I am sad and disheartened to learn that you had left this world. How could a kindhearted man like you lost his life to a heart complication? Life is just unfair. You were truly one of the most loving husbands and fathers I have known. You opened up your heart to me and placed your trust in me. I wanted to apologize to you that I couldn’t accomplish what you had asked me to do. As much as I wanted things to work out, the situation was beyond my control. Regardless of what happened I have nothing but respect for you. Rest in peace, sir.

My book, Professional Web Typography, released to the world 30 days ago. It has been an intriguing experience to see the reaction from the web community, especially on Twitter, and to learn about the pay-what-you-want model. Although the book was never intended to be free, I even put a prominent buy button next to the read button, I noticed a handful of tweets refer to it as a free ebook.

To give you some perspective on the economics of the book in its 30 days, I have gathered some information from Google Analytics and PayPal. According to Analytics, there were 18,075 sessions, 11,578 users, and 50,399 pageviews. According to PayPal, out of 76 readers have supported the book, one paid $25, four paid $0.01, and everyone else paid in between.

As promised to keep the book up-to-date, I added two new chapters: “Using SVG as Type” and “Animating Type.” My goal is still to keep the book as succinct as possible.

One of the most requested additions to the online book is a PDF version. In fact a handful of supporters expected to get a download link after they made the payment. Although I initially had no plan to release any other format other than the web, I had made a PDF version for anyone who supports $7 or more for the book. Since I have been writing a personal email to thank anyone who had supported the book, it would not be too much work to attach a PDF copy.

Once again, thanks for all your support.

I haven’t blogged about my boys for a while and don’t even know where to begin. So much had happened in the past few months. I am just going to write what I can remember.

Let’s start with soccer. We signed up soccer camp for Đán again in the spring after he showed some interest in the sport from last winter. Every Saturday morning, I took him to soccer with Đạo tagging along. Unfortunately Đán had lost his focus and attention. He rather walked around the field than joined his friends and coaches for soccer. On the other hand, Đạo started to show interest in soccer. I wanted to sign him up, but they did not have class for his age. He ended up playing in Đán’s class. One of the coaches invited him to join the group and he had been part of the team ever since. With Đán I just let him do whatever he liked. If he didn’t want to play soccer, I let him roamed around the field. He could join in whenever he wanted too. Most of his teammates were in the same boat. They just ran and did whatever they wanted rather than paying attention to the coach. Poor dads chasing after their kids and giving them warnings again and again. It’s the middle-class problem. We paid for our kids to play soccer, but ending up babysitting them.

Lately Đán had been obsessed with dinosaurs. He took his dinosaur toys with him everywhere he went. He even knew how to pronounce their names. I nicknamed him the Đánosaur. My wife and I had a conference yesterday with one of his teachers and we were surprised to learn that she had no behavioral problem with him at the daycare. Then again she was a very strict teacher. She told us that he always shared his dinosaurs with his friends in class, something he hardly did at home with his brother and cousin. We were glad to have her as his teacher this year.

Đạo is also wrapping up his kindergarten with his fantastic teacher. On Monday, he and his friends performed 9 songs for us. Each song lasted a couple of bars. One of their favorite tunes were about Abraham Lincoln. After the performance, I asked him who was Abraham Lincoln and what did they mean when they sang, “he freed the slaves.” He responded, “Abraham Lincoln was our 16th president and he gave people money.” I learn new thing everyday through my kids.

Summer is coming and we had some vacationing lined up.

In the hip-hop universe, Yelawolf is still from “Outer Space,” despite being signed to the Eminem’s camp. Although he has been in the game for a minute, Yelawolf has not been accepted. Describing himself as “Whiskey in a Bottle,” he claims, “Fuckin’ right, I’m aged / I’m Dirty Three, I’m not a child who plays with rap to get a piece.” Like Em, Yelawolf perfected his flow, but unlike Em, he could sing a few notes. As an outcast, he brings some different perspectives to hip-hop. In “American You,” he raps and sings about his upbringing: “You got a blue collar father who drinks Budweiser out the bottle.” In “Best Friend,” he opines his religious point of view: “Try hard to respect people for what they believing in / But if you spit on my fucking grave / And wish me Hell then I wish you well / I’mma send you straight up to my best friend.” Love Story has some compelling tracks, but the formula of rapping and rock singing gets repetitive for 18 tracks. The minimalist productions don’t help much either.

