ShopTalk Show: Recent Episodes

ShopTalk

ShopTalk is a podcast about front end web design, development and UX. Each week Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert are joined by a special guest to talk shop and answer listener submitted questions.

Manton Reece, creator of Micro.blog, stops by to talk about the history of Micro.blog, what it's written in, how it handles feeds coming in and going out, cross-posting, authentication, and the somewhat hidden features of Micro.blog: bookmarking, bookshelves, and even podcasting.

When will AI be able to tell you the risk / reward of cleaning up trees? Are conferences back? Bringing fidgets to the web, internet as an anxiety machine, and Chris is working on talk on modern CSS in real life.

Austin power updates, what do you need if you want to build a new JavaScript framework, and what do we hope CSS brings in 2023?

Ben Ubois is the founder of Feedbin, the RSS reader of choice for Dave and Chris. What influenced the creation of Feedbin, the state of RSS in 2023, curating your RSS feed, and subscribing to newsletters in Feedbin.

What's going to happen to homework with AI? Thoughts on infinite canvas which leads into Luro and Sigma integration, and Chris gets nerdsniped and tries to scrap (or should he crawl?) websites for data.

Zach Leatherman talks with us about what's new with Eleventy, setting up on Mastodon, what's happened with Twitter, and is-land.

Una Kravets stops by to talk about making CSS your job, @ Property, Cascade layers, color spaces updates, shared element transitions, animation on the web, nesting, focus visible, and what people should learn about CSS.

Catching up on work after being away at a conference, import maps coming to Safari, and your secret web patching tips including buying Disney tickets, saving Instagram photos, spell checking blog posts, taking funky screenshots, forms, cleaning up Jira, and pesky greyed out buttons.

Bastian Allgeier, creator of the popular CMS Kirby, talks with us about what Kirby is, why Kirby uses flat files, the whole SSG vs flat debate, the $20B Sigma shaped elephant in the room, running Kirby on the edge, how Kirby handles support and licensing, and what kinds of sites use Kirby?

An update on the spoon theory talked about in the previous episode, thoughts on the mobile browser injection going on in apps, Chris spoke at CascadiaJS, Enhance.dev released, 4 new CSS methodologies, and quantity vs quality in your work output.

What database should a mobile app use? Is there any help for GDPR processes? Is there a way to get developers to better match design? How to implement accessibility in a web app environment? Heroku shuts down their free plan, and pricing is hard.

Jen Simmons walks through a ton of the new CSS and HTML features out now or coming soon - including container queries, cascade layers, .has selector, and more!

A quick Luro update, working in a coffee shop, when do you know it's time to leave a working but shakey system behind and start fresh, teaching tricky A11y tips, dependency follow up, how big are the node modules, and we dream up a media service app.

Where have all the backend podcasts gone? Databases are so hot right now, so we're talking about them. What is the state of just using native web components? Are they a viable solution for a production app today? What if there was a type syntax in JavaScript?

How do you add features to a web app while the web app is running? Should you add features to your app based on whatever Twitter tells you? And if Chris or Dave were starting a new blog today, what niche would they start writing about?

Dave's got a new fridge, questions about whether we'll see a big podcast again, #DaveGoesNuxt3, mouthblogging Netlify ideas, resizing and cropping images, should you hire a newb dev or senior dev, what is a design system, and redesigning personal websites.

Dave's got a theory that we could build dev teams like video game teams, Chris has an API edge rant, Dave tests Nuxt 3, billionaires buying apps, camper talk, and the search for the perfect webcam.

Chris and Dave are answering questions live from An Event Apart, spring 2022 edition. What new CSS features are exciting? What would you add to CSS? What do you think creates the designer developer gap? Web components and two screens! And more!

Chuck Carpenter & Robbie Wagner from Web Whiskey and Whatnot stop by to talk about podcasting, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, web3, Ember, and working with clients.

Dave has questions about CSS Tricks sale to Digital Ocean, what's involved in selling a blog in 2022, the tech behind CSS Tricks, liberal coding to accept more than you anticipate, hidden attributes in HTML, and Inert in Safari 15.4.

Rich Harris stops by to talk about blogging, writing a book on app icons, how he archives his part of the web, whether browsers are evergreen, future vs backwards proofing, color, and images on the web.

We're celebrating episode 500 by looking back at the previous eras of ShopTalk Show including why we started the show, how it's changed over the years, and how the tech and our lives have changed as well.

Long time listener, first time guest Melanie Sumner joins us to chat about her work on Ember, enterprise work, the importance of accessibility, and the web.

We're talking with Thomas Steiner of Google's Project Fugu about native apps or web apps. What is Project Fugu? Hardware limitations or requirements for using game controllers on the web. Working with new hardware API's. Reasons to choose a native app. As well as Thomas' SVG web app he's built.

We're talking about our predictions for web tech in 2022: Container queries, web3, React, HTML elements, CSS compatibility, utility frameworks, designer and developer tooling, multiple frameworks, and more episodes of ShopTalk Show!

What's the tech stack Paravel's using to build their app? A conversation on AdonisJS, NuxtJS on Vite, side projects in Vue, checking out Bun.sh, Slinkity and Eleventy, and working on quantity to get to quality.

Dave and Chris are on podcast and YouTube benders, talking CSS performance, CSS contain: Strict, what's new in CSS, how to build a great embed, one thing to make websites better in 2022, dealing with dogma in community, creating great slide decks, and #juicegate.

How good is web3 really? And is there money to be made without destroying the environment? Is HTML good enough for the future? And what are we excited about in new stuff for CSS?

What's needed to start a tech business in 2021? Is VS Code on the web usable? Why would you choose a native app over a web app in 2021? And be sure to follow Dave on LinkedIn.

Parenting life update, redundancy for leaves, using a chaos monkey, images not showing up based on ISP, modern image handling workflow options, and discussing The Manager's Path.

It's difficult enough to keep up with new web things, even when it's your job. How do Chris & Dave do it? Dave's blogging on spicy sections, Chris' Cloudinary issues are resolved, and there's some Apple problems to deal with.

Is it harder to make a website in 2021 than in 1996? Are site building tools making life easier? Does Dave use scoped styles in Vue? How could Vue help with design systems? And Chris tries making a CSS Tricks book on the web, while Dave is workshopping a web components talk.

Join us on YouTube 3x a week for more ShopTalk fun. This episode: How would you build with maximum user growth in mind? Asset pipeline issues, self provisioning runtime, Google ZX, and crazy new CSS.

Crossover! Your favorite web dev podcasts join forces for a super collab that’ll knock you frontend off! Amelia joins Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert from ShopTalk Show while Divya teams up with Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski from Syntax. Let the FEUDing begin!

We've got a new ShopTalk Show mug you can order, Safari and Chrome #HotDrama to discuss, what is the modern WordPress build process like, and what's the state of your local bowling alley or pickleball website?

The D-d-d-d-discord's got threads! Are conferences a thing we're ready for? How was Dave's experience working on a Windows PC? Help Dave figure out his monitor issue on Mac. Are people writing websites without a build step? And what is a good CSS technique for displaying images that could be either horizontal or vertical?

Sarah Drasner's got a new book and we talk about her article on good meetings. Are front end problems more difficult than back end problems? GitHub's got an upgrade issues feature. How would you design a database for a new project? And where and what is data in 2021?

Do you drive or fly in 2021? How do you explain the Shadow DOM? What's LayoutNG? How do iFrames and Accessibility work out? Should we be using CSS Prefers Reduced Motion? And what's up with the Web Animation API?

We're joined by Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski from Syntax.fm and chat about the fun of developing, SvelteKit, what tools Scott and Wes reach for when building a website, the WordPress developer experience, and some sick picks!

Let's talk Sass, nesting, animation vs transition, animated tables, scroll snap points, progress meters, viewing emails in dark mode, and coded prototypes.

Where are my paaaants? What to do with new frameworks? What to do with new React? Building in Astro. And WWDC 2021 reactions.

What's the best way to include tabs as part of a component library? D-d-d-discord update on Alex's CSS-Trickz clone. Do you group your @media query items together or spread them around? And is software ever truly finished?

We're talking about linters, should we deliver single file HTML? Should you focus on a specific tool or be more general? And we revisit social image previews.

Jason Lengstorf and Phil Hawksworth chat about the current state of the Jamstack including React + Jamstack, Distributed Persistent Rendering, building for ease of use, dealing with minor changes and caching, whether Jamstack needs to do all things, and a big new Netlify features announced!

Dave and Chris talked at An Event Apart Spring Summit 2021 on the good and bad of the web. They talked about CSS, framework knowledge, more CSS, PWA's for projects, service workers, the language of tooling, and web performance.

Adam Argyle chats with us about CSS features from risky and never in any browser to stable and available in many browsers that are available in 2021.

Dave's prepping for a talk at An Event Apart about Web Components, and we're answering questions about OAuth, and talking digital art.

Special guest Emma Bostian is on to talk about her new book, De-coding the Technical Interview, that will help you never bomb a technical job interview again. How to answer technical questions you don't know, looking for red flags when applying, infinite scrolling question, and how to not be a schlub when applying for a new job.

We're talking all about fun with colors in CSS, browser updates, the death of AMP (question mark), pseudo selectors, a question about responsive design in vertical space, and linking with _blank.

On this episode: Updates from Dave's shed, camera options for streaming and Zooming, Discord chats, Headless WordPress block editor musings, custom form controls with ElementInternals, going from a coder to a team leader, and container query updates.

We're talking about threading in Slack or Discord, the continue reading button on a website, Axe software - also a sponsor!, cost benefit of time spent on work, what a day in the life at work is like for Chris and Dave, and musing about whether conferences are going to be a thing again.

Evan You chats with us about Vite. How is Vite so fast? What about tree shaking? How do you convert various formats into ESM and what does Evan recommend? What is the future of Babel? And what the first 2 minutes of a Vite project are like?

Dave's got YouTube dreams, a conversation about Babel, trying to generate a goldilocks level of source code a la Backbone and Underscore, power washing WordPress websites as a career, and an update on Dave's desk.

JavaScript and next gen bundlers, Dave's experience using Vite, what are your expectations with stale browser tabs, and what can you do when consultants don't seem to be able to deliver on a project?

We're officially on Patreon now and we'd love to have you come join us in the ShopTalk Show Discord and help shape the future of the ShopTalk community. We also talk about Dave's office situation, Notion competition, Elastic Search, how should someone specialize to get a job, and breaking news on the pop up element.

More on Javascript in 2201, looking at Jay Hoffman's writing workflow, helping pick a CMS for fun blogging, helping pick a web host and the happiest path involved, and just what the heck are workers on the web?

This week we talk with the maintainers of Snowpack and WMR, two newish flavors bundlers, to discuss how ES Modules change the game for modern JavaScript development.

We answer your questions about using a headless WordPress set up, changing WordPress themes and what happens to custom post types, those share buttons on websites, and talk about the 3 recent fav articles that came across our RSS readers.

Dave and Chris talk about recent pandemic purchases, publishing video on the web, more sharing of convoluted processes, some menu bar app ideas, reinvigorating HTML, and writing good git commit messages.

First episode of 2021! Dave's 11ty conversion continues, CSS Tricks gets a redesign, art directed blog posts, injecting styles into front matter, building stuff on holidays, and whether you should use open source from organizations that are sketchy?

Dave's ongoing Mac adventures, cleaning up old WordPress plugins, sharing a WordPress support tech, a Puppeteer update, and the sliding scale of giving an F in projects. Oh and we review a bit of 2020 and look forward to 2021. Thanks for listening!

What's the state of the art technique when it comes to asset bundling in WordPress? Should we use grid for every component? How should we test ecommerce site builds? And Dave goes back to the Mac!

Chris wants to upgrade his monitor situation, and Dave wants to update his shed situation. And along the way, they answer a listener question about how to care more about the blogging.

Follow up on Chris' desk adventures, trying to work out Auth and OAuth with Nuxt, fixing a fixed header issue, more on Apple's M1 processor, and a blog post reading of the Truths about Digital Accessibility.

Let's talk Serverless - including using WordPress Serverless, how to solve a problem like local databases, and edge functions with Netlify and beyond.

Chris talks about his desk and cable organization in his new office, Dave talks about his new custom keyboard, and then they go for a deep dive into container queries.

Chris & Dave talking SEO, advice for pushing scripts to the end of a page, digital minimalism, LinkedIn Recruiters, ARM based Mac computers, and web monetization.

A bit of WordPress vs Jamstack fall out, iPad SVG drawing followup before diving into your questions: Can you use PHP to serve CSS? What's the ideal pipeline from request to deploy? And are there good options for self hosting video?

This episode is about evolving the web platform - the change process of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This is a complicated and sometimes slow process that involves developers like us, standards bodies, browser vendors, and people like our guest, Greg Whitworth, who can act as outside influencers and shepherds to this process.

Chris is nostalgic for Magic the Gathering, Dave's wishing he hadn't added drawings to his blog, they're both mouthblogging about image compression and AVIF, and Jeremey Keith is back with chapter 4: The Website.

Natalya Shelburne is out guest to talk about her work at the New York Times, the importance of job titles, design engineering, design systems, and 2020 hot takes and soapboxes: childcare in the pandemic, education, and conferences.

The spookiest month of the year brings discussions of handling pull requests on open source projects, wayfinding on the responsive web, how would having to pay for frameworks change the web, relying on social media for promotion, and chapter 2 of the history of the web as read by Jeremy Keith.

Shawn Wang, known as Swyx, talks with Dave and Chris about his career path from finance to coding, and now in developer experience. They chat about serverless functions, React, getting a broad sense of technology, Wang's Coding Career Handbook, what's next for SSR, checking out Vite, and what exactly is DevX / developer experience?

This episode Dave's been blogging about the tangled webs we weave with dependancies and the internet, we talk more about web workers, and making peace with production code written by your earlier self. And Jeremy Keith kicks off part 1 of a reading of the history of the web.

Chris and Dave are coming to you live (recorded) from Smashing Conf's Live Webinar riffing on the talks and presentations, as well as their own Marketing Cloud Webinar Presentation.

David Dylan Thomas stops by to talk about his new book, Design for Cognitive Bias, recently published by A Book Apart. We talk about the illusion of control, confirmation bias, capitalism as a bias, culture fit, bias blindspots, the myth of the self-made man, move fast and break things, dark patterns, and what can we takeaway from learning about bias?

We're reflecting on turning 40, code health and integration testing, Mozilla Firefox conversations, the best way to provide an accessible text label to a button, and finding an application that minifies Javascript and images files.

We're talking addendum's and corrections, updates on Chris' text game, browsers built for designers, saying farewell to Firefox?, the best way to spin up a brochure website, and how Gutenberg in WordPress is these days.

Dave's gave a talk on backlogs, Chris has issues with Issues vs Discussions vs Chatting (and GIFs), and trying not to waste your time on ideas and projects when you have limited time to do them in.

We're talking about health, Tailwind CSS, getting overwhelmed with where to start on a project, some follow up on SVG sizes and web components, and why isn't there a bigger focus on web workers?

We riff on web components and web component libraries, when and why you should use a framework vs vanilla HTML/CSS/JS, how to make phone numbers more accessible, trying to figure out state, and some thoughts on SVG memory usage.

This episode we're talking about why we sleep, Zoom call etiquette and practices, spinning up Discord in 2020, Chris going Ruby, Dave working on CSS for foldable Windows devices, and what's the deal with masonry grid and layout?

Is there a way to listen for clicks and defer them until the app becomes available? What's the deal with accessibility widgets for websites? Should the system, browser, or website be responsible for motion settings? And how is Medium as a platform for monetizing your blog?

We're talking about how and when to spin down old projects, sun setting GitHub repos, and forums. We also answer your questions about how to educate and bring along the back-end team with tech, and when you should stick with old tech instead of the new hotness.

We're talking about Chris' new book of CSS Tricks, building support for old tech on the web, Apple going Arm and what that might mean for Parallels, and building Dave's magical image machine.

We're talking email, custom properties to tame the CSS stack, scroll trigger animation, WordPress blocks, mobile first vs desktop first design, and getting stuff to look nice on mobile Safari. And MORE!

We read some blogs and have some questions of our own: LH vs RLH? What about styling the shadow DOM with CSS shadow parts? Should you focus your work on what's loaded in your brain already? What is the Developer Experience? RUM and making decisions with or without data.

We're talking RSS feeds, Gemstone 4, MMO games, DnD, Jekyll vs Eleventy performance, email newsletters, Github and Microsoft, and strategies for dealing with Jamstack page jank.

We're talking about what's going on in our worlds, banjo talk, building in WordPress, new perf details from Google, and answering a question about static site generator performance.

Jen Simmons is back on the show to talk with us about her new HTML Essentials course, CSS Aspect Ratio, rendering engines vs browsers, and a big announcement from her personally!

Seneongo Akpem talks with us about his new book, Cross Cultural Design, and how building websites for people all over the world and from different cultures can be done better.

We're back doing a Rapidfire through your questions including: Is there a way to control text in the prompt for user permissions? Have we tried Emacs? How do you write better words? When is it appropriate to add a new framework to your resume? Do you think there is a front end ceiling?

Gerry McGovern talks with us about the amount of energy used sending the bits and bytes around the internet, the cost of storage, new phones vs old phones, the scale of data, and how do we adjust our process and culture to make changes?

Tom Preston-Werner joins the show to talk about his latest project, RedwoodJS, and the decisions made about how it works, public APIs, how tied to Netlify RedwoodJS is, and why they're using Prisma.

Vitaly Friedman talks with us about the changing landscape of publishing on the web, the changes seen in web conferences, the difference between a workshop and a webinar, and keeping up with all the technology in front end development.

We're chatting with Blaine Bublitz, lead at the Gulpjs open source project, about what Gulp is, the lack of money in open source, SVG and Gulp, handling dependencies in Gulp, and what the future of Gulp looks like.

Suz Hinton stops by to talk about what it's like to work at Stripe, how businesses should consider storing billing data, her live stream coding journey, and building and coding digital devices like the Arduino.

Brian Kardell talks with us about how new features get into browsers and the fun and challenging journey it takes to get there.

Divya Tagtachian stops by the ShopTalk studios to answer questions about Jamstack and Netlify. What's open authoring? Can a SPA be Jamstack? Can a site be too large for Jamstack? Is SSR the same thing as Jamstack? What's happening with WordPress and Jamstack?

Brian Leroux chats with us about building modern web apps using Begin and other cloud services like it including a deep dive on AWS Lambda.

Jen Simmons & Adam Argyle stop by to continue our conversations about where browsers are at, and what's coming up for browsers - specifically Firefox & Chrome.

We're pontificating on foldable phones and what that means for the web, automating and finding things we like with RSS, talking about a new CodePen feature, and trying to figure out SEO.

Chris and Dave talk hot browser drama, CSS4 ideas and thoughts, moving HTML & CSS forward, and lazy loading - and a whole lot more!

Eric Meyer joins us to talk about An Event Apart's 2020 season, subgrid shipping, the rumored rewrite of Chrome's engine, where HTML and CSS are headed, browser development, developing for giant screens and giant browser windows, and whatever happened to CSS 3?

Chris & Dave give an update on the website redesign project and then dive into your question: What kind of gear should you ask for from a new job? How do you fix a hardcoded issue in a project? And how is life using IntelliJ?

Chris & Dave talk about Edge going Chrome, a bit of follow up from last episode about Virtual Machines, thoughts on designing a website to last, a question about Rails plus React, and a question about how to move from CoffeeScript to something current.

We're talking AI and machine learning taking over, and then answering your questions on: registering a domain name, document outlining in HTML, colleges still teaching Flash, should we eject or not, enqueuing React in WordPress, and saying hyphenated domain names out loud.

Andy Bell brings his collection of side projects to the podcast to talk about including Piccalilli, Boiler Form, Web Components Club, Hylia for Eleventy, and Front End Challenges Club.

Chris & Dave are back for 2020 with thoughts on watching our industry, continuous integration and deployment, fall backs for when an API goes down, alternatives to WordPress, and tips for getting started with web components.

Zach Leatherman stops by the show to talk about his static site generator, Eleventy, as well as look back at his Front End Engineer Manifesto from 2012 and see how it holds up in 2019.

Dave and Chris talk about bacon, blogging, and the business of making money on the web. Are stories the new hotness? Should everything be an email newsletter? What can Dave sell for $10?

Chris and Dave talk about technology overwhelm, when tech breaks, when tech works amazing - and why and how tech sometimes falls out of favor.

Katie Sylor-Miller stops by the ShopTalk studios to talk about her new job as Etsy's Frontend Architect as well as her experience learning Git.

Dave and Chris talk podcasts they're enjoying, a brief making money on the web segment, and your questions about styling old elements, encrypted media, and how to keep your boss out of your code.

Live ShopTalk Show! Chris and Dave come to you live from the floor of JAMstack Conference in San Francisco answering real questions about JAMstack.

Marian Suzanne stops by the show to talk about Sass in 2019, design tokens, her company Oddbird, unused CSS, new CSS properties, and Dave & Chris' explanation of revert.

Chris and Dave revisit the state of CMS land with a discussion that mentions almost every kind of CMS available in 2019.

Jen Simmons is on the show to talk about how new features get shipped to browsers, when different browsers push features ahead of other browsers, talk a bit of Grid, Chris' aborting CSS, and aspect ratios and picture elements.

David & Stephen from the Keyframers stop by to talk with Dave & Chris about the state of animation, state machines, and animation systems - as well as live streaming coding on Twitch.

We're re-introducing ourselves in case you're new around here - and then we're right back into talking about picking the perfect stack, how to charge for various tasks in client work, handling H tags in the main menu of a site, and making money on the web.

Chris and Dave talk about interesting ways to make money on the web including Dave's drawing app idea, games like Downwell, the Tech Lead YouTube channel, and services like Coil and Brave.

Chris and Dave open up the mailbag and answer your questions in an return of a classic RapidFire episode. How do you know if you're a senior developer? How do we handle sponsors in WordPress?

Tyler McGinnis stops by the ShopTalk Show to chat with Dave and Chris about his React courses, how he keeps up with web technology, and his thoughts on marketing and selling courses.

Jonathan Carter, Lead Project Manager on VS Code Live Share, talks with Chris and Dave about how to use Live Share, how you can communicate while pair programming, live share vs screen sharing, limitations of Live Share, and most importantly: who controls the terminal??

When you're starting a new web project, what tools do you reach for? Dave and Chris talk through various scenarios and what they'd use to build it with.

Adam Argyle stops by to talk with Dave and Chris about his web design tool, VisBug, and interesting ways designers and developers can use it to be involved in modern web design and development.

Simen & Knut stop by to talk about Sanity.io - why they developed it, what it does, who it's for, and the types of projects they see people using Sanity for.

If you've ever wondered how to become a technical writer - or even a guest writer - for sites like CSS Tricks or Smashing Magazine, this episode is for you. We're talking with Rachel Andrew about how to submit technical articles, becoming a better writer, and tips for getting articles accepted.

We're chatting with Lara Hogan about her awesome new book, Resilient Management. Lots of great advice in this episode for people who are managers, becoming managers, or who are managed by someone - so almost everyone.

Eleventy
More Like Shamstack
GraphQL Documentary
X State
Learn State Machines
Why I Don’t Use Web Components
Haunted by Matthew P
Pika - A Future without Webpack
Why did I have difficulty learning React?

Timejumps * 01:34 What does Jamstack mean in your life? * 17:25 What's your reaction to "Full Stack Developer"? * 21:43 Sponsor: Datadog Synthetics * 22:51 State Management * 40:46 Sponsor: Jetpack * 42:02 Will you write more responsible code? * 44:16 Why did I have difficulty learning React?

Sacha Greif joins us to talk about the recently published State of CSS survey for 2019. What were the results? What surprised us? What are our thoughts for the future of CSS? Plus a preview of the Syntax vs Shoptalk War of 2020.

We're talking accessibility with Christopher and Nicolas from Knowbility. Does accessibility transcend the web? Is it discouraging how much work still needs to be done? How do we get people the skills needed to help with accessibility on the web? Should accessibility be a role in house? And is Javascript the enemy of accessibility?

Paul Campbell talks with us about the technology behind selling tickets on his app Tito.io and the journey they've taken in trying to rewrite the app.

Jennifer Robbins and Chris Ferdinandi stop by to talk about a great conference that's returning in the fall, ARTIFACT Conference. We look back at the state of the web 5 years ago and preview some of the talks and ideas that will be happening at this year's ARTIFACT Conference. Be sure to listen for a special ShopTalk Show listener deal on tickets!

Jason Lengstorf is our guest to help get us all up to speed on what Gatsby is, how it works, who it's for, and thinking about some interesting ways to use it on the web.

We're back answering more of your questions, including: what are the rule son displaying email on a website? What resources do you recommend to bootstrap a website? When should I stray from conventions? If customers don't want to maintain it, should I still use a CMS? And what are the limits of static site generators?

Chris and Dave are coming to you live from the Browser News Desk 2019 to talk about Microsoft Build, Google IO, and other news in the world of website builders.

We're talking Javascript land with Sara Vieira - how she got her start coding, Node, GraphQL, Apollo, living and traveling as a coder, what's happening in the Javascript ecosystem around the world, NuxtJS, design systems, and frameworks.

We're answering more of your questions, including: using .HTML method on an inner element, ARIA labelling, job titles, and should we all learn about BaseCS?

We're doing a RapidFire Q&Apisode answering your questions about Node, working on design and development, coder's block, and how to get more responsibility on remote projects.

