ShopTalk

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 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 Can a web designer in isolation in India get better at design? (Jeffrey hooks up Karthik) Was A List Apart one of the first websites to every use CSS (floats) for layout? (Todd Fahrner and Tantek Çelik are heros) What is the biggest change you’ve seen in the industries history? Sponsors 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. 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. What is the correct usage for @extend in Sass? Will Google punish me for using image replacement? #HOTDRAMA: Google’s style guide ignores “optional” tags Which platform would guys suggest wordpress or a static site generator like octopress? Have you guys heard of this tool called CSSComb? Is there an index or resource for the visual styles when mocking up in PSD? PatternTap Web Zap Where would a logical starting spot be for learning backbone and and tips? Todo.js Introduction to Backbone (YouTube) Do you see site builders (Squarespace, Virb, WordPress, etc) as becoming a problem for web designers in the future? Is there a javascript plugin somewhere that builds a product grid with DIVs? Can you guys tell once and for ever : is indenting -9999px dangerous or not? Sponsors Mijingo – Screencast for serious developers. Use the code HOTDRAMA to get Static Websites with Jekyll and Basics of Markdown for $15. 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 UX is Bullocks The “truth” about HTML5. QUOTATION MARKS MINE. WebPlatform.org Q & A What’s your process of designing a website? Laura mentions Sketch. What do you see as the challenges for designers designing for Responsive design and how do see them being addressed? What your go-to plugins are when developing a WordPress theme? (Chris’ list) Laura liked Advanced Custom Fields. How do you recommend incorporating a CSS reset into a Sass workflow? How difficult do you find it to “sell” responsive web design to smaller clients? Will we start seeing more horizontally scrolling sites with vertical media queries instead of the standard (vice versa)? Do you have any recommendations about how I should start giving life to my designs through color? Which size screen do you start designing for first? What about coding for? Sponsors 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. Environments for Humans – Conferences for web people. For instance, InControl Conference and CSS Dev Conf coming up the first week of December. More Laura laurakalbag.com @laurakalbag

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): Golden rules for freelancers or sub contractors for protecting themselves. What to do when your working environment is getting too complicated for you to feel effective. What happens with ems on retina displays? Do they change? What about rems? How do you load mobile specific stylesheets in WordPress with wp_enqueue_style()? Should you use fake data for development in the early days of a web app? 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? Is it OK to use Dreamweaver for a code editor? I’m 16 – what should my hourly rate be? Can you convert CSS into SCSS? Sponsors Mijingo – Screencast for serious developers. One recent release of theirs is about Jekyll, a static site generator on Ruby. 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): How do you prevent padding adding to the width of an element? Where do you start contributing on GitHub? Are there performance considerations for including multiple identical media queries? How can you print background colors and images? (WebKit: :root { -webkit-print-color-adjust: exact; }) What’s up with IE VM’s? What do we think of Google’s style guides? Can we make the server help us with responsive images? Are landing pages a no-no in modern web design? Is there a way to solve hover menus on touch screen devices? What should I learn next? Classic. Sponsors 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. 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): On a site where WordPress is overkill but you need a blog, what do you use? Can you @font-face fonts that come on your Mac? How do you deal with sorting a responsive data table? How do we stay motivated? How do you implement responsive images in WordPress? What is the best way to load checkbox states from a database in an Ajax-y app? Why are we polyfilling media queries for IE 8 and below? 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): 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. What do we need ems for? What is the payoff? How we can create equal height div with only css? What internet security software do we use for Mac? Is there a way to style individual letters of a string with just CSS? How do you integrate GitHub into a real web publishing workflow? Are frameworks just not for me, or am I missing the point? A client wants to hide page titles in WordPress. Isn’t that bad SEO? Understanding the purpose behind data-* attributes in HTML5. Sponsors 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. 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 What are our go-to WordPress plugins? (these) Life beyond the final breakpoint Isn’t adaptive design better? How do you deal with a grid when you start with mobile first? Ems, rems, percentages, etc. in responsive design, including media queries. (Link about using em’s for breakpoints) What is a good UI/UX conference to go to? How do you deal with the “view desktop version | view mobile version” thing? Who’s responsive design would be better? Batman or Flash? Sponsors 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. 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 Crowd Favorite is hiring. Clearleft is too. Jen Simmons & Eric Meyer are creating The Web Behind. Q & A Why is there no

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 “The Flowing Standard” Q & A How do you keep a WordPress database in sync between local development and the live server? 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? What is the difference between WP_Query and query_posts? Do you ever give clients multiple environments of a site (e.g. staging and production)? Now that RAMP is a thing, is it shifting the attitude or creating more interesting around WordPress in enterprise / large companies? How do you get started theming a WordPress site? Are there starter themes? What is our take on the Akisment plugin for WordPress (since it costs money)? Is it OK to hide page/post titles in WordPress? Isn’t that bad SEO? Sponsors 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. 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. More Alex AlexKing.org @alexkingorg

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