Non Breaking Space Show № 75: PixelJam — Indie Game Development

By Christopher Schmitt
PIxelJam

Today’s Non Breaking Space Show guest is PixelJam. Based out of Asheville, NC, Miles Tilmann and Rich Grillotti make up the leadership of PixelJam, an indie game development company. Since 2005, they’ve created their own video games mostly in the retro pixelation format that defined the look and feel of 1980s console games such as Gamma Bros., Dino Run, and PotatoMan Seeks The Troof. However, some games have other visual styles like Glorkian Warrior, show they can shed the retro feel and still make an engaging game. They’ve also produced mobile games for late night cable station, Adult Swim, such as Hipster Kickball and Pizza City. 

Topics discussed with PixelJam:

  • 21:20 → Lessons learned in making games over a long time.
  • 30:30 → What’s the baseline for getting coverage for your game?
  • 31:00 → What language are Pixel Jam using for their new games?
  • 33:00 → Any changes in tools used for editing graphics for games?
  • 34:40 → Using Kickstarter and crowdsourcing sites for game development.
  • 40:00 → Find out how many Kickstarter projects Christopher Schmitt has backed.
  • 45:20 → PixelJam’s ideas on building better crowdsourcing apps.
  • 51:00 → Talking through the desperation of crowdfunding campaigns.
  • 53:00 → What’s PixelJam’s next project?

For those in a sacred vow with Brienne of Tarth, Non Break­ing Space Show is still free of charge along with show notes and resources: Non Break­ing Space Show № 75: PixelJam — Indie Game Development

Adding Social Media Links to YouTube Channel

By Christopher Schmitt

YouTube engineers are constantly tweaking the user interface and user experience of YouTube. That means changes to YouTube in big broad strokes or in small, incremental steps. 

For an everyday YouTube user, it means expecting the UI, UX, or both to change without any warning. 

As an example, I have CSS Dev Conf’s YouTube channel up and running, but I am still trying to perfect my settings.

One of those settings or tasks is to add links to our other social media accounts from the YouTube channel page.

In the past, this had been a simple process of hovering over the edit channel banner and select Edit Links. 

But that’s changed–not by a whole lot–but enough to make me waste time trying to track down how to do something that was once so basic.

Here are the new steps to add social or outbound links to your YouTube channel:

Step 1. Log into Your Channel 

Screen Shot 2016-04-26 at 3.58.26 PM

Log into YouTube and head to your YouTube Channel.

Step 2. Select Channel Settings

YouTube Channel Settings Icon

To get to Channel Settings, click the gear icon underneath your channel banner. A modal or dialog box appears.

Step 3. Select Advance Customizing Features

yes to customize

Select “Customize the layout of your channel” in the dialog box. This is the new wrinkle YouTube has added to add social media links.

Step 4. Choose Edit Links 

edit links

Closing the dialog box, go to the upper right-hand corner of the YouTube banner and select “Edit Links”

Step 4. Add Social Media Links 

Adding links to YouTube channel

Start adding links! Once you save your new links, they will appear on top of the banner artwork in the lower righthand corner. 

That’s all there is to it!

Thanks to this change YouTube made, I lost at least 30 minutes trying figure out something so basic. That may not sound like a lot, but those 30 minutes felt like an eternity as if I was losing my mind because I had done this exact thing to the Non Breaking Space Show channel last year.

Apple iOS Spotlight Search Not Working Properly

By Christopher Schmitt
Spotlight Search

There are so many apps and folders of apps on my iPhone, I’ve given up on organizing them. 

True, I could use touch screen and move the apps around and create folders, but it’s a lot of apps and that is a slow process.

Or you would think that problem could be solved by digging out a cord and hooking up Apple iPhone to an Apple computer and using Apple iTunes to drag and drop my folders easily? You know: using the computer processing power of a desktop computer that a tablet or phone does not have (yet) would be easier, right? 

