 CSS-Tricks: Taking Control of the CSS/JS that WordPress Plugins Load Ask Dr. Web with Jeffrey Zeldman: Help! My Portfolio Sucks Pippin Williamson Optimizely Visual Website Optimizer Google Experiments Codekit Bower Woo Canvas iThemes Exchange Inbox by Gmail

This week it’s another RAPID-FIRE!!! Nothing but mouth guns and hot question and answer madness! We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 8:16 Is there a reason to use single quotes instead of double quotes when writing HTML? 11:45 I started doing work (with a group of fellow students) for a client 6 months ago, and they keep coming back with more work and changes to the site. I still haven’t been paid for the original work, and I can’t keep working for free, but I really need the money (if they ever pay). What should I do? 20:12 I work for an agency that hires a new developer every 9-12 months or so (with 5 currently on staff). Besides resources, what kinds of things can we put in place to not only make that a more seamless transition, but also for us to perform as a more cohesive unit? 26:10 My question is about rendering quality of text when the CSS transform scale is applied to the container. After scale is applied the text looks blurry. I tried using some of the fixes (like text stroke, for example), and it’s a little better but still not very sharp. Any suggestions? 36:00 What are the latest developments for dealing with the responsive image “art direction” problem? 44:59 How do web designers and developers handle the hosting of their own sites and their clients’ sites without it becoming a logistical nightmare? 51:20 The other day I saw a stack overflow question where somebody posted a PSD of a share button their designer had given them, and asked for someone to make it work using pure CSS. What are your thoughts on the ethics of outsourcing to stackoverflow? Sponsors: 17:17 Environments for Humans Online Conferences UX Future Summit – Rosenfeld Media and Environments for Humans bring together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the UX Futures Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop November 5th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). SASS Summit – A full-day deep dive into Sass–setting up from workflow foundations to learning the cutting edge Sass stuff coming in version 3.4. Join us for a day of Sass experts discussing the state of Sass and deep diving the features that make our workflow easier: from building style guides, coding complex RWD layouts, and much more. Bring the experts to your desktop November 6th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Use discount code SHOPTALKSHOW for 25% off! Get your tickets for the UX Future Summit and the SASS Summit now! 33:57 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: Audio & Music Production Logic Pro X JavaScript for Web Designers Creative GoPro Photography and Video Techniques Up and Running with Genesis for WordPress Creating a One-Page Scrollable Website with Adobe Muse And so much more. Learn all the things! Get a [free 7 day trial now]!(http://lynda.com/shoptalk)! Show Links: Geek Mental Health Week Mental Illness Can Affect Anyone (tweet) Single vs Double quotes (‘ vs “) CodePen Meetups Vagrant Pattern Libraries Dave’s Article “Delivering Mini-Bootstraps” Dave’s Tranform Scale CodePen A Guide to SVG Animations (SMIL) Get a free 14 day CodePen Pro Trial Uncle Dave’s Ol’ Padded Box JS Face Detection CSS Tricks: Figuring Out Responsive Images Picturefill: A responsive image polyfill If you’re enjoying our podcast, please let people know by leaving us an iTunes review! We really appreciate it. Thank you!

This week we’re joined by Jared Spool. Jared is the founder of User Interface Engineering, the largest usability research organization of its kind in the world. He also co-founded Center Centre, a new school creating the next generation of industry-ready UX designers. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 32:38 How do you feel about questionnaires being sent to clients? Do you think it decreases the level of personality / closeness with your client? 46:39 Have you ever used any prototyping tool like “Fireworks” or “Sketch”? And if so, what is the best tool you’ve came across? Sponsors: 24:54 – Environments for Humans UX Future Summit – Rosenfeld Media and Environments for Humans bring together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the UX Futures Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop November 5th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). SASS Summit – A full-day deep dive into Sass–setting up from workflow foundations to learning the cutting edge Sass stuff coming in version 3.4. Join us for a day of Sass experts discussing the state of Sass and deep diving the features that make our workflow easier: from building style guides, coding complex RWD layouts, and much more. Bring the experts to your desktop November 6th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Use discount code SHOPTALKSHOW for 25% off! 40:40 Adobe Typekit – Typekit is a subscription font service that brings thousands of fonts from foundry partners into one library for quick browsing, easy use on the web or on your desktop, and endless typographic inspiration. Typekit now brings beautiful type to your desktop with the power of Adobe Creative Cloud. Choose the fonts you need, and then use them wherever you need them—whether that’s on the web, synced to your desktop, or both. Check out their typography practice page, and sign up for a free trial! Show Links: Jared Spool Jared on Twitter Center Centre Shoptalk FAQ Google Glass Apple Newton Rosenfeld Media Books Source Han Sans Fireworks Sketch Balsamiq Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies) Paper Prototyping UI Conf

