It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. — Eleanor Roosevelt
This is the second video in 3-video series on using Notion. In Part 1 we covered a lot of ground on what Notion is how it’s great for any team, and web development teams in particular.
In this video, we’ll take a look at the two absolute biggest things I do in Notion:
I’m a big fan of Notion, particularly for keeping teams in sync. I work on teams of developers, and I find it works particularly well for that. If I had to sum it up really quickly, I’d tell Notion is for collaborative documents. But that undersells it.
Sign Up for NotionIn this video, I take my time explaining what Notion is and how I use it so that you can really understand it. This is the first a … Read article “#186: Notion for Web Development Teams”
You can have the best open source project in the world but, if it doesn’t have good documentation, chances are it’ll never take off. In the office, good documentation could save you having to repeatedly answer the same questions. Documentation ensures that people can figure out how things work if key employees decide to leave the company or change roles. Well documented coding guidelines help bring consistency to a codebase.
If you’re writing long-form text, Markdown is clearly a great … Read article “Front-End Documentation, Style Guides and the Rise of MDX”
I use Notion quite a bit, both personally and professionally.
In a sense, it’s just an app for keeping documents in one place: little notes, to-do lists, basic spreadsheets, etc. I like the native macOS Notes app just fine. It’s quick and easy, it’s desktop and mobile, it syncs… but there are enough limitations that I wanted something better. Plus, I wanted something team-based and web-friendly (shared URLs!) and Notion hits those nails on the head.
Here’s a bunch … Read article “How I’ve Been Using Notion Personally and Professionally”
There are so many little gems in this piece by Yevgeniy Brikman all about documentation. He digs into a lot more than simply documenting code though and focuses on how we can document every phase of our work, from design to process and beyond.
Here’s my favorite lines that made me sit back and shout “Wahoo!”:
… Read article “You are what you document”When a developer uses your code, they are really learning a new language, so choose the words in it wisely.
…programs must be written
We all know and love MDN for already being the best documentation for web features out there. It looks like it’s poised to get even better with Google and Microsoft both joining a new board.
Mozilla’s vision for the MDN Product Advisory Board is to build collaboration that helps the MDN community collectively maintain MDN as the most comprehensive, complete, and trusted reference documenting the most important aspects of modern browsers and web standards.
Interesting none of them mentioned … Read article “MDN Product Advisory Board”
I strongly believe that the documentation should be kept as close to the code as possible. Based on my experience, that’s the only option that works well in the long term. External documents, notes, and wikis all eventually get outdated, forgotten, and lost.
Documentation is a topic that always bugs me. Working on poorly documented codebase is a ticking bomb. It makes the onboarding process a tedious experience. Another way to think of bad documentation is that it helps foster … Read article “The Options for Programmatically Documenting CSS”
In the front-end community, there is a lot of attention related to documenting JavaScript. That’s not so much the case with CSS. Often times I feel like lost when I join a project with minimal or no CSS documentation.
Even though CSS is relatively easy to write, it can be quite hard to maintain. The specificity, the global scope of everything, and the lack of guidance can easily lead to inconsistency, code duplication, and over-complication.
I’ve long been curious … Read article “What Does a Well-Documented CSS Codebase Look Like?”
I have been asked to lead product development on a team. This is somewhat of a new journey for me because I’m generally used to calling myself a web designer rather than a product manager or strategist.
The toughest part of this job for me has been organizing my thoughts. I’ve written an executive summary for the product we’re building, done some competitive research and even dusted off my limited MBA education for a SWOT analysis. Oh yeah, now … Read article “On Writing Feature Requirements”
