{"rowid": 29, "title": "What It Takes to Build a Website", "contents": "In 1994 we lost Kurt Cobain and got the world wide web as a weird consolation prize. In the years that followed, if you\u2019d asked me if I knew how to build a website I\u2019d have said yes, I know HTML, so I know how to build a website. If you\u2019d then asked me what it takes to build a website, I\u2019d have had to admit that HTML would hardly feature.\n\nAmong the design nerdery and dev geekery it\u2019s easy to think that the nuts and bolts of building a page just need to be multiplied up and Ta-da! There\u2019s your website. That can certainly be true with weekend projects and hackery for fun. It works for throwing something together on GitHub or experimenting with ideas on your personal site. But what about working professionally on client projects?\n\nThe web is important, so we need to build it right.\n\nIt\u2019s 2015 \u2013 your job involves people paying you money for building websites. What does it take to build a website and to do it right? What practices should we adopt to make really great, successful and professional web projects in 2015? I put that question to some friends and 24 ways authors to see what they thought.\n\nGetting the tech right\n\nInevitably, it all starts with the technology. We work in a technical medium, after all. From Notepad and WinFTP through to continuous integration and deployment \u2013 how do you build sites?\n\nCreate a stable development environment\n\nThere\u2019s little more likely to send a web developer into a wild panic and a client into a wild rage than making a new site live and things just not working. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to have realistic development and staging environments that mimic the live server as closely as possible.\n\nAre you in the habit of developing new sites right on the client\u2019s server? Or maybe in a subfolder on your local machine? It\u2019s time to reconsider.\n\nCharlie Perrins writes:\n\n\n\tDon\u2019t work on a live server \u2013 this feels like one of those gear-changing moments for a developer\u2019s growth. Build something that works just as well locally on your own machine as it does on a live server, and capture the differences in the code between the local and live version in a single config file. Ultimately, if you can get all the differences between environments down to a config level then you\u2019ll be in a really good position to automate the deployment process at some point in the future.\n\n\nAnything that creates a significant difference between the development and the live environments has the potential to cause problems you won\u2019t know about until the site goes live \u2013 and at that point the problems are very public and very embarrassing, not to mention unprofessional.\n\nA reasonable solution is to use a tool like MAMP PRO which enables you to set up an individual local website for each project you work on. Importantly, individual sites give you both consistency of paths between development and live, but also the ability to configure server options (like PHP versions and configuration, for example) to match the live site.\n\nBetter yet is to use a virtual machine, managed with a tool such as Vagrant. If you\u2019re interested in learning more about that, we have an article on that subject later in the series.\n\nUse source control\n\nTrent Walton writes:\n\n\n\tWe use source control, and it\u2019s become the centerpiece for how we handle collaboration, enhancements, and issues. It drives our process.\n\n\nI\u2019m hoping by now that you\u2019re either using source control for all your work, or feeling a nagging guilt that you should be. Be it Git, Mercurial, Subversion (name your poison), a revision control system enables you to keep track of changes, revert anything that breaks, and keep rolling backups of your project.\n\nThe benefits only start there, and Charlie Perrins recommends using source control \u201cnot just as a personal backup of your code, but as a way to play nicely with other developers.\u201c\n\nNoting the benefits when collaborating with other developers, he adds:\n\n\n\tGraduating from being the sole architect of your codebase to contributing to a shared codebase is a huge leap for a developer. Perhaps a practical way for people who tend to work on their own to do that would be to submit a pull request or a patch to an open source project or plugin.\u201d\n\n\nRichard Rutter of Clearleft sees clear advantages for the client, too. He recommends using source control \u201cpreferably in some sort of collaborative environment that you can open up or hand over to the client\u201d \u2013 a feature found with hosted services such as GitHub.