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! Nothing but ray guns and hot question and answer madness! We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 3:26 For responsive menus, do you use a similar plugin on each site, or do you build custom menus for each site? Are there any responsive menu plugins that you would recommend? 11:12 When editing pre-built wordpress templates for a company I work for I often find myself using display:none to get rid of content that the client doesn’t want on the page. It definitely feels like a dirty fix, what are your thoughts on this? 17:58 I’m trying to develop a horizontally-scrolling page layout for a website I’m working on. How would you guys tackle this sort of challenge these days? 25:11 I’m curious if you’ve ever been part of a team where you or someone else on the team introduced a technology or process change or maybe like a paradigm shift in how things needed to be done. What were the toughest challenges? 35:25 Stacy K. wins tickets to SASS Summit! 38:47 I need to create an array of arrays of images for my banners. How do I put that together? 45:38 What do you suggest a beginner do in order to continue not only learning but implementing new ideas? 50:08 I’ve been implementing AJAX on my Rails 4 site with jquery’s $.load() function and using window.history.pushState() to update url’s in the browser’s address form. I am having issues with the page staying the same when I use the back button. The url responds correctly in the address bar, however the page does not go back to it’s previous state. I’ve read about a few javascript libraries being able to deal with this. What are y’all’s thoughts on the subject? 56:29 We’re considering moving a WordPress site with a few hundred posts, and growing, over to a static site generator like Jekyll. I’m wondering, how scalable is it? Is there a limit? Do things slow down? Sponsors: 15:40 E4H: Sass Summit – A full-day deep dive into Sass – setting up from workflow foundations, to learning the cutting edge Sass stuff coming in version 3.4. Bring the experts to your desktop November 6th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). You should also check out the JS Summit: Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in JavaScript and jQuery for an all-new, three-day online conference, the JavaScript Summit 2013! Bring the experts to your desktop November 19-November 21, 2013 from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Discount code 25% off w/ SHOPTALKSHOW code. Recordings come with registration! So, if you miss a session or can’t make the day, you can watch them later at your own time when they become available. Grab your tickets now! 33:01 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: SVG JavaScript for Web Designers Creative GoPro Photography and Video Techniques Up and Running with Genesis for WordPress Creating a One-Page Scrollable Website with Adobe Muse So much more. Learn all the things! Get a [free 7 day trial now]!(http://lynda.com/shoptalk)! Show Links: Aaron Dowd – Podcast Editor ShopTalk Show FAQ MeanMenu jQuery Plugin Responsive Nav JS Plugin How To Create a Horizontally Scrolling Site Brad Frost: Designing in the Open A Better Back Button Jekyll Jekyll Import If you’re enjoying this show, please let people know by leaving us an iTunes review! We really appreciate it. Thank you!

This week it’s another RAPID-FIRE!!! Nothing but ray guns and hot question and answer madness! We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 3:08 I hear a lot of people asking about mentorships so I made a site called HackMentor for people to post looking for mentors / mentees. I wanted to learn MVC so I thought it would be a fun project to get the concepts down. 5:03 I use Sass and Compass with Singularity and Breakpoint. I’ve been looking into integrating Grunt into my workflow but I’m having trouble finding a good solution to managing the Sass / Compass gems / plugins and the NPM dependencies. It feels like wonky to use bundler and npm, my project has a lot of configuration files it. Is there a better solution? 13:28 Just listened to episode 115 and Codekit looks like an amazing application. I have a question about using it in a Rails project. I think I recall Chris saying that he uses it when working with Rails. Can you explain the workflow for that? 15:20 Since the advent of tablets & smartphones I’ve noticed that my clients are a lot less concerned about desktop legacy issues i.e. IE. Should designers be a lot more emboldened in advising their clients to ditch IE 6-9 & get them to spend their money & your time on tablet-y smartphone-y goodness? 21:30 I’m having trouble with setting up Codekit to work with a Drupal Foundation 5 setup. Any advice? 28:36 What is a good way to implement page navigation with following requirements: no page refresh, the pages asynchronously preload, so there’s not much waiting when navigating, flexibility around loading new pages (for example the new page slides in rather than suddenly replacing the current one). Is Backbone good for this stuff or do I need something more advanced? 36:51 I just started working from home and I’m searching for some tips about how to setup my workspace. What kind of monitor are you using for coding? Are you using multiple monitors? Are you using an extra ergonomic keyboard/mouse? Do you guys like a standing desk? What kind of chair are you using? 48:27 My websites are getting more and more heavy with images and animations and my bosses / clients are complaining that things are taking to long to load and is not very responsive to user interaction. What are your suggestions on how to get my page to load sections at a time or load everything while displaying a loading animation? Sponsors: 11:47 E4H: Sass Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Sass Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop November 6th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Join us for a day of Sass experts discussing the state of Sass and deep diving the features that make our workflow easier: from building style guides, coding complex RWD layouts, and much more. Use coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW for 25% off, and grab your tickets now! 25:21 Media Temple – For years, Media Temple has been the premium web hosting choice of more designers, developers, and creative professionals than any other platform. It’s all managed through their own simple, custom control panel, and backed by Media Temple’s famous 24/7 live support. Virtual Private Server solutions are also available with their DV and DV Developer hosting plans. Also, check out their new managed WordPress hosting which includes 3 WordPress installs with unlimited bandwidth! Special discount for ShopTalk listeners, use promo code SHOPTALK for 25% off your first month of web hosting. Go to mediatemple.net and enter your promo code upon signup. Show Links: Hack Mentor NPM Bower LibSass Codekit Guard Backbone.js Discourse Herman Miller Chair NextDesk Air

