Smashing Daily #7: Wheels, Print And Bingo

In this edition of The Smashing Daily, you will find an answer to the question of why reinventing the wheel is a good thing, why you should make a mobile friendly website first, how to make that website, how to serve a print style sheet and you’ll get an excellent lesson in out-of-the-box thinking and innovation. Doesn’t that sound interesting? There’s much more in here, so hope you’ll like it!

Web First for Mobile
Steve Souders argues that you should first optimize your website for mobile. When you’re done you can then start thinking about a native app. He came to this conclusion after seeing a few talks on Mobilism. You should read this article.

In defense of reinventing wheels
A few weeks ago I needed a little script to enable simple left and right swipe gestures on touch devices. People sent me links to amazing libraries that emulate all the possible gestures out there—but I didn’t want all possible gestures, I just needed one. This is a common issue and Lea Verou explains it in detail. You should definitely read it.

Content Everywhere with Lyza Gardner
I have to admit that I haven’t listened to this podcast (to be honest, I never listen to any podcasts, not even my own, it’s just not my thing… I’d rather read) but looking at the Show Notes and Links is enough to link to it. It’s a show by Jen Simmons and Lyza Danger Gardner about a lot of great stuff that’s happening right now with content on the (mobile) Web. You should probably listen to it (and definitely click throught the links).

5 years later: print CSS still sucks
You might think that linking to a separate print style sheet would be a good idea from a performance point of view. Stoyan Stefanov did a little bit of research and yes, you guessed right, linking to a separate print style sheet is very bad for performance. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create a print style sheet (you just shouldn’t link to it separately).

Mobile First Design: Why Its Great and Why It Sucks
More and more designers start looking at websites from a mobile-first perspective and there are many good reasons to do so. Joshua Johnson explores these reasons and he looks at the cons to this approach (which are mostly personal issues, like the fact that he isn’t used to working this way). A good article which clearly shows that we have to rethink our workflows.

Augmented Paper
Here’s an interesting article in which Matt Gemmell tries to quantify what constitutes an enticing interface. He looks at iOs, Android and Window Phone (which he describes as finding yourself living inside an infographic) and looks at different apps on iOs. A very interesting read that explores the many different approaches to interfaces.

First thing you should do to optimize your desktop website for mobile
Jason Grigsby argues that the most important thing you can do if you want to optimize your website for mobile is to focus on performance first. Once performance is good you can then start focusing on things like mediaqueries (but only then).

TTMMHTM: Cardboard arcade, the power of music, Book tank, Book about Ada and inventing on principles
Do you need more to read? Here’s the ever inspiring Things That Made Me Happy This Morning by Christian Heilmann, with some beautiful, amazing and fantastic links.

Last Click

Dr. Reggie Watts on innovation and out of the box thinking
Definitely: Dr. Reggie Watts is the new Emperor of Marketing Mullshit Bingo. In this presentation he proposes some new, revealing insights on innovation and out of the box thinking in a new world of challenges for the organizational production funnel in business value environments of seemingly unrealistic, concrete demands from new, experienced entrepreneurs. Exactly (-:

Previous issues

You might be interested in the previous issues of Smashing Daily:

• Smashing Daily #6 (22.05)
  Navigation Design Patterns, TVs And 1337
• Smashing Daily #5 (21.05)
  Strict Mode, Boring CSS And A Self Portrait
• Smashing Daily #4 (19.05)
  Fonts, CSS And ModernWeb Design
• Smashing Daily #3 (18.05)
  Typography, eBooks And Decahedrons
• Smashing Daily #2 (17.05)
  Keyboard Navigation, Responsive Workflow And Goats
• Smashing Daily #1 (16.05)
  Mobile Device Lab, Browsers and Animated GIFs.

(jvb)

Vasilis van Gemert for Smashing Magazine, 2012.