Etsy’s creative director Randy Hunt provides a clear, easy-to-understand overview of product design. Recommended read for web designers who want to learn the principles of creating meaningful user experiences.

The Vegas MC apparently likes to smoke. Wright spends most of his time on the album getting stoned with his guests including members from Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Mod Sun. But when the smoke is clear, Wright is at his best like venting out his frustration on “Can I Feel This Way” (“Nowadays kids not even living they life, they just staring in they iPhone screens”) or dropping some thought-provocative rhymes on “Training Your Mind” (I wouldn’t be surprised if my future killer’s a black man / Wake up, walk out, another man chalked out”). His emotional comes through on “Daddy Daughter Relationship” (“If this world ever breaks you down / Baby girl stay strong, remember that I got your back”). In his mid 20s, Wright is still in his growing process and he probably won’t be matured until he let go of the weed.

Despite the lack of sell on Professional Web Typography this week, I added a new chapter on animating type. I write about my lost love for Flash and how you can use CSS animations to bring your typography to life. It’s a beautiful Friday so take your iPad to the nearest bar for happy hour, order a drink or two, and enjoy reading.

The new Facebook’s Instant Articles has shaken up the web community on performance. Broadband are getting better and yet sites are getting slower. Sites are slow to the point that Facebook could even use performance as its marketing strategy. While the tools can cause websites to load slowly, we, as web designers, are responsible for implementing those tools; therefore, to increase performance we have to start with education.

I had an opportunity to teach web design and usability to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the Fall of 2014. For the final project, in which the students had to design and code their own portfolio, I kept reminding them the concept of progressive enhancement because they were so early to create slick-looking websites. Out of 19 students, I had three that didn’t take my advice. One student who had some front-end skills decided to create a one-page portfolio with all the bells and whistles. She ended up using multiple CSS files and JavaScript libraries. When I tested her page on the iPhone, it could barely scroll. Another student had to start over from scratch because he couldn’t get jQuery to behave the way he wanted it to. On the last night before the due date, another student asked me why his site was not working properly. I looked at his code, which has jQuery and a handful of JavaScripts, and didn’t know how or where to begin. I told him to just do the best he could.

I was not at all against using JavaScript. In fact, I encouraged students to explore it, but they had to build the solid foundation first before they could layer all the cool interactions on top. That has always been my approach as well in my own work. For example, when I created the website for Professional Web Typography, I set out my priority. I could tuck all items in the table contents under the hamburger, but readers have to click on the icon every time they want to access the TOC. Furthermore, adding a hamburger requires JavaScript. So I decided to have the TOC always accessible at the bottom of every page so that readers can get to it at whatever page they are on. With the fancy drop cap, I could have used Adobe’s dropcap.js for consistency across the browsers, but then I could do it with just a few lines of CSS. Even though the drop cap would be a little bit off in various browsers, but I can live with that. It’s just an enhancement future.

I urge you to think the same when you approach a project to make the web a faster experience for everyone.

Starting next week, I will be teaching Introduction to Web Design. With only eight students signed up, I thought the class would get cancel, but I got the green light on Tuesday that the show will go on. As I was scrambling to prepare the lesson plan and the syllabus, I realized that the schedule, which will begin on June 2nd and end on July 23rd; is quite condensed. I have less than two months and I my goal is to teach the students the foundations of HTML & CSS. I ended up turning it into a hands-on training bootcamp. Everyday I will teach them how to code and give them assignments. They will have one project to do so that they’ll learn everything from creating a site map to wireframe to complete website.

One of the challenges of teaching an intro course is selecting the textbook. I had three choices: Shay Howe’s Learn to Code HTML and CSS: Develop and Style Websites, Thomas Michaud’s Foundations of Web Design: HTML & CSS, and Jon Duckett’s HTML & CSS: Design and Build Websites. I chose Duckett’s. Beside its beautiful design, the content seems to be easy for beginners to understand.

I built my lesson plan around the book and will cover only parts that the students will work with most of the time. My goal is to get them to get comfortable with HTML & CSS. They can learn more design in their upper classes. When I taught Web Design and Usability, which is an advanced class, last year, most students were struggling with basic coding. I want to change in the intro level. I truly believe that you can’t be a web designer, especially today, unless you can code the basics. They will have some work cut out for them.

Arman Emami’s book is a concise, comprehensive, and utilitarian primer to industrial design. Beautiful illustrations and clear writing make it a breezy read on useful topics including functionality, usability, form, colors, and materials.