This week we were joined by Bastian Allgeier. Bastian created and maintains Kirby, a file-based CMS. We take a deep dive into Kirby, other CMSs, and more. We talked about (roughly in order): News’n’Links’n’Drama: 17:25 Booking.com: Would You Like Fries With That? Q & A: 26:38 I’m a part of the CSS-Tricks forum where you can usually find me recommending Kirby to just about anyone struggling with WordPress. My first question is, was WordPress an inspiration for what NOT to do when building a CMS? Secondly, when can we expect V2 of Kirby to be released? 48:44 I was looking for a CMS to use for client sites, and I came across PyroCMS. What are your thoughts on PyroCMS? 51:33 I am a front end developer in the initial planning of a blogging site and am feeling a little overwhelmed with CMS options. Is WordPress still king, or is it worth it to look at an up and coming CMS like Ghost? Sponsors: 23:58 E4H: Sass Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Sass Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop November 6th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Join us for a day of Sass experts discussing the state of Sass and deep diving the features that make our workflow easier: from building style guides, coding complex RWD layouts, and much more. Use coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW for 20% off, and grab your tickets now! 42:50 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: SVG JavaScript for Web Designers Creative GoPro Photography and Video Techniques Up and Running with Genesis for WordPress Creating a One-Page Scrollable Website with Adobe Muse So much more. Learn all the things! Get a [free 7 day trial now]!(http://lynda.com/shoptalk)! Show Links: Bastian Allgeier Bastian on Twitter Kirby CMS Jekyll Booking.com: Would You Like Fries With That? Check out V2 of Kirby Twig PyroCMS Ghost Kirby Blog: PHP Template Engine

This week we were joined by Marc Grabanski. Marc is a UI dev consultant and runs Frontend Masters. We talked about (roughly in order): News’n’Links’n’Drama: 12:00 Don’t call it Standard Markdown Q & A: 16:07 How do you prefer attaching JavaScript events to elements? 25:58 I am having a hard time finding a way to bridge my methods between front-end javascript and back-end php/mysql. Is there a good way to bridge these technologies? 32:36 Is there a foundry or type designer you rely on to provide consistency, or do you assume the well known ones are all pretty much the same quality? Is there a real incentive to hosting yourself? 44:04 Is there a ‘best-practices’ way to direct WordPress to run any CSS and JS from plugins in the footer? 53:10 I have a friend that wants to make a quick buck throwing together sites with Drupal themes. How do you both precisely articulate what is, and what is not “professional” practice? Sponsors: 22:29 E4H: Sass Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Sass Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop November 6th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Join us for a day of Sass experts discussing the state of Sass and deep diving the features that make our workflow easier: from building style guides, coding complex RWD layouts, and much more. Use coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW for 20% off, and grab your tickets now! 40:58 Adobe Typekit – Typekit now brings beautiful type to your desktop with the power of Adobe Creative Cloud. Choose the fonts you need, and then use them wherever you need them—whether that’s on the web, synced to your desktop, or both. Stunning typefaces from quality foundries. Inspiring to browse, and easy to use. Check it out now! Show Links: Marc Grabanski Marc on Twitter Front End Masters Angular React Font Squirrel W3 Total Cache Foundation Framework Sacha Greif: The $5 Logo

This week it’s another RAPID-FIRE!!! Nothing but hot question and action action! We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 3:29 My question is about LiveReload. I want to use this but am having trouble getting sass, wordpress, and LiveReload to play nicely. When setting up live reload do you use the JS snippet or the chrome extension? Do you let LiveReload compile your sass, or use your tool of choice? 13:10 Is there a way to link lyrics to a song so that the word that is being sung is highlighted? 20:18 How does one bounce back from a bad job interview? 24:44 There is a growing trend now to switch from Photoshop to Sketch. I have been working in a Windows environment all this time and I have no idea what to do if I got a Sketch document! Should I ask the designers to extract the assets to me and use a JPG as a reference? Should I turn down jobs I am getting that aren’t in Photoshop till Sketch releases a version that can run in Windows? 33:21 What are your thoughts on the single responsibility principle pertaining to classes in html/css? If you use this principle, do you extend many classes in sass? 42:42 I have seen examples (Chris even did one on css-tricks.com) where you can have audio playing even after changing pages. Is it possible to do this with video in the sidebar? 48:23 What is the best way to query for the span element above using javascript? 55:05 I’m looking at switching my line-height set up from rem width px fallback to unitless. This is for a responsive project, where the support benchmarks have been set pretty far back. What the benefits are compered to staying with rems, and is there a performance/rendering benefit, or does unitless help with responsive? Sponsors: 17:35 E4H: CSS Dev Conf The first conference devoted to CSS, the design language of the web, returns for its third year on October 13-15, 2014, this time to New Orleans. Three keynotes and 24 sessions over three tracks makes for a fast-paced two-day immersion into modern multi-device design and development! Grab your tickets now! 31:20 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. New courses are posted every single day. Check out some super great courses like: SVG JavaScript for Web Designers Creative GoPro Photography and Video Techniques Up and Running with Genesis for WordPress Creating a One-Page Scrollable Website with Adobe Muse So much more. Learn all the things! Get a [free 7 day trial now]!(http://lynda.com/shoptalk)! Show Links : Live Reload Codekit Grunt Gulp Gulp Web Server Gulp Live Reload Tiny Live Reload (Gulp) CSS Tricks: Cross Browser CSS Injection Browser Sync HTML5 Audio Karaoke Overcast Podcast Player Sketch Single Responsibility Principle CSS SMACSS by Jonathan Snook Benefits of Unitless Line Height If you enjoyed this show, please let people know by leaving us an iTunes review! We really appreciate it. Thank you!

