ShopTalk Show

By ShopTalkTechnology

ShopTalk Show episodes

June 25, 2013Special: Live from Front-End Conf
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
30 min
June 24, 2013074: With Noah Stokes
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
1 hr 4 min
June 18, 2013073: With Val Head
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
1 hr 1 min
June 10, 2013072: With Raquel Velez
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
1 hr 3 min
May 30, 2013071: RAPIDFIRE #17
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
59 min
May 30, 2013070: With Hampton Catlin
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
1 hr 2 min
May 21, 2013069: With Mike Taylor
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
1 hr
May 15, 2013068: With Ben Schwarz
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
1 hr 10 min
May 07, 2013067: With Pam Selle
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
1 hr 5 min
April 25, 2013066: RAPIDFIRE #16
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.
1 hr 17 min

About ShopTalk Show

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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.

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