Jessica Ivins is our guest to talk about her work at Center Centre, a user experience design school, and how students are learning to be the next generation of UX designers. We also discuss self-learning, accessibility concerns, website metaphors, and how to prep for applying at a school like Center Centre.

Dave and Chris are answering your questions about what to learn next, webpack vs parcel, web development on Windows, React and NextJS, CSS crimes with WordPress, clashing on coding standards, code camps for newbies, and how to pick a CMS.

Dave and Chris talk about styling Gutenburg blocks, the Edge browser news, mobile web, Opera, web 3, Firefox empathy, and the general state of web browsers in 2019.

We're chatting with Heydon Pickering about accessibility, using pre-built solutions past their best before date, everyone's varying degrees of proficiency, and whether accessibility is becoming second nature to more people.

Guillermo Rauch stops by to talk about Zeit, Now, and Next.

Scott Kellum talks with us about his new project, Typetura. We discuss how it works, what it's dependancies and limitations are, as well as what the future holds for CSS and the web.

Scott Jehl is our guest and we're talking about accessibility, jQuery history, progressive enhancement in modern javascript, critical CSS, service workers, maintenance of a server, and other fun stuff.

We're chatting about how to get your name out there - and how not to get your name out there Jimmy John John. We also talk about indie publications, updates on Dave's office situation, and we dust off the Trello board for a mini-RapidFire on questionable projects, and building with GraphQL.

We talk with Evan You, creator of Vue.js, about his role as a creator and maintainer of Vue.js, as well as questions about upgrading legacy apps with Vue? What is a Vue file? How do web components fit in? Where is Vue 3 at? And advice on how to get started using Vue.js?

We're talking about Svelte with Rich Harris - what does it add to HTML? Does bundle size matter? How does Svelte handle routing? And who's using Svelte? Be sure to listen for a preview link to Svelte v3!

Justin Fagnani from the Polymer Project is our guest and we're taking a deep dive into lit-html and Polymer elements, how those projects are different, and we'll discuss how Web Components is wrapped up in all of this.

Jason Miller stops by to chat about PreactJS.

Dave and Chris chat about the great (or is it?) divide in the front end world of web design and development.

Laurie Voss is the co-founder and Chief Data Officer of npm and he stopped by the show to talk a bit about npm's history, some of the issues it faces now, as well as what's in store for the web in 2019.

We talk with Henry Zhu about his role maintaining the open source project Babel including how to make decisions on what pull requests to work on, scope, financial support, and what it's like to be an open source maintainer in 2019.

Erik Kennedy helps us open up 2019 with a great discussions on learning how to design, picking out better typography, picking colors, how to handle negative design feedback, and more.

We're talking performance improvements and we've got Ben Schwarz, creator of Calibre - the web performance monitoring app for teams, on to give some quick tips to improve performance as well as where performance is headed in 2019.

We're back with some thoughts on why you should(n't) fly or go camping, talking about the tech we've been loving recently, and answering your questions about BaaS, agile methodologies, human readable URL's, and web components makes another appearance.

We're answering your questions about how to fill in giant gaps in work history, whether designers should know the basics of HTML and CSS, and combating the need for high-res mock ups for Q&A.

With a bit of a Jamstack conference recap at the front, we're back to a regular episode answering your questions about using 3D on the web, migrating a site between platforms, working with MarkoJS, and have you heard about web components?

Monica Dinculescu is an Emojineer at Google and we talk with her about the state of front-end development, knowing what you're bad at vs what you're good at, and coming up with a better analogy for it all.

Peggy Rayzis is an engineering manager at Apollo GraphQL and joins us for a discussion of life as a front-end developer with a GraphQL focus.

We're joined by Ben Frain to talk about his thoughts on the state of being a front-end developer in 2018.

Sameera Kapila is on to continue our How to Think Like a Front-End Developer series answering questions of what a job posting would look like, what the hardest part is of front-end development, what her ideal project would look like, and more!

Continuing in our series, Brad Frost stops by to give us his thoughts on front-end development work in 2018 and walks us through our Dribbble shots experiment. (Links to the images are below in the show notes or on your podcast player.)

We're joined by 1/3 of Paravel, Trent Walton, to continue our How to Think Like a Front-End Developer series and talk about his thoughts on what the characteristics of a front-end developer are, caring about performance, and getting back to the grain of the web.

Mina Markham stops by to talk about her career as a front-end developer, her dream project, and we get her thoughts on our Dribbble to web challenge.

To kick off a new mini-series called "How to Think like a Front-End Developer", we're joined by Eric Meyer to get his thoughts on front-end web development in 2018 including throwing a set of website design mockups at him and seeing how he'd break them apart into HTML.

Aaron Gustafson is here to help us wrap our heads around the web standards project (WaSP), the W3C, and how it all relates to progressive web apps (PWA) and progressive enhancement. We talk about how standards come to be, how a PWA differs from a web view, why a company might choose Electron, and what the future is for PWA sites. Be sure to listen to the end for an internship opportunity with Aaron!

Chris and Dave chat with Dan Mall about designing a portfolio that hiring managers can't deny. Should you tailor your portfolio for each specific job you might apply for? Where does privilege come into play when applying for jobs? Could it backfire? And be sure to stick around for an opportunity to add the design of a certain podcast website to your portfolio!

Jen Simmons is back to talk about what's new in Firefox including a dev tools update. We also chat about sub grid, variable font support, and discuss whether all the new stuff that's been added over the last few years heralds a new era of web design.

We're joined by Jon Bellah and David Khourshid to talk about what a state machine is and what's not a state machine. We talk about state machines in React, login forms, going into the wrong state, fallbacks, game development, and working state machines into existing projects.

Jennifer Robbins stops by ShopTalk Show to talk about her recently updated book, Learning Web Design - what's been updated, who the book is for, and what's changed since she first published the book.

Dave and Chris answer your questions about how to get code consistency at work, advice on writing testable code, a new intrinsic size attribute, WooCommerce custom site building, and some thoughts on a low code world.

We're answering your questions about proper autocomplete on websites, node based CMS configs, follow up on line length, retina screens, update security, and some quilting drama.

Adam Wathan stops by to talk about Tailwind CSS, how it got started, dealing with large CSS and config files, why you might want to use Tailwind CSS, Purge CSS, and more!

We help you avoid becoming a designosaur by answering your questions about learning React, creating a universal header, jQuery vulnerability, implementing pattern libraries, and taking WordPress development seriously.

We're back answering your questions about getting old and also the web. On this episode we're talking about web components, view source in text editors, job application process, using canvas for animations, cleaning up CSS, coding bootcamps, and more.

If you're a developer who's struggled with design, you're going to love this episode! Laura Elizabeth stops by the show to talk about her course called Design Academy that teaches developers how to design better marketing sites.

Gerry McGovern is our guest this week to talk about listening to your customers, what big companies do right and wrong, how to avoid living in the past, and consulting Chris on how a new feature for CodePen could be developed.

Chris Eppstein is back on the show to talk about his new project CSS Blocks and how it works, what kinds of projects it's best for, and how it integrates with other frameworks on the web.

Tim Brown is our guest to talk about his new book coming soon called Flexible Typesetting from A Book Apart.

Dave gives a lesson on streaming, and your questions on the future of PSD to markup, tools for prototyping, what to study in 2018, and CSS Grid vs Flexbox. Thanks bro!

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

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies)

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

Designing With Web Standards

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!

This week we were joined by Sam Kapila. Sam teaches at Texas State University, focusing mainly on Responsive Web Design and Typography.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

12:50 What did you guys study in college? Would you change your mind if you could go back? What kinds of studies do you recommend or do not recommend, and can you share any experiences?
23:30 I’m not in a position at work where it’s practical/needed to get into Yeoman or Bower, even though I like to stay at the forefront of web trends. Am I becoming a dinosaur?
32:20 I created a website with a small app for a client, and now they want the source code for the app so another developer can work on it. What should I do?
36:05 I’m intrigued to use CSS Calc in my private projects (modern browsers) but am not sure about the performance. It’s not a big deal, but i’d love to know if it’s a good thing to use, or should avoid it?
47:45 I really like the idea of embedding above-the-fold CSS in the head and including the rest at the bottom of the page. Do you see any drawbacks with this method?
57:04 How can I finally get started with contributing to open source projects?

Sponsors:

30:18 Campaign Monitor – We’ve got a free eBook available with our Top 100 email campaigns, it’s a great dose of inspiration for 2014. We’re built for designers and agencies. To find out how you can rebrand and offer our service to your clients, at your own prices, check out campaignmonitor.com/agencies. Need to send an email campaign in a hurry? Try your hand at our template builder and have a responsive email template ready in 60 seconds.

43:30 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). Use coupon code “SHOPTALKSHOW” for 20% off your ticket!

Show Links:

Sam Kapila
Sam on Twitter
AtoZCSS.com
Yeoman
Grunt
Bower
Poylmer
CSS Calc
caniuse.com
Understanding Comics

Nicely Said

Have a tricky front end problem you need help with? Ask us anything!

Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose (Voices That Matter)

This week it’s another RAPID-FIRE!!! Nothing but the best darn question and answer you’ve ever heard!

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

1:28 How can I achieve HTML includes or imports without using any php or javascript? I know that Codekit has a Kit language that can do this but I don’t have a mac yet. Is there a HTML preprocessors that can do this? If so, can I use only the import function and still use regular HTML on it?
8:56 Picture this: Client organization has a CMS and puts all their ‘news’ content in. Monthly they need to generate a paper newsletter… They push ONE BUTTON and a multi-page pdf, at least as beautiful as the site, is generated with all of their news content… Has anyone tried this?
17:03 What’s the best way to compress a vector graphic from Illustrator for the web? There used to be a SVG option for “Save for Web and Devices” but it’s gone in CS6. What SVG specs are best to use?
22:43 I’m starting to hear the phrase “Tech Bubble” a lot and it’s very disheartening. Do you guys believe we’re in a tech bubble? If so, is it we the web developers/designers who have to worry? Or is it more threatening to investors, entrepreneurs, and 30 y/o billionaires?
32:30 I’m about to start working at a full time job where the team uses Git. Do you have any advice about workflow or etiquette?
39:34 I’m a developer at a mid-sized SaaS company and we have a pretty successful product. Our product has an API and there are several other companies that sell web site integrations & 3rd party plugins to our customers. Our company even receives fees to recommend certain “preferred partners”. Do you think it would be unethical or a conflict of interest for me to develop my own premium WordPress plugin on my own time?
47:47 I’m currently working in a project and the design calls for use of full-screen image backgrounds, in order to optimize this for mobile devices I’m using media queries to call the appropriate background, it works like a charm, however there is something that bothers me, if I resize the window there’s a small bit of time where the webpage has no background while the image get’s loaded. Any way around this?
51:51 Why aren’t box-shadow and text-shadow shorthand properties like background and font? Why don’t the properties box-shadow-color, box-shadow-offset, etc. exist?
58:09 My question is about Print Stylesheets. Are they still relevant? How do you approach them?

Sponsors:

14:15 Campaign Monitor – Need to send an email campaign in a hurry? Try your hand at our template builder and have a responsive email template ready in 60 seconds. While you’re browsing their site, grab a free eBook about the Top 100 email campaigns and get inspired!

28:50 Environments for Humans: Craft CMS Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in Craft for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Craft CMS Summit 2014!

In this inaugural one-day conference, we look at the State of Craft and deep dive into a series of presentations to give attendees smarter and faster ways to build the web.

Bring the experts to your desktop June 17th from 9AM to 5PM (CT). Use coupon code “Shoptalk” at checkout for a special discount!

Environments For Humans: WP Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in for an all-new, one-day only online conference all about WordPress, the WP Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop June 18th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Use coupon code “Shoptalk” at checkout for a special discount!

Show Links:

CodeKit: THE Mac App For Web Developers
Grunt
XOXCO: Packagr
Codepen Radio 012: VC
Woofoo: The Online Form Builder
Getting started with Git
Try Git: Codeschool Interactive Tutorial
Image Alpha: Photo Compression
Web P: a new image format for the web
Nifty CSS animation tricks

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! Nothing but HOT question & answer action.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

2:08 I have a question about running Sass in a corporate environment. I’m really interested in using Sass at work but since it requires Ruby there’s no chance of running a ruby server on my system. Is there any way to run a Sass processor from a thumb drive?
7:48 How long does it take for you to write a blog post from the first day you experience the problem (or get the initial idea of what want to write about) to when you actually hit the publish button?
16:42 Are there any good low cost alternatives to Engine Yard or Heroku for hosting test or small web apps?
22:20 What is the best way to validate html and css?
32:45 Are there any WordPress shopping carts that have a token feature or do you know of another way to accomplish this?
41:02 Is it worth offering IE6/7/8 support for a responsive design project?

Sponsors:

11:34 Blend Conf – BlendConf is a generalist conference featuring 60 diverse speakers sharing ideas and conversations about user experience, design, and development. September 11-13 in Charlotte, NC. 4 tracks: UX, Design, Front-end, Back-end. Keynote speakers are Mike Monteiro, Jennifer Palka (Founder Code for America), and Kimberly Bryant (founder, black girl code). Use coupon code “shoptalk” for 10% off!
38:41 Environments for Humans – 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! Tons of great speakers, including Chris Coyier, Rebecca Murphy, Dan Cedarholm, Estelle Way, Jonathan Snook, Rachal Nabors, and more! Go vote for your favorite talk, and pick up tickets today!

Show Links:

Linode
Rackspace
Serve
Chrome Dev Tools
Symbolset Icons
Google Page Speed Test
Grunt Strip MQ
Require JS

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! Nothing but HOT question & answer action.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

1:48 I have a question(s) about loading JS files in a WordPress environment. Is there a rule of thumb for when async should be utilized? If I script is loaded in the footer does ‘async’ not matter as much?
7:50 What software do you two use to create your slides for when you do talks at conferences?
15:50 I have a question about deciding on a development stack. What are some of your recommendations when making these kinds of decisions?
29:12 Why use static site generators? Are there any good tutorials out there for those of us who have never used one before?
34:28 Is there a way to make a line of text fill the width of a parent container as if it were justified?
38:28 In job advertisements I’ve been seeing lately, all of the best jobs have Angular JS listed as one of the requirements. I really love creating websites that work everywhere. The idea of using the latest tech at the expense of accessibility, and progressive enhancement doesn’t sit well with me. How can I keep my career advancing, while maintaining those core beliefs?
43:45 How long does it normally take you guys to build a website from start to finish, for instance microsoft.com or css-tricks.com?

Sponsors:

14:00 One Month Rails – Build your first Ruby on Rails web app in just one month. Easy to follow videos with step-by-step instructions. Enrollment is typically $99, but if you join now you’ll get a one time discount of 25% off for joining, so go learn how to make web apps now!

Editor’s note: I actually just bought this and I’m working through it now: it’s awesome! So easy to follow and I love the teacher’s style and the way he breaks everything down into easy to follow along with steps. Highly recommended. – Aaron D.

33:00 Environments for Humans – 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! Tons of great speakers, including Chris Coyier, Rebecca Murphy, Dan Cedarholm, Estelle Way, Jonathan Snook, Rachal Nabors, and more! Go vote for your favorite talk, and pick up tickets today!

Show Links:

Keynote
Reveal.js
Knockout
Jasmine
Handlebars
YAML
Bower
Grunt
Modernizr
Jekyl
Getting started with Jekyl
Kirby
Fittext.js
Slab Text
Big Text
Adam Clark
Goodstuff.fm

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! Nothing but HOT question & answer action.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

2:25 With this trend of big background images and full with slider, which size of images do you recommend to have a balance between size and weight?
7:56 What’s the best way to handle SVGs?
23:37 Why don’t browsers just include various versions of jquery within the end user machine, loading it as they encounter usage?
27:36 You’ve mentioned Harvest as a tool for time-tracking and invoicing; are there any other tools you would suggest, specifically for expense tracking?
36:36 What do all of you think of Netflix disabling the developer console in Chrome? Will this become popular in the future? Is it unethical?
40:35 Inline-block grid systems won’t render correctly in Safari 7. It works fine on Safari 6, ffox and Chrome but fails miserably on Safari 7. Any solutions or advice?
43:50 I have recently started to do some freelance web design, I am confident in my pricing however when writing up emails to a potential client giving them an estimate I feel that there is room for improvement. How does Dave/Paravel approach this, do you send some kind of template or something else?
49:25 Going back to something raised in podcast #103 about getting server-side variables into javascript, what is the most pure way of putting server-side data into javascript?
54:37 I’m curious how you manage passwords when working with clients. How do you securely send passwords to clients?
59:19 I’m in my 40’s and to be honest, agencies are looking for people on their 20’s. Is this web design world a place for only youngsters?

Sponsors:

20:16 Campaign Monitor – Campaign Monitor makes it easy to attract new subscribers, send  them beautiful email newsletters and see stunning reports on the results. We use it for our Shoptalk newsletter. Check out their free eBook available with their top 100 email campaigns, it’s a great dose of inspiration for 2014.
33:52 Environments for Humans – 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! Tons of great speakers, including Chris Coyier, Rebecca Murphy, Dan Cedarholm, Estelle Way, Jonathan Snook, Rachal Nabors, and more! Go vote for your favorite talk, and pick up tickets today!

Show Links:

Jeremy Keith – Deconstruct Site
Less Accounting
Billings App
Legal Zoom
Nic Gallaghers Griddle
1Password
1Password Multivault

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! Nothing but HOT question & answer action.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

1:47 Could you recommend any good WordPress plugins to work with for a bilingual support?
10:38 Is it possible to have a single page website perform well in terms of SEO?
19:03 When starting from scratch on a smaller site I tend to work first on the markup, then once happy I begin the styling. This usually means going through all selectors in the DOM and pasting them into the stylesheet. Have you found a tool to scan a DOM and spit out all the classes (and maybe IDs) for styling with?
25:12 How should I handle vertical rhythm?
33:18 Have you guys had any luck using MAMP on Mountain Lion?
35:07 I’m having problems with version control. Do you have any advice?
42:49 When or why it would be better to use @extend in certain instances versus creating a mixin and using @include?
49:15 My client expects pixel perfection when translating PSD to website. What do you think is a reasonable level of fidelity to the mockup to expect from a developer?
57:51 In responsive web design, what are the advantages and disadvantages of including media queries “inline” in your CSS versus putting them in separate CSS files?

Sponsors:

17:05 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!
54:41 E4H – Craft CMS Summit – Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in Craft for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Craft CMS Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop June 17th from 9AM to 5PM (CT). Get your tickets now!

Show Links:

Multilingual WordPress
Microsoft English
Microsoft Hebrew
Smartling.com – Website Translation
Create Crawlable Link Friendly AJAX Websites Using Push State
EmberJS.com
Angular JS
Baseline Grids on the Web – Jason Santa Maria
The Extend Concept (SCSS)
Craft CMS

This week we were joined by Bryan Jones and Guy Meyer. They are the creators of the fantastic web development app Codekit.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

10:15 WordPress mentorship initiative going on at http://wpmentor.org
13:25 GiantConf blows up

Q & A:

23:09 I use Grunt, but I also own a copy of CodeKit (1 & 2). I can never figure out a decent workflow: is there a plan for some Grunt integration in CodeKit?
43:07 What are your thoughts on HTML pre-processing languages?
49:30 What is your workflow when deploying from local to remote, and how do you handle working with another developer on a WP project, for version control especially again with the DB?
56:22 Have you had any success or desire to template in Jade within WordPress?

Sponsors:

22:05 E4H – AccessU Summit – A one day conference on May 12th, a full day ONLINE conference about accessibility. Learn all about accessibility with talks like Mobile Accessibility, Accessible Media for the Web, and more! Get your tickets today! CSS Dev Conf!!! An awesome in-person conference all about CSS. Taking place on October 13th-15th in New Orleans. VOTE for the talks you want to see! Register today
41:00 Campaign Monitor – Campaign Monitor makes it easy to attract new subscribers, send  them beautiful email newsletters and see stunning reports on the results. We use it for our Shoptalk newsletter. Check out their free eBook available with their top 100 email campaigns, it’s a great dose of inspiration for 2014.

Show Links:

Codekit
Bryan on Twitter
Bryan Jones Website
Guy on Twitter
Guy Meyer’s Website
WP Mentor
“Gracefully Bowing Out of Giant Conference” – Sarah Parmenter
Grunt
Kit Language
Harken Press

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! Nothing but HOT question & answer action.

Q & A:

1:53 How do I integrate GitHub into a real web publishing workflow?
6:40 I find typography on the web always looks somehow chunky. That’s why I use the webkit prefixed font-smoothing: antialiased on every project I work on to make it look nice and crisp at least for some users. Is there a major problem with this feature that I’ve missed or any other good reason why developers don’t or shouldn’t use it?
12:15 I’ve been messing around with the new Flexslider 2 Beta, and I wanted to pull photos from Flickr and use it as a responsive photo gallery. However, the layout breaks and has excessive white space when Flexslider tries to account for portrait oriented images. Is there a way to use intrinsic ratios like with FitVids to get rid of the excess white space?
18:30 It seems like with responsive design it’s becoming acceptable to use “foreground images” (images IN the markup) as banner images so that they can be scaled down as the viewport narrows. Is this acceptable now?
22:15 If you use media queries to adjust the body font-size percentage, is there any rule to figuring out the adjustments to the percentage as you go along?
26:24 What do you guys use for Style Guide Generation?
29:00 Do you guys wear pants while recording Shoptalk shows?
29:49 Any thoughts on Condoleezza Rice joining Dropbox?
30:51 Do you know any good javascript techniques to create pdf files?
33:00 Why SCSS over LESS?
36:42 What do you guys think about the difference between a self taught web designer and a designer with a degree?
39:23 What are your thoughts about working for clients vs working on products?
44:07 Do you have any tips about using Codekit and MAMP for local WordPress development?

Sponsors:

16:48 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. Check out great courses like: – Google Analytics Tips – Shooting With Blackmagic Cameras (4K) – Revit Construction Modeling Tools Get a free 7 day trial now!
27:49 E4H: Artifact Conf May 5-7 in Austin, Texas and Providence Rhode Island September 29 – October 1: a two day, one-track conference with some of the greatest speakers on the web, including Dave Rupert, Jeremy Keith, Brad Frost, Josh Clark, and more. Use discount code SHOPTALKSHOW for $100 off your ticket (group discounts available).

Show Links:

PHP Storm
Coda 2
Flexslider 2
KSS
Assemble
Pattern Lab
Condoleezza Rice joins Dropbox
JS PDF
SCSS VS LESS
First Moments with MAMP

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! Nothing but HOT question & answer action!

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

2:25 I know with the tag you have the ability to add various image sizes based on screen size. Will there be something similar for the tag?
6:20 Ember JS vs Angular JS: which would you choose?
7:46 What are your thoughts on styling scrollbars?
12:18 Grunt VS Gulp: Fight!
16:15 I’m really only using SCSS, why do I need Grunt or Gulp?
20:50 How do you deal with ads, more specifically AdSense, when it comes to responsive design?
25:33 How do I import a CSS file into SCSS?
29:55 How do I find a web design mentor? Where do mentors go to find people who want to learn?
34:40 Is Require JS something worth diving into?
39:26 Using P to wrap a label instead of div?
43:20 I’ve come across a blog post which tells me to basically stop using Grunt and jump over to Gulp, which does a similar thing but better, apparently. Do you two personally change tools often or do you tend to stick with the same one for quite a long time?
47:07 What is Socket.io?
52:25 What’s your favorite open source CMS for large scale sites?
54:30 I’m working at a startup, can you share some advice about writing scalable CSS?

Sponsors:

19:11 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. Check out great courses like: – Excel 2013 – Working with Dates and Times – Lightroom 5 New Features – Intellectual Property Fundamentals Get a free 7 day trial now!
28:07 E4H: Artifact Conf May 5-7 in Austin, Texas: a two day, one-track conference with some of the greatest speakers on the web, including Dave Rupert, Jeremy Keith, Trent Walton, Brad Frost, Josh Clark, and more. Use discount code SHOPTALKSHOW for $100 off your ticket (group discounts available).

Show Links:

Ember JS
Angular JS
Getting started with Grunt
Gulp
Require JS
Flight JS
Book Apart Name Generator
Macaw
Socket.io
CSS Style Guides
Creating Style Guides
Pattern Libary
Harry Roberts
Nicholas Gallagher
SMCSS
OOCSS

This week we were joined by Tim Murtaugh, you might know him as the guy who helped make the A List Apart website…

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

13:05 Trim
16:22 How to be an Open Source Gardener

Q & A:

25:48 Why you would use GitHub over BitBucket when the private repos on BitBucket are clearly cheaper?
32:08 How do you prescribe handling various content styles within a given module? Things like font size, color, and bottom margins?
40:34 Do you think that certificates are of value when looking for a job? Is it worth finding and completing courses that ‘verify’ the assortment of web-related skills that I have?
45:10 I came across this website www.unfold.no and I was wondering: how did they make their website scroll infinitely around in a circle?
50:24 Safari Reader – how does it determine the relative content and what to display and at what article length does it kick in?
56:15 I saw this new bootstrap theme/framework that has dozens of pre-made components that you combine like a puzzle to create a website. This looks pretty good at first on how they present it in their video but when I started using it I was disappointed and it took away the fun of making a website. What are your thoughts about buying and editing themes

Sponsors:

24:08 Breaking Development: Beyond the Desktop – two events: Nashville July 28-30, and Orlando November 3-5. Beyond the Desktop is a single track conference that looks to blend the conceptual and practical by brining you talks that will give you information you can take back to work the next day as well as new ideas that will force you to think bigger and more long term. Come and join in with other great attendees and speakers to recharge your approach and get excited about working on the web. Use discount code shoptalkshow for $100 off!
38:33 E4H: Artifact Conf May 5-7 in Austin, Texas: a two day, one-track conference with some of the greatest speakers on the web, including Dave Rupert, Jeremy Keith, Trent Walton, Brad Frost, Josh Clark, and more. Use discount code SHOPTALKSHOW for $100 off your ticket (group discounts available).