This week we were joined by Ian Feather. Ian is the Client Side Technical Lead at Lonely Planet. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 28:26 How do I create CSS shapes for my website? 32:40 I noticed that Lonely Planet uses SVG icons; but they appear to be base64 encoded. How is that set up in the CSS, and what happens when they need to edit/add icons? 35:28 How do you guys deal with what I call project shame? Basically, no matter how good the end product is, I always end up finding the imperfect parts to hate, resulting in my career being a never-ending flurry of project shame. Does that happen with you guys too, or should I go see a therapist? 42:30 I’m wondering why a lot of people are choosing Bower components over using a cached version from a Google/Cloudflare hosted CDN? Isn’t the latter way faster most of the time? 50:16 I work in an environment where the JS architecture I write isn’t really understood by the majority of my coworkers. Should I continue writing classical JS in this environment? Or should I start writing functional JS so that my coworkers are more likely to understand my code? 54:00 Do you tend to create SVGs by hand (typing the points for lines and what not) or do you simply export SVGs from Illustrator? 57:16 Is building your own blog a rite of passage for a young web developer trying to level up, or is it a colossal waste of time? Sponsors: 26:20 E4H: Sass Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Sass Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop November 6th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Join us for a day of Sass experts discussing the state of Sass and deep diving the features that make our workflow easier: from building style guides, coding complex RWD layouts, and much more. Grab your tickets now! 47:27 – WP Migrate DB Pro – The easiest way to sync WordPress databases between local and live sites. Copy your database from one WordPress install to another with one click in your dashboard. Stop wasting time on migrations Eliminate the pain that is migrating a WordPress *database Work less, bill the same, increasing your effective hourly rate No more fiddling with SQL files Head over to the WP Migrate DB Pro website to learn more! Show Links: Ian Feather’s Website Ian on Twitter Lonely Planet The CSS at Lonely Planet Grunticon Pattern Lab Rizzo Lonely Planet Style Guide CSS-Tricks: What do you do when your design pattern breaks down? CSS-Tricks: Icon System with SVG Sprites CloudFlare Shoptalk FAQ The Noun Project Jekyll If you enjoyed this show, please let people know by leaving us an iTunes review! We really appreciate it. Thank you!

This week we were joined by Karolina Szczur. Karolina is a designer, developer and photographer living in Kraków, Poland. She is currently working with the delightful people of &yet. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 23:44 How do you guys deal with web fonts that render significantly smaller than average? 31:02 What is the current trend for the placement of a form on a page? 39:46 The agency I work with isn’t happy I’m using LESS or SASS for front end styles. They claim the CSS it delivers for the client is too messy, and that we should write straight CSS. Do you have any recommendations for writing cleaner pre-processed code? 47:15 Is it feasible in CSS to have ellipsis applied to multiline text (text in a block, so height is also should be considered), if it starts to overflow? 58:11 I am quite new to web design and I think I could improve on my web presence. It seems that almost all web professionals use Twitter extensively. Why is it such an important tool? Sponsors: 22:02 E4H: CSS Dev Conf The first conference devoted to CSS, the design language of the web, returns for its third year on October 13-15, 2014, this time to New Orleans. Three keynotes and 24 sessions over three tracks makes for a fast-paced two-day immersion into modern multi-device design and development! Grab your tickets now! 37:54 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. Check out super great courses like: SVG JavaScript for Web Designers Creative GoPro Photography and Video Techniques Up and Running with Genesis for WordPress Creating a One-Page Scrollable Website with Adobe Muse Get a free 7 day trial now! Show Links: Karolina on Twitter Karolina’s Website &yet Emoji Fortunes Typekit by Adobe Font Squirrel Stylus Basics of the Unix Philosophy CSS Ellipsis: How to Manage Multi-Line Ellipsis in Pure CSS Barney Carroll’s Multi-line Ellipsis CodePen CSS Tricks: Line Clampin’ CSS Tricks: A Complete Guide to Flexbox If you enjoy the show, please take a minute and fill out our short feedback survey! This will be closing soon so get your submissions in and help us shape the future of the show! Also, if the show has helped you in any way, please let people know by leaving us an iTunes review! We’d really appreciate it. Thanks!

