I take great pains to keep up with news and info related (directly or indirectly) to my particular areas of expertise. During the week, I typically filter out all the links, articles, tutorials, tools, etc that appear in my RSS subscriptions, Twitter feeds, newsletters, and general perusal. At work, this gets translated into emails I send out to my fellow developers in the hopes that they may glean something useful, or at the very least have an interesting read. For myself, these end up in my vast, every-lengthening bookmarks list, which I have been suprisingly slow to add to a service like Delicious.
So, I’ve decided to start making posts of Useful Things, and because I’m all crazy about acronyms and stuff I’m going to call them LUTs. I thought about calling them Selected Lists of Useful Things… but I think we know what that would end up shortened to. Anyone reading these gets the added benefit of the info already being filtered out from all the plankton that drifts through the media ocean each day. And like any journey, it begins with this first step:
List of Useful Things – Week of March 14th
Resources
Debugging tools for IE
http://samuli.hakoniemi.net/debugging-and-testing-in-internet-explorer-made-easy/
I don’t develop in IE (at least, as a primary). Part of that is a residual disgust with Microsoft from the IE6 regime years, but largely it has to do with the fact that there have never been quality tools or approaches for debugging issues in IE, compared to tools like Firefox and – more recently – Chrome. The tools listed here put a heavy dent in that viewpoint.
jQuery References
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/uncovering-jquerys-hidden-features/
http://addyosmani.com/blog/50-jquery-snippets-for-developers/
You can never have too many lists of snippets or brief how-tos on hand. These links provide a fairly extensive, if arbitrary, list ranging from simple items to things I barely know anything about. Especially useful is the concise explanation of event namespacing and what that means for rolling your own plugin.
User Experience
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/essential-controls-for-web-applications/
A well-developed list of UI controls for use in, well… anything. Screenshots and examples included! A good, quick-reference list for inspiration on your next UI project or redesign.
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?156
PDFs and pages of process diagrams relating to design, development, UI, and UX.
http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/post/2010/02/26/table-ui-patterns.aspx
The title says it all: “Ultimate guide to table UI patterns”
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/11/forms-on-mobile-devices-modern-solutions/
Working on an iPhone app, or Droid doodle? Some examples of input forms on mobile devices/OS’s.
Articles
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/25/designing-user-interfaces-for-business-web-applications/
Containing some reference items but largely dealing with the theory behind designing for business applications versus traditional websites, a well-written article that lays out the processes involved and some best-practices for creating the levers and switches users will flip to run a web app.
A fantastic video visualization of data pertaining to web usage, social networking, communications usage, etc, etc. Superb visual motif and a fun little soundtrack:
Tools
A completely free, easy-to-use, web-based wireframing app. Exports to PDF or PNG formats. Create an account, save your work, share it with other people. Safari, Firefox, and Chrome only.
