The ALA team was helpful, friendly, and professional. Having now gone through the process, it’s easy to see why every article they publish hangs together. Thanks Mandy, Carolyn, Krista, and Erin for holding my hand, and thanks to the editors behind the scenes who liked it enough to give it the green light. If you have a comment, you should definitely join the discussion. There’s a lot to talk about.

Much gratitude also for Devan and his virtual red pen, Jay and the countless conversations we’ve had on this topic dating back several years, and Andy and David for not only making their thoughts on this subject available for aspiring young men like myself but also kindly offering their feedback on this article in particular.

His new book, Design Professionalism, is available now to read online (free) or for download to your iPad or Kindle for $9. I bought it sight unseen. It’s the least I could do.

While I could certainly imagine writing about web development full-time (a gaping hole in what’s left of the blog-o-sphere), that’s a job that requires several qualities I don’t possess, such as the time to react instantly to relevant news, the time to compose longer articles, and, most importantly, the expertise to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Given that dearth of time and talent, the subjects of the few paragraphs I have been posting and will continue to post must meet the following criteria:

• Not yet popular. If Cameron Moll, Dan Cederholm, Hacker News, and John Gruber have already brought Open Source Ampersands to your attention, there’s little reason for me to point it out. Similarly, it would be shocking if you had yet to hear about Method & Craft, the new website devoted to detailing the process behind great work, from Shawn Blanc, Chris Coyier, Brian Hoff, Noah Stokes, et al. If I happen to hear the news and write a post before it makes the rounds, so be it.
• Too important to pass up. Sometimes a particular news item’s importance transcends my desire not to pile on. In that case, I hope that the redundancy in your feed reader emphasizes the story’s merit.
• New perspective. In the event I feel confident I have something worthwhile to add that hasn’t been said yet, you can be sure I’ll seize the opportunity.
• Relatively advanced. Plenty of places on the ‘net to have people hold your hand. These are links for front-end developers who know all the tricks. Separately in emergent areas or places I’m just getting my feet wet, you may see intro-level material. It all depends where I’m at.

For a few fleeting moments, I thought I might be able to curate the world of front-end web design. Imagine A List Apart meets Daring Fireball, that’s what I was hoping to see happen. It turns out that’s more than a part-time undertaking. In lieu of one canonical replacement, I can recommend the following blogs as most likely to pick up a story and provide a bit of perspective.¹ Subscribe to these, and you’ll get about 25 percent of what you need to know within a day of it making the rounds; for the other 75 percent, you’ll need to follow several hundred RSS feeds and half the Internet on Twitter. Otherwise, you can simply wait. If it matters, you’ll know eventually.

• Quirksblog. A regular round-up of some of the most important front-end links. The resource for mobile web development news.
• Think Vitamin. Mixture of original content and links. Usually a bit slow on the draw.
• Functioning Form. Weekly statistical round-up of mobile data points.
• CSS-Tricks. Chris Coyier provides intermediate-to-advanced front-end development posts and has a good sense of which stories making the rounds deserve a little extra attention.
• Ajaxian. Used to be the best place for JavaScript news and analysis. Since Dion Almear and Ben Galbraith left, though, it’s slowed to a crawl.
• Cameron Moll. Leaning more toward design, Cameron’s tumblog has hit the high notes consistently since he most recently began freelancing again. If I could double or triple his volume and add a touch of analysis, it would be just about perfect.

A meager list.

1. I’m necessarily leaving out a few Twitter accounts that pass along more than their fair share of links, various general purpose link-aggregating websites, and content mills like Smashing Magazine.