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE! Nothing but the best darn question and answer action you’ve ever heard! We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 3:45 I need a responsive image solution for a redesign of a website running on the (.NET) Episerver CMS. What responsive image solution would you use under these constraints? 8:18 I’ve built a whole range of different sites now on WordPress and in each case I’ve felt that once I push the site live, the load time is sluggish. How do you approach this problem and what kinds of resources are out there to help? 13:50 Any tips for avoiding merge conflicts in the compiled .css file when working in teams? Should I even push compiled CSS to the repository, or should this be one person’s responsibility? 17:13 What software do you guys recommend when testing websites through a screen reader or text-based browser? 23:11 I’ve seen a few tutorials online using Adobe Edge Animate to create CSS animations. Is it something that needs to be learned or looked into if I already have working knowledge of CSS3 animations and transforms? 28:15 I am trying to dig into Sass/SCSS, preprocessors and have learned a lot already about using command line with Grunt.js and Compass, but I’m wondering if CodeKit would just be a simpler and easier thing to learn first? 32:10 What are some best practices when using tabindex? 38:06 Where would you recommend a young web designer start off? Let’s say they know html and css and are looking to learn more or kick of their career, what would you recommend? 41:10 I know there is a performance hit for every new font that gets loaded, but once I have loaded a font, is there a performance hit based on how much text on the page is being rendered? My boss likes to use the web font for the H tags and then use fallback web safe fonts for body copy, is this necessary? 45:05 I used to use my main email address for all my accounts, and shortly after an attack on a certain famous tech company, I received huge waves of spam that I have been struggling to get rid of. How do you guys handle your email accounts? 49:08 I’ve got a bone to pick with links and a seemingly odd trend of not adding target="_blank". My question to you is, “What’s up with that?” 54:00 If you export an adobe illustrator AI file to SVG, you can choose to save the layers as meta data in the SVG file. What’s even more interesting is you can then target those layers with css and jquery. Essentially you can traverse the Illustrator layer stack in an SVG file and add things like hover events which change the layer color via css. Here’s a tutorial on the subject which goes into greater detail. Sponsors: 21:02 E4H: Accessibility Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in and for an all-new, two-day online conference, the Accessibility Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop September 9-10, 2014 from 9AM to 4PM (CT). With flexible content delivery and adaptable applications, the truly Accessible Web is available to everyone all the time, regardless of ability. Spend some time with the Accessibility experts and find the inspiration and practical knowledge you need to make your Web presence truly universal. Don’t miss this great event and purchase your tickets now! 39:13 Adobe – Check out Project Parfait: it’s a really nice way to extract everything you need from a PSD – in your browser! Also, take a look at the Edge Animate CC updates: some sweet new features like copy/paste SVG art from Illustrator. Show Links: Adaptive Images W3 Total Cache New Relic ChromeVox NVAccess Screen Reader Accessibility Developer Tools Adobe Edge Animate Codekit An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues Code School Treehouse Codecademy 1Password If you enjoy the show, please take a minute and fill out our short feedback survey!

This week we were joined by Sara Soueidan. We take a deep dive into the world of SVG. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 17:45 Why do you think it took us so long to start using SVG images in web development? 27:36 I just started fiddling with SVG sprites a bit and the things that I haven’t figured out yet in my SVG workflow are: removing inline styles from paths, polylines, lines etc, so that I can easily override them in my CSS file, cleaning up empty tags, and in general cleaning up unused stuff, so that the resulted file is as light as possible. Do you know of any resources, grunt plugins online tools that can do that automatically? 36:47 I’d like to use cacheable SVG sprites for icons; what’s the best way to achieve this, and can you highlight the pros and cons of the different techniques? Also, I’m currently testing an external symbol SVG file – what’s the most solid method of testing for browser support of SVG symbol? Does the ‘hasFeature’ test work robustly? 43:18 Can you give us a rundown of how SVGs actually render on a page and the best way to size/scale them? 51:10 Is there any simple way to work with SVG, and is working with SVGs going to be the next trend? 54:34 I have just used “CSS3 columns”, do you think would that be enough in future to create magazine site? Sponsors: 35:03 E4H: Front End Summit Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in Frontend for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the FrontEnd Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop August 21st from 9AM to 5PM (CT). As the web changes for the better, so do our tools. While keeping on top of industry changes is part of the job, fighting our tools that can help us do our job faster and better shouldn’t be. In this special FrontEnd Summit, we deep dive into tools–some common like text editors and some relatively new to the scene like Grunt and Sketch–to see how they can help stay on top of cutting edge. Use coupon code SHOPTALK, and grab your tickets now! 48:52 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. Check out great courses like: SVG JavaScript for Web Designers Designing a Logo for a Band Writing Press Releases Monday Productivity Pointers, and so much more. Get a free 7 day trial now! Show Links: Sara Soueidan Sara on Twitter Understanding SVG Coordinate Systems & Transformations SVG Optimiser by Peter Collingridge (non-command line, works right in browser) Codrops SVGmin Grunt CSS-Tricks – A Compendium of SVG Information Modernizr SVG use with External Source Chris Coyier – SVG is for Everyone (video) Dmitry Baranovskiy – You Don’t Know SVG Using CSS Regions With CSS Shapes For A Better Reading Experience Guide to Responsive-Friendly CSS Columns

