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obelisk.js

[Obelisk.js is a JavaScript Engine for building isometric pixel objects.][link]

… and it looks like a million bucks. This may have to be the basis for my life’s work: A modern remake of the SNES version of SimCity. (via [Jesper][jesp])

[link]: https://github.com/nosir/obelisk.js “nosir/obelisk.js on GitHub”
[jesp]: http://waffle.wootest.net “Waffle, Jesper’s blog”

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Introducing the ‘mozjpeg’ Project

[Mozilla announces a quest to fully-optimize JPEG compression with their own open source encoder.][link]

Snark: But why don’t they just contribute to [WebP][webp]?

[link]: https://blog.mozilla.org/research/2014/03/05/introducing-the-mozjpeg-project/ “Introducing the ‘mozjpeg’ Project | Mozilla Research”
[webp]: http://www.webpimages.com “WebP – The Google Image Format”

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CSS3 text-align-last

[Short and to-the-point post on the Adobe Web Platform blog about a cool new proposed CSS3 property: text-align-last][link]. Finally, FINALLY, we can justify the last line of a paragraph tag.

My god, it’s full of stars.

[link]: http://blogs.adobe.com/webplatform/2014/02/25/improving-your-sites-visual-details-css3-text-align-last/ “Improving your site’s visual details: CSS3 text-align-last | Web Platform Team Blog”

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CSS Performance metrics from the creator of Bootstrap

[A reasonable, if unscientific, look at the performance of various common CSS methods][link], comparing things like Attribute .vs. Class-based selectors, box-sizing resets, floats .vs. flexbox .vs. inline-block, and a lot more.

Love that someone took the time to do this so I don’t have to.

[link]: https://github.com/mdo/css-perf “mdo/css-perf”

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Float Labels with CSS

[Slick technique that is worth looking into for many applications.][link] As someone who deals with a lot of form inputs both as a user and a designer, there are some useful ideas here.

[link]: http://css-tricks.com/float-labels-css/ “Float Labels with CSS | CSS-Tricks”

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websocketd

>[websocketd is a small command line tool that will wrap an existing command line interface program, and allow it to be accessed via a WebSocket.][link]

Sounds great. (via [Jesper][jesp])

[link]: https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd “Github: joewalnes/websocketd”
[jesp]: http://waffle.wootest.net “Waffle”

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Structure.io homepage refresh

So, we just launched an update to the [Structure Sensor homepage][link], and it features some neat HTML5 / CSS3 tech. I’m pretty happy with it. It required me to learn a few things, which I’ll hopefully have time to write about here soon.

It also marks the first time I’ve ever encoded video in [WebM][webm]! It was easy thanks to [Miro Video Converter][miro] and [FFMPEG][ffmpeg].

[link]: http://structure.io/ “The Structure Sensor is the first 3D sensor for mobile devices”
[webm]: http://www.webmproject.org “The WebM project”
[miro]: http://www.mirovideoconverter.com “Miro Video Converter”
[ffmpeg]: http://www.ffmpeg.org “FFMPEG”

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Exploring canvas drawing techniques

A [very well put-together interactive tutorial][link] and examination of drawing using the HTML canvas tag. Even if you’re pretty up on things, you might learn something new.

[link]: http://perfectionkills.com/exploring-canvas-drawing-techniques/ “Perfection kills » Exploring canvas drawing techniques”

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Mock Response

A super simple, but super useful, little [service that returns various HTTP status codes based the URL called][link]. Helpful tool for testing how your app responds to every HTTP status.

[link]: http://mock.isssues.com/ “Mock Response”

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Dnsyo – A DNS propogation tester

[Looks like a handy little tool if you’re in the website business][link], and it even has a pithy one-line description:

>In short, it’s nslookup, if nslookup queried over 1500 servers and collated their results.

Bonus points for being open source and installable via `pip`.

[link]: http://samarudge.github.io/dnsyo/ “Dnsyo by samarudge”

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Introducing Harp – the static web server with built-in preprocessing

[It slices, it dices, it generates static sites, it natively supports preprocessors like LESS and Stylus:][link]

>Imagine you were choosing between PNG or JPEG for an image you wanted to serve. You would simply pick the right format for that use case because web servers support either, you need only drop the file in. That is exactly what Harp does with modern web languages. Want to use Stylus? Just name your file with a .styl extension. Prefer LESS’ syntax? Just drop in the LESS source files and go to work. Or use a combination of both, Harp doesn’t care. Harp knows to compile and serve main.styl when main.css is requested, OR main.less if that file exists instead. It’s that simple.

That’s a hell of a pitch, and it’s only about 1/3 of the whole thing. Read the whole post.

[link]: http://sintaxi.com/introducing-harp “Introducing Harp – the static web server with built-in preprocessing”

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Semantic UI

[Yet another HTML/CSS/JS framework][link], but built so that the classes are understandable in english. It’ll create some HTML bloat, but it has a certain Applescript-y charm to it.

The site is pretty snazzy, too. Very readable, very smooth.

[link]: http://semantic-ui.com/ “Getting Started | Semantic UI”

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Tridiv

[A visual editor for creating 3D shapes with CSS. Damned impressive.][link]

[link]: http://tridiv.com/ “Tridiv | CSS 3D Editor”

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Macaw

[The only visual HTML editor I’ve ever seen that looks legitimately useful, well-executed, and outputs good code.][link]

Let’s see if they can deliver.

[link]: http://macaw.co/ “Macaw | The code-savvy web design tool.”

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CSS Zen Garden Relaunches

[The old favorites are still there but the new example files are fully responsive.][link]

[link]: http://www.csszengarden.com/ “CSS Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design”

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How GitHub Uses “Deprivation Testing” To Hone Product Design

[The psychology here is interesting to me.][link]

[link]: http://www.fastcolabs.com/3010972/open-company/how-github-uses-deprivation-testing-to-hone-product-design “How GitHub Uses "Deprivation Testing" To Hone Product Design ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community”

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MadEye

[A web-based IDE built for remote pair programming, uses Google Hangouts.][link]

[link]: http://madeye.io/ “MadEye”

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Log

>[“Console.log with Style”][link]

Works in Chrome, pretty cool. A little verbose for my tastes but definitely better than the default.

[link]: http://adamschwartz.co/log/ “Log – Console.log with Style”

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csscss

>[csscss will parse any CSS files you give it and let you know which rulesets have duplicated declarations.][link]

Been looking for something like this for YEARS now. Hope it’s good.

[link]: http://zmoazeni.github.io/csscss/?hn=1 “csscss by zmoazeni”

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Mozilla and Samsung Collaborate on Next Generation Web Browser Engine

[I’d like nothing more than to see this succeed][link], and I agree with John Gruber’s [simple assessment][df]:

>It would be a win for everyone if Servo did to WebKit what WebKit did to Gecko.

I will, however, be very disappointed if the logo doesn’t somehow evoke the image of Tom Servo from MST3k.

[link]: http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung-collaborate-on-next-generation-web-browser-engine/ “Mozilla and Samsung Collaborate on Next Generation Web Browser Engine | The Mozilla Blog”
[df]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/03/servo “Link to Daring Fireball post”