We put up a proper Team page. CSS-Tricks isn’t just me, but a whole team of part-time staff that keep this ship sailing. That includes writers. We’ve always had guest posts, but now, for the first time, you’ll be seeing articles not written by me that also aren’t “guest” posts, because they work here! Example. Notice it doesn’t have an introduction written by me like a guest post would. We’ll get proper author archives up soon.
Sponsored posts will also be slightly different soon. I’m going to put in a little audio clip for them, like this:
As I recently talked about, I like advertising when it’s done well. My idea with these audio clips is that it’s my chance to be super honest about sponsorships. With audio clips, I can explain the endorsement in my own words. And if I can’t do that, or the sponsor doesn’t like what I say, the deal is off.
The other week, Naysan Naraqi and Josh Janssen from Envato came to my house in Milwaukee and shot a video of me. Here’s their post on it. I think it turned out super well.
They have a whole YouTube channel of them, including recent ones from Cameron Moll and Dan Cederholm.
This season of ShopTalk has been going strong. We’ve had back-to-back guests each week for a bunch of months now. That will continue one more week, and then it’s starting to be conference season. We’ll still have an episode every week, but guest shows will be interspersed by RAPIDFIRE episodes and other specials. We have some really fun stuff lined up. Show concepts we’ve never done before.
We integrated our own chat room onto the site for when we’re live. We’re also working on updating our intro theme music, just to spice stuff up a bit.
Speaking of conference season, first up for me is heading down to ConvergeSE – one of my favorite conferences of the year. I’m leaving tomorrow morning and getting there way early. Partly because I like to think of ConvergeSE as the new SXSW. It’s a many-day conference a cool southern town known for BBQ, good music, and being hot. The conference takes place in a cool downtown area dispersed between many buildings, so there is lots of outside foot traffic. It just a good vibe.
I’m heading to Columbia tomorrow to meetup with the rest of Team CodePen so we can hang out a bit. Then we’re throwing a party with Sparkbox on Tuesday to kick things off!
From Columbia I head straight up to New York City for a week to hang out there and attend another CodePen Meetup. That one is full-up sadly, but there is a waiting list.
After that I’m home for just a few days before I’m taking a trip with my family to Branson, Missouri. Just some good ol’ fashioned family fun. We rented an AirBnB and are just gonna see some music shows and go to some water parks and whatnot.
Then the conferences continue! I’ll be at An Event Apart Boston, then headed straight down to Front End Design Conference.
I’ve gotten to be a guest on a few brand new podcasts lately. SVG Immersions with Rob Levin just launched, and I’m on episodes 4 and 5.
I was also on the not-yet-launched Spirit of the Midwest podcast, so stay tuned for that.
One thing I just want to cover briefly, as I’ll be doing a bigger post on it soon, is YWebCA. YWCA is a national organization with the slogan “eliminating racism – empowering women”. Madison has a branch and a building there. The YWeb Career Academy (YWebCA) uses space in that building to have the class.
YWeb Career Academy (YWebCA) trains women and people of color, underrepresented in technology, to attain family-sustaining jobs while meeting a labor market gap. We provide instruction in front-end web development skills—including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Node.js, user experience design and project management—to 20–25 students (per session) through 400 hours of intensive instruction.
I visited the other week to give a guest talk, and I’ve been going back as often as I can since then to help out. It’s amazing. Everybody involved is kicking ass, providing spot-on useful, modern tech training to an engaged group of students. Like I said, I’ll post more on it soon.
Great video Chris! I don’t know if the rest of that Envato series is the same, but I really appreciate how you just opened up and gave the world some insight into your day and your life.
Sometimes it’s nice to just get a quick reality check, when most of us are holed up in our own little world, and remember that we all like to play with our dogs, we like our short commutes, we all like our bikes (weired) and we could all use a stint at fat camp, er… better healthy habits, er… less beer? :) Thanks!
The Team page is great!
If Sara brought up the idea to you it was because I asked her (in the Brad Frost’s workshop here in Dayton, OH a couple of weeks ago) about the new writers that had no introduction from you, and it would be nice to have some insight about them.
Then she said she was going to talk to you about maybe creating an About Us page :).
If not, the Team page still rox! lol.
It’s great to read the chronicles man, Thanks for sharing.
BTW, to improve the UX of the audio clips maybe show the remaining time rather than the elapsed time? Just like putting the file size and extension next to a link that opens a PDF, for example. That way, users can decide if they would like to allot the remaining time to listen to the clip or not.
Just a UX idea.
Why the different sized photos on the Team page? Just curious…
I’m not seeing it. Details?
Robim is 200x 200. You are 250×250.
I’m using Firefox on the Mac. Three different sized photos. You and the one below are showing as medium sized. Then two very large ones and then a set of altogether smaller one.
P.s. All showing as the same size in Safari and Chrome btw.
Pretty fascinating. That’s a pretty big rendering difference between Gecko and Blink/Webkit. If you make the
<td>
25% wide and an<img>
in theremax-width: 100%;
, Blink/WebKit will make sure that table cell remains 25% wide and shrink the images if needed. Gecko will stretch the table cell out to the widest image. I wonder who is right?Tough call. I might be wrong, but I think that table-cells/tds don’t act as a containing block for their content but table/display:table do, so in Firefox the width calculation is done in regards to the full width of the table element, so the image expands to it’s real max-width. Since without a fixed table layout the width of a table-cell is determined by the width of it’s content, it expands further than 25%.
Firefox is probably right in terms of specs, but Blink and Webkit are right in terms of everyday usefulness.
Will you be coming down to the Chicago Codepen meetup on Monday, April 13? It’s full up as well, with a waiting list.
UGGG I really wish I was but I’ll be out of town for ConvergeSE and the CodePen/Sparkbox meetup we’re doing there. I’ve been told it won’t be the last one though, and hope to make the next one.
It’s like the old adage, “98% of lawyers give the other 2% a bad name.”
99% of advertising gives the other 1% a bad name.
Chris, it was awesome to see you in that Envato spot. You just have one of those awesome personalities. I think I mentioned in (adjacent to) your last Chronicle that I’ve been making major health changes myself mostly inspired by you. I just turned 30, married, trying to start a family, working with kids in my church; I topped out at 305 lbs in January and just realized that I need to make a change. So seeing your posts on it and reading about you recognizing the need gave me that push to make tangible differences in my lifestyle… joined a gym last year, completely changed my daily diet, I try to bike more, joined a 12 week health program at my gym and got involved in my work’s health program to be a cheerleader for others.
Just wanted to say, I’ve admired you for years for the great resource that is this site, but also wanted to say thanks for being open with your personal stuff too.
Hi, I wanted to know how you were able to display the audio in the post, from the post type.