Where do you get your web development information from?

At JSConf, I posed this question to a group of developers (in a pool no less):

“What are your primary sources for the web development information that you use, need and value?”

The reason for this question is because I’ve been trying to come up with better ways of ensuring that developers know about the new features in Internet Explorer. I’ve used the example of how I’ve had several conversations where developers didn’t know that IE10 supported such features as WebSockets, Transitions, or (gasp!) border-radius. It got me motivated to figure where you, the dev community, goes to get the most relevant info on new browser features and web development techniques. Hacker News and MDN were two immediate resources mentioned.

So I’ll ask you, the reader, the same question:

“What are your primary sources for the web development information that you use, need and value?”

Answer in the comments.

Rey Bango

28 Comments

  1. back in the day it used to be sites like like WebMonkey but these days I get more from random pointers on Twitter.
    Places like Hacker News have a lot of information but the presentation puts me off. Sites like A List Apart are great, but focussed.
    I’ve probably found more useful pointers in StackOverflow answers than anywhere else recently

  2. CanIUse.com
    StackOverflow.com
    MDN
    MSDN

    Hacker News is an interesting response to “Where do you get the most relevant info on new browser features?”. If you miss something, you miss it. In that same way I suppose I can see I get all my information from Twitter, which is true to a certain extent.

  3. It’s docs.webplatform.org (biased on this one as I edit it from time to time) or developer.mozilla.org,

  4. – can i use
    – mdn
    – smashing mag
    – loaaaaaads of front end dev on twitter

  5. – I subscribe to RSS feeds for developer blogs of all major web browsers to be up-to-date with the new stuff coming in.
    – caniuse.com (quick checks for feature support)
    – mdn
    – w3c specs
    – rfc (usually lower-level stuff)
    – msdn (only for IE-specific info)

  6. Caniuse.com
    Tells me everything that IE can’t do.

  7. Rey, I think it depends. Your specific examples of supported stuff would all be covered by caniuse.com. I always go there for, “Does browser X support Y.” But when you say “web development information”, to me that sounds a bit more high level. Beyond just does IE support X, but perhaps blog entries on IE doing X. For stuff like that I’d typically expect to see them in JavaScript Weekly or HTML5 Weekly.

  8. About 100 sources, including:

    -Official msdn blogs
    -Official asp.net blogs
    -Various tech news sites, such as Slashdot and Engadget.
    -Specific individual blogs, such as Scott Gu, Stephen Walther, Scott Hanselman, Somasegar, John Resig.
    -UX sites such as Smashing Magazine.
    -Microsoft news followers Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley.

  9. To answer the question, I get info from many both MSFT and non-MSFT sources — usually indicated by authors of major tools (Jquery, Modernizr, etc.) Note though that responses you collect here will likely over-represent Microsoft tech (since that’s where many people know you from). You need to ask the question from a more “neutral” place (like the jQuery blog). I’m not surprised that many don’t know about IE features since IE’s profile is relatively silo’d in Microsoft properties. For example, if someone searches Google for “HTML5” one of the top results is the Google-centric HTML5 Rocks site. Once people go there, they are on a path away from IE. Microsoft needs to be better at raising their profile in the web world (and playing SEO).

  10. My number one source is Prismatic. Does a great job of pulling in my interests from Facebook and Twitter but also suggests articles from people I don’t follow which helps me branch out.

  11. I only recently launched it, but I think http://flippinawesome.org is turning into a good resource (of course I am biased).

    I also agree with the folks about the weekly newsletters. I subscribe to HTML5 Weekly, JS Weekly, CSS Weekly, Web Design Weekly and RWD Weekly (among others).

    However, my primary source would be via RSS. I have a NewsBlur feed (now that Reader is dead) with probably hundreds of different sites. Granted, I am voracious reader of this stuff.

  12. Mostly twitter. Also I read articles from codrops, smashingmagazine, nettuts and instantshift

  13. Blatant self promotion: I think codeproject.com, @codeprojectnews and the CodeProject weekly Web Development newsletter are good sources of web dev news.

    Of course, I would think that – I put those news feeds and newsletters together. I spend a chunk of every day wading through a variety of sources I’ve discovered over the years, including Twitter, hundreds of blogs I follow via RSS and a constantly changing group of news aggregators. I wade through it all and find what seems like the best stuff so you don’t have to.

    My former employer, MSDN Magazine, also publishes some top-notch articles and columns.

    Some other particularly good sources are Smashing Magazine and Nettuts+. It’s also well worth your time following Bruce Lawson, Christian Heilmann, Elijah Manor, Encosia (Dave Ward), John Papa and the proprietor of this blog, Rey Bango.

  14. 1. Following relevant people on Twitter + news.me = relevant information
    2. Watching courses on tutsplus.com and peepcode.com

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