Desk Talk Weekly - Web Turns 25 and More

Hey y'all,

I've decided that I might start collecting weekly news articles and trending conversations about web development and post them here.  Besides stuff in the news,  I want to talk about stuff that is trending or that people are talking about a lot.  We've got a big news event this week, so let's get started:

The World Wide Web Turned 25 Wednesday

Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal for the idea of the internet in March of 1989, the year I was born.  His proposal brought ideas of community and sharing stuff over what we call today, the Internet.  Soon, they developped the first website ever.  Today, Berners-Lee is still promoting the web, but argues that it should be open, free, and accessible by everybody.

CSS UI Icons

Trevan Hetzel has taken some of the most popular icons on the web and has recreated them using only CSS.  He argues that images are really annoying to deal with.  They can mess up responsive environments, are sometimes large, and they load slowly.  But, images cannot be replaced for now because we enjoy them too much.  Instead, he argues that we should code what we can.  I can see these becoming really popular; they are some of the most used icons and he provides the code for each one.  He also explains his method.

2048

This game has been talked about a lot this week.  The game is really simple and addicting, but what we're interested in is that it was made with Javascript!  Maybe the author will come out and talk about his Javascript creation soon.

Crowdsourcing Missing Plane Search

Crowdsourcing on the internet has been a big thing in recent years.  Basically, we are able to do bigger and better things through online collaboration; stuff that one person or a small team could never do.  This week, we were greeted with the sad news that a recent Malaysian plane was lost which carried over 200 people.  In an attempt to find the missing plane, which is still lost as of March 13th, people have been scanning satelitte images and reporting pictures of wreckage-like images.  So far, nothing has turned out to be anything of note, but the fact that we are all working together is an awesome thing.  And as developers, we have the opportunity to make stuff like this happen.

Resource Roundup - Keep Your Skills Up To Date With These Five Resources

Coding is similar to every other profession in that one needs to keep up to date with their knowledge and skill sets so that they don't fall behind.  This is possibly true for coding more so than any other profession because the technology changes so rapidly.  If you fall behind, you might fall out of your job.

Luckily, the coding community is an active bunch of bloggers, writers, and networkers.

In this week’s blog post, I’ll share some of my favorite resources that I have been following since my venture into front end development.

For Beginners:

CodeCademy

If you have never coded a single line of text in your life, then CodeCademy is a great stepping-stone towards front end development.  It has detailed, interactive tutorials on multiple languages including HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, Python, and Ruby.

For Everybody:

Hey, designer!

Hey, designer! is a great resource for both developers and designers.  A small portion of my blog is dedicated to web design, so why not share a resource that has both subjects underneath one website?  Hey, designer! is basically a resource gathering board; all of the links lead to external sites.  Posts range from educational blurbs about design to in depth JavaScript library tutorials. The best part of the site is the trending section, which shows which articles have been clicked on the most for the day, week, or month.

HTML5 / Javascript Weekly

If you’re looking for a once a week update that comes as one newsletter, these resources are great.  Once a week, an email will be sent in a newsletter format with the latest news surrounding each subject.  Each newsletter features a featured section, code and tools, watch, read, and a job openings section (ding ding!).  I recommend signing up for both.

Here’s an example issue for HTML5:

http://html5weekly.com/issues/125

Codepen.io

Like art, checking out other people’s work is a part of being an artist.  It keeps you on your toes, culturally up to date, and it might spark some inspiration.  Codepen.io is a great resource if you want to see what other people are doing.  Projects are hosted on Codepen with all of their code available for the world to see.  Most creations are on the brink of falling apart, but these people are trying to push the boundaries of coding.  However, when something works well and you want to use it on your site, you are able to by just copying and pasting the code.  Everything is shared.  After all, everything is stolen from somewhere nowadays.  You just have to steal correctly.

THE Front End Development Resource

I saved the best for last.  Yes, I meant to capitalize the; this resource is the resource to end all resources. I’m not sure who this person is, but they have combined every front end development resource out there into one, easy to navigate document.  Everything is split up into categories, so it’s easy to digest.  It might take you a year to go through it all, but it is definitely worth playing with.  And look, it’s hosted on GitHub.  This could be a project that a lot people have worked on.