While in town for You Gotta Love Frontend, I was invited to present this talk at the VilniusJS meet-up. There were only a couple designers in the audience, so I did a little on-the-fly reframing — namely to explain the value of a designer on a team. I only went…
Last night I drove up to Toronto, braving concurrent matches from two of their local sporting clubs, parking in oblivion, navigating a maze of progressive rings of fencing, sneaking into the venue via a propped service door, and presented on the role of design in accessibility. It was a code-light…
Underlines, the standard, built-in signifier of hyperlinks, the core feature of the web, are beautiful. This is objectively true. They are aesthetically one of the most delightful visual design elements ever created. They represent the ideal of a democratized information system. They are a frail monument to the worldwide reach…
Web developers around the world have celebrated Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related topics. As a result, you may recognize some of the ones listed below. Every year I miss a few on day one, so add a comment or tweet me if you have…
The chocolate tasted like sugared wax. Yet it was still less offensive than the typeface. For a few years now web developers around the world have celebrated Saturnalia Christmas with advent calendars covering topics related to the web. I expect you will recognize some of these from prior years. I…
Painfully slow demonstration of the example table resizing and different media queries kicking in. After writing (again) that it is ok to use tables, and after providing quick examples of responsive tables, I received questions about why I used some of the code I did. I am going to attempt…
Sometimes we fail to consider how browser features can jack up our interfaces. This is neither good nor bad, but we do need to account for it. My argument here is simple. Avoid putting important actionable or informational text exclusively below form fields. This includes labels, hints, and error messages.…
Léonie Watson recently posted Accessible Emoji, a simple technique to make emoji characters accessible to those with screen readers. It requires a little bit of extra effort when inserting an emoji into a web page, but it is worth it to convey the meaning to screen reader users. Then there…
There has been some discussion lately around, of all things, text resizing widgets on web sites. It was kicked off by a post from Jeffrey Zeldman suggesting that perhaps it is time to bring them back. Even mighty responsive design benefits from offering a choice of font sizes—because there are…
The chocolate in that calendar was terrible. Terrible enough that I keep re-using this photo since I do not want to buy a new calendar. For a few years now web developers around the world have celebrated Saturnalia Christmas with advent calendars covering topics related to the web. Some come…
TL;DR: In general, I recommend underlining links in body content. In the absence of a better style appropriate for a specific site, this is the way to go. Overview It is amazing to me how this suggestion causes so much angst and fighting. Designers often argue that they look ugly,…
In 2012 I wrote about how to use chromatic type with pseudo-elements. My objective back then was to minimize the hassle of a content author using a WYSIWYG while also not overwhelming a screen reader user with triplicate content. Pseudo-elements achieved that, though support for pseduo-elements in screen readers is…