Flutter is a mobile UI toolkit that combines fast development, expressive and beautiful UIs, with native performance. To test-drive the platform, Grant Skinner & Mike Chambers recently built Redrix: a mobile companion app for Destiny 2.
RegExr 2.0 was released a little over 2 years ago. If you haven’t used it, it is a great way to test, preview, and share Regular Expressions. We’re committed to updating and improving RegExr, and in January we quietly pushed out some features to help inspect and explain patterns.
Initially, RegExr only had one tool, the “substitution” panel, which let users show sample text with matches substituted using an expression. It was hidden by default, unless a pattern included a substitution expression. This tool has been renamed “replace”, and is now part of a larger “tools” bar, which we hope to continue growing in the future. In the meantime, it has a few other useful tools that I’ll describe below in more detail. Continue reading →
Sharing code and visual experiments has always been a huge part of my professional life. Experimentation in Flash launched my career, and remained an important theme in my presentations for years. I exhorted audiences to make time for play, but ultimately forgot to follow my own advice.
As the company grew, and life got busier, I lost the habit of building things for fun. I’d dabble now and then, but there was no real concerted effort to create something worth sharing.
This seems to have affected much of the industry. The lab section used to be an integral part of every agency’s site, now they are rare, and when they do exist, tend to be really sparse.
Hex grid experiment.
It’s time for that to change, at least for us. We’re launching our lab section today. It has a decent smattering of experiments already, and we’ll add to it as time goes on.
Continue reading →
Don’t get me wrong, the “Cloud” is great. Being able to utilize existing apps and not having to worry about updates or security is a huge time saver. But when it gets down to it, “In the cloud” is a buzz term. When translated to laymen speech it means “Storing your data and running your applications on an offsite server, somewhere”. It’s that “somewhere” that is a legal gray area for us, and for certain clients. For example; let’s say we’re working on a project for Microsoft, but are storing documents and files on Google servers. The two companies can (and do) collaborate, but what if they don’t on this project? And we’re storing sensitive Microsoft information with Google? It could cause legal issues if a dispute ever came up. This is the primary reason why we choose to self-host the vast majority of our infrastructure. The services we self-host include a Git server, bug tracker, wiki, file syncing server, and a custom built timetracker. Having a local server host all these services allows us to be extremely agile in development and with our workflows.
Typographers and type enthusiasts will attest that aligning a typeface to its baseline grid is an essential part of any text-heavy design. Maintaining a consistent vertical rhythm is an important part in the creation of beautiful typography and layouts. This is accomplished easily in programs such as Adobe InDesign. However until now, I have yet to find a tool that easily accomplishes this with web type, while remaining flexible to the individual needs of a project.
Automation saves you time, your company money, and your employee’s sanity. At gskinner, we have a long history of building workflow tools to aid with anything from creating a simple button in Flash, to managing the build process for entire web apps or JavaScript libraries like CreateJS. Automation doesn’t need to be complicated. Some of my own tools only have a few lines of code, but those few lines can take hours off any project. For large scale projects spending hours or even days building an automation tool can have the same impact as a small tool. I generally start with a small scope (no more then a few hours) and see if what I’m building is a) Useful and b) Useable. If it doesn’t meet both of those criteria then I can re-evaluate my approach without burning too much time.
Handling layout changes across a broad landscape of devices and browsers typically involves the use of media queries, which enable layouts to bend and flex based on their viewing environment.
Most queries I see are built around the concept of width:
@media screen and (max-width: 640px) {
body { background-color: blue; }
}
I love the simplicity of this methodology. It’s straightforward, easy to implement, and it works with content that comprises most websites. But what about web-based apps, the website’s younger cousin? Is this model the most effective media query strategy that can help us with the unique challenges of designing web applications? Continue reading →
It’s been nearly a full year since I last blogged. (Do people still blog? Maybe I should snapchat this instead?) I used to blog a lot, but life became busier, posts became more infrequent, and eventually it stopped being a habit and became a chore.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot to say. It’s just that the last few years have been a crazy and exciting ride, and I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to writing posts.
Five years ago, Flash as a platform died. For a lot of shops, the migration was gradual. The new betting sites and media platforms adapted quickly and moved on. But the migration was not gradual for us. Our clients come to us for cutting-edge tech, and almost overnight, Flash didn’t meet their criteria. We went from almost 100% Flash work, to nearly 0% in less than a year.