Show Links:

Tim Murtaugh on Twitter
Monkey Do Design & Development
Trim
How to be an Open Source Gardener
Battle of Brothers
Unfold.no
Readability Developers Guidelines
Designmodo Startup Framework

This week we were joined by Dee Gill. Dee transitioned her career from finance to software engineering in part via a dev bootcamp, so we talk about the many different ways to learn web development and programming.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

25:50 #HOTDRAMA Feedback
29:02 Revisiting the Brendan Eich situation

Q & A:

34:00 I’ve been doing front end dev work for a little while on my own, and now I’m ready to join a team. Do you have any suggestions for me regarding the interview process?
37:47 What do you guys think about online learning resources like Codacademy and Treehouse?
45:58 Should I go to college to learn web development? What about programming bootcamps?
52:23 How do you keep tabs on all the things you care about and stay passionate?

Sponsors:

42:30 Survey Monkey SurveyMonkey is the world’s leading online survey platform, with more than 2 million survey responses every day. SurveyMonkey has revolutionized the way people give and take feedback, making it accessible, simple and affordable for everyone. They just launched the very first SurveyMonkey app for iPhone and iPad. With the new SurveyMonkey app, you can create your poll or questionnaire on your phone and track results on-the-go. Check out the app in the iTunes app store.
23:31 Media Temple – For years, Media Temple’s Grid service has been the web hosting choice of more designers, developers, and creative professionals than any other platform. A single Grid account can host anything from your portfolio site to 100 different client projects. Special discount for The ShopTalk listeners, use promo code shoptalkshow for 25% off your first month of web hosting. Go to mediatemple.net and enter shoptalkshow upon signup.

Show Links:

Dee Gill on Twitter
Survey Monkey
Hackbrite Academy
Treehouse
Codacademy
CodeSchool
Andy Bud: My Advice to Young Designers and Developers
Lean In
Articles about Sharon Sandberg
Codepen Radio #7: Complexity

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

This week we were joined by Julie Ann Horvath, designer and developer for &yet. Julie has recently been the subject of tech news headlines because of her public resignation from her previous employer (Github) due to sexism and harassment. It’s a heavy and traumatic topic, but we’re thankful to Julie for sharing her experience so we can grow as a community and prevent these types of unfortunate events in the future.

We talked about (roughly in order):

5:15 Story behind Julie’s GitHub exit (Full Story: TechCrunch)

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

28:37 Brendan Eich resigns as Mozilla Corporation CEO
- Note: Within minutes of wrapping this episode, Brendan Eich stepped down as CEO.

Q & A:

38:09 Do you have any advice on where to look for jobs where an experienced front-end developer could learn from their co-workers and be challenged?
46:52 Since there are a lot of web development languages to learn and many developers know the usual HTML, CSS and Javascript. Which language would you say is a niche market to learn for hire?
50:48 I feel like I may have too much on my plate for the year: should I ask my team for more help?

Sponsors:

20:27 Harvest Harvest is a beautifully crafted business tool for tracking time spent on client projects. Work from anywhere by starting a timer via web browser, desktop, iPhone or Android. It’s effortless to start a timer. No matter where you find yourself plugging away, the focus stays on the task at hand. After the free 30 day trial period, use code “SHOPTALK” before June 1st and receive 50% off your first month.
43:08 E4H: Artifact Conf May 5-7 in Austin, Texas: a two day, one-track conference with some of the greatest speakers on the web, including Dave Rupert, Jeremy Keith, Trent Walton, Brad Frost, Josh Clark, and more. Use discount code SHOPTALKSHOW for $100 off your ticket (group discounts available).

Show Links:

Julie’s Website
Julie on Twitter
andyet.com
Human Javascipt Book
Passion Projects
Head over to Shoptalkshow.com and sign up to get email notifications!

This week we were joined by web developer, WordPress core contributor, Sass-fan, Tracy Rotton.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

8:22 Facebook buys Oculus Rift
11:02 SPECIAL: ONE ON ONE WITH A HACKER
14:11 Does most RWD look the same?
19:55 Is building a non-blog with WordPress a hack?
27:06 Shadow Dom

Q & A:

32:48 I’m currently not working in a team environment but am wondering if it would be more difficult if a developer was using the heck out of @extend?
37:22 Can’t we agree that it’s best to let the browser read plain CSS but let us have tools to make writing that CSS as easy and maintainable as possible?
44:02 How to I pull down client changes from my live wordpress site to my local environment?
50:01 I’m a WordPress Developer and I’ve noticed a disturbing trend lately. More and more clients are wanting developers that are experts with a specific commercial them? Weird, right?
54:05 I have yet to make the leap to SASS or LESS. Does it become troublesome and inconvenient to work with people and projects that don’t use these new methods?

Sponsors:

31:15 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. Check out great courses like: – Creating and Editing Custom WordPress Themes – Up and Running with Evernote – After Effects – Excel 2013 training Get a free 7 day trial now!
42:30 E4H: Rosenfeld Summit Rosenfeld Media and Environments for Humans bring together some of the Web’s most notable experts in User Experience for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Rosenfeld Summit! Bring the experts to your desktop April 24th from 9AM to 4PM (CT). Get your tickets now!

Show links:

Tracy Rotton’s website
Tracy Rotton on Twitter
Responsive WP Theming E-book (early access)
SCSS @extend
Buy stuff from the Shoptalk store

His fake name is “Earl Drudge”, an anagram of “Drug Dealer”. In early March 2014, he used some social engineering techniques and fake US federal documents to be granted full access to Chris’ servers. After missing the opportunity and a failed retaliation attempt, he posted sensitive personal information of Chris’ onto a site where not only can it never be removed, if it’s attempted to be removed becomes promoted.

He agreed to talk with Chris directly and have it recorded for this show.

We realize that this crosses the line of “feeding the trolls” or giving attention to “bad guys”, but we feel it relevant for our industry. Our lives and work are completely online and we’re all highly susceptible to types of hacks and identity theft. It should go without saying that you should not try to be a hero here: if you visit EarlDrudge’s site(s), try to expose his identity, or try to snoop around on him, you might actually put yourself in a position where you yourself might be vulnerable to being attacked. We advise you to simply listen.

Update since the recording (from Chris) : I was able to talk with Media Temple directly only hours after this conversation. One good end result is that they have changed their policy of how/when/what documents can be approved in which to grant access and who can do that. The retaliation attempt (“honeypot”) was verified to have been done by Media Temple. They were trying to catch the bad guy for me, and while I wish there was better communication about that, it’s nice to know they were trying to fight back on my behalf.

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! Nothing but HOT question & answer action!

Q & A:

10:00 If a freelance client wants an eCommerce solution, what is the best way to handle this?
17:15 If I set the font-weight on a parent element that doesn’t generally support text nodes (like TR or UL tags) the property can be inherited by the child TD or LI. However, if the property is set by another selector (even a less specific one), it’s replaced. What’s the deal?
26:09 How you organize variables for preprocessors?
32:30 I wanted to get your method of tackling web projects. What kind of planning goes into your personal processes?
40:05 I am considering getting into some collaborative development through Github. Is Github’s Explore the best place to start to find projects, or would you recommend another site for finding projects?
48:36 Is it semantically accurate to place pagination or breadcrumbs inside a nav element?
51:55 Is it a good idea to wrap function calls, which trigger Layout (consecutive read->write), in request animation frame?
56:28 I was wondering if you guys could talk about using ajax requests to dynamically load content on a page, and how it can be done so that google can recognize it?

Sponsors:

20:10 Adobe – Adobe believes that web standard technologies are the future for creative expression. They are addressing different parts of the web design process with fantastic tools like:
- Edge Animate (for creating animated, interactive content with HTML)
- Edge Reflow (for creating responsive designs)
- Edge Code (for writing HTML, CSS and JavaScript)
- Edge Inspect (for previewing and inspecting web designs on devices) You can learn more at html.adobe.com/edge.
- 38:25 E4H – Responsive Web Design Summit – 3 days, all day long. Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in and for an all-new, three-day online conference, the RWD Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop April 1 – April 3, 2014 from 9AM to 5PM (CT). Use coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW and grab a ticket for 20% off!

Links:

CSS Tricks Redesign!
FoxyCart
CSS Regions Considered Harmful?
Github Explore
PJAX

This week we are joined by Joe Casabona. Joe is a web developer, author and teacher at University of Scranton.

Q & A:

23:14 I’m starting to take my sites performance more seriously and I’m having great success compressing and caching everything, except when it comes to “defer parsing for javascript” for both internal and external resources. I’ve been reading up on it but since I don’t know javascript that well I’m having a hard time implementing. Currently I enqueue the scripts in the footer (wordpress), but apparently thats not enough.
30:21 I want to move from static sites to building wordpress sites. What’s the best way to transition?
35:10 When I design websites for clients, I almost always work with wordpress. One reason is that wordpress is so widely used. Can you recommend any CMSs that are worth checking out that specifically have a similar widespread use and staying power?
40:53 I’m thinking about more seriously getting into freelance work. What would you say are the most important skill sets?
45:50 A deployment strategy is pretty much required for something like Ruby on Rails, where you’re precompiling assets, restarting servers, etc., but what about wordpress? What do you do about databases, plugins, or version control?
55:00 Why has the html email section of the web not been talked about in the web standards? Is this something that I should start evangelizing about fixing or has someone already been heading this fight? What are some free / cheap solutions to check my email code cross platform?

Sponsors:

28:26 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. Check out great courses like:

Creating and Editing Custom WordPress Themes
Google Analytics Tips
Shooting With Blackmagic Cameras (4K)
Revit Construction Modeling Tools Get a free 7 day trial now!

39:10 E4H – Responsive Web Design Summit – 3 days, all day long. Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in and for an all-new, three-day online conference, the RWD Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop April 1-April 3, 2014 from 9AM to 5PM (CT). Use coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW and grab a ticket for 20% off!

Show Links:

Joe’s Website
Joe on Twitter
Building WordPress Themes from Scratch
Responsive Web Design with WordPress
CSS-Tricks: “Icon System with SVG Sprites”
Coda
MAMP
Varying-Vagrant-Vagrants
Campaign Monitor HTML Email CSS Guide

This week we were joined by Nick Pettit, educator at Treehouse, an online learning platform. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

17:25 Correction regarding Drupal and 1000 script/style files.
20:10 Github releases Atom, a hackable text editor

Q & A:

23:29 I’m curious about making the shift from HTML, CSS, jQuery, WordPress development to Full Stack JS. It seems the front end world is making a huge shift in that direction, and I thought it would be a good career move for me to do one of these 8 week bootcamps to get me started. What do you guys think?
30:24 I considered myself pretty versed in HTML, CSS, but with a desire to learn more particularly Javascript and it’s connection to CSS for dynamic website building. I feel that if I add this skill it could change a lot things for me professional. How can a service like Treehouse help me put it all together?
39:15 I’ve been learning Ruby for the past 2 months and have now started learning Rails v4. My problem: I’m using Treehouse and they use Rails 3. What kind of issues should expect?
46:08 This summer I’ll start trying to find some paid projects to do and I was wondering: what is best way to get the client set up with hosting and domain?
50:47 I would love for you guys to talk a little bit about Content Editable. I work on the project Barley and have learned a lot about CE over the past year and it has been a painful process. There is not many resources out there so it has been mostly trial and error.

Sponsors:

36:00 Adobe – Adobe believes that web standard technologies are the future for creative expression. They are addressing different parts of the web design process with fantastic tools like:
- Edge Animate (for creating animated, interactive content with HTML)
- Edge Reflow (for creating responsive designs)
- Edge Code (for writing HTML, CSS and JavaScript)
- Edge Inspect (for previewing and inspecting web designs on devices)
- You can learn more at html.adobe.com/edge.
- 44:02 E4H: Responsive Web Design Summit – The best conference for learning all about RWD. A 3 day online-conference (April 1,2,3) featuring talks by Tim Kadlec, Tammy Everts, Jenn Lukas, Dave Rupert, Dan Mall, Matt Griffin and more. Get your tickets now! And remember to save 20% any kind of ticket with coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW.

Show Links:

Nick’s Website
Nick on Twitter
Treehouse
Treehouse Workspaces
Oculus Rift
Content Editable

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE! We take listener questions and try to answer them as best we can within a 3 minute time constraint.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

2:19 What’s the best way to release a tiny JQuery plugin?
6:14 My question is about Grunt and requireJS: if I concatenate all my javascript features into a single file, all of them will be loaded with 1 http request, right? So what’s the point of using requireJS?
13:52 What is the maximum number of javascript files that you should load on the same page?
21:02 I want to set a performance budget but have no idea where to start. Are there any good articles or pieces of advice you can give?
29:00 What’s the best way to learn JQuery?
31:35 What’s the best way to detect if something is visible in the browser’s active viewport?
38:29 Do you know of a port of Bootstrap that is more intended for a Grunt and Sass workflow?
41:50 I’ve been trying to figure out the right way to handle content hiding. Any advice or thoughts on this?
48:20 How do you handle a boss that gets upset when you ask him about which devices we’ll be supporting for a project?
51:20 Do you guys know of any cool sites/tools to see what percentage of people are currently using what browsers to get a general idea of global usage on a particular browser version?

Sponsors:

27:14 lynda.com The best online learning resource where you can learn about everything. Check out sweet courses like:
- Lighting Design for Video Production
- Animate a CSS Sprite Sheet
- Responsive Typography Tips
- Agile Project Management
- Creating Hair in Maya
- Go check it out and get a free 7 trial!
- 36:19 Environments for Humans: Responsive Web Design Summit Lot of great speakers talking about performance, techniques/tips, and strategy when dealing with RWD and workflows.
- Topics include Sass tips, grunt, tool automation, responsive HTML emails, content strategy for designers, responsive wire framing, and much more. Speakers like Dan Mall, Brad Frost, Trent Walton, Jenn Lukas, and more. Use “SHOPTALKSHOW” to get 20% off any ticket combo!

Show Links:

Shards JQuery Plugin
Tim Kadlec – “Fast Enough”
Dave Rupert – “A Brander Newer Blog”
Treehouse
CodeSchool
Codecademy
JQfundamentals.com
Learning JQuery book
CSS Tricks: A Complete Guide to Flexbox

Learning jQuery - Fourth Edition

This week we were joined by Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman, headmaster of Hogwarts the Unicorn Institute (aka Center Centre) in Chattanooga, TN.

We talked about (roughly in order):

26:50 Firefox 26 now supporting audio decoding

Q & A:

29:20 Will Center Centre have online classes?
30:34 Do you guys have any experience with the WordPress plug-in WP Migrate DB Pro?
33:40 For Center Centre: are all prospective 30 courses mandatory, or are there electives? Are all courses consecutive or is summer open to intern/work with partner companies?Also, what’s the target size for the first cohort, what’s the cost of the program, who are the partner companies, and when can I apply?
43:10 I totally hate my job. I’m therefore trying to turn myself into a freelance developer/designer. Can I acquire the skills I need purely by online and book based learning?
46:48 I’ve been lucky enough to be working as a Community Manager for an advertising agency taking care of social media and web development. Recently the job has grown too large and is being split in two and I am opting to stay with the development side and we will bring in a new social person. I have been asked to provide a possible job title. Do you have any more suggestions?
52:29 I have owned a small web design company for a few years now. I have reached a point where I just need more of a challenge. I would really love to work with a new start up, or maybe just a larger web firm with more exciting clients, but I really have no clue of how to get my foot in the door. Any suggestions?

Sponsors:

WP DB Migrate Pro Premium wordpress plugin for migrating and syncing databases back and forth from local and remote sites. Chris uses it on CSS-Tricks. Boom.
50:40 E4H: Responsive Web Design Summit April 1-3, online: lots of great speakers talking about performance, techniques/tips, and strategy when dealing with RWD and workflows. Topics include Sass tips, grunt, tool automation, responsive HTML emails, content strategy for designers, responsive wire framing, with speakers like Dan Mall, Brad Frost, Trent Walton, Jenn Lukas, and more. The code SHOPTALKSHOW gets 20% off any ticket combo.

Enter to win a ticket to RWS Summit: send in an audio question and tag your email “RWD”.

Show Links:

Leslie on Twitter
Leslie’s Website
The Unicorn Institute Kickstarter
Martin Duran on being a minority
Codepen Radio Podcast
Give Shoptalk a .Net award!

This week we were joined by Louis Lazeris. Louis is the curator of the Web Tools Weekly email newsletter, co-author of HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World and author of Jump Start CSS.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

8:54 w3schools: The Ugly, the Bad, and the Good

Q & A:

20:54 Is there any good solution on how to run page specific javascript functions?
28:50 Question for Louis: Read your recent article on w3schools, but the question remains why their site still loads fast despite that many javascript file requests. Could you try to elaborate on this a bit more?
35:35 I’m interested in finding out what you think of “mobiledetect” a php class for device detection: http://mobiledetect.net/. I’m looking into solutions for swapping out/removing blocks of content (beyond what can be achieved with media queries) on small screen devices and this seems like it could do the job nicely. My main question is, how reliable are solutions like this?
48:15 Have you come across any solutions to the Windows font icon problem or font smoothing in general?
55:40 I’m enjoying learning Sass, but one of those things I can’t wrap my head around is use cases for lists. What would you stuff in a Sass list?

Sponsors:

27:09 Media Temple – For years, Media Temple’s Grid service has been the web hosting choice of more designers, developers, and creative professionals than any other platform. That’s because a single Grid account can host anything from your portfolio site to 100 different client projects. Special discount for The 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.
45:35 E4H – Responsive Web Design Summit April 1-3, online – Lot of great speakers talking about performance, techniques/tips, and strategy when dealing with RWD and workflows. Topics include Sass tips, grunt, tool automation, responsive HTML emails, content strategy for designers, responsive wire framing, and much more. Speakers like Dan Mall, Brad Frost, Trent Walton, Jenn Lukas, and more. The code SHOPTALKSHOW gets 20% off any ticket combo.

Show Links:

Louis on Twitter
Louis’ Website
Web Tools Weekly
HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World
HTML9Responsiveboilerstrapjs.com
CSS Conf, Australia
CSS Conf, Florida
What’s with putting the CSS in the head?
Mod Pagespeed
Go Vote For Shoptalk (.net award)

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE!!! We take listener questions and try to answer them as best we can within a 3 minute time constraint.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

3:07 HTML email is super fun to design for, so I’m a little surprised that you guys aren’t all about it, and kinda put it down in show 12. The demographic I design for love their email and I’m sure they will until they retire (obviously older crowd, but still relevant).
6:39 How do you know when to scale up and get bigger clients and start charging more? Do I need to look like an agency? Do I need a team?
9:52 In my mind, CMS’s are too often an annoying, unnecessary layer between the developer/designer and the code, making it harder instead of easier to optimize and maintain. What are some good alternatives for sites that aren’t e-commerce or blogs?
16:08 Flexible grid vs multiple fixed width layouts. Pros, cons, love, hate?
21:05 Do you think there will ever come a day when the browser makers agree to standardize so we could not have to worry about putting all the browser prefixes in, then for IE, change how we write it completely? Also if this day ever came, how big would the party be?
25:17 My questions are: 1. Is Code Ignitor a good solution for learning the proper PHP way to import images and data from external sources? 2. What’s the best way to do this without dozens of server requests for each site view? 3. I’m planning on just reformatting the data with CSS. I want to make compelling infographics from the data. Recommendations?
32:37 Are there any really good introductions out there to CSS preprocessors?
36:28 How do you work with Boilerplate?
40:34 Now that Retina is officially coming to the laptop experience, I’m bracing myself for dealing with having to output design and development mockups at twice the resolution. How do you guys streamline production when taking differing scale resolutions?
47:02 Which responsive grid system do you prefer?
50:07 How do you center a responsive website?
55:17 What effect is the template market having on young developers who are trying to go it alone? Is it lowering client cost expectations but raising their deliverable requirement?

Sponsors:

13:38 lynda.com The best online learning resource: a huge library of courses covering all kinds of techy topics. Some examples:
- Design the Web: From Illustrator to HTML5 Canvas
- Building Confidence
- Sculpting and Painting a Head in CINEMA 4D
- Tethered Shooting Fundamentals
- Visit lynda.com/shoptalk for a free 7 day trial!
- 30:21 Environments for Humans: Artifact Conf May 5-7, 2014 in Austin, Texas. An amazing list of speakers that includes: Jeremy Keith, Brad Frost, Val Head, Todd Parker, Eileen Webb, and Stephen Hay. Go sign up!

Show Links :

Timer-tab.com
Autoprefixer: solving the vendor prefix problem
Code Igniter
SASS
Codekit
PrePros
24 Ways: Grunt article
Dan Cederholm’s SASS For Web Designers
HTML5 Boilerplate
1140px CSS Grid
Skeleton
Foundation
Bourbon/Neat

This week we were joined by John Resig. John is the Dean of Computer Science at Khan Academy and the creator of the jQuery JavaScript library. He’s also the author of the books Pro JavaScript Techniques and Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

42:08 Is it worth it for me to start investing my time into learning all these new frameworks (such as backbone, angular, ember)?
46:50 I work as a front-end developer at Hiplogiq. We are looking to fill a couple of front-end dev internships. We would like to offer more opportunities to women in our field, but I have found that is extremely hard to find candidates. Do you guys have any ideas where else can I find students that may want to be part of our internship program? (check out: Women Who Code)
58:00 Should I learn Javascript or JQuery?
61:45 Minigames with canvas?

Sponsors:

38:38 Perch – Perch is a content management system designed to help freelancers and design agencies deliver great sites that their clients will really love. Get 50% off a Perch site now!
56:15 E4H: Responsive Web Design Summit – Lots of great speakers talking about performance, techniques/tips, and strategy when dealing with RWD and workflows.

Topics include Sass tips, Grunt, tool automation, responsive HTML emails, content strategy for designers, responsive wire framing, and much more, with speakers Dan Mall, Brad Frost, Trent Walton, Jenn Lukas, and more. Use code SHOPTALKSHOW and get 20% off any ticket combo!

Show Links:

John’s Website
John on Twitter
Donate to John on Gittip
Ukiyo-e.org
Go Vote For Shoptalk (.net award)
Women Who Code
Pixi.js
Impact.js
Ejecta
Node-Webkit

Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja

This week we were joined by Rachel Andrew, author and purveyor of Perch, a lightweight PHP content management system.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

10:23 CSS Regions Considered Harmful
16:40 Squarespace Logo
21:06 Google Webfonts: The Spy Inside

Q & A:

26:55 One thing that’s not very well known is that Perch actually pre-renders it’s PHP into static pages. How does Perch compare to static site generators like Jekyll?
35:30 Do you have suggestions or best practices for creating a website search?
41:24 I was wondering what ratio of new comers to Perch CMS are new to CMS (in general or migrating from another CMS)?
44:00 Is it easier to start coding into static html files, or just start building the template files (includes, etc)?
49:49 What are the best books for people who are thinking of starting up a small web shop or agency?
50:55 I’ve been working for a few years now and I’m thinking about hiring some help. How do I go about making sites from a local computer, and start making websites as a team?
54:10 If you have a big image carousel or just lots of images, do you ever think about implementing the webp image format in your site or is it really not worth the time?

Sponsors:

25:08 Media Temple For years, Media Temple’s Grid service has been the web hosting choice of more designers, developers, and creative professionals than any other platform. Use promo code “shoptalk” for 25% off your first month of web hosting.

39:30 Environments For Humans: Artifact Conf ARTIFACT is an intimate two-day, single-track conference that helps DESIGNERS and DEVELOPERS adapt their tools and processes to the challenges of designing for a MULTI-DEVICE world. Check it out!

Show Links:

Rachel’s Website
Rachel on Twitter
Perch
The Business of Digital Products
Brennan Dunn: Freelance Advice
Design is a Job by Mike Montiero
Github
Beanstalk
Tower (Github App)
PerfPlanet
Breaking the PageSpeed Barrier with Bootstrap
The Profitable Side Project E-book

We pulled this one down. No big deal, lots of more shows here, carry on.

This week we were joined by Lyza Danger Gardner.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

12:33 Web Standards Killed The HTML Star, and Is Web Design Dead?
21:40 Grunt is dead? What about Gulp?

Q & A:

27:04 I’m curious to know how we as a community are handling touch events on mobile devices at the moment? Specifically referring to dropdown/fly-out menus. Is there a popular jQuery/JS library you’d recommend?
35:15 Every now and then, my job requires me to code an html email template. I usually have to look online to see what email clients can and can’t handle, but lately I’ve been getting a lot of contradictory answers. Is there a CanIUse.com for emails?
40:05 Is it possible to (and how can one) avoid code redundancy / DRY violations when supporting non-media query browsers like IE8 and below during responsive design implementation?
50:37 Can you explain a bit about what Compass is, how to use it, and what makes it so great?
58:34 What are the benefits of having a responsive design vs a separate mobile site?