Sadly, iTunes has been a design joke for years: Apple is known for making great products and experiences by focusing on the design and the user’s experience with them, yet iTunes remains this devil’s compromise of under delivering and over promising what any logical person knows one piece of software should not do:

iTunes needs to be selling digital goods, managing said digital goods, storing your credit card information and profile, managing your entertainment network of devices, and now being a streaming music competitor–that making an above average app organizer for your a phone and tablet is the least of their worries.1

My problem with managing all these apps and folders of apps has not been a problem since I could use global search on my iPhone: “Spotlight Search” acts as my only path to my apps. By pressing an unlocked screen and swiping down on an app screen, the search box appears. I then enter in my search terms and the iPhone starts looking for apps named similarlity to that keyword. 

Maybe then the iOS looks inside your contacts database for similarly named people, and, if that fails, offers options to search the Web, App Store, or Maps in the latest version of iOS. It’s fairly basic experience. You’ve done it a thousand or million times without thinking.

This has been my backup and backbone for dealing with the iPhone OS. 

Until it stopped working on my phone.

Spotlight Search Stopped Working

I’m not sure how or when it stopped working. It just flaked out and I’ve been left to hunt and peck for apps like someone typing at a computer for the first time. Might as well be left to paining on cave walls with this smart phone.

So, what did I do? I do whatever everyone does when confronting the problem with Apple products: I Googled for a solution. 

Here’s the solution that somewhat worked for me:

Step 1. Reduce options

Head to Preferences > General > Spotlight Search. Turn off Siri 

I have a lot of out of date iOS apps I keep on my phone out of habit–and would be said to see them go like the Battle for Hoth game? Which is an amazing game since it had great replay value and, get this, it didn’t try to scam your real money for virtual coins or tokens to upgrade virtual stuff. But I digress… Go through the whole list of applications and make sure all the options are turned off.

Step 2. Hide and Show All Contacts

Contacts search results are as important as what apps are on your device. Having the iOS scan emails, phone numbers, etc. is very important. Click on Groups and choose to ‘hide all contacts’ then switch back to ‘show all contacts’.

Step 3. Do a Full Power Down Restart

If you are like me, you don’t restart your phone. It’s a smart phone and needs to be constantly working. Why would you restart it? But every once in a while, it’s good to start fresh. Jiggle the wires. 

Step 4. Go back to Spotlight Search

Head back to Preferences > General > Spotlight Search. Turn on Siri Suggestions. Then only check on Contacts and a few other apps you would like to have Spotlight Search use. 

These steps brought back Spotlight Search to life for me. It still has not been a 100% reliable, but it has been better than the 100% useless it was before. 

I’m hoping Apple goes through and thoroughly fix the Spotlight Search “feature” as that is going to be an easier sell to their engineers than giving them the task pf breaking up iTunes and making it easier to organize apps and folders. But, who knows? Maybe they will surprise us again. Till then, Spotlight Search is working again!

  1. I’m not saying Apple should avoid fixing iTunes. It’s that I don’t see them solving a problem that’s been a decade in the making where they can still make a mountain of easy cash by making a Rose Gold robot car. ↩

What Comes Next Is the Future Trailer #2

By Christopher Schmitt

What Comes Next Is the Future is the definitive documentary about the web, as told by the people who build it each day.

Their challenges and successes will help us better understand this thing called the web, and what lies ahead. A project by Matt Griffin – founder of Bearded, What Comes Next Is the Future is an effort to capture the titanic shift in the web landscape that mobile devices have initiated.

RWD Summit: Flexbox and CSS Grids

By Christopher Schmitt

In her Flexbox and CSS Grids talk at RWD Sum­mit in March 2016, Rachel Andrew shares her thoughts on work­ing in new layout technologies for web builders. Here are my notes from her talk:

  • Problem with our layout methods: 
    • Describing layout in markup with “DIV-itis”
    • Cost to learning layout methods to tame HTML/CSS to get the layouts we want
    • Trying, but “failed promise” of separation of source and display
  • Flexbox
  • CSS Grid Layout 

Non Breaking Space Show № 73: Tammy Everts — Web Performance

By Christopher Schmitt

Today’s Non Breaking Space Show guest is Tammy Everts. Tammy has spent the past two decades obsessed with the many factors that go into creating the best possible user experience. As a senior researcher and evangelist at SOASTA, she researches the technical, business, and human aspects of web & application performance.

