Sitepoint, a website filled with resources for web designers and developers, is giving away “The Art And Science of CSS” as a downloadable PDF.
All you have to do to get the freebie is to follow Sitepoint on Twitter, and in a matter of minutes, you’ll get the download link delivered to your inbox. Make haste, though, the offering only lasts for two weeks! I haven’t read the book yet, but it seems good enough – and hey, it’s free, right?
Where2Eat is a web application developed by me and three other friends at this year’s SAPO Codebits. Sadly, we didn’t win any of the awesome prizes they gave away, but we still liked the idea, so we decided to keep developing it.
Basically, Where2Eat is an application that, after you tell it where you are right now, finds the nearest restaurants around the area, and shows them on a map. You can then refine your search, by adjusting the amount of area covered, how much you wish to spend or even what you feel like eating.
Right now, the application is in it’s early Alpha stage, and there are a LOT of bugs left to fix and new features to implement. We decided to get it out at this stage because we really want to be involved with the community from the very beginning. We set up a development blog (in Portuguese) so you can check out the latest version features and fixes and also so you can leave your precious feedback and suggestions (believe me, your contribution is really important!).
Just as the name implies, a CSS Reset is a stylesheet that lets you start your project on a real blank slate. What this means is that the styles defined in this particular stylesheet override (and effectively strip off) all the default browser styles Web Designers usually rely upon.
So why would you want to reset those styles? After all, they’re useful and save you a lot of code, don’t they? The answer is of course yes, but the problem is that different browsers have (very) different defaults, and if you trust default styles with too much you might just end up serving a very different experience for people with other browsers. Using a CSS Reset, however, you’re going to have to define some styles you probably didn’t even care about before, like strong, em or small. But believe me, it’s worth the extra work.
The CSS Reset stylesheet I’ve been using for a few projects now is the one written by Eric Meyer, CSS guru. You can download it here, and you’re encouraged to alter it to fit your needs.
Shelfari is a website for people who like to read. Put simply, you can create a virtual shelf containing all the books you’ve read, are currently reading and wish to read in the future. You can then share that with your friends, or maybe just jot down that perfect Christmas wish-list (I know my list is always chock full of books).
The concept may not sound all that innovative, and it really isn’t. Shelfari’s design is, though. Clean, crisp Web 2.0 looks combine perfectly with Wood or Mahogany textures reminiscent from that old study your grandfather used to spend whole afternoons reading, and the virtual bookshelf feature is really well implemented. No Flash here, it’s all CSS and Javascript under that beautiful hood. They also let you customize your shelf as a widget so you can include it on your blog or page. Visit the site, fall in love with it, and as long as you’re there, check out my profile.
This post on Techcrunch today raises some interesting questions about what the Web 3.0 will be like. Some say it will be all about the Semantic Web, while others such as myself profess a complete shift from the desktop towards “the cloud” (not that the two are mutually exclusive). What this article’s author suggests is something completely different: the next big challenge is about creating intelligent information filters that reduce the noise we currently experience from all the sources of information we consume. Hundreds of news pouring down from the web into our reader, millions of tweets from the hundreds of people we follow, there’s just no end! Or is there? Go read the article!
