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Adrian Roselli
Series A Machine Learning Platform VRML

All Posts Tagged: UX

Showing File Types in Links

Links to files can be a surprise for users, especially those who cannot use, do not notice, or do not have the status bar to show a link destination. Some users may appreciate knowing a link points to a file, sometimes even a particular file. For links with the download…

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Tags: css, html, usability, UX

Responsive Type and Zoom

Typography that responds to viewport width (‘fluid’ or ‘responsive’ typography) can be useful when you want to ensure text does not get clipped or spill out of some design elements. Carousels, widget controls, or my Venn diagram are some examples. I say viewport width because I rarely see responsive type…

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Tags: accessibility, css, design, usability, UX

Web Development Advent Calendars for 2019

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…

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Tags: accessibility, css, design, html, internet, standards, UX

Accessible Drop Caps

Since the early days of the web, when images could be floated and text would wrap around them, designers have wanted to bring drop caps onto the web. Then we learned how terrible a pattern like <img alt=”M” align=”left”>atthew is for users, and CSS introduced :first-letter, letting us believe all…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIA, css, design, html, pattern, usability, UX, WCAG

An HTML Element Potentially Worth $18M to Indiegogo Campaigns

The title of this post is a play on Jason Grigsby’s recent post An HTML attribute potentially worth $4.4M to Chipotle. In it he asks: How many other people have failed to finish an order because the form doesn’t support autofill and the error messages aren’t helpful? An HTML attribute…

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Tags: accessibility, html, standards, usability, UX, WCAG

Under-Engineered Text Boxen

Others in this sorta-series: Under-Engineered Custom Radio Buttons and Checkboxen Under-Engineered Toggles Under-Engineered Toggles Too This is the latest, and not last, in my informal series of posts on under-engineered controls. Generally I am looking at the minimum amount of CSS necessary to style native HTML controls while also retaining…

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Tags: accessibility, css, html, pattern, usability, UX, WHCM

Basic Custom Control Requirements

If you are working on a custom control, a complex widget, or a novel interface element to integrate into a project, library, or framework, there are some core features you need to build. These represent not just what works for users across the most contexts and preferences, but also what…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIAbuse, pattern, usability, UX

Under-Engineered Toggles Too

Updated Intro Whether you use a <button> or <input type=”checkbox”> for your toggle depends on a few factors: Use <button> if: you can count on JavaScript being available, flipping the toggle has an immediate effect, the toggle will never have an indeterminate state. Continue reading this post. Use <input type=”checkbox”>…

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Tags: accessibility, css, html, pattern, usability, UX, WHCM

Maybe Ignore type=search

Another case of the headline saying it all. If you have a valid, accessible search field (with a useful, sensible label) then you can probably ignore type=”search” and use type=”text” instead. I made a code sample you can use for testing in your preferred set-up; it is what I used…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIA, browser, html, standards, usability, UX

Maybe You Don’t Need a Date Picker

Calendar controls, date pickers, date widgets, whatever you call them, however they are described, they follow the same basic principle — present the user with a calendar to enter a date (and sometimes a time). Chris Blakeley, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The native implementations come from browsers when authors use <input…

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Tags: accessibility, html, JavaScript, pattern, usability, UX

Link + Disclosure Widget Navigation

Early in 2017 I filed an issue against WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices (APG) requesting a change to the menu navigation pattern. Despite a great deal of feedback in agreement, it languished. In late 2017 I wrote Don’t Use ARIA Menu Roles for Site Nav and started actively campaigning against the APG…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIA, html, pattern, standards, usability, UX, WAI, WCAG

Group Labels Do Not Guarantee… Uniquity?

Heading this off early: uniquity uniq·​ui·​ty; \ yüˈnikwətē, -wətē, -i \Uniqueness; quality of being unique. There is a place where accessibility practitioners hang out and try to out-do each other with niche knowledge of nuance. While loitering in one, a question came up about text fields that have the same…

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Tags: accessibility, browser, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, usability, UX