10 ways the role of web designer is changing — from creativebloq.comby Sush Kelly

From DSC:
In my experience, there are numerous demanding aspects to being or becoming a web designer, as you have to:

  • Purchase the necessary software and hardware as well as find the funding for a hosting service / Internet service provider in order to start gaining some serious experience (at least for a good share of us that was/is the case); this is an expensive proposition if you want to do things well these days
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  • Constantly keep learning about new things — as the pace of change on the web is staggering
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  • Design for an ever increasing amount of devices — though responsive design is changing this situation up quite a bit
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  • Give up control at times (i.e. not like the print world)
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  • Deal with extremely unrealistic expectations from clients, corporations, and hiring managers/personnel who often don’t know what’s actually involved; what they often ask for is a designer, a programmer, a project manager, an account manager and more all wrapped into one position (and forget about a well-laid out career track as in the golden corporate days of old.  You have to make your own career and hope that you can survive the ever changing landscapes — as well as get through a fair amount of age-discrimination and people who don’t want to pay you for all the hard-earned experience you’ve gained.)

HTML5DevConf – October 2012 — Recordings

Excerpt:

What is the HTML5 Developer Conference?

The HTML5 Developer Conference has become the largest JavaScript and HTML5 developers conference in the world! With a number of varying and expanding approaches, tools, best practices, and advice to be had, there’s a lot of new information to wrap your head around.

We provide tracks on Javascript, HTML5, Apps & Games, client, server, mobile, and more. See leading edge sessions given by renowned speakers…

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#DevLearn 2012 Conference Backchannel – Curated Resources — from/by David Kelly

Excerpt:

This post collects the resources shared via the backchannel of The eLearning Guild’s 2012 DevLearn Conference, being held October 31 – November 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I am a huge proponent of backchannel learning.  There are many conferences I would love to be able to attend, but my budget can only accommodate one or two each year.  The backchannel is an excellent resource for learning from a conference or event that you are unable to attend in-person.

I find collecting and reviewing backchannel resources to be a valuable learning experience for me, even when I am attending a conference in person.  Sharing these collections on this blog has shown that others find value in the collections as well.

 

 

Some examples:

 

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Also see:

 

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HTML5 website showcase: 48 potential Flash-killing demos — from hongkiat.com by Alvaris Falcon; with special thanks going out to Leonard De Rooy, Professor and Chair of Engineering Dept. at Calvin College for this resource/find

Excerpt:

So you’ve heard all rumors about HTML5 would take over Adobe Flash. While most web community argues that it’s possible or not, you must be wandering what makes HTML5 so powerful that even giant company Apple wants to use it to replace Flash.

That’s why this post exists, we’re not going to talk about what HTML5 can do, but show live demos of magical things that HTML5 can achieve with other language like JavaScript, so get ready to be inspired.

Note: As HTML5 is not fully supported by certain web browser like Internet Explorer, you’re strongly recommended to use Firefox browser to view all HTML5 demos below.

Also Len mentioned another interesting item:

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codeforamerica.org

Andreessen Horowitz’s $100 million bet on developers — from cnn.money.com

Excerpt:

In simple terms, GitHub is an online repository for developers to store and collaborate on code. It’s been called a “Facebook for geeks.” Managers can also log in and track changes that are made along the software development process. But while GitHub has implications for non-programming needs, it’s mainly a tool for developers. In other words, if you can’t tell code from gibberish it’s probably not on your radar.

GitHub pours energies into enterprise – raises $100 million from power VC Andreessen Horowitz — from techcrunch.com by Alex Williams

Excerpt:

Andreessen Horowitz is investing an eye-popping $100 million into GitHub, the ever popular repository for developers to post code and collaborate.

It’s GitHub’s first infusion of venture capital.Co- founder Tom Preston-Warner said the round will go to developing GitHub Enterprise, a server side version of GitHub.com. Reports state GitHub has been valued at $750 million.

What language should you build your app with? — from Mashable.com by Grace Handy

Excerpt:

Mobile developers across the globe have developed and released more than 650,000 iPhone apps, 400,000 iPad apps, and 600,000 apps for Android. Are you thinking about building an app? A key step in the process is choosing the right programming language, which depends on how scrappy you’re willing to be.

Make sure you’ve researched cross-platform app design and reviewed the common pitfalls of developing your app. Decide on your audience and what platform you’ll use, and then weigh your options to select a language.

Playcraft Labs launches HTML5 dev tools, aiming at games and beyond — from techcrunch.com by Billy Gallagher

playcraft-logo
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Excerpt:

Created by the folks at Chaos Collective, “Space” is an internal project that takes social coding to the next level with a real-time collaborative editor baked right into your browser. Right now, we’ve only seen the tool in use and haven’t played with it ourselves, but boy does it look impressive.