\n\nIf you\u2019d like to hone your Git skills, Emma Jane Westby wrote Git for Grown-ups in last year\u2019s 24 ways.\n\nDon\u2019t repeat, automate!\n\nTim Kadlec is a big proponent of automating your build process:\n\n\n\tI\u2019ve been hammering that home to every client I\u2019ve had this year. It\u2019s amazing how many companies don\u2019t really have a formal build/deployment process in place. So many issues on the web (performance, accessibility, etc.) can be greatly improved just by having a layer of automation involved.\n\n\tFor example, graphic editing software spits out ridiculously bloated images. Very frequently, that\u2019s what ends up getting put on a site. If you have a build process, you can have the compression automated and start seeing immediate gains for no effort. On a recent project, they were able to shave around 1.5MB from their site weight simply by automating compression.\n\n\nOnce you have your code in source control, some of that automation can be made easier. Brian Suda writes:\n\n\n\tWe have a few bash scripts that run on git commit: they compile the less, jslint and remove white-space, basically the 3 Cs, Compress, Concatenate, Combine. This is now part of our workflow without even realising it.\n\n\nOne great way to get started with a build process is to use a tool like Grunt, and a great way to get started with Grunt is to read Chris Coyier\u2019s Grunt for People Who Think Things Like Grunt are Weird and Hard.\n\nTim reinforces:\n\n\n\tIssues like [image compression] \u2014 or simple accessibility issues like alt tags on images \u2014 should never be able to hit a live server. If you can detect it, you can automate it. And if you can automate it, you can free up time for designers and developers to focus on more challenging \u2014 and interesting \u2014 problems.\n\n\nA clear call to arms to tighten up and formalise development and deployment practices. The less that has to be done manually or is susceptible to change, the less that can go wrong when a site is built and deployed. Any procedures that are automated are no longer dependant on a single person\u2019s knowledge, making it easier to build your team or just cope when someone important is out of the office or leaves.\n\nIf you\u2019re interested in kicking the FTP habit and automating your site deployments, we have an article later in the series just for you.\n\nBuild systems, not sites\n\nOne big theme arising this year was that of building websites as systems, not as individual pages.\n\nBrad Frost:\n\n\n\tFor me, teams making websites in 2015 shouldn\u2019t be working on just-another-redesign redesign. People are realizing that in order to make stable, future-friendly, scalable, extensible web experiences they\u2019re going to need to think more systematically. That means crafting deliberate and thoughtful design systems. That means establishing front-end style guides. That means killing the out-dated, siloed, assembly-line waterfall process and getting cross-disciplinary teams working together in meaningful ways. That means treating development as design. That means treating performance as design. That means taking the time out of the day to establish the big picture, rather than aimlessly crawling along quarter by quarter.\n\n\nDesigner and developer Jina Bolton also advocates the use of style guides, and recommends making the guide a project deliverable:\n\n\n\tConsider adding on a style guide/UI library to your project as a deliverable for maintainability and thinking through all UI elements and components.\n\n\nVal Head agrees: \u201cbuild and maintain a style guide for each project\u201d she wrote. On the subject of approaching a redesign, she added:\n\n\n\tA UI inventory goes a long way to helping get your head around what a design system needs in the early stages of a redesign project.\n\n\nSo what about that old chestnut, responsive web design? Should we be making sites responsive by default? How about mobile first?\n\nRichard Rutter:\n\n\n\tThink mobile first unless you have a very good reason not to. Remember to take the client with you on this principle, otherwise it won\u2019t work as a convincing piece of design.\n\n\nTrent Walton adds:\n\n\n\tThe more you can test and sort of skew your perception for what is typical on the web, the better. 4k displays hooked up to 100Mbps connections can make one extremely unsympathetic.\n\n\nThe value of testing with real devices is something Ruth John appreciates. She wrote:\n\n\n\tI still have my own small device lab at home, even though I work permanently for a well-established company (which has a LOT of devices at its disposal) \u2013 it just means I can get a good overview of how things are looking during development.