Postlight
The Best of Track Changes in 2019
A recap of this year's best articles, podcast episodes, and Labs projects.
2019 was a busy year at Postlight: We turned 4 years old! We expanded our leadership, open-sourced one of our biggest software projects, launched a design sprint, pledged parental leave, and as always, we are hiring and growing. (You should work here.)
We also love to share what we we’ve learned along the way. Throughout 2019, we published weekly articles by Postlight employees across our product management, product design, and engineering groups. Paul and Rich put out new episodes of our podcast every week. And everyone in the company contributed to Postlight Labs, shipping fun experiments and modern digital tools and products.
As the year comes to a close, we’d like to share some of our favorite and most popular articles, episodes, and Labs projects of 2019.
2019’s Top Articles
Rich Ziade explains what exactly a headless CMS is, and the advantages of the model. A great primer for those considering making the switch, or rolling out a new web site.
Paul Ford follows up his cover piece in WIRED magazine with further musings on how the tech industry should approach the world’s biggest problems.
Mike Ashley guides us through the basics of React: What it is, the most common applications, and what exciting developments to watch for in the coming year.
Rich shares the eight key qualities he’s noticed the best designers tend to have, learned from a lifetime of hiring designers.
2019’s Top Podcast Episodes
Paul and Rich discuss Twitter’s redesign: Should you put your product or your user first?
#180 The Design System Has To Reflect The Business: Paul and Rich on Twitter’s Redesign
We discuss the platform’s new features and the response from its users
Rich and Paul dissect exactly what’s happening every time you open a web page.
#142 Inspect Element: Diving Into The Complexity Of The Web
How do we respond to the levels of abstraction we’ve piled on to web development?
We interview Evan Ratliff about his new book: The Mastermind. He guides us through the incredible story of Paul Le Roux, international criminal mastermind.
#157 What if Al Capone wrote C++?: Evan Ratliff on the The Mastermind, Paul Le Roux
We sit with author Evan Ratliff to talk about capital-c Crime.
In a world with a thousand better channels for communication, how necessary is email? We sit down and try to figure out if there’s any point to still using what sometimes feels like an ancient form of communication.
#179 Playing With Fire: Why Email Is a Dangerous Game
We look at the best and worst of email, and introduce a new section
Postlight Labs’ 2019 Projects
We launched what The Verge called “the best new chatroom” of 2019.
Glides helps engineers easily integrate Salesforce into their app with a GraphQL API, allowing then to develop faster and easier. Businesses love Salesforce and engineers love GraphQL, so it’s a match made in heaven.
The best way to drive a team is to orient everyone around a deadline. We made Dash for Slack to break down sprawling, confusing conversations into manageable single-topic channels with an expiration date.
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In the meantime, have great holidays. We’ll see you in 2020!