Sponsors:

24:45 Digital Ocean Cloud Hosting Provider. Plans starting at $5/month, everything is on SSDs, so it’s SUPER FAST. Go get it. Use “SHOPTALK10″ for $10 off 2 months.
48:18 InCTRL Conf Orlando, FL, Feb 17-19. Use “SHOPTALK” — it’s good for $100 off. Using that code, it’s early bird prices! Dave will be there talking about awesome stuff you should know about. You should totally go!

Show Links:

Never Heard Of It – List Apart Column
Lyza’s Website
Lyza on Twitter
Cloud Four
Simple Slide View on Github
Jquery Mobile Touch
Hammer.js
Fastclick.js
Top 100 Codepen’s of 2013
Mailchimp Email CSS Inlines Tool
Campaign Monitor CSS Inline Tool
Ink from Zurb
Understanding Comics

This week we were joined by Mina Markham, a Sass-lovin’ designer and developer from Dallas, Texas. She’s a Syracuse University alum, part-time freelancer, full-time Parago employee, and soon-to-be Girl Develop It teacher.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

Myth.io: “CSS Level 4 kind of stuff”

Q & A

17:01 I’ve just started using Compass mixins and helpers, but I’ve found that it doesn’t directly solve all of the prefix problems. Should I write my own mixins, or should I try to choose from one of the gazillion or so community mixins available?
22:53 Do you feel any isolation in being a black woman in the dev and coding community?
29:10 I’m primarily a front-end coder. I’d like to do more design work for my company. How do I convince them to take a chance on me?
35:23 With today’s advancements in HTML and CSS, how much of a site is image based? What parts should be displayed with images and what should be CSS3 coding?
41:27 I’m a front end developer that works with a team of talented back end devs. How would you hand off CSS that has been compiled by a preprocessor to a back end developer?
48:00 How do I trademark my personal brand?
54:41 I have fallen in love in how easy CodeKit makes developing websites. But when I work with other people, often in Rails, they just use the terminal to compile the Sass. But I really miss the compiling + minifying of JavaScript. Is there a way to do this without CodeKit?

Sponsors

21:15 Discover Meteor The best way to learn how to build real-time Javascript web apps. Get 20% off the awesome book now!
39:49 InCTRL Conf 2 Day conference in Orlando, FL. Fantastic speaker line up. Use code “SHOPTALK” for $100 off!

Show Links

Mina’s Website
Mina on Twitter
Parago
Pink Pixels Creative
Ladies in Tech Podcast
AutoPrefixer
Meteor.js
Sidebar.io
Black Girls Code
Chris’s 24 Ways Article: Grunt
AIGA
Girl Develop It

This week is another RAPIDFIRE!!!

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

2:02 Should I use “.mainNav” or “nav.main”? Do you see any issues with using either?
4:54 I’m looking to find a new job. How should I approach employers when I’m not proud of the sites I’ve been working on?
7:18 I am developing locally and pushing out to a live site but is there an easy way to handle databases (WordPress mainly). Is there a more automated way to do this?
12:00 How do you design for touch? Do you use something jQuery.finger?
18:46 Google really likes blogs for SEO, are there any lightweight solutions to adding blog functionality to a pre-existing site?
22:59 Do you think that in the future someone could create program like Photoshop with an export function that compiles everything into cutting-edge code that works on all browsers?
27:20 What do you guys think of working with coffeescript, less, etc. along with task runners like grunt? Do you find these tedious or too confusing?
38:00 How do you handle spam comments on a WordPress blog?
44:28 I’m doing a web presentation at work in front of some non-technical people. I want to discuss 3 hot web design trends in 2013, what would you recommend?

Sponsors:

WP DB Migrate Pro A fantastic wordpress plugin that makes syncing wp databases super easy. You can push or pull your databases from one site wordpress site to another.
34:48 Evironments for Humans: InCtrl Conference FEB. 17-19 in Orlando, FL. A single track conference, with 1.5 hour long deep-dives into awesome topics. Check it out.

Show Links :

Filament Group: Tappy
Hammer JS
Jeckyl Blog Generator
Macaw: Code-savvy Web Design Tool
Time to buy a ShopTalk tshirt for Christmas!

This week we were joined by super-designer Dan Mall. Dan currently runs Superfriend.ly, is a co-host of the Businessology podcast, and previously worked at Happy Cog and Big Spaceship.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

17:10 CSSOff #hotdrama: Dan made a PSD that was too good.

Q & A:

33:02 In defense of AMPPS…
34:45 Can you guys rant about the different scenarios on how and/or when and/or why to use javascript on text/typography?
46:21 How much testing and compatibility is enough? Should we just stick to the big 5 browsers on desktops, Android browsers, Safari on mobile devices?
51:48 I’ve been trying a couple of CSS/JS frameworks lately (Bourbon+Neat, Foundation) and I’m struggling to choose which better suits my purposes. What do you suggest? What frameworks/libraries do you guys use for your projects?

Sponsors:

30:11 Media Temple: web hosting for web designers and web developers since 1998. Special discount for ShopTalk listeners, use promo code “shoptalk” for 25% off your first month!.
40:35 Evironments For Humans: In Control Conf 2014. Speakers include Brad Frost, Dave Rupert, Tim Kadlec, Estelle Weyl, Louis Rosenfeld, and more! Use “Shoptalk” for $100 off your ticket!

Show Links:

Dan on Twitter
Dan’s Website
Businessology Show Podcast
The East Wing Podcast
OpenSourceDesign.is
Lettering.js
Foundation Framework
Neat
Bourbon
Autoprefixer

This week we were joined by Emily Dunkle. Emily is a UI & UX Designer from Massachusetts. She believes in semantic markup, design of all kinds, and a good old-fashioned legal pad.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

16:37 My company’s IT department has taken over our website. What can I do about it?
25:03 Just wondered what approach you guys take to testing your sites. Not just design, but also functionality and calculations etc. Do you write tests or use any nice tools?
32:55 Will Macaw (and similar tools) replace web designers?
42:40 I have been a web developer for 4 years and I recently built a site for a client that is by far the worst I have built in my career. Should I intentionally ignore best practices just because the client doesn’t understand and wants the web to work like it did in 2001?
51:00 I would like to get your opinion and thoughts on how to better interact with other developers who either don’t care or don’t have an understanding for why and how you have laid out your markup the way you have.
57:05 What is the best responsive solution for image/video galleries? I need my work to be easily accessible on mobile. My problem is that most websites use lightboxes and this seems outdated now. What are your opinions?

Sponsors:

30:48 Harvest Spend less time tracking and more time doing. Fantastic desktop and mobile apps, used by 10,000+ awesome companies. Time tracking, invoicing & reports made super easy. Starts at $12/month. Go check it out!
48:32 Environments For Humans: InControl Conf Dave is gonna be there! Orlando Florida, FEB. 17-19. Early bird pricing! Interesting keynotes: Scott McCloud and Daniel Ryan (Director of Front-end Development for President Obama’s 2012 election campaign). Get your ticket now!

Show Links:

Emily on Twitter
Emily on Dribbble
MIT Technology Review
Emily’s Website
This is a Motherf***ing Website
Wraith
Huxley
Macaw
Scott McCormick’s Website
Adobe Muse
Adobe Reflow
Webflow

This week, it’s another RAPID FIRE!!! Chris and Dave take on listener questions, fast and furious.

2:27 Do you guys have any advice when the time comes to hand over a WordPress site?
5:57 What are your opinions about disabilities (hopefully about stuttering but not necessary) in the workplace?
9:06 How do I address responsiveness on items that don’t scale well (table, video embeds)?
14:15 What is Grunt.js? What do I use it for?
17:37 I was wondering what your opinions are on training from places like MakerSquare (in Austin), G-School (in Denver) and others that say they can teach you to become a developer in a relatively short amount of time. Would you consider attending schools like these?
21:14 I’m looking to start a video blog and I’m searching for a CMS to use with my static site which I designed and developed. Do you have any experience or thoughts about Leaf CMS?
25:17 Lately I’ve just been frustrated with all the work needed to make WordPress speedy. The Admin Dashboard in particular can be so slow at times. Any hot tips to make WordPress snappy?
28:35 So we’ve just launched a startup, what’s the best way for us to get the app / platform out there, and get people using it?
34:28 I am yet a CSE undergrad student. I like both C++ and CSS. I like native programming and front end programming. Will I have to choose one or can I do both?
37:56 What are your opinions about Oracle ADF?
42:00 Does it make sense to use sprites in your workflow when your image folder is broken up into 2 or more sub folders?
44:40 Could you talk a bit about Custom Elements (web components) and why they are (or aren’t) a good idea? Won’t they dilute the semantic value of already existing elements such as and?
48:20 Have you investigated switching your local development to AMPPS? I know you have been a big MAMP Pro fan, but I’ve been reading that it’s stale and AMPPS has a lot of activity. Thoughts?
52:31 It’s 2013. What’s up with with setting type in pixels, ems and rems, or even %. I understand the differences in theory, but in practice, I really only use pixels. I get that pixels are static (not relative) and don’t really mean much with today’s high-dpi screens, etc. Do I need to suck it up and just get comfy with a modern approach to type, or are pixels ok?
57:30 What SASS pre-processor do you suggest to use on a windows machine to replace Compass and Code Kit?

Sponsors:

12:40 Sponsor: lynda.com

Over 2,000 courses, with new courses added daily
One low monthly price of $25/month provides access to the entire course library
Over 2 million active members, and over 500k fans on facebook
HTML/CSS/JS – WordPress/Joomla – UX – Adobe – Objective-C/PHP – Photography/Time Management/Negotiation
Searchable transcripts / Playlists / Bookmarks 7 day trial at lynda.com/shoptalk

33:12 Environments for Humans – InCtrl Conf InCtrl 2014 put on by the wonderful folks at Environments for Humans. Lots of great speakers. Put this on your calendar. February 17-19th in Orlando, Florida!

Incontrolconference.com

Show Links:

Advanced Custom Fields WordPress Plugin
WP Help
Chris Coyier’s post on responsive tables
Jason Grigsby’s post on responsive tables
Grunt.js
MakerSquare
G-School
The ATX Web Show
Leaf CMS
Oracle ADF
Web Components
AMPPS
Vagrant
Koala for Windows
PrePros for Windows
Codekit
Mixture.io

This week we were joined by Dudley Storey. Dudley is a teacher, craftsman, designer & writer, and the author of Pro CSS3 Animation.

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

7:00 Webkit hates src-N
- End Of Year Responsive Images Report
- 13:14 CSSOff 2013
- 17:20 Learn jQuery from Scratch (CSS-Tricks Class)

Q & A:

21:15 Is it worth taking the time to learn Flash in 2013?
26:56 Is getting a degree from a university something that you feel is a necessity for our line of work or is there enough value in self teaching the skills used in web development?
33:54 Can you give a general overview of the things someone new to the field should study right away to build their core coding skills?
39:57 StackOverflow and books can only teach me so much. What are your recommendations for code mentoring both at work and when I freelance? I never know if I am doing things the “right” way.
48:32 As someone just starting out in web design, should I be using Flexbox right now?
52:23 I’ve been designing and developing for a couple years and just moved into WordPress. I stumbled upon the editor that allows you to edit the templates and CSS and I wonder if its a good idea to do edits here or continue to edit the files from the FTP?
56:12 I don’t do any coding, I solely focus on web design. Can I use a robust, well-maintained Behance/Dribble profile instead of building a separate portfolio site? Will potential employers look down on me if I decide to go in that direction?

Sponsors:

31:30 lynda.com
- Over 2,000 courses, with new courses added daily
- One low monthly price of $25/month provides access to the entire course library
- Over 2 million active members, and over 500k fans on facebook
- HTML/CSS/JS – WordPress/Joomla – UX – Adobe – Objective-C/PHP – Photography/Time Management/Negotiation
- Searchable transcripts / Playlists / Bookmarks
- Get a free 7-day trail at lynda.com
- 38:15 Environments for Humans: InControl 2014 in Orlando Florida

Show Links:

Freakonomics Goes to College
Dudley on Twitter
Dudley’s Website
Dudley’s Reading List for Beginners
Cafe Bedouins
Flexbox
Blue Box on a Screen
Springloops.io

Pro CSS3 Animation (Expert's Voice in Web Development)

This week we were joined by Merrick and Jamison from the Javascript Jabber podcast. They are both super awesome at javascript and very handsome.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

10:42 Responsive Web Design: Relying Too Much On Screen Size by LukeW
- Rebuttal by Ethan Marcotte: RESPONSIVE DESIGN, SCREENS, AND SHEARING LAYERS
- PPK: Of viewports and screens, input modes and event handlers
- Counter Rebuttal: On Using Browser Viewports to Understand Screens
- 14:35 “Offline first is the new Progressive Enhancement” – Zeldman
- Say Hello To Offline First

Q & A:

19:00 I’m in the process of building my first real web app. I’ve been researching the best way to handle authentication and some have suggested to use pre-written scripts, while others have suggested using a framework. What should I do?
30:33 I would like to lazy load images on my website to speed up performance, however I am concerned about the fallback issues, users without JavaScript will get no images. Will putting the images in a noscript tag solve this problem? What is your view on this?
37:01 Do you know of any awesome web or print resources for learning unit testing in Javascript?
45:52 Everything I know I have learned from “just building websites” but with that style of learning, comes an urgency which often makes me feel like I may not have picked up on some of the finer points. Do you have any advice?

Sponsors:

29:26 lynda.com
- Over 2,000 courses, with new courses added daily
- One low monthly price of $25/month provides access to the entire course library
- Over 2 million active members, and over 500k fans on facebook
- HTML/CSS/JS – WordPress/Joomla – UX – Adobe – Objective-C/PHP – Photography/Time Management/Negotiation
- Searchable transcripts / Playlists / Bookmarks
- Get a free 7-day trial at lynda.com/shoptalk
- 44:21 Environments for Humans – Javascript Summit It’s 3 days of Javascript covering jQuery UI/Mobile, Backbone.js, HTML5 APIs, Grunt, prototyping with Node, AngularJS.
- Speakers include Rebecca Murphey, Ben Alman, Estelle Weyl, Tim Anglade, Val Head, Scott González, & many more.
- Use SHOPTALK for 20% off any ticket.

Show Links:

Merrick on Twitter
Merrick’s Website
Jamison on Twitter
Jamison’s Website
Javascript Jabber Podcast
Effective JS Book
Hoodie
“Sound Of Silver” by LCD Soundsystem
NGConf
Web Audio Demos
Next Desks
Dad Makes 3D Printed Hand For His Son

This week we were joined by Pamela Fox, a web developer and educator currently working at Khan Academy.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

9:30 Big Snow Tiny Conf
10:30 Automating Workflow Slide Deck

Q & A:

14:54 I’m sold on GIT and have used it locally on my machine. How can I go about deployment without paying for a service?
22:20 What is your preferred UI & Backend workflow when developing web apps for clients? Do you use pre-made libraries, or do you developed your own UI & backend?
32:07 I’m an ad copywriter looking to make the switch to front-end development. Do you have any tips on finding work that requires less formal experience?
37:22 I’ve recently discovered the magic behind Bootstrap. I’m on Rails 3.2 but can’t seem to figure out a good tutorial or method for importing that theme into the asset pipeline, etc. Any advice?
46:25 How do you guys approach mobile first and responsive design?
56:00 I’m going to be interviewed for a front end dev job. If you were going to hire me, what questions would you ask? What level of CSS and JavaScript should I have?

Sponsors:

30:45 Harvest Beautiful, easy to use time track and invoicing software. Track your time, expenses, and invoice your clients. Start a free 30-day trial at GetHarvest.com.

44:44 Environments For Humans – Javescript Summit It’s 3 days of Javascript covering jQuery UI/Mobile, Backbone.js, HTML5 APIs, Grunt, prototyping with Node, AngularJS.

Speakers include Rebecca Murphey, Ben Alman, Estelle Weyl, Tim Anglade, Val Head, Scott González, & many more.

Use SHOPTALK for 20% off any ticket.

Show Links:

Pamela on Twitter
Pamela’s Website
Kahn Academy
WP Migrate DB Pro
Beanstalk
Google App Engine
Chris’s post on deployment
FTPloy
React JS
Laravel PHP Framwork
Craft CMS
Angular JS
Ember JS
Sinatra
“Responsive Web Design” & “Mobile First” E-books
Chris’s CSS interview questions
Darcy Clarke’s Front-end Job Interview Questions

This week we were joined by Karen McGrane. Karen is a mobile content strategist and has a fantastic book called Content Strategy for Mobile.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

24:08 Front End Architechture Showdown CSS Cargo Cult
25:19 Does our Industry have a Drinking Problem?
29:34 Scroll Hijacking

Q & A:

34:56 Why does no one talk about RWD in the opposite direction, making things bigger for larger screens?
40:50 Have you really heard Google say they’ll punish non-mobile-optimized sites?
48:04 I work for a small traditional advertising and marketing agency. We are often finding that clients are not fully understanding our project proposals and specs from the wireframes and spec we present. Some approve the wireframes then want to change core functionality or design features after development has started. Any advice on how to handle this?
53:00 What is your opinion on websites that use large sliders on the landing page? Do you feel this is a waste of website real estate or a powerful instrument to convey a idea?

Sponsors:

33:30 Ding.io Time tracking for people running their own show. Built for freelancers & small teams. Ding focuses on the hours you put in and the money you make. Beautiful UI. It’s tool you’ll actually want in your daily workflow. Blazingly fast iPhone app. The easiest way to log hours on the go. Get a 90 day free trial at Ding.io/shoptalk.
57:22 Artifact Conference An hour outside Boston. Ethan Marcotte will be doing the keynote, and they have great workshops: Build Responsively by Ben Callahan, Sass for Beginners by Matt Griffen, CSS Animation by Val Head, and Responsive Designer Patterns by Brad Frost. Use “SHOPTALK” for $100 off your ticket. Check it out!

Show Links:

Karen on Twitter
Karen’s Website
Breaking News Website
“Recommendations for building smartphone-optimized websites” blogpost from Google
Style Tiles

This week we were joined by Scott Jehl, a progressive enhancer at Filament Group. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

15:48 Godaddy aquired Media Temple

Q & A:

24:30 I want to use a ‘mobile first’ approach, but the client wants to see the desktop version first. How would you solve this little problem?
31:14 I’m trying to understand Javascript templating. I’ve heard of Mustache/Handlebars, but not sure how it’s implemented. What are the pros/cons of it?
42:58 I manage an established, spaghetti-coded academic department website. A redesign is on its way but the menu is still hover based. I needed a quick, temporary fix.
51:43 My question is about vanilla javascript performance and libraries. What if you already have jQuery running, should you still write as much as possible in plain javascript?

Sponsors:

23:10 lynda.com
- Over 2,000 courses, with new courses added daily
- One low monthly price of $25/month provides access to the entire course library
- Over 2 million active members, and over 500k fans on facebook
- HTML/CSS/JS – WordPress/Joomla – UX – Adobe – Objective-C/PHP – Photography/Time Management/Negotiation
- Searchable transcripts / Playlists / Bookmarks
- 40:09 Enviornments for Humans – Artifact Conf November 4-6 in Providence, RI. A fantastic 2 day, single track conference about front end. The theme is “Multi-Device World”. Some great workshops:
- Build Responsively by Ben Callahan
- Sass for Beginners by Matt Griffen
- CSS Animation by Val Head
- Responsive Designer Patterns by Brad Frost
- Use the discount code SHOPTALK for $100 off your ticket.

Show Links:

Scott on Twitter
Scott’s Website
Filament Group
Mustache
Responsible Responsive Design

This week we were joined by Nicolas Gallagher, CSS expert. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

8:29 EFF gets involved in DRM

Q & A:

13:40I want an automated way to produce styles guides. How do you produce guides for your clients? Have you been able to automate the process?
18:23 Any insight into IE downloading inapplicable stylesheets?
35:23 I’m a huge fan of inline blocks. Is there any other reason why the whole world is using floats?
41:10 I want to create a blog for myself, to document and share what I learn. Is it crazy NOT to use a CMS?
49:23 I’m applying for a dev job with a company and they use LESS. What are the key things I need to bare in mind when changing from Sass to LESS?

Sponsors:

33:55 lynda.com
- Over 2,000 courses, with new courses added daily
- One low monthly price of $25/month provides access to the entire course library
- Over 2 million active members, and over 500k fans on facebook
- HTML/CSS/JS – WordPress/Joomla – UX – Adobe – Objective-C/PHP – Photography/Time Management/Negotiation
- Searchable transcripts / Playlists / Bookmarks
- 47:24 Enviornments for Humans – Artifact Conf November 4–6 in Providence, RI. A fantastic 2 day, single track conference about front end. The theme is “Multi-Device World”. Some great workshops:
- Build Responsively by Ben Callahan
- Sass for Beginners by Matt Griffen
- CSS Animation by Val Head
- Responsive Designer Patterns by Brad Frost
- Use the discount code “SHOPTALK” for $100 off your ticket.

More Links:

Nicolas’ Website
Nicolas on Twitter
KSS Ruby Gem
Brad Frost’s Pattern Lab
“Mobile first” CSS and getting Sass to help with legacy IE
Testing for Asynchronous Load of Inapplicable CSS StyleSheets (github)
Centering in the Unknown – CSS Tricks Article
Dave Rupert – “A Brander Newer Blog”
Jekyll – A Static Site Generator

This week we were joined by Jenn Schiffer. Jenn works at sports-ball and knows Michael Jordan. She also makes websites!

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

9:51 How can we go about getting back in touch with our inner creative coder? And how can we start introducing this back into our ‘bread and butter’ work?
20:32 Are there any meet ups in New Jersey?
27:06 I have a quick question about redesigning my portfolio. I have big plans for using the canvas element which isn’t supported in IE8-. Would it be a waste of time for me to provide fallback images for IE8 users?
29:22 We build our clients websites in WordPress. One thing we don’t do is bake in support/on going maintenance for our clients sites in our contracts. What are your 2cents on support plans/updating sites? Should we be charging and ongoing service fee to make sure the security on our clients sites don’t become vulnerable?
36:46 I’m working on learning Git and how to best utilize Github. Should Github should become part of my regular workflow or instead just a backup of my code and a place to share and collaborate with others.
42:08 Here’s my question: What’s the deal with Art Direction? What role does Art Direction play in your work?
51:42 I keep reading things like “get a mentor” or “have your code reviewed”, yet I’ve never been able to find anyone interested in doing either of those. Any idea how it’s possible to find that kind of people, or why people keep saying that if they don’t exist?

Sponsors:

25:28 lynda.com Over 2,000 courses, with new courses added daily. One low monthly price of $25 will get you access to the entire library of web design and development courses. Follow this special link for a free 7 day trial.
47:44 Enviornments for Humans: Artifact Conf Ethan Marcotte will be doing the Keynote, and Dave will be talking about responsive images. There will also be some great workshops:
- Build Responsively by Ben Callahan
- Sass for Beginners by Matt Griffen
- CSS Animation by Val Head
- Responsive Designer Patterns by Brad Frost
- Use discount code SHOPTALK for $100 off!

More Links:

Jenn’s Website
Jenn on Twitter
Joshua Davis
Tab Atkins Proposal
Alex Sexton: The Internet’s Mentor

This week we were joined by Kimberly Blessing. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

6:17 CERN – The birth of the web
The first web browser
FORK THE LINE-MODE BROWSER

Q & A:

16:02 What are your opinions on the nonstandard mozmm units? See also : Blog post.
24:20 I was wondering if either of you have worked for a corporation maintaining a single large scale website, or if you have only worked on projects on a per client basis. If you have done both, which do you prefer?
34:30 I’m trying to find some time to try some JavaScript MVC framework. Could you explain to a dummy what they are actually and in what cases I could use them?
42:18 When I learned the basics of HTML markup, I learned to do it the XHTML way. While technically valid, should I finally let go of my XHTML habits? Should I make my markup look like all HTML5 markup?
48:42 What kinds of things should I include in my online portfolio? How should I display them?

Sponsors:

22:40 Responsive Web Design E-Book, $3.99 A collection of interviews, tips, tricks and some responsive sketch pages in one easy to download file. Learn from more than 26 leading responsive design experts across more than 80 pages for the price of an expensive coffee (otherwise known as a beer).

40:08 Environments for Humans – Artifact Conf Nov 4–6, just outside of Boston. Tons of awesome workshops. Use “SHOPTALK” for $100 off!

More Kimberly:

Kimberly on Twitter
Kimberly’s Website
Jobs at Think Brownstone
Thanks for all the time jump links, Phil Zelnar!
TodoMVC
Egghead.io

It’s time for another RAPIDFIRE! No news, no drama, just lots of question and answer action.