\n\n\nAnd speaking of systems, Mark Norman Francis recommends the use of measuring tools to aid the design process; \u201c[U]se analytics and make decisions from actual data\u201d he suggests, rather than relying totally on intuition.\n\nTim Kadlec adds a word on performance planning:\n\n\n\tI think having a performance budget in place should now be a given on any project. We\u2019ve proven pretty conclusively through a hundred and one case studies that performance matters. And over the last year or so, we\u2019ve really seen a lot of great tools emerge to help track and enforce performance budgets. There\u2019s not really a good excuse for not using one any more.\n\n\nIt\u2019s clear that in the four years since Ethan Marcotte\u2019s Responsive Web Design article the diversity of screen sizes, network connection speeds and input methods has only increased. New web projects should presume visitors will be using anything from a watch up to a big screen desktop display, and from being offline, through to GPRS, 3G and fast broadband.\n\nWill it take more time to design and build for those constraints? Yes, it most likely will. If Internet Explorer is brave enough to ask to be your default browser, you can be brave enough to tell your client they need to build responsively.\n\nWorking collaboratively\n\nA big part of delivering a successful website project is how we work together, both as a design team and a wider project team with the client.\n\nVal Head recommends an open line of communication:\n\n\n\tKeep conversations going. With clients, with teammates. Talking is so important with the way we work now. A good team conversation place, like Slack, is slowly becoming invaluable for me too.\n\n\nRuth John agrees:\n\n\n\tWe\u2019ve recently opened up our lines of communication by using Slack. It has transformed the way we work. We\u2019re easily more productive and collaborative on projects, as well as making it a lot easier for us all to work remotely (including freelancers).\n\n\nShe goes on to point out how tools can be combined to ease team communication without adding further complications:\n\n\n\tWe have a private GitHub organisation (which everyone who works with us is granted access to), which not only holds all our project code but also a team wiki. This has lots of information to get you set up within the team, as well as coding guidelines and best practices and other admin info, like contact numbers/emails for the team.\n\n\nSmall-A agile is also the theme of the day, with Mark Norman Francis suggesting an approach of \u201csmall iterations with constant feedback around individual features, not spec-it-all-first\u201d. He also encourages you to review as you go, at each stage of the project:\n\n\n\tAlways reflect on what went well and what went badly, and how you can learn from that, even if not Doing Agile\u2122. Ultimately \u201cbest practices\u201d should come from learning lessons (both good and bad).\n\n\nRichard Rutter echoes this, warning against working in isolation from the client for too long:\n\n\n\tAvoid big reveals. Your engagement with the client should be participatory. In business no one likes surprises.\n\n\nThis experience rings true for Ruth John who recommends involving real users in the feedback loop, not just the client:\n\n\n\tWe also try and get feedback on what we\u2019re building as soon and as often as we can with our stakeholders/clients and real users.\n\n\nWe should also remember that our role is to serve the client\u2019s needs, not just bill them for whatever we can. Brian Suda adds:\n\n\n\tDon\u2019t sell clients on things they don\u2019t need. We can spout a lot of jargon and scare clients into thinking you are a god. We can do things few can now, but you can\u2019t rip people off because they are unknowledgeable.\n\n\nBut do clients know what they\u2019re getting, even when they see it? Trent Walton has an interesting take:\n\n\n\tWe focus on prototypes over image-based comps at all costs, especially when meetings are involved. It\u2019s much easier to assess a prototype, and too often with image-based comps, discussions devolve into how something might feel when actually live, or how a layout could change to fit a given viewport.\n\n\nVal Head also likes to get work into the browser:\n\n\n\tSketch design ideas with any software you like, but get to the browser as soon as possible.\n\n\nBeyond your immediate team, Emma Jane Westby has advice for looking further afield:\n\n\n\tInvest time into building relationships within your (technical) community. You never know when you might be able to lend a hand; or benefit from someone who\u2019s able to lend theirs.