Topics discussed with Tammy Everts:

  • 3:00 What was Tammy’s first connection to the web?
  • 3:24 Owning Uber
  • 4:06 “I own 20 different domains”
  • 5:24 Activity Impact Score
  • 9:26 Your own site, visitors determine performance impact
  • 11:20 How did you get into performance evangelism?
  • 13:47 When a client see user testing once…
  • 17:30 The Super Bowl Infographic
  • 20:30 The Consumer Performance Index
  • 22:01 What is synthetic data?
  • 28:00 There’s no Unicorn Metric
  • 28:59 Who is using mobile?
  • 30:17 What is the fastest growing demographic using mobile?
  • 33:33 People go straight to smart phones, never owning a laptop
  • 35:15 Tablet performance sucks. Why?
  • 37:45: “I don’t want to be a big pep rally for tablets, but…”
  • 40:16 What are the biggest performance issues that you see?
  • 46:53 Tammy’s book, “Time is Money”
  • 50:02 What Tammy is excited about in the future?

For those still on the Tamagotchi OS platform, Non Break­ing Space Show is still free of charge along with show notes and resources: Non Break­ing Space Show № 73: Tammy Everts — Web Performance

RWD Summit: RWD & SVG

By Christopher Schmitt

In his RWD & SVG talk at RWD Summit in March 2016, Dudley Storey shares his thoughts on working with Scalable Vector Graphics for Responsive Web Design, especially on logos and icons. Here are my notes from his talk:

There are five rules when designing icons and logos in SVG:

  1. Design & build SVG icons&logos at the aprox target px for the screens (~50x50px for icons, as needed for logos)
  2. Set up your illustration tool to help solve issues before they happen: 
    • Strokes in the middle of paths
    • Exporting styles as CSS
    • Use Boolean paths rather than superimposed layers
    • SVG filters and not illustrator’s one (if illustrator)
  3. Draw icons 1px in from the edge of the viewBox to allow for browser’s tendency to fractionally bloat SVG with antialiasing, which can be cut off if you draw too close to the edges 
    • Optimize the SVG to remove redundant code
    • SVGOMG
    • Adobe Illustrator 2015.2
    • Sketch Beta 3
  4. Since SVG is a replaced HTML element, linked CSS that does not load will leave an SVG element rendered at 300x150px by default. Icons should have fallback width and height attributes:
  5. Deal with IE 
    • It sets height for the SVG applied as a 150px height and 100% width creating distortion. You can use img {width: 100%;} or safer with img[src$=“.svg”] { width: 100%}
    • Inline SVGs require a container element and a “padding hack”

LiveBlogging: Lynda.com’s Up and Running with Snapchat

By Christopher Schmitt
Snapchat

Of the social media networks, I like to think I understand Twitter the most.

The Facebook replaces the need to go our family and friends’ places and see their family vacation photographs in person. Or worst yet, slideshows of ads.

Snapchat, however, I don’t get it. For a service that delivers 7 billion videos a day1 , I figured it’s time to dive in. 

So, I’m looking to get up and running with Snapchat. 

Thankfully, there’s a Lynda.com course called Up and Running with Snapchat by Anson Alex .

Also, it’s Saturday night and this is how I roll now. Apparently.

Sunday; April 3, 2016

12:06 AM

Opening up the web site and logging into Lynda.com.

12:11 AM 

First, up the welcome message. Snapchat is a “unique social media sharing program.” Snapchat is on Android and iOS respective app stores.

12:14 AM 

Snapchat sends video and messages to friends OR family. Oh, friends AND family, too.

Snaps can only be sent once by the recipient—except for some “conditions”. Seems ominous. 

Maximum video length is 10 seconds long. So, videos need to be memorable. 

12:16 AM 

Going through the Snapchat account registration process. I already set one up years ago, it looks like. Also, it appears I’ve gained a few friends and a family members since I last opened up the app.

So, reviewing the Snapchat does on-boarding process. As a designer, it’s interesting to see the UX instead of living it.

