I have spent the last week or so slowing reading through Head First Mobile Web by Jason Grigsby and Lyza Danger Gardner. I have to admit that at first I was a bit turned off by the whole format of the Head First series, but after reading through it, I am a believer. The way they set it up really kept me engaged with the various styles of sharing information. It also was helpful to have some simple exercises to reinforce the concepts – breaking out a pencil while reading is great. I’ve always been a fan of workbooks. Of course the code examples are fantastic as well.
I totally went into the book thinking the first couple of chapters would be a review for me, but holy cow, I learned a ton about responsive design, especially the ways to do it mobile first. Then the book moved on to the more difficult subjects of whether or not to build a separate mobile site, how to do that if you choose to do it, and the craziness that is WURFL and device capability detection. For me these chapters were the meat and potatoes of the book and I learned so much about how to go about all of this. As a front end coder, the PHP was a bit difficult for me, but the book laid things out in an easy to understand manner. Since I’ve lately been working on learning to program I found all the vanilla JavaScript concepts I’ve learned to be in the PHP so it wasn’t as hard as I would have initially thought.
The chapter where they use jQuery Mobile to build a site was also a fantastic insight into what a great framework can do to help push along the process, especially when you may not have easy access to lots of devices. Using something that is already tested thoroughly is so helpful. I am a huge fan of the mobile web and so seeing how to do that really well with clean, semantic markup and then just using the new HTML5 data attributes to add on to the look and feel is awesome. It all comes together so easily; I hope I have a future project where I get to use this.
They leave you on a high note, with the idea that doing things cleanly with the markup and moving from there towards progressive enhancement is the way to go to be future friendly and hopefully support as many devices as possible. This really translates into supporting as many users as possible, because it is the people interacting with the device that we want to support. Everyone deserves to get to the information they are after no matter the device they are using or the speed of their connection. Jason and Lyza show how to do that beautifully. I am so thankful that we live in the same town, because I get to pester them at Mobile Portland and I will be able to benefit from the device lab they are working tirelessly to build.
My next steps are to go back over the CSS for this site and set it up to be mobile first. I hope some mobile projects to come my way soon, it’s definitely where my interest lies at this point. The diversity of it all fascinates me. Thank you Jason and Lyza for feeding my fascination with a great book.
My last post was on the culture of busy that I think is ingrained in most of our lives, but I looked at it from the perspective of the web world and how it is affecting me when I go out and talk with potential clients about work.
Over the weekend I finished reading Design is a Job by Mike Monteiro (click through to Mike’s twitter at your own risk, his twitter background is NSFW). Mike’s thoughts actually resonated a lot with me and the busyness I have been thinking about. Like the other books in the A Book Apart series, it was a quick, easy read and I enjoyed it for the most part. I don’t always like Mike’s writing style, but the heart of his message is a really important one and I believe it comes down to demanding respect. Through talking about money, dealing with clients who try to design the site themselves, dealing with the problems of working with others; it all boils down to demanding that clients respect you, and your abilities, and also that you respect those around you on the team, be they in your company or the client’s.
This means that you stand up for yourself, you are not working horrid hours because of demanding clients treating you with a lack of respect, you are entitled to a life outside of your work. It applies just as much to in-house talent as it does to those of use working independently or for digital agencies. I also found that much of what he wrote about clients applied just as much to working in a large company with in house folks who are your client as it applies to the digital agency with clients outside the company.
So as I strive for the balance I spoke of in the last post, I am grateful for Mike’s reminders to stand up for myself. It can be difficult at times, but I’ve been doing it a lot lately and it’s totally worth it. I was also reminded to think about what I love to do and look for the situations where I get to do that and excel. So I am heeding Mike’s advice
…I’d caution you to stay away from jobs that take you away from the things you love to do….
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. Most of them have been quite geeky and to be honest, it’s been Jen Simmon’s on The Web Ahead. She’s lately been interviewing a lot of people about mobile, Jason Grigsby, Luke Wroblewski, and most recently, Lyza Danger Gardner. As I work on different projects, I’ve been thinking about all these devices and what it means for what I build.
I try with each and every project to build a good foundation, whether the client actively brings up the desire for something that will work on mobile. I feel lucky that I do have a client thinking this way, so I am working hard to set up a foundation to prepare for how we will adapt the product to work on different devices. But I must admit, that I am more and more amazed when it isn’t brought up at all. Meeting people where they are is so important and as more devices come out I continue to think about this and wonder what the best way forward is. I feel fortunate to be in a community that is also thinking about it too, because they feed my need to learn and push myself.
What I have come to realize is that I really, really want to work with folks who are doing thinking about all these really complicated, tricky ideas. I am excited that I have a project where we are talking about it and I can’t wait to see where it goes in the future, but I also really hope that more projects come my way where in the initial kick off meetings how to meet people where they are is discussed, whatever form that takes is not as important as actually talking about it. Speaking of which, if you have projects like this and you need help, I would love to help you out.