\n\n\nAnd when things don\u2019t go according to plan, Brian Suda has the following advice:\n\n\n\tIf something doesn\u2019t work out, be professional and don\u2019t burn bridges. It will always come back to you.\n\n\nThe best work comes from working collaboratively, not just as a team within an agency or department, but with the client and stakeholders too. If doing your job and chucking it over the fence ever worked, it certainly doesn\u2019t fly any more. You can work in isolation, but doing really great work requires collaboration.\n\nThe business end\n\nWhen you\u2019re building sites professionally, every team member has to think about the business aspects. Estimating time, setting billing rates, and establishing deliverables are all part of the job.\n\nIn 2008, Andrew Clarke gave us the Contract Killer sample contract we could use to establish a working agreement for a web design project. Richard Rutter agrees that contracts are still an essential part of business:\n\n\n\tThey are there for both parties\u2019 protection. Make sure you know what will happen if you decide you don\u2019t want to work with the client any more (it happens) and, of course, what circumstances mean they can stop taking your services.\n\n\nHaving a contract is one thing, but does it adequately protect both you and the client? Emma Jane Westby adds:\n\n\n\tFind a good IP lawyer/legal counsel. I routinely had an IP lawyer read all of my contracts to find loopholes I wouldn\u2019t have noticed. I didn\u2019t always change the contract, but at least I knew what might come back to bite me.\n\n\nSo, you have a contract in place, and know what the project is. Brian Suda recommends keeping track of time and making sure you bill fairly for the hours the project costs you:\n\n\n\tIf I go to a meeting and they are 15 minutes late, the billing clock has already started. They can\u2019t expect me to be in the 1h meeting and not bill for the extra 15\u201330 minutes they wasted. It goes both ways too. You need to do your best to respect their deadlines and time frame \u2013 this is always hard to get right.\n\n\nAs ever, it\u2019s good business to do good business. Perhaps we can at last shed the old image of web designers being snowboarding layabouts and demonstrate to clients that we care as much about conducting professional business as they do.\n\nTime to review\n\nIt\u2019s a lot to take in. Some of these ideas and practices will be familiar, others new and yet to be evaluated. The web moves at a fast pace, and we need to be constantly reexamining our tools, techniques and working practices. The most important thing is not to blindly adopt any and all suggestions, but to carefully look at what the benefits might be and decide how they apply to your work.\n\nCould you benefit from more formalised development and deployment procedures? Would your design projects run more smoothly and have a longer maintainable life if you approached the solution as a componentised system rather than a series of pages? Are your teams structured in a way that enables the most fluid communication, or are there changes you could make? Are your billing procedures and business agreements serving you and your clients in the best way possible?\n\nThe new year is a good time to look at your working practices and see what can be improved, and maybe this time next year you\u2019ll look back and think \u201cthank goodness we don\u2019t work like that any more\u201d.", "year": "2014", "author": "Drew McLellan", "author_slug": "drewmclellan", "published": "2014-12-01T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/what-it-takes-to-build-a-website/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 31, "title": "Dealing with Emergencies in Git", "contents": "The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,\nIn hopes that version control soon would be there.\n\nThis summer I moved to the UK with my partner, and the onslaught of the Christmas holiday season began around the end of October (October!). It does mean that I\u2019ve had more than a fair amount of time to come up with horrible Git analogies for this article. Analogies, metaphors, and comparisons help the learner hook into existing mental models about how a system works. They only help, however, if the learner has enough familiarity with the topic at hand to make the connection between the old and new information.\n\nLet\u2019s start by painting an updated version of Clement Clarke Moore\u2019s Christmas living room. Empty stockings are hung up next to the fireplace, waiting for Saint Nicholas to come down the chimney and fill them with small treats. Holiday treats are scattered about. A bowl of mixed nuts, the holiday nutcracker, and a few clementines. A string of coloured lights winds its way up an evergreen.