Notes from the Future Desk: January – week2

The latest VRay addition, 3.30.03, has clearly moved to a progressive rendering model for its defaults. This is because the new progressive workflow for work-in-progress testing of materials and lighting is far faster to refine than adaptive rendering models. For final output, however, the adaptive quality is still superior and faster than previous builds, especially now with the latest DMC changes. The great thing about VRay is that you can have the best of both worlds. I would suggest reading through the changelog to learn more, they are adding tons of features in every microupdate. -JEckert

coolors.co is the tits. I used Kuler for a while, but it just never quite met the needs for a from-print-to-web-and-back perspective. Now I can explore colors all the doo-dah-day and immediately grab the CMYK, RGB, HEX aaaaaaannnnndddd PMS color closest to my selection. –Emilee

The dev team completed a free online course at flexbox.io as part of our weekly lunch-and-learn series. Flexbox allows you to create powerful responsive layouts with less HTML markup or CSS. For example, with flexbox you can visual order by adding a single line of CSS without altering the markup or floating elements. This is awesome from both a design and SEO standpoint. Browser compatability is better than you think and autoprefixer can handle the rest. What are you waiting for? –Jerrod

There has been a lot of talk recently about A/B testing – and plenty of services that have popped up to offer it. But did you know that Google actually has a tool that can help you do A/B testing, and it’s right there in Google Analytics? Yes, and it’s called Google Content Experiments. It’s pretty straightforward – you create your page variants and let Google know about them, and they do they A/B serving. Can’t wait to use this! –Ben

Clarification of roles and responsibilities is extremely important for everyone on the project team. Its a slippery slope to frustration if everyone doesn’t know and understand who is doing what on a project. –Kim

I’ve always taken offense to the term “thought leader.” The only things that control my thoughts are myself and tequila. –Jerrod