And once more I am on my way to Berlin to check possible options as a new home for beyond tellerrand in Berlin.

First of all: congratulations to Bastian Allgeier and his team. Today is the day they were working so hard for and spend so much time on. Finally the new version, which is Kirby 3 is here!

What’s New

So much is new in Kirby 3, which you can all read in detail on the fresh and new site for and about Kirby 3. But here is a list of the new and updated features:

• a completely overhauled new panel
  • sections and tabs
  • better user account management
  • a Vue.js UI kit
  • improved fields
• drafts and custom publishing workflows
• a brand new plugin system
• REST API and Headless CMS
• virtual pages and external data sources
• an asynchronous media API
• shared collections
• a new email engine to easily send emails
• better caching
• … and much more

Congrats!

I had so many conversation with Bastian over the years and I think I can say, that I know how he is feeling today. But you know what, Bastian? You made it. I hope the new version takes off as it deserves it. I myself am already looking forward to updating my websites to the latest version soon (planned for February). Thanks for your work and effort, of pushing Kirby to what it is.

This morning I switched to Mozilla Firefox as my main browser on all my devices. I was using Chrome and I don’t have a real reason, other than not wanting Chrome to gain the absolute monopoly. So far I have to say, that Firefox feels so much faster than Chrome and I am impressed. I don’t get why not all extensions and the way I define my look for the browser is synced to all other devices, but I spent an hour to set it up on all my devices (including iPhone and iPad) and give it a chance now.

Just started reading the latest edition of the excellent and inspiring newsletter of Veerle Pieters. In her intro she says:

[…] Each bicycle ride was in boring grey skies and usually wet, dirty greasy muddy roads. Excellent times to test out bike cleaning tools and soaps :)

That made me smile, as I – a second before that – just thought who dull and grey it is outside during the last days or weeks and how I dislike this.

Good, that Veerle reminded me of what I often tell people: there is something positive in anything shit/negative. For Veerle it is, that she can test out her bike cleaning tools and soaps because of the shitty weather. That is the right attitude to go with ;)

Heydon Pickering always hits the right nerve for me to catch my attention. I love his books, I love his way of explaining things, I really love his talks and now he started a video series on Making Future Interfaces.

If you want to learn something and giggle and laugh while doing this, you definitely should check this series. So far he published:

• Unusual Shapes
• Custom Properties
• Algorithmic Interfaces

Having watched these, I am even more happy that he is part of the upcoming Düsseldorf edition of beyond tellerrand after being part in Berlin a few years ago.

Keep on this great stuff, Heydon! And thanks for producing all this …

Jon has written a good post about his personal experience using an iPad Pro as his main computer. What I like is, that he describes how he got there and since when and what else he tried. I see a lot of things similar to what he describes. I was totally tempted to do exactly what he says and skip a computer update and get an iPad Pro (or a Surface earlier and heard what he says about this way too often sadly). The downsides he mentiones about using it for web related work are a reason not to do it right now. Still tempting … ;)

(I am typing this on an iPad Air 2 while having breakfast btw)

⇾ Visit: Using the iPad Pro as Main Computer

Hello dear 2019. I am happy you are here, as 2018 left a strange taste. I can’t complain about your past really, but for some reason – which I can’t describe or grab – 2018 felt not good and everything felt heavy, clumsy and harder as usual.

Therefore I am happy that you are here, to hopefully change this again. I am looking forward to a year full of great things again. Another – hopefully – lovely event in Düsseldorf, a new home for Berlin’s 2019 edition and many other interesting things in the pipeline.

Not to forget my role as chairman of the Smashing Magazine supervisory board in which I am looking forward to being part of events in San Francisco, Toronto, Freiburg (even though not completely as my youngest nephew is going to get married) and New York. I am looking forward to meeting Vitaly and the team again and get those things kicked off. Some of the team, including me, have written a short end-of-year note as well.

Yesterday I had the first day looking at emails after two weeks again and today I wanted to work on my taxes. The door bell rang and I got a lovely present of Faculty, Chris Shiflett’s new-ish studio. What a lovely way to get back to work. ;)

Oh … and where we speak about kicking things off, when I made plans of running beyond tellerrand in Munich in January 2018, I have written about Simon and how much I liked his New Adventures as kick off for the year. Well, if you haven’t gotten any notice yet (you must live on the moon!): it’s back!!. In less than three weeks I am going to be in Nottingham and am sooo much looking forward to great talks and workshops. But mostly to meet all those people for the first time in 2019 and make the first new friends in this fresh and new year. There are still tickets left and you should get one to be part of it.

Anyways. Whether we meet at New Adventures or anywhere else, I am seriously looking forward to conversations and stories from everybody I meet in the upcoming year.

Last month I was trying to make my sites more accessible. One problem was my choice of colours. And even though some of them are not as I wanted them to be in the first place, accessibility was more important.

This article is a nice read about how to build an accessible color system from scratch.

⇾ Visit: Building an Accessible Color System

Animation certainly can be annoying when over-used and not used, where it makes sense. Even worse is, when it prevents the users from actually using what they are trying to use. In this Medium article Vernon Joyce has collected useful tips and examples to explain useful and subtle use of animation, that can actually add value to your website and/or interfaces.

⇾ Visit: Animation That Adds Value

Maria Keenan has written a 14-part FAQ with the most common questions about events and organising events for Tito. Obviously not everything fits to every event, but it is a nice, general overview.

⇾ Visit: Event FAQs