This week it’s another Rapid Fire!!! Nothing but the best darn question and answer action you’ve ever heard! We talked about: Q & A: 2:01 I follow tons of awesome web developers on Twitter and I learn about all the cool new things. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. How do I actually get better at making websites? 8:22 I got an email that contained a countdown timer gif. Do you know how this was accomplished? 15:54 I am working with a site that generates it’s own short urls and I was wondering about adding to my pages. First of all, what good does it do? Secondly, I also saw . What is the difference, if any, and which should I be using? 25:44 What is your preference for fixing design breakpoints in responsive designs? 33:54 Now that Twitter is cutting off their Javascript engine to the public, how do I pull in tweets from Twitter without having to use the embedded widgets?! 40:02 Why do people avoid using Javascript? 44:44 How do you handle touch screens and responsive design? 52:42 Many mobile first grids/ frameworks I see use predefined breakpoints. Doesn’t this go against the common rule of designing for the content and not the device? Should I have commonly defined breakpoints then tweak each page accordingly? Sponsors: 13:55 E4H: Front End Summit Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in Frontend for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the FrontEnd Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop August 21st from 9AM to 5PM (CT). As the web changes for the better, so do our tools. While keeping on top of industry changes is part of the job, fighting our tools that can help us do our job faster and better shouldn’t be. In this special FrontEnd Summit, we deep dive into tools–some common like text editors and some relatively new to the scene like Grunt and Sketch–to see how they can help stay on top of cutting edge. Use coupon code SHOPTALK, and grab your tickets now! 30:22 Adobe – Check out Project Parfait: it’s a really nice way to extract everything you need from a PSD – in your browser! Also, take a look at the Edge Animate CC updates: some sweet new features like copy/paste SVG art from Illustrator. Show Links: React JS Angular Ember Countdown Clock in Email Email Countdown App CSS Shapes Brackets Code Editor CodePen: Twitter Post Fetcher Trent Walton: Device Agnostic CodePen: Input Methods by Operating System Overcast.fm Podcast Junkies

This week we were joined by Tobias Günther. Tobias is the founder and CEO of Fournova, the makers of Tower – the most powerful Git client for Mac. We take a deep dive into Git and version control. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 16:06 I have never used git before as a web developer/designer. Can you explain in more detail about how git works? 21:12 When you make a commit in a VCS like Git or Subversion, should the commit message be in the past, present or future tense? 24:44 I am part of a very small team prototyping a new app. We are familiar with GitHub, but the enterprise-company we’re working for requires us to work in Subversion (SVN). How would you recommend we attack the SVN dilemma? 32:32 We have a linux-based server where some of our clients’ websites are hosted. Someone thought of the idea of moving the entire website-folder into a Dropbox-folder thus keeping all the websites constantly backed up to the cloud, and at the same time using the Dropbox built-in version history to easily revert back to older versions of images/files or whatever when needed. Any ideas about pros/cons regarding performance and so on? 40:06 What license – if any – do you guys use for open source software? 45:10 I recently wrote and open-sourced a “framework” of sorts which deploys WordPress projects via Git/GitHub using Capistrano and WP-CLI. Here’s the link. 52:00 Have you tried using Git as a project management tool? Would you recommend it? 57:05 Do you know of an ebook, online resource, or online course directed at Git newbies? Sponsors: 23:07 Environments for Humans – Digital Biz Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Digital Biz Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop August 20th from 9AM to 5PM (CT). Dan Mall, Emily Lewis (Digital Biz & The Hiring Process), Carl Smith, Robb Harr (Digital Biz & Cashflow) etc. all going to be there to answer questions, and provide support to freelancers and small biz owners. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 10% off your ticket! 37:21 Media Temple – For years, Media Temple has been the premium web hosting choice of more designers, developers, and creative professionals than any other platform. It’s all managed through their own simple, custom control panel, and backed by Media Temple’s famous 24/7 live support. Virtual Private Server solutions are also available with their DV and DV Developer hosting plans. Also, check out their new managed WordPress hosting which includes 3 WordPress installs with unlimited bandwidth! Special discount for ShopTalk listeners, use promo code SHOPTALK for 25% off your first month of web hosting. Go to mediatemple.net and enter your promo code upon signup. Show Links: Tobias on Twitter Fournova Tower 2 Scott Jehl: How We Make RWD Sites Load Fast as Heck Dave Rupert: RWD Bloat Getting Started with Git Learn Version Control with Git Versions App CornerStone App Git SVN Sublime Text WTFPL License MIT License MIT/GPL Dual License WP Deploy Deploying with Capistrano FogBugz Codeschool: Try Git (free interactive online course)

