Great thread What do software engineers who work at a large scale understand that other developers don’t? at /r/programming
services
Designer & Developer Support
When other web suppliers tap us it’s usually for our ExpressionEngine chops.
Recently
Introducing version 3 of painter Juan Carlos Bronstein’s site
This one was a labor of love wherein the background remains dark, the panther pink.
Florida Council of Independent Schools adopts CSF’s Master In-Service system
The system handles re-certification for teachers at over 160 independent Florida schools.
products
External SAEF (Free)
Insert a row into any MySQL database table using a form on an ExpressionEngine page.
Tied Entries (Free)
An ExpressionEngine plugin to access content entries further than a single relationship away.
Elsewhere
In BetterProgramming, these are two well-written posts I’ll refer back to by authoritative web guy Joe Honton: “My Perfect 2020 Stack” and “Full Stack Pronounced Dead”.
The inaugural State of SaaS Report.
In trying to improve the performance of an ExpressionEngine-powered web-based system, I came across the following database fields within MySQL query WHERE clauses that therefore should be indexed but aren’t:
- exp_actions: class, method
- exp_categories: cat_url_title
- exp_ce_cache_tagged_items: item_id
- exp_channels: channel_title
- exp_channel_fields: field_name
- exp_extensions: enabled, hook, priority
- exp_fieldtypes: name
- exp_members: in_authorlist, screen_name, username
- exp_menu_items: sort
- exp_modules: module_name
- exp_playa_relationships: parent_is_draft
- exp_plugins: is_typography_related
Every little helps.
Smoother CSS shadows by Philipp Brumm. Simple; excellent. [via CSSTricks]
Matt Layman’s handy Failed SaaS Postmortem — too much tech tinkering; I need to take heed. Plus it’s great he’s getting right back in the saddle.
A deep dive into the newness of the iPhone 11 camera at the Halide blog.
Gadget: 1. Survey [PDF] is a cool history of software milestones “from Smalltalk to Minecraft” Chaim Gingold (2017). When you see these things collected you realize how much progress they collectively represent. I wonder what we’d have been doing otherwise…
Volvo unveils its first full battery electric model, the XC40 Recharge SUV with 402bhp a 248-mile range. Featuring no front grille!
A deep dive into the Grand Seiko Snowflake on Hodinkee. “The entire thing seems to have been calculated to create an effect of serenity without boredom; of minimalism without sterility.”
Processes
Architecture
Before building your site or system, plans are required for both the back and front ends.
Design
It’s the competing considerations themselves that coalesce to form the design.
Installation & configuration
As well as smarts, what really makes a successful implementation likely is experience.
N
ow that the site’s wireframes have been generated during the architecture process, we turn them into mock-ups using visual elements such as a logo and an icon set; visual conventions such as a color scheme and a typeface collection; and visual rules such as a grid layout. Design appears in Jesse James Garrett’s useful Elements of User Experience diagram as the top level, labelled Visual Design.
As well as these elements, conventions and rules, the design must take into account a number of considerations that may initially appear to conflict until, with work, the tensions among them coalesce to actually form the design.
Dieter Rams, renowned industrial designer, has 10 Principles of Good Design.
Good design:
- is innovative
- makes a product useful
- is aesthetic
- helps us to understand a product
- is unobtrusive
- is honest
- is long-lasting
- is consequent to the last detail
- is concerned with the environment
- is as little design as possible.
The entire process, with dependencies