12:19 AM

Once you are done with the onboard processing, you get the main camera screen–a major area in Snapchat:

  • The big circle is for taking a photo or video: Press-click to take a photo and press-and-hold to record a video.
  • Upper right corner allows for switching of back and front cameras.
  • Bottom-left of the screen is the the bumber of
  • Swipe left-to-right to access inbox.

12:25 AM

You can add friends AT ANY TIME! Crazy, I know.

Also, the course is reminded me that Snapchat is a medium to share videos and pictures. So, I better get some friends:

My account is “teleject” on Snapchat.

12:31 AM

First time recording the video, Snapchat asks to access the microphone. 

You can record a video for up to 10 seconds. You might rembeber that factiod from 10 minutes ago.

When you are ready to send your snap, you can specify which Snapchat to send to. You can send it to one or multiple people. 

You can even at the Snapcat to “My Story” and my “friends” can view the Snapchat as many times as they like within a 24 hour window. 

It’s the exception to the “view once” Snapchat rule.

Also, I’m more than halfway done with this course!

12:42 AM

Somewhat hung up on the content disappearing. Is content creation really this disposable? Tweets and Facebook postings don’t disappear. 

You can type captions on your Snapchat by pressing the Type icon in the top right of the Camera screen.

Once you press done on the keyboard, captions can be moved anywhere. Press and hold on the captions while moving them to your new desired location for the caption.

For filters, slide on the Snap from right to left. Filters will slide over the image. There are several to pick from–some are basic photographic filters to dynamic text (like picking our location, your speed, etc.). If you don’t get these cool filters, you might need to enabled location services for the Snapchat app in your phone’s setting.

You can do free form drawing by clicking on the pencil icon. Pick the color you want and then draw with your finger over the Snap. 

Of course, you can add emojis. We are not savages. Click on the sticker icon in the upper right corner. Scroll through the list of emojis. Using your fingers on the touch screen, you can position, place, enlarge, or shrink the image over the Snap. And you can add more than one emoji on a Snap photo. So, go nuts.

12:55 AM

You can also adjust the amount of time a friend can view a photo. This can be up to 10 seconds. Adjust this feature in the lower lefthand corner of the Camera screen. 

If you love your Snap photo, you can save it to your photos app by clicking on the down arrow icon in the lower left hand screen. 

Well, that helps me feel better from creating disposable media!

To automatically saved a Snap photo to your “My Stories” section–which can be seen by all your friends, I believe–select the plus sign icon. This saves a step or two and allows for quick sharing–and allows friends to see the Snap for up to 24 hours. 

Of course, you can always be in greater control of your Snaps and send them directly to friends by clicking the right arrow in the lower righthand corner of the Camera screen. This brings up your friends directory. Check off the friends that you want to receive the Snap photo.

1:06 AM

Again, if you get a Snapchat, the icon in the Camera screen will show a number in the lower righthand corner. 

To view a Snap from a friend, it will appear as a solid colored icon next to their name in the Snapchat inbox. 

Where as Snapchats that you have sent to a friend will have an arrow next to their name.

Better know a Snapchat icon by reading the icon directory in Snapchat help. Please someone tell me there’s a Memory game made out of this?

1:08 AM

When viewing a Snap that someone has sent you, hold and press the screen the entire time for the Snap. 

You can also chat directly to a friend via Snapchat because text message software needs to be reprogrammed otherwise it’s not a social media app.

In the settings, you can make updates to how to be notified that when new Snaps arrive. You can also set other settings about privacy, setting up your Best Friends, gloss over their Terms of Service.

1:19 AM

Reviewing now who can see Snaps. Sent directly to friends, only friends. Send to “My Story”, all friends in your directory.

Do Snaps really disappear “for good”? It depends. They appear to disappear–If it’s on the internet, it’s probably out there. 

If you want to delete your Snapchat, you need to go to the Snapchat web site. Once there, log into the site under the account you wish to delete and follow the Support/Help documents for instructions on deleting the account.

That’s it! We’re Snapchat pros!

1:20 AM

That was pretty basic, but it definitely does what is said on the package to get us up and running. 

  1. According to Business Insider ↩