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@tinabeans
tinabeans / template.html
Last active February 13, 2024 09:18
A super-barebones single-column responsive email template, assuming a max-width of 540px. Read about it on the Fog Creek blog.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Single-Column Responsive Email Template</title>
<style>
@media only screen and (min-device-width: 541px) {
.content {

Make it real

Ideas are cheap. Make a prototype, sketch a CLI session, draw a wireframe. Discuss around concrete examples, not hand-waving abstractions. Don't say you did something, provide a URL that proves it.

Ship it

Nothing is real until it's being used by a real user. This doesn't mean you make a prototype in the morning and blog about it in the evening. It means you find one person you believe your product will help and try to get them to use it.

Do it with style

@tyre
tyre / gist:5561992
Last active December 17, 2015 05:59
Stop developing for the 90% use case

TLDR:

Please stop overvaluing your time at the expense of your users. It is easy to get caught up in a features pissing contest with that other startup down the road, but don't lose sight of your mission. Take one problem that people have and solve it. Well. All of it. All of the time.

Last year I read the wonderfully concise essay Half, Not Half-Assed by the 37 Signals team.

It took me more than five minutes to figure it out, but the time spent thinking was definitely worth it. Talking with coworkers, friends, or conference attendees about those handful of paragraphs reinforces this.