Google+ API, where art thou?

Although I’m guilty of not using Google Plus anywhere near as much as I want to, one of the things that continues to amaze me is the complete lack of any kind of API to enable automatic content sharing between Plus and other platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, WordPress, Pinterest, Linked In, Vimeo to name a few.

It just so happens that I use all of those platforms for communication and ‘content creation’ and I would dearly love to share this content with Plus: but equally share my Plus content with them.

Every single one of the aforementioned platforms has a facility to share what you’ve posted/created/found/uploaded with another platform. I’ve been posting Tumblr and WordPress links to Twitter for a while, for example, yet I cannot sharing my Tumblr posts or even my musings here on Clear After Floating with Plus! This is madness! (cue Gerard Butler sound-bite).

Google Plus has developed something of a reputation for being the favourite social network of the geeky, nerdy or  more ‘technical’ amongst us. Oh how ironic then that a social network such as Facebook – popular with ‘regular’ folk – lets me share anything and everything with it, and also empowers me to share my FB posts with these other services!

Granted, Zuckerbook has been around for a good while longer, however a basic API surely cannot be beyond the reach of one of worlds most capable technology companies? Is it really that hard for them to put aside a little bit of development time to open Plus up? Of course I’m aware of the fact than an API does exist, but not one that is in any way useful for users who communicate/create/share across multiple platforms.

For me, the delay in rolling out this functionality is a complete mystery: it’s also a reason why I won’t be a full-time user any time soon. Plus has undergone a lot of change in the last twelve months and they’ve been adding in functionality on a near monthly basis. The question begs: at what point do you roll out an API? Is this even on their list of priorities and if not, why?

It’s nothing to do with a fear of polluting their ecosystem with content from other platforms, as Plus users are manually posting content from a variety of sources on their pages every minute of every day: so why not let them automate this?

If you think you’ve cracked the reason why Google are being so slow to open up their platform, let me know in the comments!

Share:

http://www.besquare.me/session/responsive-design-system/

I really enjoyed this 20 minute talk by Laura Kalbag at the ResponsiveConf last month. She talks about design systems for responsive web design and makes a hell of a lot of sense: it certainly made me think about the way in which we approach the initial design phase of a responsive build.

It seems that the video cannot be embedded so I’m just providing the link directly to the conference website. I might attend this conference next year.

Typecast and Modern.ie both launch

Typecast

Earlier this week, Typecast app launched after an extended period of beta testing and jumped straight to top spot on my list of ‘Tools I’d Like to Use but Cannot Justify Paying For at This Time’.

For $29.00 per month (starter plan) Typecast provides web designers and developers with a hassle free means of creating web typography via a slick browser interface, testing for things like readability and font rendering with a huge library of web fonts to choose from. You can test out your headings, body copy or any text-based element using different sized containers to see how your content would look and behave, and you also have the option to set-up a vertical rhythm if you’re into that sort of thing.

Not only is Typecast a great tool for prototyping (personally, I can spend hours on typography)  but it generates clean HTML & CSS that you can paste directly into your projects which is a significant time-saving!

Typecast isn’t a tool I can see my employer wanting to introduce (b00), but I do hope to be able to use this in the not too distant future for personal projects. I played around with it for a short time during the beta testing phase, and I found it to be incredibly powerful, intuitive and of course it looks absolutely gorgeous!

Take a look for yourself and sign-up for a 14 day free trial on their website.

modern.IE

I was originally going to make this post solely about the Typecast launch, but then modern.ie popped up in my Twitter feed over lunch and I thought it was worth killing two birds with one post.

It looks as though Microsoft have decided to give the web development community some tools to play that will go some way (about 0.001%) to easing the pain and misery we all go through when carrying out cross-browser testing for the different versions of Internet Explorer that (unfortunately) still exist.

They’re offering a web-based tool that scans a webpage and produces a list of  recommendations akin to the Google Page Speed tool, along with a series of ‘virtual test tools’ that Windows (and soon OS X and Linux) users can install on their machines to emulate different, older versions of their browser for localised testing.

Additional documentation is provided to help developers code in a manner that is more IE friendly: although a lot of it is fairly straight forward and any front-end developer worth their salt should already be aware of the content of these teachings.

The output of the webpage scanning tool

Microsoft have also done a deal with Browserstack which means you can take advantage of three months free use of their superb web-based browser testing service for free when you sign-up. I use Browserstack and find it an incredibly powerful tool when testing a new site before it goes live so this is a good deal for interested designers/developers and some brilliant exposure for the team behind it!