Q & A:

0:51 How do you prefer ordering your queries within your stylesheet? Is mobile-first really the best strategy here?
8:27 Would either of you have any insights as to how to test, target, and develop for the stock “Internet” browser app from Android?
12:37 Maybe Autoprefixer will be useful to your podcast listeners?
19:45 Is there a pretty CSS only solution to style a file input field? The default is so ugly and annoying.
24:00 I have noticed that many theme developers will have the header template that opens a div that is closed in the page template. I find this very frustrating. Is this common for wordpress or is this a bad idea all together?
28:12 So I’ve been having a habitual debate between the SEO department at my job, as well with my other developers, which is the usage of h1’s per page. I understand it use to be that we were suppose to use only one h1 per page for SEO purposes, however from my understanding with html5 elements like section and article we can now use multiple h1’s per page. With many conflicting articles out there, and all these SEO ranking tools that contradict one another, what’s the deal here?
36:10 I was wondering if you could explain the difference between web designers, front end developers, UI designers, etc.?
40:22 A lot of the development I do these days is responsive, but in order to accommodate advertising or Facebook widgets etc I am finding that working with a fixed width sidebar is cleanest. I have been experimenting with display:table-cell, it looked like the perfect solution until I had a page that had a series of short pieces of content that didn’t keep the left hand area full width ( example here Is there a way around this? Do I really just need to wait for Flexbox? Any advice would be awesome.
43:17 I’ve started working with Rails and the Rails asset pipeline. One thing I don’t like is that Rails does the Sass compiling instead of doing it via command line or with a tool like Codekit. I was wondering if you guys know if there are any benefits to using the pipeline vs just compiling it locally. Finally, what do your Sass file structure look like? Do you have one manifest file with many imports, or multiple files each with their own imports?
51:34 Hey guys, I am curious if you guys are familiar with Codekit’s KIT language?

Sponsors:

18:05 Web Design Day
- Conference day: Friday October 25th, Workshop day: Saturday October 26th. 2013 is our fifth year and we’ve got workshops and a conference day this year.
- Sessions from: Aaron Draplin, Josh Clark, Jenn Downs, Stacey Mulcahy, Sara Watcher-Boettcher, Brian Warren.
- Shork and smart lightning talks from Jen Meyercheck, Rob Wierzbowski, Chris Cashdollar and Cathrine Farman.
- Workshops by Bearded and Brad Frost
- Topics include: devices and the future, UX testing, web typography, keeping your team awesome, controlling your content, the perks of open source, designing for the man without losing your soul, time-saving Sass and some inspiring design talk.
- Also, Pittsburgh is awesome

34:15 Environments for Humans – CSSDevConf October 21–23, 2013. The Stanley Hotel in the Rocky Mountains · Colorado, U.S.

More :

Stumped: Android WebView + querySelectorALL()
Chris’ post on Autoprefixer
Shadow Dom
Chris’s post on Job Titles in the Web Industries
Chris’s Codepen on The secret power of revisiting the block formatting context, see original post
Guard for Rails
Codekit’s KIT Language
Hammer for Mac

This week we were joined by Florian Motlik. Flo is an awesome programmer an a co-founder of Codeship, a part of Techstars Boston. This episode is a deep dive into continuous deployment and automation.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A

13:08 I would like to use Git for version control, and set up a deployment strategy so I can stop going “FTP commando’, but terminal is a bit scary for me. Do you have any suggestions for free or one-off-purchase alternatives for deployment so I can get off FTP?
20:50 Hey guys, I just did a little google-ing and found an FTP-post-commit-deploy-script for Bitbucket/Github. It works on public and private repos. I set it up on my server for a little project I’m working on, and so far it’s working great! I thought this could be a good tool for folks that don’t have a VPS they can setup Git on to still get on a version control work flow.
22:40 What’s the best way to handle database synching? Is it possible to do it with version control?
40:09 I have this site to build with about 30 pages, all one template. Where the line is drawn for static sites vs. CMS?
52:27 I have been looking at several PaaS options out there such as Heroku, Appfog, Paogdabox, and Fortrabbit. I was wondering if those types of scalable web application platforms are best used for all types of sites (blogs for example) since they provide a level of control and scalability, or are they really just meant to be utilized on custom web applications that do a lot of processing server side?

Sponsors

24:40 WP DB Migrate Pro: WP Migrate DB Pro eliminates the manual work of migrating a WP database.
50:15 CSS Dev Conf Join Eric Meyer, Estelle Weyl, Jonathan Snook, and more as they discover the latest in the intersection of CSS and Preprocessors (Sass, Compass, etc.), JavaScript, Responsive Web Design & Mobile at the second annual CSS Dev Conference.

More Flo

Flo on Twitter
Codeship Twitter
Flo on Github

Show Links

Chris’ post on deployment
Codeship
R-Sync
WordPress Theme Unit Test
CasperJS, navigation scripting & testing utility
Setting up a static site on Amazon S3
The ATX Web Show Podcast
WP Engine

Codeship Blog Posts

Smoke Testing with CasperJS
Getting started with Testing from Top to Bottom

More links about continuous integration, continuous deployment, and testing:

Continuous Integration
Continuous Delivery & Deployment
An introduction to test driven development

This week we were joined by Jason Santa Maria, a designer currently in Brooklyn, New York. You might know Jason from his work on Typekit or more recently the writing collaboration tool Editorially. Or perhaps from past work like the WordPress logo and from working at renowned web studio Happy Cog. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

14:31 WebKit now supports the srcset attribute on image (img) elements – Webkit.org

Q & A

20:53 Jason, you were one of the more prominent art-direction bloggers with your v4 redesign. Did you find it hampered your writing since you had the extra burden of laying out the article in addition to crafting the words?
26:21 What’s your favorite upcoming part of the CSS Fonts Module Level 3 and can you explain what attracts you to those parts and give a little info/background about that portion of the spec?
30:15 Should I chase money, or chase opportunity? I recently could have taken a high-paying corporate job, but chose instead to stay with my creative agency job. What would you do?
35:37 I’ve recently applied for a few jobs where mobile web development or responsive design was a requirement. I started using Twitter Bootstrap about a year ago and use it for every project that I work on now. The feedback that I’ve received from employers is that their IT team feels that I’m just using simple templates and that I don’t have the coding skills or chops required for the position. Does the IT team know what they are talking about?
41:05 If I post code on Github and someone makes my code better or fix any bugs, is it legal to make a profit on their own code if I post it on an app store?
47:44 How do I become a designer?

Sponsors

24:00 Ghostlab Cross-device testing app! Use SHOPTALK code for a 30% discount on the Ghostlab app over at the online store.
45:49 Environments for Humans: Digital Biz Summit – We’re gathering freelance, agency leads, and project managers to discuss how they handle projects, cultivate positive culture, and maintain effective communication from clients to employees. And also make money without losing their shirt. Discount code SHOPTALK still good for 20% off.

More

Jason’s Website
Jason on Twitter
A Book Apart
Editorally

This week we were joined by Geri Coady, an illustrator, designer, and author from Newfoundland, Canada. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

17:51 WooThemes Price Change, also here
22:00 Chrome’s password saving drama

Q & A

29:02 Are there any particular hues and shades of colors that are particularly inaccessible or render unfaithfully? Also, how does this affect color accessibility?
38:27 I was wondering what your thoughts are on using design elements from web sites such as designshock.com and the slew of others that offer freebies or commercial license purchases?
45:40 In an industry that can be dramatic, cynical, and sometimes barbaric, how do you remain positive and keep your head up in what you do?
52:11 Am I stupid to quit my full-time corporate print design job?

Sponsors:

27:31 BlendConf – Blend Conference is a generalist conference in Charlotte, NC featuring 50 speakers sharing ideas and conversations about user experience design, user interface design, and web development. It’ll all happening September 5-7. 20% off with the discount code ‘shoptalk’.
44:05 CSS Dev Conf – Speakers Announced! October 21-23, 2013 – The Stanley Hotel in the Rocky Mountains · Colorado, U.S.

Show Links

Geri’s Website
Geri on Twitter
Colour Accessability Pocket Guide
Design Shock
Treehouse
Codecademy
Code School

It’s time for another RAPIDFIRE! We talk about (roughly in order):

Q & A

2:30 Which books would you recommend learning about CSS and /or UX design?
6:32 There is a lot of hype around the Hammer and Mixture static site generators right now. Can teams work on these together, or are they just made for prototyping?
12:00 What is the best payment gateway (ease of use and flexibility in their API) for processing both credit cards AND ACH debits?
19:10 What do you do about supporting older browsers like IE6?
24:10 Do you guys experience any wrist pain working at the computer so often?
28:40 How do you deal with this inconsistency across browsers?
37:40 What are your thoughts on Stylus and the ease/difficulty of switching (from SCSS)?
42:42 What are the most important steps a person should take to secure their WordPress sites?
48:30 This question is related to a post that Chris wrote on CSS-Tricks where he was exploring the pros and cons of object literal javascript patterns. Should there be a standard set to all shapes and sizes of sites, or would a large site with a team of people working on it have a different JS pattern than a small one?
54:27 Any tips on how to use the figure element in a more elegant way than just before or after a paragraph?

Sponsors

17:07 Blend Conf Blend Conference is a generalist conference in Charlotte, NC featuring 50 speakers sharing ideas and conversations about user experience design, user interface design, and web development. It’ll all happening September 5-7. You can follow @blendconf on Twitter and register for 20% off with the discount code “shoptalk”.
35:10 Environments for Humans – CSS Dev Conf October 21-23, 2013 The Stanley Hotel in the Rocky Mountains · Colorado, U.S.

Show Links

HTML & CSS Book
Any Book by Dan Cederholm
Don’t Make Me Think
A Book Apart
Mobile First
CSS-Tricks Bookshelf

What are the books have you guys read? (Leave comments!)

Stripe
Authorize.net
Matt Stow Viewport Genie
Viewport Genie on Github
Vaultpress
Learning Javascript Design Patterns

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

This week we were joined by Travis Miller, a full stack developer at SPARK. Chris and Dave met Travis at Front End Conf where he gave a talk about hip hop and the web. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

9:24 Why You Shouldn’t Tell That Random Girl On The Street That She’s Hot

Q & A:

14:40 What is the future of layout; CSS Grid or Flexbox?
22:32 Data URI vs linked image?
32:24 What solutions could you recommend for someone looking to provide video training with a paywall on their website? How would you handle memberships? Is Vimeo business secure?
39:36 What would you guys use if you were building a e-commerce site for a small store today?
47:28 I work for an agency looking to move from going “commando” with FTP over to git, sass, etc. What should we do when a client asks for FTP access?
52:34 Are there any performance hits or gotchas by simply linking to Google web fonts instead of downloading them?
57:04 There are a few ways people replace images with text.

Which is the best, considering performance and crossbrowser compatibility?

Sponsors:

46:09 Enviornments for Humans – Digital Biz Summit They’re gathering freelance, agency leads, and project managers to discuss how they handle projects, cultivate positive culture, and maintain effective communication from clients to employees (and also make money without losing their shirt).

Discount of SHOPTALK still good for 20% off.

29:27 BlendConf

SEPTEMBER 5 – 7, 2013

CHARLOTTE, NC

3 tracks / 40 talks

20% off with the discount code shoptalk at http://www.blendconf.com

Show Links:

Travis on Twitter
Travis works at Spark
Egghead.io
Chrome Dev Tools Auto Save
Chris’s guide to Flexbox
Mobify article – Data URI Is Slower
Restrict Content Pro
Vimeo Business
Bitcast.io
FoxyCart
Lemon Stand – All-in-one E-Commerce

This week we were joined by mobile architect Rick Blalock. Rick currently works at Appcelerator, a framework for building out native applications in Javascript. Rick also knows quite a bit about Joomla.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

12:30 Why mobile apps are slow
21:17 Tweetbot Neue
22:42 Clear up EE drama: Brandon Kelley did not “rage quit” on stage, and EllisLab is looking for a new owner for CodeIgniter

Q & A:

25:12 Do you guys know any good resources that feature some advanced knowledge about web-apps on mobile devices?
33:58 What do you guys think of the responsive image delivery services that are coming online? Have you tried any? Do they reduce the ‘Ughck’?
42:15 With Google getting ready to punish sites that aren’t mobile friendly, do I need to start learning mobile-first responsive design even as a beginner, or should I develop a non-RWD site and then go back later and make it responsive?
47:45 What’s up with Haxe? It’s an open source platform that can compile to many different things, including the mobile platform.
51:56 What are the Pros and Cons of using Drupal vs Joomla these days?

57:04 How do you guys work with Git?

Sponsors:

32:15 BlendConf SEPTEMBER 5 – 7, 2013, Charlotte, NC

3 tracks / 40 talks. 20% off with the discount code ‘shoptalk’ * 45:52 Environments for Humans OCTOBER 21–23, 2013, The Stanley Hotel in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S. All the top people awesome at CSS will be there. Plus, SMACSS workshop!!!

Show Links:

Rick’s Website
Rick on Twitter
Appcellerator
Titanium Framework
PhoneGap
Responsive.io
Resrc.it
Sencha
Gitflow

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE! We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A

2:23 I recently ran the W3C Markup Validation tool on one of my WordPress site. I was amazed to see how many errors came up… Do you have any suggestions for validating my markup?
9:19 Should I learn Haml or Emmet to speed up writing HTML?
14:47 Do you know of any good tutorials or resources that explain how to set up a workflow for WordPress using GitHub for version control? (Yes: The Lodge at CSS-Tricks and WP Migrate DB Pro)
23:40 I was wondering if you know of a way to synchronize break points values between different assets? Is there a way to set the breakpoint values in some way so that both Sass and JS can load them in and use them?
27:45 Whenever I use SVGs as a background-image and add the background-size property, the SVG in Firefox is blurry. I’ve tried fixing this several ways, including making the width and height of the SVG 100%, but that doesn’t seem to work in every case. Have you ever run into this problem?
30:48 Do you follow any specific style guides for personal/team coding? ( Yes: Sass Style Guide)
37:15 Sponsor: CSS Summit Use the discount code “SHOPTALK” for 20% off!
39:48 I was wondering if you had any advice for what should go into every .htaccess file – do you have a standard that gets put into every project? I heard some talk about the one included in the HTML5 boilerplate, and took a look, but a lot of it didn’t really mean anything to me, so I wasn’t sure what to take…or should I just take it all?
46:32 I have a question for you: What is the best way to create column layouts in CSS?
56:15 In order to use em and rem better, I declare html {font-size: 62.5%;} so that the root size is 10px. This allows me to do mathematical calculations much easier and faster. (For eg., a 15px font size can be declared as font-size: 1.5rem;). However, this doesn’t work when it comes to using em in media queries. I’ve noticed that for these to work correctly, I have to revert back to the default 16px. So a min-width: 1000px will be the inconsistent min-width: 62.5em instead of 100em. Do you guys know of a fix for this? Should I even be using em for media queries?
61:35 In one of your previous episodes you talked a little about nginx, and I was hoping you could talk more about that. In the little that I read, it seems like it’s much faster than Apache. But are there any catches? Or is it a no-brainer to switch from Apache?
66:56 Could you talk about using Normalize with Compass on Sass? What is your workflow for getting started?

Sponsors

WP Migrate DB Pro
CSS Summit It’s the 5th annual CSS Summit w/ three tracks focusing on CSS3, workflow, and a whole day dedicated to Sass and Compass. It’s gonna be amazing. Sign up now! Use the discount code “SHOPTALK” for 20% off!

More

Introducing HTML Inspector by Philip Walton
Try Cmd+D in CodePen
Dave’s other podcast, The ATX Web Show
.htaccess Book
The Tao of WordPress
HTML5 Boilerplate
Using Flexbox
Github Normalize Sass

This week we were joined by Tim Sabat and Alex Vazquez. Like Chris, Tim and Alex worked at Wufoo, then SurveyMonkey after the acquisition. Now all three of them are the founders of CodePen. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

13:02 Expression Engine Drama – “Competition Ethics & Add-ons”
17:40 Firefox 23: Disable Javascript button is GONE.
26:10 Google Reader is dead.
27:38 H&FJ Fonts now available as web fonts

Q & A

30:25 What are your thoughts on mod_pagespeed?
36:20 Where would you start a major front-end design project for a new software-as-a-service website?
47:24 Is it worth the time and money to go to college to study web development?
52:42 Have you guys had any experience deploying projects with Capistrano?
58:20 Is there a easy way to work locally yet have the clients still be able to view the website?

Sponsors

45:50 BlendConf – September 5 – 7, 2013 – Charlotte, NC – 3 tracks / 40 talks – 20% off with the discount code “shoptalk” at Blendconf.com
29:12 Environments for Humans CSS Summit – Val and Dave and lots of other great designers are speaking at it, use discount code “SHOPTALK” for 20% off at CSSsummit.com

Show Links

Tim’s Website
Tim on Twitter
Alex’s Website
Alex on Twitter
New Relic
Dave’s “Excuse Generator”
Brad Frost’s Pattern Lab
Guard
Local Tunnel

This week we were joined by Tim Kadlec. Tim is a front end developer, blogger, book author, and started the web conference Breaking Development at his previous job. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

3:40 “Just Build Websites!” Soundbyte
5:30 Breaking Development Conf
9:30 Tim’s Drama: Science and responsive images
19:15 “The Sidebar In Your Site Is Hot Garbage”
24:20 Brad Frost: Mobile Web Problems

Q & A

30:52 1. Tim, you’re a husband and father of three, you write books, run and speak at conferences and still have great looking hair. What’s the secret?
Do you generally favour responsive image techniques that require author ‘intervention’ (e.g. writing or srcset style markup) or set and forget methods such as adaptive-images.com (and why)?
41:30 Have you seen any examples of pages using mostly CSS animation to tell a story? Also, for Tim, how do animated infographics fit into a responsive workflow?
48:35 Isn’t display: table-cell awesome? Why don’t CSS developers use it more often?
56:24 How do you find the people that you want to interview? The reason I ask is because on your site — and most other design sites I’ve found — never talk about or feature any black designers or developer.

Sponsors

40:10 Environments For Humans CSS Summit – July 23-25. The best conference for front end designer! Dave will be talking about responsive images! Use “Shoptalk” for 20% off.
28:02 TP2WP The quickest and easiest way to move your TypePad or Movable Type blog to WordPress. Use “shoptalk6″ for $10 off.

Show Links

Tim’s Website
Tim on Twitter
8:32 Tim’s Book: Implementing Responsive Design
BigQuery
PictureFill
Matt Wilcox’s Adaptive Images
Sencha IO

This episode of Shop Talk was filmed before a live studio audience. Thanks to Dan & Cherrie Denney for inviting us down to Front-End Design Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. Chris played the banjo a bit and Dave wore a Floridian shirt. It is a spectacular conference and a lot of fun was had. We talked about (roughly in order):

3:06 Does the flat design trend affect your perception of a brand?
7:03 Why don’t more E-commerce sites use RWD?
“You Like Apples” – Electric Pulp
13:39 What’s your opinion on the overuse of jQuery in teaching JavaScript?
17:05 Given the growing complexity, where do you start learning how to make websites?
22:40 Does being involved make our industry better?
26:56 I teach and Intro to Web class at the college level, do you think Sass is a good solution or should I stick to basic CSS?

Front-End Design Conference Links

http://frontendconf.com
@frontendconf
Conference Organizers:
- Dan Denney ( @dandenney)
- Cherrie Denney ( @CherrieDenney) Thanks to

LessFilms for recording the audio. Special thanks to everyone who helped us record our brand new “Just Build Websites” sound effect: Sean McCabe, Allan Branch, Claudia Mir, Danielle Schechter, Joseph Nuñez, Brooke Lee, Andrew Lee, Ravi Panchumarthy, Marina Nattinger, Sarah Sheehan, Robert Lockridge, Vera Polyakova, Lance Welsh, Doug Mays, Ron Pezzullo, Sarah Giuliano, Mike Facciolo, Kevin Altman, Kim Siefke, Pedro Carmo, Pete Nelson, Neil Kinnish, Charles Burgess, Marcos DeSousa, Giovanni DiFeterici, Jay Barry, Gene Crawford, Krupa Patel, David Pollard, Justin Ramedia, Juan Mora, Thomas Griggs, James Blevins, David Platt, Alysa Schearer, Erica Walker, James Webb, Jason Hulbert, Naomi Ensell, Eric Braun, James Bruehl, Luqmaan Dawoodjee, Jesse Petersen, Brandon Mitchell, Brent Walbolt, Gary Hyde, Chris Chapman, Joe Healy, Clark Mercer, Austin Foster, Gonzalo Vazquez, Oleg Zhovnir, Toma Griffey, Kevin Razmus, Josh Hamilton, Joel Glovier, Jahdai Cintron, Angela Trego, Jonathan Wade, James Michiemo, Devin Vinson, Elaine Simmons, Bill Columbia, Miguel Elasmar, Akia Wells, Samantha Johnson, Vlad Shapochnikov, Brian Wong, Rick Osborne, Andy Merhaut, Rachel Higley, Naomi Lantzman, Jared Lantzman, Jason Vandlerslice, Gavin Scott, Ben Wiemer, David Komando, Rebecca Arnold, Brian Hall, Jesse Adametz, Patrick Peralta, Julio Salvat, Aaron Pinero, Lin Jackson, Pejman Haftbaradaran, Josh Schottenstein, Will Duderstadt, Derk Bender, Jaren Davis, Aaron Clayton, Brian Foshee, Samuel Hall, Ken Jones, Ernesto Valdes, Sarah Williams, Chris Williams, Eric AZARES, Lauri Hynynen, Cole Krumbholz, Kody Peterson, Sam Artioli, Rachel Schallom, Nick Hehr, Zack Spear, Christopher Martin, Ricky Gipson, Cory Chase, Tim Campbell, Maranda Ochoa, Mike Herchel, Kenton de Jong, Vyacheslav Kurochkin, Shaun Milosevich, Craig Velez, Kirk Finley, Brian Plaza, Brandon Kalber, Victor Marquez, Helena Zubkow, Drew Bolles, Brian Milner, Frankie Ramirez, Michael Maine, Johnny Hughes, Chris Jenkins, Keith Hutchinson, Holly Mullinax, Daniel Ryan, Adam Kuhn, Josh Carey, Jared Fager, Chris Kanclerowicz, James Sylvanus, Daryn St. Pierre, Charlene Foote, Andi Graham, I’m Pat Narciso!, Ismael Burciaga, Robin Dluzen, Fabian Alcantara, Isabela Belloso, Pete Boyd, Brad Randolph, Alex DiSebastian, Tyler Goelz, Jim Dough, Alina Balean, Doug Logue, Matt Santucci, Alex Swanson, Mike Key, Daniel Chavez, Kelli Kreighbaum, Rich Lim, Steeven Rosenberg, Milton Jackson, Omar Bravo, Adam Nerland, Alice Lee, Todd Zaki Warfel, Bob Woodard, Anthony Garand, Brad Miller, Jonathan Crowe, Joe Steele, Allison Grayce, Max Jordan, Nick Cadigan, Lenox Cruthers, Eric Schon, Laura Sayegh, Travis Miller, Adam Gilardi, Chad Crissman, Kristie Haylock, Blake Compton, Brian Ledebur, Edith Duran, Eric Sharp, Guil Hernandez, Luis Reyes, Ben Marte, Mariella Smith, Nate Hunzaker, Jeremy Frank, Skyler Slade, Joe Kelly, John Patsos, Juan Diego Benitez, Rebekah Monson, Ed Foster, Desiree Perry, Wendy Osusky, Ricardo Vazquez, Brandon Bisnette, Eric Van Holtz, Erik St. Martin, Tyler Kelley, Toni Baxter, Jun Verde, Dan Tello, Meagan Ryan, Susan Tabb, Krassimir Ivanov, Joseph Perez, Jon Friskics, Arron Mabrey, Drew Barontini, Nick Walsh, Jason VanLue, Jordan Wade, Justin Mezzell, Tim Dikun, Gavin Stark, Andrew Smith, Allison House, Mark Schabacker, Caroline Baltrusis, Lauren Moore, Marc Anayas, Jill Anayas, Alyssa Nicoll, Bermon Painter, Chavaly Rodriguez, Josh Bloom, Jason Olmsted, Regi Ellis, Matt Dorst, Dusty Myers, Wayne Espinola, John Thomas, Zachary Nicoll, Matt Lubner, Thomas Grauer, Nathaniel Deal, Olivier Lacan, Jackie Smith, Sylvia Martinez, Andrew Volk, Edu Stuivenberg, Shawn Berg, Matt Wild, Alison Foxall, Trae Regan, Tami Stillwell, Homer Gaines, Lisa Eck, Terrance Rogers, Marcus Burnette, James Brown, Todd Blackmon, blake clerke, Mina Markham, FRANCIS SUAREZ, Mike Houghton, Denise Little, Robert DeLuca, Michael Laplante, Chris Morata, Josh Story, Becky Hamm, David Bisset, Rob Stewart, Danny Morgan, Catalina Bolanos, Brian Burridge, Brandon Brown, Tyler Matthews, Travis Lopes, David Leininger, Cherrie Martires, Dan Denney

This week we were joined by Noah Stokes, founder and partner of Bold (a web design studio) as well as a designer and front end coder with the best of them. Noah is also a professional newscaster, blogger‘, and speaker. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

9:57 PRISM
13:05 “Ughck. Images.”
17:47 More about flat design (iOS7! Nexus 7 drama!)

Q & A:

22:03 How do you normally work with displaying fractions on sites?
26:48 Noah, what is it about ExpressionEngine that you like so much?
39:32 Icon fonts versus inline SVG. Go!
42:28 I have been researching layout approaches and the Golden Ratio seems to be a common standard. I am concerned that making the site responsive may break this “divine proportion”. What are your thoughts or strategies you use?
47:50 How do you plan for a conference? What do you plan, what do you take with you, and once you’re there how do you make the most of your time and your ticket?
54:29 What are professional designer and coder thoughts on the Adobe Tools and Services and especially Edge Code / Brackets?

Sponsors:

46:36 Environments for Humans – The CSS Summit is an online conference focused totally on CSS July 23–25. Three full days of training, advanced topics, and preprocessors. Coupon code SHOPTALK is good for 20% off.
37:15 DevTees http://devte.es
- Dev Tees is a collection of t-shirts and apparel for programmers, developers and generally nerdy folk.
- The inaugural line has 9 shirt designs, plus the original hacker t-shirt, and the code hoodie.

