Curated Bits
Curated Bits is a feed of articles, videos, and projects that I found interesting and worth sharing, accompanied by my comments. I don't want to impose any limitations on the content here, but you can expect it to be mostly about frontend, design, open source and interesting tech things. To follow this feed subscribe to its RSS (it's separate from the main website RSS feed).
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I start to think there is no topic on which Dylan Beattie can't make a talk… Anyway, this one is real good. I finally learned how the Linotype machine works, and it kinda blew my mind. We have it very easy when it comes to working with type when compared to 50 or 80 years ago.
Check it outI knew that a clipboard can store multiple formats of data, but I had no idea rabbit hole goes that deep!
Full storyI intuitively use problem — searching for a solution — presenting solution — conclusion structure for articles and papers I write. This short article proposes a totally different structure where you open with a conclusion and only then go into details. And the best example is the article itself, as it's written following the Minto Pyramid structure! It reads very easily, and it persuaded me to try Minto Pyramid for my writing too.
Find out moreThe longer I watch the artist community, the more I notice a very different attitude towards sharing your work with the community, and copying in general. At least compared to the developer community, artists are a lot more protective of their work. In this article, Matthew discusses the role of copying (and, to an extent, sharing your work openly and allowing others to copy and build upon it) in design. Design always seemed to me as a kind of middle ground between art and programming: it takes the creativity and freedom of interpretation from the art, but ultimately it still solves practical problems, like computer programs do. And so it's even more interesting to observe how those two spheres, with very different mindsets on copying, influence design. Fortunately, we have some great pieces exploring this topic, like today's article.
Check it outAt some point, to follow a software developer canon, you have to abandon the internet and move into the woods. So, be prepared and find a wood hut to move to (or dream about) now.
Full detailsI love Dylan's tech talks, they all great and interesting. But this one is, so far, my favorite. Maybe because I just agree with his stance on open source and wish more people would share the same view. It's about how open source started, how it became so big and important, how companies started taking huge advantage of it, how zero interest rates (huh, ZIRP again?) affected it, and finally where is it going now.
Full storyAwful title, but very interesting content. Gergely describes what happened in the industry in last 4 years, how interest rates affected the industry, and what to expect in next few years. This is transcript of the talk at the conference and it's not complete. If you're interested in the topic I recommend to watch the recording too.
Explore furtherNeat trick how to better organize component types (e.g. Props, Variant, etc) without adding prefixes like ButtonProps.
The title is a bit inflated, imo, but the video is nevertheless very interesting. It's about how insecure RNG can be a weak link in security; in this case, specifically, RNG seeded with system time was used to generate passwords.
Learn moreEach Large Language Model has its own inner representation of our world (I can't talk about other models, as I'm not that familiar with them, but I assume they are similar in this regard). It allows the model to 'understand' that orange and apple have something in common. And as LLMs become more intelligent, they are able to pick up more nuanced relationships. But does this mean that in the end, given enough resources and time, all models will have the same most comprehensive representation?
Check sourceThis book was an excellent companion to spend 10 hours on train to Košice and back to Bratislava! While not geared towards the web specifically (and so some chapters are not really applicable), it was still very interesting to read. Especially about more basic and subtle topics, like when to use en dash vs em dash, or what type of quotes you should use in English.
Check it outYet another example how centuries old legacy haunt modern developer and designers. I just always assumed that font size sets, I don't know, size of letter. Turns out, fact that fonts with same font size are at least somewhat consistent in actual sizes is more of a coincidence than we'd like.
Full detailsReading Spotify's design system guide, I noticed a (quite controversial) suggestion to not use a floppy as an icon for the "Save" action, as it's very outdated and a lot of users don't even know what it is. Fair enough, I myself saw floppy only a few times at my parent's work. When I got my first computer, it didn't even have a floppy disk reader.
But that got me thinking: do you really need to know what a floppy is to understand an icon's meaning? And if we abandon floppy, what should be used as an icon for "Save"? In the end, I didn't find a satisfying answer for the second question. But the good news is that there are a lot of other examples of how an icon lives longer than the object it depicts, and it works just fine!
Full detailsI like Juxtopposed's videos so much. This particular one is about blur and shows 10 different ways to use it. Video is a bit too fast-paced for my liking, but, oh boy, there are so many examples.
Head to originalThis link comes from "Lessons From Six Years of Self-Employment" which I linked a few days ago. But it's just too good to not post it separately. Just a list of a lot of things you can do. Even if you don't want to do most of them, it was nice to realize that I'm a grown adult and can do a fucking lot of things, lol. Some of the items on the list sound very interesting, though. I copied those in my personal to-do list.
Learn moreI really like Workspaces account in Twitter, but this is levelup. It's whole magazine about workspaces!
Explore furtherI have been working as a freelancer/independent contractor pretty much my whole career, and this article is very relatable. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that whatever hourly rate you have now, you can earn more. Even if you're sure you can't charge more. Even with your current level of hard skills. Fortunately for me, I got into an awesome community of freelancers early in my career and they both showed me that it was possible to earn much more and helped increase my hourly rate.
If you recently started (or only plan to) working as a freelancer, I recommend you check this article, it covers other topics besides money too. If you have been freelancing for a while, you probably won't find anything new there.
Check sourceI present this to you: one more thing which you won't be able to unsee. This article not about centering blocks (that was more or less solved by flexbox), but about centering inline elements and centering text.
If you're doing frontend, I'm sure you had problems with it too, this article explains nicely why it happens and what we can do about it (spoiler: not much).
Head to original