{"rowid": 82, "title": "Being Prepared To Contribute", "contents": "\u201cYou\u2019ll figure it out.\u201d The advice my dad gives has always been the same, whether addressing my grade school homework or paying bills after college. If I was looking for a shortcut, my dad wasn\u2019t going to be the one to provide it.\n\nWhen I was a kid it infuriated the hell out of me, but what I then perceived to be a lack of understanding turned out to be a keystone in my upbringing. As an adult, I realize the value in not receiving outright solutions, but being forced to figure things out. \n\nEven today, when presented with a roadblock while building for the web, I am temped to get by with the help of the latest grid system, framework, polyfill, or plugin. In and of themselves these resources are harmless, but before I can drop them in, those damn words still echo in the back of my mind: \u201cYou\u2019ll figure it out.\u201d\n\nI know that if I blindly implement these tools as drag and drop solutions I fail to understand the intricacies behind how and why they were built; repeatedly using them as shortcuts handicaps my skill set. When I solely rely on the tools of others, my work is at their mercy, leaving me less creative and resourceful, and, thus, less able to contribute to the advancement of our industry and community. \n\nOne of my favorite things about this community is how generous and collaborative it can be. I\u2019ve loved seeing FitVids used all over the web and regularly improved upon at Github. I bet we can all think of a time where implementing a shared resource has benefitted our own work and sanity. Because these resources are so valuable, it\u2019s important that we continue to be a part of the conversation in order to further develop solutions and ideas. It\u2019s easy to assume there\u2019s someone smarter or more up-to-date in any one area, but with a degree of understanding and perspective, we can all participate. \n\nThis open form of collaboration is in our web DNA. After all, its primary purpose was to promote the exchange and development of new ideas.\n\n\n\tTim Berners-Lee proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the World Wide Web. Based on the earlier \u201cEnquire\u201d work, it was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents.\n\n\nI\u2019m delighted to find that this spirit of collaborative ingenuity is alive and well on the web today. Take the story of Off Canvas as an example. I was at an ATX Dribbble meet up where I met Jason Weaver and chatted to him about his recent work on the responsive layout prototype, Off Canvas. Jason said he came across a post by Luke Wroblewski outlining the idea and saw this:\n\n\n\tIf anyone is interested in building a complete example of this approach using responsive Web design techniques, let me know!\n\n\nFrom there Luke recounts: \n\n\n\tWe went back and forth on email, with me laying out ideas and Jason doing all the hard work to see if they can be done and improving them bit by bit! Once we got to something we both liked, I wrote up an article explaining things and he hosted the examples.\n\n\nLuke took the time to clearly outline and diagram his ideas, and Jason responded with a solid proof of concept that has evolved into a tool we all have at our disposal. Victory!\n\nI have also benefitted from comrades who have taken an idea of mine into development. After blogging about some concerns in regards to maintaining hierarchy as media queries are used to shift layouts, Jordan Moore rebounded with some responsive demos where he used flexbox to (re)order content as viewport sizing changes.\n\nSimilar stories can be found behind the development of things like FitVids, FitText, and Molten Leading. I love this pattern of collaboration because it involves a fairly specific process:\n\n\n\tInitial idea or prototype is outlined or built, then shared\n\tDiscuss\n\tSomeone develops or improves it, then shares it\n\tDiscuss\n\tSomeone else develops or improves it, then shares it.\n\tInfinity.\n\n\nThis is what the web looks like when we build it together, and I\u2019d argue that steps 2+ are absolutely crucial. A web where everyone develops their own ideas and tools independent of one another is like a room full of people talking and no one listening. \n\n\n\nThe pattern itself mimics a literal web structure, and ideally we\u2019d be able to follow a strand from one idea to the next and so on.\n\nBlessed are the curators\n\nSometimes those lines aren\u2019t easy to find or follow. Thankfully, there are people who painstakingly log each experiment and index much of what\u2019s out there. Chris Coyier does this with CSS in general, and Brad Frost is doing this for responsive and multi-device design with his Pattern Library. Seriously, take a look at this page and imagine what it would take to find, track and organize the progression of each of these resources yourself. I\u2019d argue that ongoing collections like these are more valuable than the sum of their parts when they are updated regularly as opposed to a top ten tips blog post format.\n\nHere\u2019s my soapbox\n\nHere are a few things I appreciate about how things are shared and contributed online. And yes, I could do way better at all of them myself.\n\n\n\tConcise write-ups: honor others\u2019 time by getting to the point. Not every idea or solution needs two thousand words to convey fully. I love long-form posts, but there\u2019s a time and a place for them.\n\tVisual aids: if a quick illustration, screenshot, or graphic helps illustrate your point or problem, yes please.\n\n\nBy the way, Luke Wroblewski rules the school on both of these.\n\n\n\tDemo it: host it yourself, or put it on CodePen or JS Bin for others to see.\n\tPut it on Github: share and improve with the rest of the community. Consider, however, that because someone puts something on Github doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re forever bound to provide support or instruction.\n\n\nThis isn\u2019t a call for everyone to learn everything all the time, but if you\u2019re curious or interested in something, skip the shortcut and get your hands dirty: sketch, prototype, question, debate, fork, and share. Figuring these things out on our own makes us valuable contributors to the web \u2013 the thing that ultimately we\u2019re all trying to figure out together.", "year": "2012", "author": "Trent Walton", "author_slug": "trentwalton", "published": "2012-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/being-prepared-to-contribute/", "topic": "process"}