More :

Noah’s Website
Noah on Twitter
Math Jax
Code Mirror

This week we were joined by Val Head. Val is a designer and consultant. She co-founded Web Design Day and Refresh Pittsburgh, is the Managing Editor of CreativeJS.com, and just released the CSS Animations Pocket Guide on Five Simple Steps.

We have some sponsor spots open! Get your thing in front of lots of smart, rich people!

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

10:15 iOS7 Ugly Stick
15:33 Why we need responsive images

Q & A:

24:35 How do you solve 0 to 480px, then from 481 to 600px and so on in EM-based media queries?
32:19 What you think of this Topcoat and Pure? Also, should I write my own CSS using LESS/SASS using the principles of modular CSS/HTML?
45:52 Could you talk about the techniques used to produce this new Mac Pro page on apple.com? Is it witchcraft?
52:10 How are you supposed to price yourself competitively when there really is no solid standard?

Sponsors:

41:17 Environments for Humans: CSS Summit Val and Dave speaking at the “big event of the summer”, use SHOPTALK for 20% off!

More Val Head:

Val on Twitter
Val on Dribbble
Val’s Website

This week we were joined by Raquel Velez, an all around web and robot hacker focusing on Node.js at the moment at Storify.

We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

5:30 Why is Node good for robots?

Q & A:

14:50 I was wondering if you could talk about what the ideal scenario is to use Node.js over another development stack like Rails or Django. Are there things that Node handles exceptionally better than the other guys? Are there things that Node doesn’t handle as well?
31:08 I have a question for you and Raquel. What would be a real world application on a small scale that you would build from Node.js, ember.js, or backbone.js?
40:40 Where do you get inspiration for tackling robot/complex projects with nodeJS? do you always start with a clearly defined problem, or do you explore with code?
49:40 I recently started working for a company as a front-end developer using Node. Personally, I love development work and my first programming language was PHP (With LESS and jQuery). What other libraries and languages would you recommend to help me move forward in my career, that aren’t just trendy but are expected to be around for awhile?
56:15 What should I do to practice my web coding and design over the summer?

Sponsors:

Environments for Humans

CMS related Summits next week: + WordPress Summit June 11th, all about WordPress! + Engine Summit June 12th, all about Expression Engine!

SHOPTALK gets 20% off the tickets!

28:55 Harvest: Time tracking and invoicing made super easy. Check out getharvest.com.

More Raquel Velez:

Raquel on Twitter
Raquel’s Website

Links:

Node.js
PatternLab

from Brad Frost * Rod Smith’s Data URI Amazing Conversion Site * Crowdnotes

This week we have a special RAPIDFIRE episode for you! We’re gonna answer as many of your questions as possible, as best as we can (in three minutes or less)! We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A

2:50 I’m trying to think about mobile first. Is serving HTML content through JavaScript bad? Can I serve HTML images through CSS backgrounds?
6:54 SCSS feels complicated, and LESS seems to be enough for me. Why SCSS and not LESS?
10:31 Any way to avoid using PNG fallbacks for SVG images?
13:40 What do you think about the List Apart re-design and the drastic navigation change?
18:50 I’m getting tons of spam comments on my WordPress sites. Can you recommend third party comment systems like Discus?
24:15 How can I convert long-hand CSS into short-hand CSS and minify the code?
27:18 How much of a difference do the servers have on website response time?
31:10 I’m a 16 year old designer/dev, is college worth the money?
34:34 Do you have a rule of thumb for using base64 and data URI images in your CSS?
37:00 What do you think about HTML5 Video?
42:15 What plugins do you use for common UI elements?
45:40 What are your thoughts about social media icons? Can I use my own custom icons?
48:17 How do you decide which tool to use to make a background? Should I use Photoshop, or CSS instead?
52:12 Is there a way to have a fluid width pseudo element image?
53:47 What do you think about having a video playing in the background of my site (in terms of UX)?

Sponsors:

22:30 Front End Masters Online learning for front end web developers.
40:35 Environments for Humans – The CSS Summit is an online conference focused totally on CSS July 23–25. Three full days of training, advanced topics, and preprocessors. Coupon code SHOPTALK is good for 20% off.

Other Links

SCSS
LESS
SVGeezy
A List Apart
Back to Front Podcast
Disqus
Full Sail
@samkap
Twitter Bootstrap
Unheap.com
JQuery UI

This week we were joined by Hampton Catlin. Hampton is the inventor of Sass and Haml, the original creator of Wikipedia Mobile, and several successful iPhone applications including Dictionary! Hampton is currently building crazy new technologies to mobilize the web at Moovweb. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

19:20 Welcome, Recent Graduates by Mike Monteiro
22:30 Tumblr got bought by Yahoo!, Flickr gets a re-design
25:50 Jif, or Gif?
27:45 The Pattern Rodeo at CodePen

Q & A

29:00 Do we live in a world wherein both “LESS” and “Sass” will continue to coexist?
35:55 I recently got a copy of LiveReload for the Sass/Less capabilities. I noticed that it compiles other things as well such as Haml. I had never heard of Haml or Jade. What are your thoughts on these? Do you think they will gain in popularity or are they on their way down? Have you used them? How do you keep up with all the new frameworks and libraries and know which ones to use and which ones won’t last?
42:36 What do you think is the best approach for coding/designing responsive modals or lightboxes?
51:45 “I came across this tool yesterday that allows users to query a huge amount of client data server side.”

Sponsors:

41:51 Squarespace – Super nice looking websites (new templates!) that you can create right from the browser. Plus, very advanced developer tools. Head over to Squarespace and start your free trial, and use coupon code “shoptalk4” when you order.
50:25 Environments for Humans – The CSS Summit is an online conference focused totally on CSS July 23–25. Three full days of training, advanced topics, and preprocessors. Coupon code SHOPTALK is good for 20% off.

More Hampton

@hcatlin
hamptoncatlin.com

Other Links

Prepros for Windows
Conditional Lightbox by Brad Frost
Magnificent Popup Plugin
The Detector

This week we were joined by Mike Taylor, a whitespace strategist from Opera. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

6:37 The W3C added EME Spec (aka DRM for video)

Q & A

19:24 Percentages seem to render different in Opera, what’s the deal? Should I use media queries instead?
23:42 Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to change the default page scroll behavior (for a horizontal scrolling site)?
30:56 Handling fonts (in silk)
37:04 How would you explain javascript closures to a 6 year old, and how do you use them?
46:42 Caching files with .htaccess: what happens when you have files that change frequently?
52:14 How to test post requests from third parties locally?

Sponsors

28:45 Squarespace – Super nice looking websites (new templates!) that you can create right from the browser. Plus, very advanced developer tools. Head over to Squarespace and start your free trial, and use coupon code “shoptalk4” when you order.
48:53 Environments for Humans – The CSS Summit is an online conference focused totally on CSS July 23–25. Three full days of training, advanced topics, and preprocessors. Coupon code SHOPTALK is good for 20% off.

More Mike

@miketaylr
miketaylr.com
Dragonfly now hiring Javascript developers

This week we were joined by Ben Schwarz, a full stack web hacker, tool maker, and tip sharer from Melbourne, Australia. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

4:00 Ben’s latest project Gallery CSS
11:30 Global Accessibility Awareness Day
14:50 National Fart JavaScript Awareness Day

Q & A:

16:30 When does Ben use Grunt JS and when does he use CodeKit?
24:25 What are some of the worst case scenarios when using UA sniffing? Is all UA sniffing bad, or are there upsides? Chris lays down the law.
34:00 Responsive images via SVG by Estelle Weyl
42:10 What’s new in Melbourn, Australia?
43:35 “I’m pretty good with CSS, when should I start learning SCSS? Do you have any suggestions for a Windows setup?” Scout, Live Reload, Compass.app for Windows.
50:30 What workflow should I use for Git since I’m not building web apps? (example, building a WordPress site)
58:40 What is the big deal about designing with a grid? Why should I use one?

Sponsors:

56:45 Environments for Humans – The CSS Summit is an online conference focused totally on CSS July 23-25. Three full days of training, advanced topics, and preprocessors. Coupon code SHOPTALK is good for 20% off.
37:13 Squarespace – Super nice looking websites (new templates!) for people you create right from the web. Plus very advanced developer tools. Head over to Squarespace.com and use coupon code “shoptalk4″.

More Ben:

@benschwarz
germanforblack.com
Ben on Github

This week we were joined by Pam Selle, a full stack developer in many languages and all around hacker from Philly. Pam works at AxisPhilly, teaches for GirlDevelopIt, and blogs at The Webivore. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

1:50 Introducing Pam Selle
2:45 Pam’s day job: Axis Philly
4:00 Girl Develop It
8:37 Civic Hacking Video

The Beef with Uncle Dave

12:58 Recruiters. What on earth do these people do for a living?

Q & A

15:40 Opinions about the use of :hover related to drop down menus
22:57 I’m new to hackathons and not super great at code, what should I expect? Can I still get anything out of it or contribute?
31:04 Client side templating vs server side templating: what are the differences and benefits?
39:17 Resets vs Normalize (and frameworks)
47:30 Problems with jQuery on a CDN
53:57 Trying to put together a standard HTML/CSS/jQuery Framework – is it OK to mix bits and pieces of different pre-existing frameworks?
59:15 “I fixed up my old site (which had tables) with newer code, but my site visitors still see half of the old code. Help!”

Sponsors

27:40 Cotton Bureau – Submit a T-Shirt design. If approved, and you sell at least 25 shirts, it will be printed and shipped. All the hard stuff like taking money, shipping, and returns is taken care of for you.
51:06 Environments for Humans – The CSS Summit is an online conference focused totally on CSS July 23-25. Three full days of training, advanced topics, and preprocessors. Coupon code SHOPTALK is good for 20% off.

More Pam

@pamasaur
thewebivore.com
On Github
Axis Philly
Girl Develop It

Another classic RAPIDFIRE! No guests, no drama, no news, just all redhot question on answer action.

2:35 What do you use to concatenate JavaScript files before production on Windows?
6:33 Aren’t thinks like history.pushState just new JavaScript things, not HTML5?
11:10 Can Sublime Text help with re-usable components?
16:08 How do you diagram these fancy one-page style apps?
20:42 How do you take PHP and JavaScript to a professional level?
22:40 How much does Modernizr help with cross browser compatibility?
30:20 What is the best tag for an alert or notification?
35:58 What is Backbone for?
43:35 Is it better to have one stylesheet with media queries in it or split it up into different stylesheets?
55:40 How do you minify data-uris?
59:13 How do you handle subscription based font services and clients?
1:06:00 What are our views about SEO in general?

Sponsors

52:04 Wufoo – Makes building online forms fun! Quickly build any type of form you need, from the humble contact form to the epic multi-page, logic-riddled, mobile-friendly, custom-designed, spam-protected, payment-taking super form.
1:03:20 Environments for Humans – The CSS Dev Conf is coming October 21-23 in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

This week we were joined by Ben Frain, a web developer, technology columnist, and [book author][1] from Cheshire, UK. Ben has written for major publications like MacUser, .net, and The Guardian and is also a [very famous][2] television actor. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

9:40 Seven Rules nonsense.
16:15 Aral Balkan’s Slide & Stage
17:06 The answer to one of ShopTalk’s most-asked questions (how to keep a WordPress database in sync between live and local): WP Migrate DB Pro

Q & A

21:45 Wouldn’t it be easier to group media query stuff into blocks and @import them in chunks?
27:50 How do you compile Sass server-side?
32:45 If I use Coda 2 will I be cooler than someone who uses Sublime Text?
35:10 Are there benefits to switching to Sass if a project is already in LESS?
44:20 How can I use a Git workflow and retain working offline?
51:30 Is there a standard for structuring a Sass project? ( The Sass Way on structure, Globbing)
58:35 If you’ve gone-commando directly on some .css on the server, but the project is in Sass, is there a way to port those changes back?

Sponsors

34:10 Lynda.com – Use that link for a free week. Lynda.com has 1,700 full training courses on all kinds of tech learning. Level up your knowledge!
49:00 Environments for Humans – CSS Dev Conf is happening again! This time in Colorado. Talk proposals open!

Another RAPIDFIRE episode where Dave and Chris answer as many questions as possible. No guests, no news, no drama, just all question on answer action. This time they set a timer so no answer may exceed 3 minutes!

2:43 Should you learn jQuery or JavaScript first?
5:30 How come two scripts seem to work fine when minified but break when minified and concatenated?
9:15 How do you make WordPress load new content with Ajax?
13:00 How do you get a spreadsheet into an HTML table? ( perhaps)
16:51 What code editors do you prefer?
20:27 How do you use Google Analytics? Does it play a role in keeping up a website?
23:58 Tabs or spaces?
27:12 Can you be taken seriously as a 14 year old developer?
30:40 Is it risky to hire a 14 year old developer?
34:15 What third party ad buying service do you recommend?
37:45 What is a good page weight number for a mobile site?
41:08 How do you handle CSS3 in oldIE?
44:38 How do you handle retina images? ( see)
48:02 Why do @font-face fonts look too bold?
51:40 How do you handle fixed positioning when it is causing cut-off problems?

Sponsors

Wufoo – The world’s greatest online form builder! Use simple drag and drop form builder to create anything from simple contact forms to super complex multiple page checkout forms. Then put them right on your own site with copy and paste code.
Environments for Humans – Check out the (online) Responsive Web Design Summit coming April 16-18. Save 20% with discount code SHOPTALK. Dave will be there!

This week we were joined by Rachel Nabors, a cartoonist, illustrator, designer, and front end developer out of Raleigh, North Carolina. Rachel is highly interested in animations and sound in CSS and JavaScript. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

11:34 – hgroup removed from HTML 5.1
16:25 – Copy vs. Design ( Robert Williams, Tim Smith)
21:40 – Blink, Chrome’s new fork of WebKit

Q & A

31:15 – Will hover/mouseover events ever be as widely accepted on mobile and tablets as it is on the PC?
48:50 – On a responsive website, what is the best way to take a section from the desktop version and turn it into a collapsible item at smaller resolutions?
55:05 – I tried submitting some talks for conferences last year and all of them were rejected. I wonder if you guys had any advice on submitting talk proposals? ( relevant link)

Sponsors

44:40 – Environments for Humans – CSS Dev Conf is happening again! This time in Colorado. Talk proposals open!
53:05 – Lynda.com – Use that link for a free week. Lynda.com has 1,700 full training courses on all kinds of tech learning. Level up your knowledge!

More Rachel

rachelthegreat.com
rachelnabors.com
Rachel on CodePen
@CrowChick

This week we were joined by Brandon Mathis, a web worker out of Birmingham, Alabama working for MongoHQ. Brandon is on the Compass team and is the creator of the static site generator Octopress. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links

(9:41) – Getting Started with Octopress

Q & A

(26:32) – Regenerating sprites with Compass is taking 30 seconds, what gives?
(30:04) – Why doesn’t Octopress use Grunt?
(33:58) – Should we be using placeholder selectors for every possible property/selector combination?
(43:17) – How should I go about grouping media queries? (Also see Brandon’s custom mixins for media queries)
(53:00) – What is Dave Rupert?
(54:45) – How do you do that thing where you serve a very basic stylesheet to oldIE? ( link)
(57:55) – Have we used any HTML preprocessors?

Sponsors

(51:44) – Environments for Humans – Check out the (online) Responsive Web Design Summit coming April 16-18. Save 20% with discount code SHOPTALK.
(24:42) – Lynda.com – Use that link for a free week! Lynda.com has over 77,000 videos on all kinds of topics ranging from web stuff to photography to business.

More Brandon

brandonmathis.com
@imathis

This week we were joined by Alex Sexton, a JavaScript developer for BazaarVoice, ex- yayQuery star, Modernizr team member, YepNope inventor, TXJS organizer, and essentially the world’s best loved ginger. We talked about (roughly in order):

New’n’Links’n’Drama

Donglegate: Venture Beat, Hacker News, Amanda Blum, Estelle Weyl
Are UX and Design different? Dan Eden, Mark Otto
Done with the web
DRM in ChromeOS / HTML5: François Beaufort, Ian Hixie, Google-owned platform
Web Design Weekly

Q & A

49:15 Leveling up understanding of Event Handlers
54:39 What’s the deeeeeal with loading jQuery from Google?

Sponsors

Environments for Humans – Check out the (online) Responsive Web Design Summit coming April 16-18. Save 20% with discount code SHOPTALK.
ConvergeSE – A web design and development conference in Columbia, South Carolina April 25-27. Chris will be there!

More Alex

@SlexAxton
alexsexton.com
GitHub

This week we were joined by Samantha Warren, a designer and recent San Fransico-ite. She moved from Washington D.C. to work for Twitter. Samantha is known for her love of all things typography and design and speaks at conferences around the world about these things. Most recently, about Style Tiles, a concept for showing design to clients that sits somewhere between mood boards (too loose) and comps (too tight). We talk about (roughly in order): News ‘n’ Links ‘n’ Drama

16:05 Google Reader shutting down
21:00 Sidebar.io Q & A
11:00 How’s San Francisco?
22:21 When is responsive web design right or not right for a project?
35:30 Should you redesign your personal site before applying to a new design agency?
44:48 Are cheap templates ruining the industry?
52:00 How do you deal with vertical rhythm and fluid images?

58:26 Do the current generation of designers/developers lack critique skills? Sponsors

34:00 lynda.com – Use that link for a free week! lynda.com has over 77,000 videos on all kinds of topics ranging from web stuff to photography to business.

42:43 Environments for Humans – Check out the (online) Responsive Web Design Summit coming April 16-18. Save 20% with discount code SHOPTALK.

This week we were joined by Lara Hogan, formerly UX manager at Dyn and now a manager of mobile web at Etsy. Lara has long been a champion of web performance, UX, and being a good front end developer. We talk about (roughly in order):

News ‘n’ Links ‘n’ Drama

8:45 LayerVault vs. DesignModo
14:13 “Pinkifying the recruiting process”
19:50 FRED
20:40 Client-Hints

Q & A

27:35 What up with gzipping?
31:37 If you use styles for literally only one page, shouldn’t that be a ``?
34:50 If you could attend only one conference, what would it be?
37:40 How much third part “stuff” is too much?
58:43 What kind of skills do you need to get a job at an agency?
49:31 What kind of device should you get for testing retina?

Sponsors

26:12 ConvergeSE – A web design and development conference in Columbia, South Carolina April 25-27. Chris will be there!
47:42 Environments for Humans – Check out the (online) Responsive Web Design Summit coming April 16-18. Save 20% with discount code SHOPTALK.

This week we were joined by Derek Featherstone, an accessibility specialist and leader of [Simply Accessible][1], a consulting firm in Ottawa, Canada. The full show transcript [is available here][2]. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

8:15 ARIA tree roles, not so simple
24:15 Nav in lists discussion again

Q & A

30:00 Does display: table; have an effect on screen readers?
43:35 Are Google and Facebook particularly bad accessibility offenders, or no?
52:45 Is there a “minimum bar” of accessibility to achieve before launching?

Sponsors

42:12 ConvergeSE – A web design and development conference in Columbia, South Carolina April 25-27. Chris will be there!
51:45 Environments for Humans – Check out the (online) Responsive Web Design Summit coming April 16-18. Save 20% with discount code SHOPTALK.

This week we were joined by Jeff Starr, who has been blogging about the web for longer than either of us. Jeff is a WordPress master, co-author of Digging Into WordPress (with Chris) and author of HTAccess Made Easy. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

9:10 Opera goes WebKit
15:30 Speaking Up: Sarah Parmenter & Leslie Jensen Inman
15:30 Ladies in Tech
17:35 DevTees

Q & A

21:44 Getting off EE, and on to ______?
27:21 Hiring a new front-end dev, what should I ask? Questions by Darcy Clarke
36:15 How do you handle deployment in a git workflow?
45:30 Learning via the student/mentor relationship
54:00 What up with attribute selectors in CSS?

Sponsors

18:35 ShopLocket – the easiest way to sell products professionally online. Embed stores onto your own website. Use our link to get three months with no transaction fees!
43:50 Environments for Humans – Check out the (online) Responsive Web Design Summit coming April 16-18. Save 20% with discount code SHOPTALK.

No guests, no drama, no, whatever, other stuff. Just all question on answer action with Chris and Dave. We talk about (roughly in order):

1:45 Like a unicorn horn through the heart. How to handle a late in the game career change.
6:10 More thoughts on when/where to use Class/ID.
16:55 How do you learn more about the voodoo that is .htaccess ( book)
21:50 Why Austin?
28:15 Is it possible to use Sass with WordPress even though Sass is Ruby and WordPress is PHP?
35:18 Is there a recommended tool for automated style guide creation?
41:35 Should you limit yourself in Photoshop according to the abilities of HTML and CSS?
48:25 Are there more tools than Firebug for coding in the browser?
51:40 I’m in a rut where I read more than I build, and I’m looking to get out of my job and into freelancing, what do I do?

Sponsors

24:55 Environments for Humans – InControl is coming in a few days. Artifact is May 13-15 in Austin, Texas.

This week is just Dave and Chris answering as many listener questions as possible. That’s right, it’s RAPIDFIRE time! rat-a-tat-tat. We talk about (roughly in order):

What do we think of Kirby CMS?
Do we use Compass too? Are there Compass specific plugins?
Can you change a Sass variable depending on the media query?
Is it possible to find unused CSS selectors?
Do you ever use “inherit” as a value?
If you use Sass too much, will you forget CSS?
How do you explain to a client that you don’t know how to do something?
What are the key do’s and don’ts for a contract?

Sponsors

Harvest – Time tracking and invoicing for professionals. Check out how easy their Mac app is to use.
Environments for Humans – Both Chris and Dave will be at the exellent In Control Conference in Orlando this February. Use coupon SHOPTALK for $100 off.

Stephanie Rewis is a front end engineer who was a speaker, trainer, and builder all simultaneously for many many years and is now the VP of front end at a not yet launched CRM startup. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

Navigation in Lists?

Q & A

Do you use CSS3 selectors? (not just properties)
Is inline-block better than floats?
Concerning animations and techy graphic formats like SVG and Canvas, is the line between developer and designer blurring even more?
Does the advice for young folks getting into the industry apply to those north of 35?
Is node or backbone a logical follow up learning choice to HTML/CSS/JS?

Sponsors

Environments for Humans – Both Chris and Dave will be at the exellent In Control Conference in Orlando this February. Use coupon SHOPTALK for $100 off.
Harvest – Simple Online Time Tracking Software. Spend less time tracking and more time doing.

More Stephanie

@stefsull
W3Conversions

This week we were joined by Divya Manian, an “Open Web Pamphleteer” at Adobe and Garann Means, a web developer at Etsy and fellow Austinite with Dave. Together they from Frip Frap, a video podcast about front end stuff. That’s right, #CROSSOVER! We talk about (roughly in order): News’n’Links’n’Drama

WordPress vs Envato drama. Two second recap: Envato sells WP themes with a split license, WordPress doesn’t like that, no solution in sight, Envato authors can’t participate (beyond attending) at WordCamps. Jake Caputo was majorly affected. Chris Wallace is similarly confused.
Heather Arthur gets some scorn she didn’t deserve. Q & A
How did you get started JavaScript testing?
What does Git have over SVN?
Does a search form belong in a

? * Is hiding content off screen (rather than display: none;) going to hurt your SEO?

What up with validation flagging so many “errors”? Sponsors

Environments for Humans – Both Chris and Dave will be at the exellent In Control Conference in Orlando this February. Use coupon SHOPTALK for $100 off.

lynda.com – Over 77,000 videos teaching not just the web, but photography, business, 3D, and more. Use our link for a free week. More Divya

@divya / @nimbu

nimbupani.com More Garann

@garranm

garann.com

This week we were joined by Niki Brown and Liz Andrade, both independent web designers and developers who together form the Pagebreak Podcast. That’s right, another #CROSSOVER! We talk about (roughly in order): News’n’Links

In true crossover style, we discuss the article Becoming Better Communicators. Q & A
When you build a site with WordPress, do you start with a starter theme? ( _s, Bones, Roots, HTML5 Reset)
When to use min-width and max-width media queries?
What’s all the fuss about grid systems?
Is “the age of the developer” gone?
How do you handle CSS3 features that aren’t supported by IE. Specifically, flexbox.

Is using HTML5 sturctural elements bad? Sponsors

Environments for Humans – Both Chris and Dave will be at the exellent In Control Conference in Orlando this February. Use coupon SHOPTALK for $100 off.

lynda.com – Over 77,000 videos teaching not just the web, but photography, business, 3D, and more. Use our link for a free week. More Niki

NikiBrown.com

@nikibrown More Liz

CMD+Shift Design

@lizandrade

This week we were joined by Drew Wilson, a designer and developer (a true cross-bread powerhouse) out of Oceanside, California. Drew created the first widely popular icon font, Pictos. He is a conference organizer, producing ValioCon. He’s the creator of web apps like Space Box and Dialoggs. The list goes on and on. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

Drew and Josh Long wrote a new book called Execute (in 8 days)
Chris decided BuiltItWithMe should get popular again
The diversity at conferences drama hits a fever pitch
Google Maps says they won’t support Windows Phone 8, then retracts statement
Windows Phone 8 meta viewport / @-ms-viewport debacle
Follow up on RSI talk

Q & A

What is a good CDN for a personal website? Is there a free one? ( CloudFlare)
How do copyrights work on websites? Is putting the © somewhere on the site enough to protect it? Even the name?
How do you allocate time to your side projects?
Is there some magical listing of jobs that only shows remote work opportunities?
Do we have any accessiblility tips?

