Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.

To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot

Gmail is now your email personal assistant http://depot.ly/lNM5P

Girls, Google says it’s time to back away from cookies: introducing nutrition info in search http://depot.ly/lNKyb

Discussing the Right User Interface for Video Streaming Websites http://depot.ly/lNLSE

Wanna upload photos from your PC to Instagram? Gramblr is the solution: http://depot.ly/lNL0Q

Might wanna check this out: A Guide to the New #HTML5 Form Input Types http://depot.ly/lNKnV

How to Find the Right Designer http://depot.ly/lNHrc  *Good article by @TrevMcKendrick

YouTube’s New One Channel Design Now Live For All Publishers http://depot.ly/lLkBY  via @marketingland

.@mobify shares a collection of 70 stunning responsive sites for your inspiration http://depot.ly/lLdOd

Honey is a social network for businesses that’s flexible enough to fit any workflow. You might like it: http://depot.ly/lLdwR

Fresh Resources for Designers and Developers from @hongkiat >> http://depot.ly/lLdrB

Funny & realistic slogans that tell the truth about famous brands http://depot.ly/lILTf

What’s really like to be a Google Intern http://depot.ly/lISb3

Softies is a very creative advertising campaign. You should check it out: http://depot.ly/lGLdl

‘Posthumanist’ art reflects wearable tech’s impact on humanity http://depot.ly/lGqlI  via @verge

Nice! 10 Print magazines all web designers and developers should read http://depot.ly/lGqfr

Here’s a good read from @TechCrunch – http://depot.ly/lDIew  – The Sisyphean Problem Of Email

Businesses With A Strong Sense Of Purpose Are More Successful http://ow.ly/lDHm2  *Inspiring read from @FastCoDesign

Watch: The History Of The Bauhaus, In 2 Minutes http://depot.ly/lDHaI

 Want more? No problem! Keep track of all our tweets by following us @DesignerDepot

Play Blu-ray Movies on Your Mac – only $25!

John Allsop uses an old iMac and the browser to snap a picture through a web cam and then email it when it detects movement.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

Build a motion activated security camera, with WebRTC, canvas and Device Orientation is a post from CSS-Tricks

There used to be just one way to do a timed loop in JavaScript: setInterval(). If you needed to repeat something pretty fast (but not as-fast-as-absolutely-possible like a for loop), you'd use that. For the purposes of animation, the goal is sixty "frames" per second to appear smooth, so you'd run a loop like this:

setInterval(function() {
      // animiate something
    }, 1000/60);

There is a better alternative to this now. Paul Irish introduced requestAnimationFrame over two years ago. I don't have a whole lot to add to it, I just had never actually used it before and now I have so I thought I'd help spread the word and write about its basic usage.

Why better?

As Paul explained:

• The browser can optimize it, so animations will be smoother
• Animations in inactive tabs will stop, allowing the CPU to chill
• More battery-friendly

The Simplest Possible Example

function repeatOften() {
      // Do whatever
      requestAnimationFrame(repeatOften);
    }
    requestAnimationFrame(repeatOften);

Call it once to kick it off, and your function recursively calls itself.

Start and Stop

requestAnimationFrame returns an ID you can use to cancel it, just like setTimeout or setInterval does. jQuery used here only to demonstrate a simple animation and bind events.

var globalID;
    
    function repeatOften() {
      $("<div />").appendTo("body");
      globalID = requestAnimationFrame(repeatOften);
    }
    
    $("#start").on("click", function() {
      globalID = requestAnimationFrame(repeatOften);
    });
    
    $("#stop").on("click", function() {
      cancelAnimationFrame(globalID);
    });

Example of this:

Check out this Pen!

Browser Support

See the Can I Use... tables.

The only notable problems are IE 9-, iOS 5-, and Android. But not actually a problem, because:

Polyfill

Like many fancy web features, it's nice to use it when available and fallback to something that works when you can't. Probably best just to refer to this Gist. Literally just include that chunk anywhere before you use requestAnimationFrame or cancelAnimationFrame.

Using this, you'll be able to use requestAnimationFrame in literally any browser.

Slightly More Complex Example

I learned about this while making a dumb little demo to learn canvas better:

Check out this Pen!

What would actually be more complex is several animations running at once using this (that still falls back OK). Feel free to link some of that goodness up in the comments if you know of examples.

Using requestAnimationFrame is a post from CSS-Tricks