Why I stopped blogging, and what do you want to read about next?

I have only written about Susy since the release of Learning Susy a few months ago. I’ve been working on the update since then and now that it’s finally complete, I wanna move on to a new topic.
There are 3 themes that I’m interested to explore and I’l…

I have only written about Susy since the release of Learning Susy a few months ago. I’ve been working on the update since then and now that it’s finally complete, I wanna move on to a new topic.

There are 3 themes that I’m interested to explore and I’ll need your help in choosing which one to work on.

But first, let me be completely honest to you about my feelings for the past few months.

It’s been a great ride

Learning Susy has been a smashing success for me and it would never have been possible if you weren’t part of it. I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support and for sticking around with me.

In addition to this immense joy and gratitude, I need to acknowledge another deeper, darker feeling – fear.

I never said this publicly before, but I was scared stiff by the decisions that I had to make while writing Learning Susy, especially when it came to pricing the new update.

On the surface, I was afraid that nobody would buy at the new price point. On a deeper level though, I was worried you would reject me and decide to boycott me forever.

This fear of rejection eventually manifested big time in my blog over the last couple of months.

My posts became shorter, for fear I may be wrong.

I removed my emotions and opinions from my posts, worrying that you’ll find them boring or worse, repulsive.

I stuck only to Susy-related posts, quietly clinging to my safety net where I’m an “expert”.

I would spend hours staring at a blank screen every week, trying to come up with something decent to blog about. On good days, I would manage to squeeze out a draft. But those drafts often got deleted the very next day.

This vicious cycle kept repeating itself. It came to a point where I was afraid to write anything. And I hid under the facade that I was busy updating Learning Susy.

Well, now that Learning Susy is finally complete, I can no longer use it as an excuse, and that’s when I decided to be totally honest about these feelings of inadequacy to you, and most importantly, to myself.

I am afraid of making mistakes, of failing, of writing useless junk, and I am fucking afraid of you leaving my world and hitting the unsubscribe button (Oh, and of what you’d think of me when I use the word “fuck”).

It’s now time to face these fears head on, start blogging again and make this blog super worthy of your time.

And to do that, I’ll need your help to choose one of these three themes which I’d like to explore:

  1. Modern Web Development Workflow
  2. Web Animation with CSS and JS
  3. User Experience and Web Design

(Early disclaimer: I fully intend to make a book out of the chosen theme. You’ll get to voice your opinions in this new book, so read on if you’re interested.)

Modern Web Development Workflow

Speed matters. If we can streamline our processes and get the computer to automate our tasks, then we free up time to do things that matter.

That’s what the workflow theme is about. It’ll cover anything that will help you master your web tools so your development process becomes lightning fast.

We will explore topics like:

  • Setting up your text editor environment
  • Using Bower to manage your frontend dependencies easily
  • Frontend optimization practices with Gulp and its plugins
  • Frontend templating with tools like Handlebars
  • Automated Visual Regression testing (CSS Testing)
  • JavaScript Testing
  • and many others…

Workflows is a topic which I’m most comfortable writing about since I’m a workflow geek myself. I love experimenting with new processes for my development with the latest tools. My guiding principle is that it has to be easy to use, fast and automated. A large part of my workflow has been chiselled to perfection and I’ll be more than happy to share it with you.

Web Animation with CSS and JavaScript

Web animations are the next big thing and, with the right touch, can enhance websites and make them come to life.

But the question remains: how do we get this elusive “right touch” for every single project? When should we use bigger, more dynamic animations and when should we keep to simpler, subtle ones?

These will be questions on the design side of things. We’ll also cover stuff on the technical side of things, like how-tos, when to use CSS or JavaScript for animations, performance and other technical mumbo-jumbo to create the magic.

This will be an exciting theme to explore.

Web Design and User Experience

Web design and user experience is one of those themes that many people have covered and are still covering. You’ll probably have a good idea of the type of posts that’ll fall under this theme. They may be:

  • What are the basic principles to design and how to apply them
  • What is white space and how much of it is enough?
  • How to come up with a great colour palette
  • How to create visually pleasing contrasts
  • Posts about user experience
  • and many more …

I wanna talk about this topic because I have received multiple questions on design and UX in the last few months. There’s also a hidden agenda if I talk about this topic – I wanna get better at web design and user experience myself, and I realised that teaching design would make me more knowledgeable about design.

Since design is subjective and I’m always equipped with a “I’m not good enough” personal framework, this theme would be a big challenge for me.

It’s Your Turn to Choose

I hope you’re excited about the themes I proposed and you’re eager to see me jump into one of them.

I’m interested in all 3 and so it’s difficult for me to choose what to move onto. I want to make sure this blog is worthy of your time, hence I’d like you to help me choose an area to focus on for the next couple of months.

In addition to that, I’d love to hear any burning questions you may have with regards to all three proposed themes (or any other topic you have in mind).

Just let me know in this quick survey I made (It’s only gonna take you two mins to complete).

I’m super grateful to have you with me on this journey and I look forward to disclosing the results next week!

Thanks for everything!


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» Why I stopped blogging, and what do you want to read about next? | Zell Liew | Sciencx | https://www.scien.cx/2015/05/14/why-i-stopped-blogging-and-what-do-you-want-to-read-about-next/ | 2024-03-29T07:00:58+00:00
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