Sponsors

Environments for Humans – Both Chris and Dave will be at the exellent In Control Conference in Orlando this February. Use coupon SHOPTALK for $100 off.
Treehouse – Take online courses in learning web design, web development, and iOS development.

More Drew

drewwilson.com
@drewwilson

This week we were joined by Daryl Koopersmith, a San Francisco based web developer. Daryl was a lead developer on WordPress, and co-headed up the recent 3.5 release, specifically working on the new (awesome) media manager. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

Daryl has left Automattic and is looking for something fresh
Pseudo elements now animate in WebKit

Q & A

What can go wrong when moving a WordPress installation from one laptop to another?
How can I make the homepage of a WordPress site as editable as possible for a client?
How can I start learning WordPress development?
Can you use Sass in a WordPress workflow? What is the future of WordPress and CSS preprocessors?
If you want to start selling WordPress themes, what is the best thing to learn?
WordPress and eCommerce… where to start?
How do you start contributing to WordPress?

Sponsors

Environments for Humans – Both Chris and Dave will be at the exellent In Control Conference in Orlando this February. Use coupon SHOPTALK for $100 off.
Treehouse – Take online courses in learning web design, web development, and iOS development.

More Daryl

@koop
koop on GitHub
darylkoop.com

David Walsh is a MooTools lover, recent Mozilla-er, and (for a final “M”), fellow original Madisonian with Chris. David has been writing at his blog The David Walsh Blog for over five years. We talk about (roughly in order): News’n’Links

That whole domain theft thing
ShopTalk Shirts
CodePen PRO is out now Q & A
Should you use em on everything, even padding?
Why the huge differences between Google Analytics and StatCounter?
Is an direct editing through FTP based workflow still OK for “small” sites?
How do you fight carpal tunnel and tendonitis? (or is it RSI?)
What is a good example of a responsive eCommerce site? ( United Pixelworkers)

Should you conditionally load resources for sub pages or just load everything on all pages? Sponsors

Environments for Humans – Both Dave and Chris will be at InControl 2013 Orlando! Feburary 17-19. Save $100 with coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW.

lynda.com – Over 77,000 video tutorials about web technology and much more. Use our link for a free week trial. More David

@davidwalshblog

davidwalsh.name

This week we were joined by Jen Simmons the host of The Web Ahead (CROSSOVER!) and a long time freelancer, consulter, builder, and friend of the web. We talk about (roughly in order): News’n’Links’n’Drama

Jen also doing The Web Behind with Eric Meyer
Instagram Term of Service debacle
Animation performance ( 1, 2) Q&A
If you’re good at design, but no so much at code, how do you get better at code?
How do you get over being so hypercritical of yourself that it’s debilitating?
What’s up with Mixture.io?

Using partials in Sass (also: globbing) Sponsors

Environments for Humans – InControl is back in Orlando February 17-19. Use coupon SHOPTALKSHOW for $100 off

lynda.com – Over 77,000 training videos on all kinds of computer learnin’. Use our link for a free week trial. More Jen

@jensimmons

jensimmons.com
The Web Ahead

This week we were joined by Tim Smith, a designer doing both freelance work and in-house design work as well as soon-to-be magazine publisher. This is a crossover episode, as both Dave and Chris have been on Tim’s excellent podcast The East Wing. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

Brian Franco’s book An Illustrated Guide to Front-End Development
Sam Stephenson: You Are Not Your Code (relevant to last show’s talk about Prototype)
Responsive URL’s (a joke, folks)
Andy Clarke and Jen Simmons on The Web Ahead talking weblebrities at conferences.

Q & A

Should browsers natively support CSS preprocessor syntax?
Websites are getting fat. What can we do?
Is there tech we can use to help with HIPAA compliance?
Should there / can there be print buttons on mobile websites?
How does Tim keep on keeping on?

Sponsors

Mijingo – Educational screencasts for web developers. Use coupon HOTDRAMA to get both the Jekyll and Markdown screencasts for only $15
Environments for Humans – Both Dave and Chris will be at the 2013 InControl conference in Orlando, Florida in February. Use coupon SHOPTALK for $100 off.

More Tim

timothybsmith.com
@timothybsmith @ttimsmith
Make Awesome (being renamed?!)

This is a classic RAPIDFIRE episode. No guests, no drama, no news, just straight question on answer action. We talk about (roughly in order):

What is the best way to host videos behind a pay wall? Chris uses WordPress with Restrict Content Pro (with PayPal) and Vimeo Pro to host the video.
Can there be cross-browser problems with PHP?
Tips for designers working with developers.
Do target="_blank" links affect SEO or UX? When should we use them?
Is it better to base breakpoints after known device sizes or the design itself?
How the text fade out effect on Polygon.com was done.
How is it possible icon fonts show up in Firefox but not Chrome?
Why does Prototype still exist?
Plug for Color My Sass by Richard Bray.
What is the correct semantics for testimonial quote with source? (Not , apparently)

This week we were joined by Harry Roberts of CSS Wizardy. Harry does a lot of writing about CSS architecture and writing good CSS. He has a fancy title at BSkyB and has worked on apps such as Faavorite. We talk about (roughly in order):

HOTDRAMA

To use or not to use ID’s, the saga. (1) (2) (3) (4)
Changes afoot for Ellis Labs / Expression Engine

Q & A

In search of the ah-ha moment for preprocessors. (For Harry, variables in inuit.css)
What sort of planning process do you go through to prepare yourselves to write efficient code on large projects?
How do CSS transforms interplay with normal CSS properties like height/width and top/left?
Newly added styles have a way of just being append to end of stylesheet. Are there organizational principals to help with that?
There are lots of new awesome workflow tools for Mac, what about Windows and Linux?
Is there some kind of tool to automate making CSS IE compatible?

Sponsors

Environments for Humans – InControl 2013 in Orlando is going to be fantastic! Both Dave and Chris will be there. Save $100 with coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW

More Harry

@csswizardry
csswizardry.com

This week we were joined by Jeffrey Zeldman, a man who scarcely needs an introduction around these parts. In the early days of the web Jeffery was influential in pushing web standards forward and getting us to the happy place we are in now. He’s also the man behind the web magazine A List Apart, the web conference An Event Apart, and the book label A Book Apart. We talk about (roughly in order): #HOTDRAMA

(9:23) – Harry Roberts mentions (among other things) that ID’s are no good. Jeffrey defends them. We all have our own thoughts – but agree that dogma == bad. Q & A
(21:49) -Can a web designer in isolation in India get better at design? (Jeffrey hooks up Karthik)
(25:57) -Was A List Apart one of the first websites to every use CSS (floats) for layout? (Todd Fahrner and Tantek Çelik are heros)

(35:01) – What is the biggest change you’ve seen in the industries history? Sponsors

(32:42) – lynda.com – Use that link for a free week! lynda.com has over 77,000 videos on all kinds of topics ranging from web stuff to photography to business.

(43:23) – Environments for Humans – InControl is coming back to Orlando in February 2013. Use SHOPTALK for $100 off!

Another CROSSOVER episode! This time the business detectives over at the BizCraft show (Gene Crawford and Carl Smith) join us to solve the toughest unsolved mysteries on the modern web. Translation: we hang out with Gene and Carl and do some Q&A. Both of these fellas run their own little web empires doing client work. Carl runs nGen Works and Gene runs Period Three. We talk about (roughly in order): Q & A

How do you get a job working remotely?
How do you handle a client overage right before launch time?
How do you deal with charging for time when you get super into a project and spend way more hours on it than you could charge for it?
Local SEO went down, international SEO went up. What up with that?
I’m not feeling my own portfolio, how can I get a job?
Should we always be learning new design techniques like we learn coding techniques?
What is the proper usage of ems? ( Why Ems?) Sponsors
lynda.com – Over 77,000 video based tutorials on design, programming, photography, animation, and much more. Get 7 days free with that link.

Enviornments for Humans – Upcoming back-toi-back conferences in Honolulu, Hawaii! InControl and CSS Dev Conf More Gene and Carl

@carlsmith

nGenWorks

@genecrawford

Unmatched Style
Period Three

Hot off the trail of “Episode 41: The Even Lost’er Episode”, we have another surprise RAPIDFIRE! No guest, no drama, just question on answer action.

2:11 What is the correct usage for @extend in Sass?
9:15 Will Google punish me for using image replacement?
16:35 #HOTDRAMA: Google’s style guide ignores “optional” tags
20:18 Which platform would guys suggest wordpress or a static site generator like octopress?
26:27 Have you guys heard of this tool called CSSComb?
30:12 Is there an index or resource for the visual styles when mocking up in PSD?
1. PatternTap
2. Web Zap
3. 35:05 Where would a logical starting spot be for learning backbone and and tips?
4. Todo.js
5. Introduction to Backbone (YouTube)
6. 41:16 Do you see site builders (Squarespace, Virb, WordPress, etc) as becoming a problem for web designers in the future?
7. 47:07 Is there a javascript plugin somewhere that builds a product grid with DIVs?
8. 49:20 Can you guys tell once and for ever : is indenting -9999px dangerous or not?

Sponsors

24:13 Mijingo – Screencast for serious developers. Use the code HOTDRAMA to get Static Websites with Jekyll and Basics of Markdown for $15.
38:16 Environments for Humans – Conferences for web people.
- Nov 12th – Mobile JavaScript Summit
- Nov 13-14-15th – JavaScript Summit

Use code SHOPTALKSHOW — that’s good for 20% off at both conferences

This week we were joined by Laura Kalbag, a freelance designer from Surrey in the UK. She’s done some work you might be familiar with, like the “Future Of …” conference websites. Laura talks about responsive design and what it’s like being a web designer in a modern and fresh way. We talk about (roughly in order):

Hot Drama

3:32 UX is Bullocks
6:38 The “truth” about HTML5. QUOTATION MARKS MINE.
9:22 WebPlatform.org

Q & A

19:37 What’s your process of designing a website? Laura mentions Sketch.
23:44 What do you see as the challenges for designers designing for Responsive design and how do see them being addressed?
29:26 What your go-to plugins are when developing a WordPress theme? ( Chris’ list) Laura liked Advanced Custom Fields.
38:10 How do you recommend incorporating a CSS reset into a Sass workflow?
43:02 How difficult do you find it to “sell” responsive web design to smaller clients?
51:40 Will we start seeing more horizontally scrolling sites with vertical media queries instead of the standard (vice versa)?
55:40 Do you have any recommendations about how I should start giving life to my designs through color?
1:00:17 Which size screen do you start designing for first? What about coding for?

Sponsors

34:54 PeepCode – High quality instructional videos on a variety of tech subjects. For instance, this bundle of design videos that show top designers work through design problems out loud and on camera.
46:20 Environments for Humans – Conferences for web people. For instance, InControl Conference and CSS Dev Conf coming up the first week of December.

Another RAPIDFIRE episode of ShopTalk! No guests, no #hotdrama, no news, just all steaming hot question on answer action. We talk about (roughly in order):

2:20 Golden rules for freelancers or sub contractors for protecting themselves.
7:58 What to do when your working environment is getting too complicated for you to feel effective.
17:08 What happens with ems on retina displays? Do they change? What about rems?
27:58 How do you load mobile specific stylesheets in WordPress with wp_enqueue_style()?
34:32 Should you use fake data for development in the early days of a web app?
39:50 Can you size icon fonts like you might size an image in a flexible design, taking up 100% of the width of a container like an image might?
53:18 Is it OK to use Dreamweaver for a code editor?
1:01:20 I’m 16 – what should my hourly rate be?
1:13:59 Can you convert CSS into SCSS?

Sponsors

48:40 Mijingo – Screencast for serious developers. One recent release of theirs is about Jekyll, a static site generator on Ruby.
25:00 Environments for Humans – Conferences for web people. Upcoming conferences include InControl Conf and CSS Dev Conf, back to back in Honolulu Hawaii this early December.

Another RAPIDFIRE episode of ShopTalk! No guests, no #hotdrama, no news, just all steaming hot question on answer action. We talk about (roughly in order):

(1:47) How do you prevent padding adding to the width of an element?
(8:05) Where do you start contributing on GitHub?
(13:20) Are there performance considerations for including multiple identical media queries?
(24:10) How can you print background colors and images? (WebKit: :root { -webkit-print-color-adjust: exact; })
(31:47) What’s up with IE VM’s?
(35:10) What do we think of Google’s style guides?
(43:00) Can we make the server help us with responsive images?
(52:46) Are landing pages a no-no in modern web design?
(57:20) Is there a way to solve hover menus on touch screen devices?
(1:03:22) What should I learn next? Classic.

Sponsors

(21:00) Mijingo – Screencasts for people serious about learning web development. They have recently released a screencast on Jekyll — learn how to build a static site generator in Ruby.
(39:32) Environments for Humans – Conferences for web people. Upcoming conferences include InControl Conf and CSS Dev Conf in Honolulu, Hawaii.

No guests, No drama. Just all question on answer action! We talk about (roughly in order):

(1:22) On a site where WordPress is overkill but you need a blog, what do you use?
(6:53) Can you @font-face fonts that come on your Mac?
(12:11) How do you deal with sorting a responsive data table?
(17:32) How do we stay motivated?
(22:43) How do you implement responsive images in WordPress?
(28:53) What is the best way to load checkbox states from a database in an Ajax-y app?
(33:22) Why are we polyfilling media queries for IE 8 and below?
(36:55) Is there a way get Sass to output all media queries at the end of the document rather than peppered througout?

Another RAPIDFIRE episode of ShopTalk! No guests, no #hotdrama, no news, just all steaming hot question on answer action. We talk about (roughly in order):

(2:07) How can you minify CSS when you use WordPress? WordPress needs a special block of comments at the top of the CSS file for the theme to work.
(6:18) What do we need ems for? What is the payoff?
(15:20) How we can create equal height div with only css?
(22:42) What internet security software do we use for Mac?
(26:46) Is there a way to style individual letters of a string with just CSS?
(29:54) How do you integrate GitHub into a real web publishing workflow?
(39:13) A client wants to hide page titles in WordPress. Isn’t that bad SEO?
(40:32) Understanding the purpose behind data-* attributes in HTML5.
(47:44) Are frameworks just not for me, or am I missing the point?

Sponsors

(20:30) Converge FL – A conference for web people who like to make the web a little happier and friendlier. Tallahassee, Florida on October 4-5, 2012.
(36:48) Environments for Humans – Conference for web folks. InControl Conference is coming up in Honolulu, Hawaii this December 2-4, 2012. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for $100 off.

This week we were joined by Brad Frost, a web designer and developer who is doing a lot these days for the responsive web design movement. He’s created things like Mobile Web Best Practices and This Is Responsive. We talk about (roughly in order):

Q & A

(14:55) What are our go-to WordPress plugins? ( these)
(16:18) Life beyond the final breakpoint
(21:47) Isn’t adaptive design better?
(32:24) How do you deal with a grid when you start with mobile first?
(42:45) Ems, rems, percentages, etc. in responsive design, including media queries. ( Link about using em’s for breakpoints)
(51:52) What is a good UI/UX conference to go to?
(57:57) How do you deal with the “view desktop version | view mobile version” thing?
(1:07:12) Who’s responsive design would be better? Batman or Flash?

Sponsors

(30:40) Harvest – Time tracking, time analysis, and invoicing for people that do client work on computers. Make sure to check out their Mac app as well as iOS and Android apps.
(51:12) Environments for Humans – All three of us in this episode are going to be at InControl Conf and CSS Dev Conf in Honolulu Hawaii this December 2-5, 2012.

More Brad

@brad_frost
bradfrostweb.com

This week we were joined by Jeremy Keith, long time super genius. Jeremy works at Clearleft in what he dubs the Research & Development arm. He built Huffduffer, wrote HTML5 for Web Designers (amongst other books), and is an all around swell chap from Brighton, UK. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

(21:50) Crowd Favorite is hiring.
(23:40) Jen Simmons & Eric Meyer are creating The Web Behind.
(27:46) Clearleft is too.

Q & A

(10:08), (28:48) Why is there no element? And the Scooby-Doo algorithm.
(31:40) HTML5 has a bunch of stuff in it to benefit everybody… except developers?
(40:30) Is mobile first design hindering creativity?
(51:40) Will HTML5 mobile apps ever be as efficient as Native apps? Is that the right question?
(51:40) Bonus CSS riddle.

Sponsors

(38:20) Squarespace – A web app for building powerful and beautiful websites. Use coupon SHOPTALK9 for 10% off any purchase.
(49:40) Environments for Humans – Upcoming conferences include three back-to-back online conferences: Accessibility Summit, UX Web Summit, and the Content Strategy Summit. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off.

More Jeremy

Adactio.com
@adactio

This week we were joined by long time WordPress contributor and entrepreneur Alex King. Alex has been kicking ass on WordPress for longer than we’ve known it was a thing. He is now the proprietor of Crowd Favorite which does large scale client work and creates find products such as RAMP and Carrington Build. We talk about (roughly in order):

News ‘n’ Links ‘n’ Drama

7:30 “The Flowing Standard”

Q & A

11:40 How do you keep a WordPress database in sync between local development and the live server?
20:58 For someone just getting started with WordPress and wants to run a business around it, what should you focus on, what should your goals be, and how do you stay motivated?
35:52 What is the difference between WP_Query and query_posts?
42:07 Do you ever give clients multiple environments of a site (e.g. staging and production)?
46:25 Now that RAMP is a thing, is it shifting the attitude or creating more interesting around WordPress in enterprise / large companies?
50:58 How do you get started theming a WordPress site? Are there starter themes?
56:24 What is our take on the Akisment plugin for WordPress (since it costs money)?
58:42 Is it OK to hide page/post titles in WordPress? Isn’t that bad SEO?

Sponsors

34:20 Breaking Development (BD) Conf – An upcoming conference at the lovely Gaylord Texan in Dallas, Texas. BD Conf is all about the web as it exists “beyond the desktop”. Chris will be there! Use coupon code TXSHOPP for $200 off.
49:11 Environments for Humans – Conferences for us web folk. Upcoming face-to-face conferences include InControl and CSS Dev Conf, both in Hawaii this early December! Use coupon code SHOPTALK for $100 off tickets.

This week we are joined by Estelle Weyl. Estelle is a contract front end design engineer who has worked with a long list of big name companies. She has written a number of tech books, working on several more, and speaks at dozens of conferences a year. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

FontPrep – Like the Font Squirrel @font-face generator on a Mac app you run locally.
Twitter API 1.1 Changes – #hotdrama
Picture element (Florian’s Compromise) now in dev specs.

Q & A

The type attribute and links – could browsers affect request headers and thus the content served from the same URL?
Do websites using the .mobi TLD render differently on iOS? (We say on the show probably not, but…)
What is Flexbox actually doing to do for us, on a practical level?
How can we get client approval when they are constantly throwing up road blocks and steamrolling good designs?
What does “Front End Web Developer” actually mean? Do they need to know back end stuff as well?

Sponsors

Environments for Humans – Honolulu, Hawaii, Web Nerds: InControl Conference and CSS Dev Conf. Save $100 with coupon SHOPTALK
Squarespace – A web app for building websites. Use coupon code SHOPTALK8 for 10% off any purchase.

More Estelle

@estellevw
standardista.com

Matt is the co-founder of WordPress ( .org, .com) and and essentially the head dude there and at Akismet, VaultPress, Gravatar, bbPress… you know, a few things (see: Automattic). We talk about (roughly in order):

Q & A

Will you get more traffic just being on WordPress vs being on Blogger?
What do you need to consider before you start storing sensitive information on the web like Social Security Numbers? (For starters, PCI compliance)
Can you recommend a blank starter theme for WordPress? ( _s)
A young developer asks: what should I learn next? (ya’ll know the chorus)
Wouldn’t it be easier just to build a responsive admin rather than a separate native app for WordPress?
What kind of apps would Matt like to see be built on WordPress?
How do you deal with WordPress security? ( book)
re: Culture of Distraction – How does Matt stay focused?

Sponsors

Harvest – Time tracking for professionals. Coupon code SHOPTALK is good for 50% off first month or 10% of a yearly plan.
Environments for Humans – Conferences for web people. Coupon code SHOPTALK is good for $100 off InControl.

More Matt

Automattic.com
Ma.tt
@photomatt

This week we were joined by Rebecca Murphey. She is a JavaScript developer currently working for Bocoup and creating a training curriculum (something she has experience in doing). Her blog is a must-read for modern day JavaScript devs. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

$foo syntax for CSS variables dropped. Good or bad?
Rebecca’s Net Mag drama: an official statement.

Q & A

Do you prefer function declarations or expressions and why?
Is JavaScript at it’s peak? What is JavaScript’s future?
What do we think about Adapt.js for responsive design?
GitHub Etiquette
How do you write tests when your only public functions are init();?
Is it OK to charge when you’re still learning?

Sponsors

Squarespace – A web app for building websites. Use code SHOPTALK8 for 10% off any purchase.
Environments for Humans – Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off the Responsive Web Design Summit (online) or $100 off InControl Conference (Hawaii).

More Rebecca

Blog: Adventures in JavaScript Development
@rmurphey

This week we were joined by Tab Atkins. Tab is a member of the CSS Working Group in the W3C and contributes to several other working groups. He is an employee of Google with the title Web Standards Hacker. We talk about (roughly in order):

Followup

Josh Dyck wrote in with a link to an article by Lee Blue on automating database syncing.

hotdrama

Dave and Ryan Irelan go freaky friday. Dave is using Sublime Text 2 all week and Ryan is going Coda 2 all week.
TextMate goes open source.

Q & A

Why don’t CSS float clear themselves? (Or, their parents)
Where does Tab land on the whole srcset/picture thing?
Making animations smoother (and stuff)
Why are there margins, borders, and padding? Shouldn’t those just be one thing?
Is higher education necessary in web dev?
Do you need to encode characters anymore or can you just use symbols right in code?

Sponsor

Environments for Humans – Upcoming conferences include Responsive Web Design Summit (online) and CSS Dev Conf (Hawaii)

More Tab

xanthir.com
@tabatkins

This week we were joined by by the amazing designer and “pixel perfectionist” Allison House. Allison has worked with a number of big web/tech education companies like Treehouse and Code Academy. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links

Prism
Other podcasts Chris likes

Q & A

How do you get better at Photoshop?
How often should you change jobs?
Should you stick with what you know to get work done, or always be learning?
What are the new layout methods and when can we start using them?
Do we use CSS grid systems?
Can you transition pseudo elements? ( not really, yet)
What is the benefit of semantic markup? Why is HTML5 even a thing?

Sponsors

Environments for Humans – The Responsive Web Design Summit is coming up August 28th.
Squarespace – Everything you need to build an exceptional website. Save 10% off any purchase with coupon code shoptalk8

More Allison

allisonhou.se
@house

This week is a classic RAPIDFIRE where we get through as many reader questions as we can. No guests, no drama, just all question on answer action. We talk about (roughly in order):

Mental block on normalize.css
Need a bunch of icons for a site, use a sprite or make a font? ( Goldilocks, Baby bear, Mama bear, Papa bear)
Keeping Twitter Bootstrap up to date in projects. Do you need to? (Dave mentioned diffing with Kalidescope)
Trello vs. Basecamp vs. ???
Keeping local and live databases in sync ( RAMP)
Backing up sites, including databases ( VaultPress)
Google Maps with intrinsic aspect ratios, can it be done?
What to get for legit hosting for $500 a year ( MediaTemple (dv), probalby)
Reselling domains and hosting for clients. A good idea?
Do non-JS users really exist? Are there stats? ( Remy sharp’s technique, 2010 data from Yahoo)
Why aren’t data URI’s used more often?

Sponsors

Crafting Type – A 5-day design workshop for designing type in Edmonton, Alberta.
Environments for Humans – Upcoming conferences include In Control in Hawaii followed directly by the CSS Dev Conf.

This week we were joined by the legendary Dan Cederholm. Dan is the author of (dare we say) the best books ever written on CSS including Handcrafted CSS, CSS3 for Web Designers, and Bulletproof Web Design. He’s done some very high end client work, founded a few startups, and has done a bunch of speaking. Most notably these days, Dan is the founder and half the team at Dribbble. We talk about (roughly in order):

Hot Drama

.net magazine publishes a “Optimize your Javascript” by Joe Angus. Rebecca Murphey posts this which basically calls out a lot of the content in the article. Oliver Lindberg, the magazines editor, responded and Rebecca responded back.

We’re still talking about IE. But should we be?

News ‘n’ Links ‘n’ Followup

Lovely quote by Chuck Close (thx Dan Miner)
Uncle Dave solved the fluid Google Maps thing.

Q & A

How can you help (and how do you approach) responsive designs on existing websites?
He’s been out of the game since 2004, how does he get back in?
How do you charge clients for the fonts that you buy?
What is the back end of Dribbble?
How did Dan get the idea for Dribbble?
Will Dribbble allow for higher resolution shots?
What up with Dribbbleboard.com (stuff about API usage)
Will Dribbble ever do a conference?
Sure, “Just Build Websites”, but where to get feedback on those websites?

Sponsors

Environments for Humans have some great conferences coming up in Hawaii: In Control runs back to back with CSS Dev Conf. All three of us in this show will be there!
Harvest is time tracking and invoicing software for anyone in client services. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 50% off your first month.