This week we were joined by Fabio Carneiro. Fabio is an Email & User Experience Designer at MailChimp, where he designs and develops versatile, responsive html emails for over 4 million users. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 21:50 Are there any tools or frame works to help make responsive emails easier for me? 38:06 Can you describe your workflow for marking up and testing a HTML email? 44:58 If you were an active member in a forum, how could you describe the notification preferences of your dreams? 49:40 What is the easiest way of handling data without a database? 53:11 I’ve noticed that most registration forms don’t require the user to enter their email address twice (just like the password). Is there any best practice to make it the most comfortable for the client and securing a successful registration process? Sponsors: 20:20 Environments for Humans – Digital Biz Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Digital Biz Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop August 20th from 9AM to 5PM (CT). Dan Mall, Emily Lewis (Digital Biz & The Hiring Process), Carl Smith, Robb Harr (Digital Biz & Cashflow) etc. all going to be there to answer questions, and provide support to freelancers and small biz owners. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 10% off your ticket! 35:32 Media Temple – For years, Media Temple has been the premium web hosting choice of more designers, developers, and creative professionals than any other platform. It’s all managed through their own simple, custom control panel, and backed by Media Temple’s famous 24/7 live support. Virtual Private Server solutions are also available with their DV and DV Developer hosting plans. Also, check out their New Managed WordPress Hosting which includes 3 WordPress installs with unlimited bandwidth! Special discount for ShopTalk listeners, use promo code SHOPTALK for 25% off your first month of web hosting. Go to mediatemple.net and enter your promo code upon signup. Show Links: Fabio on Twitter Fabio’s Website Mailchimp Templates – Mailchimp Responsive Email Patterns Ink from Zurb Litmus

This week it’s another Rapid Fire!!! Nothing but the best darn question and answer action you’ve ever heard! We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 3:30 Do you have any rule of thumb for deciding when to use the new element (using the picturefill polyfill) vs just using CSS background images with media queries for responsive images? Is it more a question of semantics? 12:15 What is translateZ traditionally used for and how can it help me with my front-end style markup? 24:26 I love inline-block, it’s great and allows for easy simple vertical alignment. However it always adds that little bit of extras space making items wrap, e.g. a list of 4 with each set at 25%. Is there a better/cleaner way than commenting out the space? Why does it even happen? 31:36 I’m trying to move stackicons.com from icon font to SVG-based. Can you reference an external style sheet in the SVG file itself and use that as a single place to change styling across all the icons? 38:45 In jQuery, what is the difference between the .on function and the .click function? 44:47 I’m curious on what your thoughts are for terminology changes across an entire project. To give you some background, I work for a company that has created a web-based software. We have come across stages in our development that we want to change the terminology for functionality in our site. How would you guys go about this? 51:44 Regarding performance on mobile, is it better to A) have all content on page load and then show-hide it, B) inject the markup and content dynamically or C) load that markup and content using ajax, when a tablet o desktop media query matches, so secondary content can be shown to these more capable browsers. Sponsors: 20:19 Adobe – Check out Project Parfait: it’s a really nice way to extract everything you need from a PSD – in your browser! Also, take a look at the Edge Animage CC updates: some sweet new features like copy/paste SVG art from Illustrator. 37:05 E4H – FrontEnd Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in FrontEnd for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the FrontEnd Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop August 21st from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Lots of great talks including: Sublime, Vim Editors FTW, Fearless Browser Test Automation, The State of Grunt, and more! Get 20% off your tickets now by using coupon code “SHOPTALK”! Show Links: Picture Element Picturefill Polyfill Buzzfeed Minus Gifs Will-change CSS Property Fighting the Space Between Inline-Block Elements – CSS-Tricks Blog Post Stackicons FitText Conditional Loading for Responsive Designs

This week we were joined by Rob Dodson. Rob works on Polymer at Google. True Facts. We take a deep dive with him into Polymer and Web Components. We talked about (roughly in order): Q & A: 27:58 Web components are a hot topic at the moment, and it looks like libraries like Polymer are almost ready for production. Have either of you guys had the opportunity to play around with web components yet? Do you think they are the future? What do you believe to be positive and negative aspects of breaking up your HTML, CSS and JavaScript into isolated bundles of styling/functionality? 39:58 What would you say are the advantages of polymer over angular directives? 46:40 Is it possible to use Polymer with Phonegap? 49:09 When working on a project with a team, using Git and SASS, what does your guys folder structure and workflow look like? 54:38 I’ve started using Grunt for javascript concat and minification, image optimization and cache manifest generation when necessary. Should I .gitignore the node modules folder? Sponsors: 24:22 SpeedCurve – Monitor front-end performance. Get continuous feedback on how your front-end code is affecting the performance of your website. 44:50 E4H – FrontEnd Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in FrontEnd for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the FrontEnd Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop August 21st from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Lots of great talks including: Sublime, Vim Editors FTW, Fearless Browser Test Automation, The State of Grunt, and more! Get your tickets now! Use coupon code “SHOPTALK” for 20% off any ticket combo. Show Links: Rob Dodson’s Website Rob Dodson on Twitter Polymer A Guide to Web Components Intro to Material Design Responsive Design Speed Testing Chrome Status Angular Directives Phonegap Cordova Google Web Fundamentals

