📝 Issue #436: RWD Turns Ten, Tools for Better Thinking, Happy Data, The Fastest Google Fonts, and more…

Happy birthday to Responsive Web Design, which turned ten this week. Ethan Marcotte gives us a glimpse at his thought-process, including the inspiration for RWD in this potted history of the technique that made him a household name (in households containing web designers). It’s an illuminating read.

Web accessibility is a niche area that only benefits a small minority of people, right? Wrong. Web accessibility is central to creating a digital world in which we are all equal. This excellent summary of accessibility tips explains that more people than you might think benefit from these simple to implement features.

I’m not really a developer; Sooner or later I’ll get caught Googling answers, or checking syntax on a cheatsheet. At least, that’s what most people who write code think. Landon Schropp breaks out the pep talk vibes in this positive antidote to imposter syndrome. A must-read for anyone who writes code.

The first step in being a better designer, is training yourself to think effectively. There are proven techniques that can help you solve problems, make decisions, and think systematically. Untools is a fantastic free collection of thinking techniques from Second-Order Thinking, to the Hard Choice Model.

Google Fonts is a great resource for web designers, and compared to all but the slickest rivals, it’s pretty fast. But pretty fast isn’t fast enough for Harry Roberts who delves into the performance of Google Fonts in this post, and provides the ultimate high-speed snippet for maxing their speed.

If you’re a designer, your portfolio is the primary tool with which you prove your skills to clients, and prospective employers. Keeping your portfolio up to date is one of the most productive things you can do, and in this advice-packed post we break down the four distinct times you should consider a full redesign.

The future of much customer interaction, especially on the web, is automation. But how do you automate human-codebase interactions without sacrificing the personalized experiences that customers value? Kaitlin Pettersen talks to Ryan Steinberg about Intercom’s drive for empathy in this in-depth interview.

Adoric is an excellent app that helps you deliver customized user experiences that convert visitors into paying customers. Using templates that can be modified to meet your brand guidelines, Adoric will show individual users enticing messages at the right time. There’s a free forever plan available.

If you’ve been struggling mentally with the Coronavirus outbreak, finding it hard to be hopeful, and wondering if things can really turn around, then you should check out Happy Data by Pentagram. It features creative visualizations of positive data, from falling pollution in Italy, to rising volunteering in New York.