\n\nPerhaps a few of these images are familiar, or maybe they\u2019re just settings you\u2019ve seen in a movie. It doesn\u2019t really matter what the living room looks like though. The important thing is to ground yourself in your own experiences before tackling a new subject. Instead of trying to brute-force your way into new information, as an adult learner constantly ask yourself: \u2018What is this like? What does this remind me of? What do I already know that I can use to map out this new territory?\u2019 It\u2019s okay if the map isn\u2019t perfect. As you refine your understanding of a new topic, you\u2019ll outgrow the initial metaphors, analogies, and comparisons.\n\nWith apologies to Mr. Moore, let\u2019s give it a try.\n\nGetting Interrupted in Git\n\nWhen on the roof there arose such a clatter!\n\nYou\u2019re happily working on your software project when all of a sudden there are freaking reindeer on the roof! Whatever you\u2019ve been working on is going to need to wait while you investigate the commotion.\n\nIf you\u2019ve got even a little bit of experience working with Git, you know that you cannot simply change what you\u2019re working on in times of emergency. If you\u2019ve been doing work, you have a dirty working directory and you cannot change branches, or push your work to a remote repository while in this state.\n\nUp to this point, you\u2019ve probably dealt with emergencies by making a somewhat useless commit with a message something to the effect of \u2018switching branches for a sec\u2019. This isn\u2019t exactly helpful to future you, as commits should really contain whole ideas of completed work. If you get interrupted, especially if there are reindeer on the roof, the chances are very high that you weren\u2019t finished with what you were working on.\n\nYou don\u2019t need to make useless commits though. Instead, you can use the stash command. This command allows you to temporarily set aside all of your changes so that you can come back to them later. In this sense, stash is like setting your book down on the side table (or pushing the cat off your lap) so you can go investigate the noise on the roof. You aren\u2019t putting your book away though, you\u2019re just putting it down for a moment so you can come back and find it exactly the way it was when you put it down.\n\nLet\u2019s say you\u2019ve been working in the branch waiting-for-st-nicholas, and now you need to temporarily set aside your changes to see what the noise was on the roof:\n\n$ git stash\n\nAfter running this command, all uncommitted work will be temporarily removed from your working directory, and you will be returned to whatever state you were in the last time you committed your work.\n\nWith the book safely on the side table, and the cat safely off your lap, you are now free to investigate the noise on the roof. It turns out it\u2019s not reindeer after all, but just your boss who thought they\u2019d help out by writing some code on the project you\u2019ve been working on. Bless. Rolling your eyes, you agree to take a look and see what kind of mischief your boss has gotten themselves into this time.\n\nYou fetch an updated list of branches from the remote repository, locate the branch your boss had been working on, and checkout a local copy:\n\n$ git fetch\n$ git branch -r\n$ git checkout -b helpful-boss-branch origin/helpful-boss-branch\n\nYou are now in a local copy of the branch where you are free to look around, and figure out exactly what\u2019s going on.\n\nYou sigh audibly and say, \u2018Okay. Tell me what was happening when you first realised you\u2019d gotten into a mess\u2019 as you look through the log messages for the branch.\n\n$ git log --oneline\n$ git log\n\nBy using the log command you will be able to review the history of the branch and find out the moment right before your boss ended up stuck on your roof.\n\nYou may also want to compare the work your boss has done to the main branch for your project. For this article, we\u2019ll assume the main branch is named master.\n\n$ git diff master\n\nLooking through the commits, you may be able to see that things started out okay but then took a turn for the worse.\n\nChecking out a single commit\n\nUsing commands you\u2019re already familiar with, you can rewind through history and take a look at the state of the code at any moment in time by checking out a single commit, just like you would a branch.\n\nUsing the log command, locate the unique identifier (commit hash) of the commit you want to investigate. For example, let\u2019s say the unique identifier you want to checkout is 25f6d7f.\n\n$ git checkout 25f6d7f\n\nNote: checking out '25f6d7f'.