This is a continuation to my earlier post on SASS: SASS, SCSS and Modular Designhttps://publishing-project.rivendellweb.net/sass-scss-css-and-modular-design/. This presents new ideas and more advanced mixins, tools and concepts. During development, watch what you're doing An additional parameter to the SASS command line tool allows you to watch files for changes and then automatically recompile them. This reduces the commands that you have to type at the terminal and it makes it easier to track changes. The command I use to watch the folder containing my SASS is: sass \ --scss \ tells SASS that we're using the SCSS syntax --update \ compile...
Introducing VTT WebVTT Web Video Text Tracks, formerly known as WebSRT, is a W3C community proposal for synchronized video caption playback. It is a time-indexed file format and it is referenced by HTML5 video and audio elements. As with many assistive technologies, it would be a mistake to assume that they are only meant as a way to provide for accessibility accomodations. We can enable captions when the ambient noise is too loud to listen to a recorded presentation, we can use chapters to navigate through a long lecture video just like DVD or Blue Ray movies. Captions can also...
As a designer we all hit the point where we want to use a specific feature of HTML5 and you don't know what browsers support what version of the specification in question. This is particulary important when we're asked to support older browsers where the same script we use to trigger a feature may be ignored or have unexpected results. In the CSS front we have to deal with "prefix hell". In their efforts to be in the bleeding edge of CSS feature development, and to show how the features may work in standard implementations, browser vendors all of them...
Since I last looked at video it's been a few years, there are new and amazing things that have happened in the field and I'm just amazed at the kind of stuff that you can do. This essay is the beginning of my exploration into the updated world of web video. In a separate essay I will explore web video's cousin, WebRTC and describe there what the differences are. Video is a first class web citizen The humble video tag has come a long way since I last looked at it. It still requires a lot of extra work to...
BACKGROUND In October of last year 2012 i was contacted by a German developer to do consulting on Docbook based ebook design and publishing. Because I had recently started a full time job I had to turn him down. 4 months later things had slowed down at work enough for me to reach out and check with the potential client to check if I could offer any assistance. I was sad to find out that he had given up and pretty much abandoned the project. I offered to run the project for free in exchange of being allowed to write...
