I loved taking this course as part of my job training at Microsoft and I’m so excited that they’ve made it public. I learned a ton and I’m sure you will too:
In this course, you’ll deepen your understanding of unconscious biases, how they influence behavior, and how they impact us all. You’ll also learn numerous actions you can take to help counter bias in your own work environment.
This is an awesome post from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the future of Artificial Intelligence, recommendations for the development of AI, and what will be required of us as humans interacting with it.
In two back-to-back, potentially NSFW posts discussing web development vs. platform-specific development, Eran Hammer covered a lot of the pain points encountered in each. For instance, on the Web, you’ve got rendering and user interface inconsistencies between browsers. On the other hand, retention for apps is notoriously crappy.
The world’s cheapest smartphone (251 Indian Rupees—less than US$4) is here. The specs:
The rollout is slow and units are being sold at a loss, but still. This is amazing and the program, which is subsidized by the Indian government, will bring the web to millions who have not been able to access it previously.
This is an interesting survey of form validation approaches. Interestingly it does not include in-browser validation handling, only bespoke validation scripts.
The intro to this awesome post sets the stage perfectly:
The web has changed immensely in the past 20 years. In 1996 there were roughly a million websites; now there are more than a billion. Back then there were roughly 50 million internet users; today there are more than 3 billion. We have more content than we ever dreamed was possible. People are enjoying it on 8.1 billion connected devices, including more than 24,000 distinct mobile device types.
We need progressive enhancement and we need to look beyond our technological bubble. It’s good for us and it’s good for the Web.
I love, love, love this collection of posters covering topics like research, access needs, accessibility, and design. Download them, print them up and hang them up all over your office!
Microsoft created a Code of Conduct (based on a template from the TODO Group) for all of their open source projects. Good stuff!
The Microsoft Edge team’s Jacob Rossi on Microsoft’s continued commitment to web-based apps and the future of Progressive Web Apps.
Jeremy on aggregating links for Progressive Web Apps. Sounds a lot like bringing back the Yahoo directory :-)