Moving down to London.
Big news for me. I’m off to work for @madebymany in London from the end of August.
I will be leaving the awesome guys and girls at Motionlab (for the second time!) in a few weeks, packing up my gear, and taking on the South.
MxM really struck me when I went to see them. Their way of working is second to none, and the projects are nothing but cutting-edge.
Basically, I’m massively excited.
I will be back up North when I can, so I will still be in touch with you all. Plus, (if I know you), it’d be great to meet up for a pint if you’re ever nearby.
Bring it on!
Announcing the OMB Project
The XMB (XrossMediaBar) by Sony is a huge UI design breakthrough. Everyone loves it. It’s so easy to use, even my mum (who is PC-illiterate) knows how to use it transfer music to it, and use the PlayTV functionality.
Yet, I’ve often through about its delivery to other devices.
It would be great to have it on your mobile; have it on a suitable media website… basically, have it wherever you need to access your media. And modern technologies are allowing us to develop these open interfaces with relative ease.
Here I have the first incarnation of my OMB Project — Go to http://omb.so
Create Interactive Maps with SVG & Raphael JS
Even as an interface developer, I actually rarely get the chance to create maps from scratch. (Or, cartography, as it’s apparently called!)
Today, I was tasked with exactly that. Without using Flash. The obvious choice seemed to be to use SVG (because most map sources are vectors anyway). Continue reading →
Developing an API Pattern for a jQuery Plugin
There’s are lots of tutorials out there on how to write jQuery plugins. However, I think most struggle to get a balance between easy-to-maintain private code; and openly accessible code, but without variables passed around as arguments a thousand times.
Then I started to read how the jQuery Tools plugins were made. I’ve always liked how they expose an API to access ready-only properties, invoke public methods, and use available the callbacks. I also like how the plugin is kept extremely easy-to-read; and super simple for designers and developers to use.
So, here’s an attempt to break down how the plugins are developed, so that hopefully you can start implying this API-centric pattern for your own plugins. Continue reading →
_Shifts in Front End Development
What’s expected of you as a developer changes week-by-week. From how you fit into a digital agency’s process; to opinions on browser support; to the frequency of emerging technologies. Whatever it is, front-end development is certainly not levelling out, and has a massive future ahead of itself. This means you need to be hot on your feet, and learning when you can.
Here are a few points that I’ve gathered together recently on how to change the way you think about your job.
oCanvas. The jQuery of HTML5 Canvas?
One of the most exciting things for web interface development in a long time.
This morning, @seb_ly retweeted @robhawkes with a link to a new HTML5 canvas library, called oCanvas. I took a quick look, and soon realised that this was no ordinary library. Sure, we’ve got ones that are built to handle game rendering; but this seemed like such a simple, down-to-earth and accessible set of tools. Continue reading →
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