More Dan

simplebits.com
@simplebits

This week we were joined by the talented design and developer David DeSandro. David was formerly nClud and recently joining Twitter in New York. David is known for some amazing projects like Masonry, http://isotope.metafizzy.co/, the 2011 BeerCamp site, and extensive documentation on 3D transforms. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links

Paul Irish on IE’s new updating plan
jQuery 2.0 (in 2013) dropping IE 8. And how it’s probably not too big of a deal since you can load 1.9 conditionally.

Q & A

CSS3 creeping in on JavaScript territory. Is it really? Do we care?
Why can’t you inset text shadows?
Do you have to be the best of the best to work at a big company?
I think I might have a case of divitus.
Working on an HTML5 url input polyfill and need a regex.
Apps that have in-app browsers, are they just WebKit?
What steps do we take to ensure usability and accessibility? Resources?
What is the performance of Masonry on older browsers?
Who is your Yoda?
David is colorblind. ( resource links)

Sponsors

Harvest – Time tracking and invoicing for anyone in client services. Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 50% off the first month.
Environments for Humans – upcoming conferences include the CSS Summit and In Control.

More David

desandro.com
@desandro

This week we were joined by Rogie King, a talented illustrator and web designer living in (as he calls it) the armpit of the internet: Helena, Montana. Rogie has a super unique cartoonish illustration style but is by no means limited to that. He is also a very detail oriented web designer, Mac app interface designer, entrepreneur, and family man. We talk about (roughly in order):

News n’ Links

jQuery 1.8 Beta announcement is pretty awesome.
Tab Atkins research for CSS4 Colors is also pretty awesome.
Dan Gold has all the good jokes.

Q & A

Fireworks (versus?) Illustrator
Dribbble: do we need to define what it’s for? Is it for final work or works in progress?
WordPress, WooCommerce, and selling online in general
Daaaaaang. How you so good Rogie?
How to get started with Mac app design. What are the deliverables?
Making time for life.
Why hasn’t Disney hired Rogie yet? Would he even work there?

Sponsors

Enviornments for Humans are doing some upcoming conferences including the CSS Summit (online) and Incontrol (in Hawaii). Guess what? Both Dave and Chris will be at both events.

More Rogie

Rog.ie
@rogie
Fine Goods Market
Rogie on Dribbble

This we were joined by Jessica Hische, a prolific and talented letterer (listen in to find out what that term means specifically) living in San Francisco. She’s also a darn good web designer and creator of many hilarious and useful side projects. We talk about (roughly in order):

Introduction n’ Hot Links

Interlink
What lettering is and how it fits into the typography world.
Moonrise Kingdom (has Jessica’s lettering work in it)
Chris is doing two big new things: CodePen and a Kickstarter.
Southstreet – collection of fancy tools by Filament Group to help with cross-device web design
CSS variables landing in WebKit
PayPal’s thin re-design

Q & A

Working with a small team of folks and feeling like you only do the easy stuff.
Pricing for clients ( Should I work for free?)
Tricks for better font rendering on Windows (see this, picking a that is of high quality, webtype)
What are the easiest letters to get started illustrating? (and a fancy word you can start with).
How do you make colors look good on all monitors?
Should you go through with an $80k design and development degree if you already have a job?
How do you deal with non-paying clients?

Sponsors

Thanks to Environments for Humans for their ongoing sponsorship! Upcoming conferences include the CSS Summit where both Chris and Dave will be speaking and InControl Hawaii where Chris and Dave will also be, and Jessica is keynoting!

More Jessica

Personal Site & Portfolio
@jessicahische
Don’t Fear the Internet
Daily Drop Cap
Mom, this is how Twitter works

This week we were joined by Nicole Sullivan, a long time web veteran, originator of OOCSS, CSS lint, and tons more. Nicole is definitely a thought leader in the modern web development world who is often ahead of us all. We’ve watched OOCSS start out as this abstract and highly criticized concept turn into a pretty commonplace practice on large sites. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

Matt Wilcox on The Responsive Images Problem
IE 7 Tax – Company literally charging 6.8% more for products they sell online if browser is IE 7.

Q & A

Isn’t OOCSS just moving CSS bloat into HTML bloat?
Is there going to be a book on OOCSS?
Recognizing when many elements have the same classes, and making a new class that @extends the old ones.
Can you use the body element like you would a page-wrapping div?
What tools to we suggest for validation in the modern world, especially as part of a workflow?
How does SMACSS compare/contrast to OOCSS?
When do you call yourself a professional designer or developer?
How about universally setting elements to position: relative;

Sponsored by

Environments for Humans and specifically the CSS Summit (July 31-August 2) in which all three of us in the episode are presenting!

More Nicole

Website
“Don’t Feed The Trolls”
OOCSS
CSS Lint
@stubbornella

This week we were joined by Mat “Wilto” Marquis. He’s now a full timer at Filament group in Boston who, while doing client work (like The Boston Globe, have you heard of it?), have done some amazing open source work for the modern web (e.g. major contributions to jQuery UI and Mobile). Mat chair’s the Responsive Images Community Group and has been front in center in the work (or shall we say, #hotdrama) toward dealing with responsive images in web design. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

Kicktastic
Mike Evans: 23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?
RWD Calc
Coda 2
Axis

Q & A

What up with Filament’s Enhance.js (new beterness coming!)
Can we as authors just choose not to use features we don’t like?
Is the RICG (the so-called “picture pushing club”) lazy? (Hint: no. Here’s a link to a recent compromise).
Should designers now be making all sites responsive? And thus prices going up?
How does a business like Wade’s Tree Service get decent SEO and avoid shady over-promising services?
Can we improve the aesthetics of websites during the loading process?
What up with Opera Mini?
What is / should we always be using Progressive JPGs?
Resources for staying on top of responsive web design: @RWD, @brad_frost

Sponsored By

Mijingo – Screencasts for Web Designers & Developers. Use code HOTDRAMA for 10% off videos about Python, Markdown, ExpressionEngine CMS, OmniFocus and Evernote.
WPSummit – The online, live WordPress Design and Development Conference. Use coupon code BACON for 10% off!

More Wilto

@wilto
matmarquis.com
filamentgroup.com
Wizard Staff

More big, bad, question on answer action. We talk about (roughly in order):

Ajax pagination, WordPress, and SEO
Developers who insist on screwing up semantic markup
Resources for getting started with Git ( roundup by Brad Frost)
Comparing/Confusing Git and FTP
Responsive images, the tag, and picking a solution
Finding, removing, and dealing with unused styles in CSS
Using Google Analytics as a tool in project upkeep
Is there a way to do overflow-x: hidden in browsers that don’t support it?
Email. Does it suck? Why are there no alternatives?
CSS image replacement. Why can’t we just chuck an in a

tag and call it a day? Is that just as good for search engines? Sponsored by

Mijingo – Video Training and Screencasts for Web Designers & Developers

This week we were joined by Gene Crawford, master of the South Carolinian Internet and commander of the triforce that is Unmatched Style. Gene cut his teeth doing client work for many years and now does spectacular web conferences like ConvergeSE. We talk about (roughly in order):

Followup’n’Drama:

Running is good for your back
Louis Lazaris on Health Tips for Web Developers
Opera gets Webkitty
Vendor bang bang Vendor bang bang

Q & A

Hey great job. But what if we used Squarespace instead?
How many years of experience do you really have?
How are we handling images for the “retina” display?
Do we start the design process with actual pen and paper? Or something like Balsamiq. Also, Styletil.es
Where do you add brand new CSS styles into an existing project? How do you stay organized?
What tools do we use for testing usability of websites? Silverback.

Dave’s dog is a troublemaker.

Sponsored by

Mijingo – Video Training and Screencasts for Web Designers & Developers

Winners of the Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3 book

Jeremy Worboys
Barry Maxwell
Kyle Gordy

More Gene

@genecrawford / @unmatchedstyle
crawfishstudios.com
period-three.com
unmatchedstyle.com
convergeSE.com

It’s RAPIDFIRE time! No guests, no hot drama, and sadly this week no sponsors. We just dig into as many questions as we can. We talk about (roughly in order):

Should clients have to pay for security updates?
When to use a PHP framework like Yii, CodeIgniter or CakePHP
How, Why, and When to use modern support tools like Modernizr
Why is there no “wrapper” pseudo elements?
Couldn’t we achieve what CSS preprocessors can do with PHP?
Dealing with health and a sedentary lifestyle
Interactive elements in jQuery UI vs native HTML5
Finding clever domain names (Try Domainr or Thsrs)
Disappear an image on scroll down
Using JavaScript to insert/remove content at different width breakpoints
Pricing yourself and the awkwardness of asking for money
Making a triangle with shadow in just HTML/CSS ( Dabblet)

This week we were joined by Ian Stewart, a Theme Wrangler for Automattic working on WordPress themes for WordPress.com, the biggest Automattic project. We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama

Chrome 20 supporting date and color input types as well as scoped CSS behind a flag
Running stable and canary Chrome side by side
Semicolons

Q & A

About WordPress MultiSite
Dealing with clients who are confused about the “admin” of WordPress and when/if to bring the power of creating posts to the front end
The difference between WordPress and Drupal
Syncing databases ( ramp)
Boilerplate theme with child themes, and overriding functions/parts of the parent
Are Gantt charts useful?
Can you break out into the industry without going to college?
How to spellcheck your site both within WordPress and the code itself. ( After the Deadline, turn on spellcheck feature in your code editor)

Sponsors

LessMoney – A conference in Tampa, FL about running a better business and making more money.

More Ian

ThemeShaper
iandanielstewart.com
@iandstewart

This week we were joined by Jenn Lukas and Allison Wagner who are front end web developers at Happy Cog (Philadelphia).

Links’n’Drama

Tim Kadlec’s research on resource downloading
JS2Coffee.org
Drinking at Conferences ( Ryan Funduck’s blog post)

Q & A

Single line vs. Multi line CSS (findability, information density, CSS3 issues, comments, etc)
Level of JavaScript knowledge
What to learn next / Is higher education necessary for a career in web development?
Dirty code / Clean code awareness
Meeting other front end devs (Montreal and elsewhere)
Do we use reference charts for HTML and CSS while coding, or is it all memorized? (We ended up talking about some generator tools like these two gradient generators)

Sponsors

Harvest – Time/Expense tracking and invoicing app. Use coupon SHOPTALK for 50% off the first month.
LessMoney – A small intimate conference about making more money in Tampa, FL.

More about Jenn and Allison

@jennlukas – jennlukas.com – Happy Cog – .net Magazine monthly columnist
@alliwagner – Happy Cog

No guests this week, as we plow through as much question on answer action as possible. Don’t worry, you’re regular installment of hot drama will be back soon. We talk about (roughly in order):

The way we interact with websites on desktops/laptops vs touch screen devices is extremely different. How do we deal with that?
Indentation in HTML (styles, and how that relates to View Source and CMS’s).
How to improve your CSS skills.
How and why to use the HTML5 Boilerplate. ( Paul’s intro to it).
How do you attract clients as a designer?
Settings margins/padding/height/width in PX or EM? Why? Can you use both?
Use separate stylesheets linked up from the head with media query attributes, or combine into a single file (“external” vs “internal”)?
What’s up with “responsive images”?
Navigation that appears on all pages of a site without repeating yourself.
If you’re writing backend code like PHP, should we be using an IDE like NetBeans?
How much money should designers/developers be making?
Categorizing online inspiration
Will the .scss syntax ever be standardized as regular CSS?

In this second edition of RAPIDFIRE we again chug through as many questions as we can. No guests, no links, no hot drama. We want to answer as many listener questions as we can, so this is how we plan to catch up once in a while. We talk about (roughly in order):

What’s wrong with UA sniffing to serve a mobile stylesheet?
What are the 5 CSS tricks we can’t live without?
What’s up with HTML5 video streaming?
How can you modernize your front end development skills?
What are the books/blogs/designers that we follow?
Are margin and padding interchangeable?
HTML preprocessors with parsing smarts.
Will we talk about IE7 for less time than we talked about IE6?
Why use the Google CDN version of jQuery rather than the latest version from jQuery.com?
WordPress or Tumblr?
Where can you get more engaging code reviews?
What to focus on as a front-end dev?

This week we were joined by Trent Walton and Reagan Ray, who together with our very own Dave complete the Paravel triforce down in Austin, Texas. We talked about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links

Best practices in forms. We should definitely talk about this in more detail in an upcoming episode, but this week we took the opportunity to say just use Wufoo.
Rémy Bach’s medium-sized jQuery SuperLabels
TypeButter and inventing new elements.
Adobe WebKit Hackathon includes a start to ::nth-letter which is a start to answering ::nth-everything and possibly, many many years from now, removing the need for Lettering.js.

Q&A

Has Paravel ever done any products, in addition to client work? Goodfoot is one example, but closing of Gowalla doesn’t bode well for it. Also side projects like The Many Faces Of…
What CMS does Trent use and how does he do custom art direction ( art direction plugin, Dave’s better fork of that)
Dealing with client requests that are beyond the skills of the team
Using HTML5 and CSS3 in real client work
The domain stealing saga, and the tragedy that is SohTanaka.com
Is it best to specialize? What about as a team member vs trying to get hired?
Growing in revenue and project quality without growing team size
How to bundle HTML email in with client services
Topics for a graduate thesis related to the web industry

Sponsors

LessMoney – A Conference in Tampa, FL on July 7th all about building a better business. As in, one that makes more money and is less stressful to run.

… which runs back to back with …

Front-End Design Conference – a two-day one-track conference about all things front-end web in St. Petersburg, FL (sister cities with Tampa) on July 8th and 9th.

More Paravel

@raygunray / reaganray.com

@trentwalton / trentwalton.com

This week we were joined by Jina Bolton, a talented designer and developer. She’s currently working for Do.com ( @DoWorkTogether) and helping out with the SASS website redesign ( @TeamSassDesign). We talk about (roughly in order):

News’n’Links’n’Drama:

Magento Boilerplate
Picturefill, a polyfill for ``
More followup on tracking print usage on websites: Stephanie Hobson’s thoughts and research.
CSS for Grown Ups: Slides and Audio
Hot Drama on potential removing of swearing from Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML5.
Mozilla begrudgingly adopts H264

Q&A:

Google+’s HTML
Handing off between front end and back end developers
vs. for icons
What programs do we design with
Getting called out on terminal usage
Will using preprocessors too much make us forget the orignal language?
Differences and usage of @mixin vs. @extend
Learning of the newfangled

Sponsors:

LessMoney – A conference in sunny Tampa, FL on July 7th about building a better business
Hover – Save 10% off your order from the best place to buy domain names

More Jina:

@jina
sushiandrobots.com
Art in my Coffee

This week we were joined by Doug Neiner, a senior designer and engineer at AppendTo. Doug is an equally talented at both those jobs and, as he put it, would have an awfully hard time choosing between them if he had to cut one. Doug found the perfect spot in his basement to record this show with us, directly underneath his router upstairs. He told us later he was sitting on a pile of broken glass. Sorry Doug! We talk about (roughly in order):

Hot Links

BeerCamp
Multi-Device Layout Patterns (mined from mediaqueri.es)

Q&A

Does there need to be any more jQuery plugins?
Learnings from the CSSOff
How do big websites like Hotels.com or Expedia.com get data?
What is the scope of handlebars.js in Front-End Development?
What’s up with floats? Why is there no simple float clearing property?
“Push” vs “Poll”
Working with build scripts
Steps after a recently becoming unemployed
Is there a tool to un-jQuery-fy something?
What’s up with Doug’s “Contextual jQuery” talks?

Sponsors

Hover – The best place to buy domains. Use that link and get 10% your entire order.
LessMoney – A conference in Tampa, FL on July 7th all about building a better and more successful business.

More Doug

@dougneiner
dougneiner.com / code.dougneiner.com

This week we were joined by Ethan Marcotte, our chauffeur into the brave new world of responsive web design. We’ve been getting a good amount of questions about RWD, so we’ve saved the best ones up for a special espisode from the man himself. We talk about (roughly in order):

Hot Links:

(4:20) – StyleDocco
(5:50) – Adobe Shadow
(7:40) – SenchaTouch 2
(8:15) – The Non-Breaking Space Show Crossover
(8:50) – The Industry Podcast

Q & A

(12:20) – What is responsive design?
(15:43) – When shouldn’t you use responsive design?
(24:26) – Using image sprites with responsive design?
(31:30) – Scaling images in responsive design
(37:27) – Responsive display advertising
(44:30) – Making the jQuery plugin DataTables responsive
Grid systems to help the transition into responsive design
(49:55) – Is hiding inline images good enough to prevent them from loading?
(53:40) – Embedded tweets in responsive design
(56:50) – Masonry style layouts

Lovely sponsors:

Hover – Buy domains without all the annoying cross-selling. Use that link and get 10% off your order.
LessMoney

Note: Dear Audiophiles, sorry about the choppy recording. Will work on it.

This week we were joined by Christopher Schmitt, Chris Enns (TRIPLE CHRIS SHOW!), and Dave McFarland. These are the fellas behind the new podcast The Non-Breaking Space Show. Watch their site, as we joined them immediately afterward to record an episode of their show (CROSSOVER SHOW!). We talk about (roughly in order)…

Followup:

We’ll be at SXSW. Follow @ShopTalkShow, we might have an impromptu meetup or something.
Nathaniel Higgins had a neat idea for tracking how often your page gets printed.

Q&A:

Roundtable on our preferred text editors, paid and free.
Can you get and display information from an RSS feed completely with JavaScript?
How to create a two column layout with a fixed left sidebar and a fluid right side main content area.
A bookmarklet on removing deprecated attributes, and how to promote yourself without being annoying.
How to write semantic HTML for a poem.
Will there be another dotcom bubble?
What TV shows are we?
What CMS would we choose if we could only choose one?
What homepage do we set our browsers to?

A full set of excellent sponsors this week!

Hover – Use that link and get 10% any order. Hover is the best place to buy domain names.
LessMoney – A conference in Tampa, FL on June 7th all about making more money.

More about the Non-Breaking Space fellas:

@teleject / christopherschmitt.com / Environments for Humans
@iChris / chrisenns.com / SSKTN
@davemcfarland / sawmac.com

No guests this week. We just chug through as many questions as possible. We plan to do one of these every so often to make sure we get to as many listener questions as possible. We talk about (roughly in order):

Q & A

(1:48) – What to focus on to move career forward
(4:35) – “Google” Dart
(6:35) – Clever uses of ::before and ::after
(8:05) – A brief intro and explanation of the difference between Node.js and CoffeeScript
(12:52) – Using PHP to serve CSS
(15:58) – Planning a framework
(18:57) – How Modernizr helps make cross browser compatible sites
(22:16) – Cleaning up the WordPress mess of plugins injecting CSS and JS
(25:53) – Why CSS opacity affects all decedent elements and what you can do about it
(28:40) – Finding the time
(30:59) – Pros and Cons of Blueprint CSS Framework
(34:05) – CSS rotation and poor text rendering
(36:00) – When will we be able to animate/transition pseudo elements? [chart]
(38:14) – Pixel tracking for emails and alternatives

This week we were joined by Zoe Gillenwater who we like to think of as one of the mothers of responsive design, in that she was talking and writing books about responsible fluid layouts for quite a long time. Add some media queries and you have what is essentially modern day responsive design. We talk about (roughly in order)…

Shoutouts:

Conferences: BarCamp Tour, InControl, LessConf, SXSW
Wufoo Demo, Wufoo Spanish

Q&A:

Are print stylesheets still important? How we approach them, some tips, and speculation on how their usage might be tracked.
CSS formatting (mentioned: Jeff Starr’s Obsessive CSS Formatting)
The new spec for CSS variables and how they stack up to LESS/SASS
Icon fonts like Pictos, performance concerns, and accessibility concerns.
Background images and fluid width layout. Example of background-size, jQuery BackStretch
Strategies for approaching CSS transitions/animations
Are we still using conditional stylesheets? Boilerplate html classes
Why is there no shorthand for the different text properties?

More Zoe:

@zomigi
zomigi.com

Giveaways:

Congrats on Keith Wyland, the first winner for the HTML and CSS Book Giveaway. We have two more books and we’ll give away one per week. Record an audio question to enter.
We have five copies of ProCSSor to give away. We’ll give away two this week. Any tweet that mentions @shoptalkshow and #procssor will be entered to win.

This week we were joined by Jeffrey Way who is a long-time Envato employee, probably most well known to our listeners by being the editor of Nettuts+. Jeffrey hails from the mountain town of Chattanooga, TN, home of the world’s fastest internet. We talk about (roughly in order)…

Follow up and hot drama:

Quick followup on Performer JS
Bootstrap, the most popular project on GitHub, goes 2.0
HTML5 Boilerplate goes 3.0 and removes Respond.js and the build script. And how how we mostly use it by just snagging individual lines from the GitHub repo.
Pea.rs, a collection of neat a clean mini design patterns with HTML and CSS
All the drama around -webkit-. Non-webkit browser vendors are thinking about supporting that prefix to more sites work, because of lazy developers not including other prefixes. Most folks are crying out that that’s a bad idea, but with different proposed solutions. Working group even considering standardizing around -webkit-. Read: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].

Question and answer:

Will Envato make a marketplace for iOS designs? Already kinda have on Code Canyon.
Battle of the code editors.
Should we be able to add class names via CSS?
How does Jeffrey do it all? Quotes: [1], [2]
How we test on IE: Browserstack, Virtualbox + Multiple Windows VMs, Actual $200 laptop

More Jeffrey:

@jeffrey_way / jeffrey-way.com
@envatowebdev / nettuts.com

Want to win a copy of the HTML & CSS Book? Just send in an audio question and you’ll be qualified to win. We’ll pick one winner a week for three weeks.

No sponsor this week =(. Wanna reach our audience? We’re thinking they are mostly spendy try-anything trend-setting types. Hit us up.

This week we were joined by Jonathan Longnecker and Nate Croft, who together form FortySeven Media, a design studio focusing on web design, branding, and ExpressionEngine development.

Audiophiles, pardon the echo we’ll work on that for the next show. We talked about (roughly in order):

Chris Taylor’s Performer JavaScript library (let’s revisit that next week).
Andreas Hedderich’s noise technique.
Whether or not website building apps (e.g. Squarespace, Virb) are putting web designers out of business.
How personality can affect the clients you bring in.
Designing in the browser vs. designing in Photoshop / Illustrator / Fireworks.
Apologizing for not sharing Windows alternatives (but how it doesn’t matter too much, since web == everywhere).
If there is every a good time to design for older browsers and leave it at that (not enhance for newer browsers at all).
Are there features of JavaScript we should watch for in older browsers, similar to how we have to watch out for non-support of HTML5 and CSS3 features.
Why Git/GitHub so popular and the workflow around it.

More on Jonathan Longnecker and Nate Croft:

Freshly redesigned fortysevenmedia.com / @47m
The Kick Awesome Show / @kickawesomeshow
@necker47 / @natecroft

Brought to you by LessAccounting.

This week we were joined by Chris Eppstein who is known for his work in the world of CSS preprocessing. But Chris has a deep history in the web, being a full stack developer for many years and for many different startups. This week, in loose order, we talk about:

A sweet new candidate for intro music by Chris Taylor.
Who various celebrities favorite HTML elements are.
How a preprocessor can help with better names for fonts, and ways to keep even that from being repetitive.
The difference between to similar looking CSS selectors.
How we might start thinking about JavaScript optimization.
Some “startup” tips.
How Coyier the Destroyer would win in a wrestling match against Chris Eppstein (after all the crying).
Sprites: why they are good and things to watch for ( Compass helper).
Testing on mobile devices on a budget ( Brad Frost’s article).

More on Chris:

Chris Eppstein
@chriseppstein
Compass
SASS
Caring.com

Like Compass? It’s charity ware so if you like it Chris asks you donate to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation (UMDF).

This show brought to you by LessAccounting and United Pixelworkers (save 10% off a shirt with code “shoptalk”).

This week we were joined by Paul Irish and we, you guessed it, talked shop! We answered a bunch of reader questions (including some sweet audio questions, thanks folks) and talked about (mostly in order):

The crazy cool Acko.net ( Three.js)
Pokémon
(6:25) jQuery on mobile devices
(12:10) How Paul got a job at Google ( Modernizr)
(15:16) The recent slight-more-popular SVG ( The Noun Project, Resolution Independence with SVG)
(19:42) CSS animations/transitions and using them in responsive design
(26:58) How to start contributing back to the community while garnering some reputation ( Moving the Web Forward, Compass)
(35:02) Approaching JavaScript on projects / using templating vs. pre-formatted HTML
(41:45) Styling a link’s active state

Find Paul:

Personal Website
Twitter
Google+
GitHub

Sponsored by LessAccounting

We are pleased to have the legendary Jonathan Snook, author of SMACSS, on the first ever episode of ShopTalk. We got things going with some listener-submitted questions. We couldn’t answer all the questions, but you should keep asking. Thanks for everyone who tuned in live and joined in on the IRC. We apologize for any technical errors. We’ll work on getting more bandwidth sorted out for next week so we don’t break the internet anymore.

Show Notes * Jonathan Snook

+ Snook.ca
+ SMACSS
+ prepareTransition – Launched today!

Books by Dan Cedarholm
OOCSS
deCSS3 – A bookmarklet to see how gracefully you’re degrading.
Modernizr

Sponsored by LessAccounting

Dave and Chris happen upon each other and decide to start a podcast… about shop. And talk. ShopTalk.