Head on over to modern.ie to play around with these new toys.

A List Apart’s new responsive design

The folks over at A List Apart recently launched version 5.0 of their website, featuring a new responsive design and I’ve found myself exploring it an awful lot over the last few days. Considering that these guys also exist as A Book Apart, who publish a well-known series of web design/development books it is difficult not to expect something out of the top drawer.

Firstly, take a look at its predecessor…

A Book Apart – Version 4.0

I never had any problems with this version of the site. And to be honest as I’ve only been reading it for the past 12-18 months, I don’t actually recall any of the prior versions. The site was easy to navigate, the typography, imagery and colour palette all worked well together and for me it just gave off that certain academic quality which sent a signal to my brain saying: these guys know what they’re doing.

Of course, sites must and often do evolve…

A List Apart version 5.0

The first thing that struck me about the design, and this is very much confirmed in the above article is that there is a significant content-first focus here. ALA (as it will now be known) has always been a very wordy site, given the plethora of articles and blog posts spanning several years or more which have seen veterans (like the authors) and newbies (like me) flock there week after week.

Everything just has so much room to breathe. The whitespace is plentiful, the scale of the type from the headings right down to the lesser elements such as social media links etc is just right, and of course they’ve really put their love for illustrations centre stage by dropping in a generously sized image at the top of the page. Beautiful.

For me the typography is just absolutely spot on: they’re using Georgia Pro which is so easy on the eye, and the colour palette is simple yet effective. For me, the site feels like a web-based publication rather than a website, if that makes sense?

They’ve even opted for the classic blue links which is a nice nod to the early days of the web, but works really well as by now we’ve all been indoctrinated to understand blue equals hyperlink!

This design is just so simple, and maintains this simplicity when you view at different viewports. I’ve re-sized my browser right the way down from 1280 x 1024 (Macbook Pro), through tablet and down to mobile sizes and it just works.

On my iPhone with Wi-Fi turned off, the site absolutely flies which is testament to the fact that the site is still very wordy, using images only where absolutely necessary. It is a very pragmatic piece of design and they’ve clearly gone to great lengths to make sure that “content is king” no matter what device you’re using. This site not only looks good but it performs admirably.

One thing I will say though, is that the design is very plain. As a piece of design in a general context – and believe me I’m making this comment purely based on my amateurish view of its aesthetic qualities – it doesn’t blow you away. It’s missing a wow factor, and I’ve read a number of tweets that echo this: but the site just caught my attention and encouraged me to browse its wares and find its treasures so…job done?

Bloody bravo. I’ll be snooping through the source code of this one over the next few days no doubt!

What do you think?

You can follow A List Apart on Twitter. Don’t forget A Book Apart, who are also on Twitter.

Clean slate and a new direction

One of the problems I’ve had with ‘proper blogging’ over the years is that I’ve never actually done much of it: now there’s an honest and succinct opening statement for you.

I think I’ve probably averaged a blog post once every ice age (or something along those lines), and although I’ve always wanted to write more, I just haven’t had enough of an incentive to do so.

Given that I’m seven months into a new career as a front-end web developer –  adding to earlier adventures as a SEO/PPC consultant and a web hosting account manager – I decided that I’m far more likely to blog consistently if the output is of a more professional nature and relates to my daily trials and tribulations ‘making websites’ with HTML, CSS and jQuery.

I’ve learned a lot in the seven months I’ve been codemonkey’ing around: however I still have a huge amount to learn so blogging my journey and sharing my findings, conclusions and mistakes along with useful tool, resources and sources of inspiration I find along the way seems like a good idea.

Therefore, starting this week I’m going to try to be a proper blogger: the vast majority of my posts will relate specifically to web design & development, although I’ll also be covering tangentially related topics such as social media, web services, e-commerce, mobile etc as well as offering commentary on general ‘web’ stories in the news.

I hope that at least some of the content I post here will be worth the time it takes for you to read it. Hopefully I’ll be able to post interesting, useful or even thought-provoking content. We’ll see, shall we?

EDIT: I was trying to think of a name for the blog, and after a quick scan of my DVD shelf I came up with Clear After Floating after The Coen Brothers’ excellent and highly underrated ‘Burn After Reading’. It’ll do.