Here’s the interesting part: since Space is an internal project, the creators are trying to decide how to share it with the public. They company is asking if they should open source the entire project, or if they should build, maintain and support it as a full-on service.

Successful businesses will be those that optimize the mix of humans, robots, and algorithms — from nextbigfuture.com by Brian Wang

 Addendum on 7/13/12 — see also:

  • MobileAdvantage from infragistics.com
    “Deliver the most amazing user experiences across mobile devices with the new MobileAdvantage bundle. With toolsets for HTML5, iOS, and Windows Phone, you get every UI control you need to create the most performant, vibrant, and consistent applications for decision makers on the move.”

 

Plasma First: Apple TV, SmartGlass and the New World of Multi-Screen Cloud Content – from forbes.com by Anthony Wing Kosner

Excerpt:

The future for web developers is big. 50 inch plasma screen big. After an intensive cycle of trying to figure out how to take desktop websites and make them look and work great on mobile devices (often by starting from scratch) the pendulum is swinging to the other end of the multi-screen spectrum—the family TV, the conference room monitor, the classroom SmartBoard.

Also see:

Two browser-related items

Google Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer as the Web’s most used browser — from thenextweb.com by Jon Russell

Excerpt:

Google Chrome has been long expected to leapfrog Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to take its position as the Web’s most used browser and, according to data from Statcounter, the momentous change of leadership happened last week. The firm’s latest figures — spotted by Global Nerdy blogger Joey deVilla – show that Chrome’s line of usage creeped to overtake IE’s for the first week ever, with Firefox, Safari and Opera completing the top five respectively.

Browser choice: A thing of the past? — from cnet.com by Stephen Shankland
Devices using iOS and the future Windows RT hobble third-party browsers. Despite some good reasons for doing so, the change could undermine browser competition.

Five browser logos
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appliness – the first digital magazine for web application developers

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Addendum on 4/13/12:

  • Java leads programming language popularity – measured by book sales — from readwriteweb.com by Joe Brockmeier
    Excerpt:
    How do you calculate the popularity of various programming languages? The TIOBE folks try to rank programming language popularity by searching the Web. The RedMonk team pulls data from GitHub and Stack Overflow. But O’Reilly has a unique method: It measures book sales as an indicator of technology trends. By that measure, at least, Java and JavaScript come out on top. Mike Hendrickson, O’Reilly’s vice president of content strategy, has been taking a deep dive into the state of the computer book market in a series of posts beginning on March 29th. The most recent is a look specifically at programming language popularity related to sales.
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HTML5 Cheat Sheet - Tags
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HTML5 Cheat Sheet - Event Handler Attributes

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HTML5 Cheat Sheet - Browser Support

From DSC:
Looking at the %’s for browsers overall support of HTML 5, it’s just not there yet…but it’s making progress. I’ll try to pulse-check this from time to time.
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treehouse.com -- learn web design, web development, and iOS development

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Defending the Generalists in the Web Design Industry — from Smashing Magazine by Paul Boag

Excerpt:

In recent years there has been a move away from generalist Web designers to specialists such as content strategists, user experience architects and front-end coders. Where once there was a single job, there are now many, with ever-narrower spheres of responsibility.

While my peers are becoming more specialized, I have stoically refused to do so, remaining a generalist. If anything, my interests have broadened, encompassing subjects such as marketing, psychology and business strategy.

This has drawn criticism from some who view generalists negatively, which is in line with some of what I am reading in the blogosphere.

Where has this negativity come from, and is it justified?

From DSC:
This is a great writeup of the pro’s and con’s, benefits and drawbacks of being a generalist in the web design industry.  My experience with web design and production is that it has been extremely difficult to keep up over this last decade — especially when one can not focus solely on web design and production in one’s daily tasks.  For example, I’ve had to redirect my resources/energies into other areas, tools, pedagogies, learning theories, trends, systems-related projects, management, etc. — leaving little time to try to keep up with advances and changes within the arenas of front-end design and back-end development. I’ve been forced to be a generalist as well — but a few levels up.    🙂

 

 

Report: The most common web browsers and browser versions today — from royal.pingdom.com

 

Browser logos

 

Excerpt from this 6/16/11 posting:

The web browser market is an ever-changing landscape. It can sometimes be rocky ground for web designers and web developers trying to make their websites and services work for all the various browser versions available out there. It’s challenging work, to say the least.

That’s why it pays to be aware of what the web browser market looks like, and stay up to date. How many are using the various browsers out there? How many are using the latest versions? Which versions are the most common? How big an audience may you be annoying if your site isn’t perfect in a specific browser version?

Those are all questions you’ll want to answer, and here is what the situation looks like right now, in June 2011, based on the traffic to more than three million websites and billions of page views.

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