This week, we take a listen to an episode of the Shoptalk show that was recorded WAAAYYYYY back in 2004, when – apparently – both Chris and Dave had midwestern accents and voices that cracked regularly! They speak to some up-and-comers in the web design community, and debate the hot question: CSS, or tables? Q & A 5:26 Live Journal no longer requires an invite code: is there going to be a Shoptalk Community? 7:07 How do I add text to my Zen Garden theme with CSS? 12:06 I’d like to use CSS Zen Garden, but I’m Christian. What should I do? 15:31 I’ve been using frames and tables for my layouts, but I’ve heard about divs and CSS. Should I take the time to learn this stuff? 17:25 Is it possible to use CSS with IE 5 and 6? 20:10 I heard the folks at Mozilla are about to release a new web browser. Will it handle CSS properties better than Internet Exploder? 22:59 I have two frames in a frame set. How do I let my users toggle the left frame on and off by clicking a button on the right frame? 26:27 Where can I find “Under Construction” GIFs for my new site? And how long do I have before GeoCities takes my page down? 30:41 I’m working with an Ad Agency doing print work, but I’m interested in building websites. Is the future of websites bigger than print design? 34:28 I’ve been hearing about liquid layouts to let websites adjust to different screen sizes, but since most screens are 1024px or 800px, are liquid layouts worth the extra work? 38:23 What can I do to make my Myspace page look cooler? 40:50 I’m building my first website, and I want to make a blog. Should I use WordPress or Grey Matter? 43:15 How do I change the background image in my nav bar when the user hovers over it? 46:46 Do you know of a good rollover plugin for Dreamweaver 6? 48:47 Why should I start using CSS and Divs instead of table based layouts? 52:38 I’ve been using Adobe Director, but my teachers at school keep telling me that Authorware is going to be the next big thing. Any tips? 56:00 My uncle keeps having the weird dreams about the future where kids are taking pictures of their meals and sharing them on the internet. Is he crazy? Sponsors: 61:15 Adobe – Check out Project Parfait: it’s a really nice way to extract everything you need from a PSD – in your browser! 63:03 E4H CSS Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in and for an all-new, three-day online conference, the CSS Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop July 15-July 17, 2014 from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Show Links: Homestar Runner CSS Zen Garden Designing with Web Standards Javascript Tutorials Aurgasm Metafilter WordPress Grey Matter Moveable Type Lingo Adobe Authorware Adobe Director 9

This week we were joined by Katie Kovalcin. Katie is a designer at Happy Cog in Austin and teaches at Girl Develop It. We talked about (roughly in order): News’n’Links’n’Drama: 12:55 Protesters outside Google.io, and Google Cardboard Q & A: 19:56 What is your feeling on website creators like Wix and Squarespace? Is this taking away from potential business for web designer/developers? 27:32 Recently I was asked to create page design for a client. Just the visual design, no code. I thought this would be easy, but after spending an hour and a half creating a table in Illustrator, I’m yearning for some basic HTML & CSS. Are there any design tools you guys know of that take into account of things like “separation of style and content” or “modular components”? 34:10 I’m a newb. I love designing using HTML and CSS, but my creativity is stunted because I can’t program. Which language should I learn first? 38:43 Responsive web design has done a lot of great things for the web, but sometimes the sharing of a single codebase for all the different breakpoints makes things tricky. I’ll usually ask my designers to avoid situations that would require building a component in two different ways across screen sizes. The navigation in the header is usually one of the areas for this discussion (where a design basically requires toggling visibility between two different menu systems). Am I being too much of a stickler or should I stand my ground? 47:03 For smaller websites I often find it difficult to collect quality content from the business that I am designing a website for. These website budgets are usually small therefore a content writer may not be practical. Can you explain your process on collecting data or steering customers in the right direction when it comes to providing quality content? 52:35 I’ve got this really bad habit of nudging things in my design. Two pixels up, an em here, an em there. And then repeat into insanity. I’m always struggling to get that whitespace just right. How do you approach whitespace? Sponsors: 24:17 Codeship: Continuous Delivery Made Simple – Codeship helps run your tests and continuously deploys new code when it passes. Get 20% off your first 3 months by using discount code “shoptalkshow”. 43:10 E4H CSS Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in and for an all-new, three-day online conference, the CSS Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop July 15-July 17, 2014 from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Get 20% off your ticket now by using SHOPTALKSHOW during checkout! Show Links: Katie Kovalcin Katie on Twitter Katie’s upcoming talk at CSS Dev Conf Hyperquake Happy Cog Artifact Conf Polymer Google Web Fundamentals Google Web Starter Kit Google Material Design Brad Frost Pattern Lab CSS-Tricks: Small Business Website Sketch Jeff Low wins a ticket to this years CSS Summit! Thanks for sending in nerdy questions, everyone!