\n\nYou are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around,\nmake experimental changes and commit them, and you can\ndiscard any commits you make in this state without\nimpacting any branches by performing another checkout.\n\nIf you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, you may do so (now or later) by using @-b@ with the checkout command again. Example:\n\n$ git checkout -b new_branch_name\n\nHEAD is now at 25f6d7f... Removed first paragraph.\n\nThis is usually where people start to panic. Your boss screwed something up, and now your HEAD is detached. Under normal circumstances, these words would be a very good reason to panic.\n\nTake a deep breath. Nothing bad is going to happen. Being in a detached HEAD state just means you\u2019ve temporarily disconnected from a known chain of events. In other words, you\u2019re currently looking at the middle of a story (or branch) about what happened \u2013 and you\u2019re not at the endpoint for this particular story.\n\nGit allows you to view the history of your repository as a timeline (technically it\u2019s a directed acyclic graph). When you make commits which are not associated with a branch, they are essentially inaccessible once you return to a known branch. If you make commits while you\u2019re in a detached HEAD state, and then try to return to a known branch, Git will give you a warning and tell you how to save your work.\n\n$ git checkout master\n\nWarning: you are leaving 1 commit behind, not connected to\nany of your branches:\n\n 7a85788 Your witty holiday commit message.\n\nIf you want to keep them by creating a new branch, this may be a good time to do so with:\n\n$ git branch new_branch_name 7a85788\n\nSwitched to branch 'master'\nYour branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.\n\nSo, if you want to save the commits you\u2019ve made while in a detached HEAD state, you simply need to put them on a new branch.\n\n$ git branch saved-headless-commits 7a85788\n\nWith this trick under your belt, you can jingle around in history as much as you\u2019d like. It\u2019s not like sliding around on a timeline though. When you checkout a specific commit, you will only have access to the history from that point backwards in time. If you want to move forward in history, you\u2019ll need to move back to the branch tip by checking out the branch again.\n\n$ git checkout helpful-boss-branch\n\nYou\u2019re now back to the present. Your HEAD is now pointing to the endpoint of a known branch, and so it is no longer detached. Any changes you made while on your adventure are safely stored in a new branch, assuming you\u2019ve followed the instructions Git gave you. That wasn\u2019t so scary after all, now, was it?\n\nBack to our reindeer problem.\n\nIf your boss is anything like the bosses I\u2019ve worked with, chances are very good that at least some of their work is worth salvaging. Depending on how your repository is structured, you\u2019ll want to capture the good work using one of several different methods.\n\nBack in the living room, we\u2019ll use our bowl of nuts to illustrate how you can rescue a tiny bit of work.\n\nSaving just one commit\n\nAbout that bowl of nuts. If you\u2019re like me, you probably had some favourite kinds of nuts from an assorted collection. Walnuts were generally the most satisfying to crack open. So, instead of taking the entire bowl of nuts and dumping it into a stocking (merging the stocking and the bowl of nuts), we\u2019re just going to pick out one nut from the bowl. In Git terms, we\u2019re going to cherry-pick a commit and save it to another branch.\n\nFirst, checkout the main branch for your development work. From this branch, create a new branch where you can copy the changes into.\n\n$ git checkout master\n$ git checkout -b rescue-the-boss\n\nFrom your boss\u2019s branch, helpful-boss-branch locate the commit you want to keep.\n\n$ git log --oneline helpful-boss-branch\n\nLet\u2019s say the commit ID you want to keep is e08740b. From your rescue branch, use the command cherry-pick to copy the changes into your current branch.\n\n$ git cherry-pick e08740b\n\nIf you review the history of your current branch again, you will see you now also have the changes made in the commit in your boss\u2019s branch.\n\nAt this point you might need to make a few additional fixes to help your boss out. (You\u2019re angling for a bonus out of all this. Go the extra mile.) Once you\u2019ve made your additional changes, you\u2019ll need to add that work to the branch as well.\n\n$ git add [filename(s)]\n$ git commit -m \"Building on boss's work to improve feature X.\"\n\nGo ahead and test everything, and make sure it\u2019s perfect. You don\u2019t want to introduce your own mistakes during the rescue mission!\n\nUploading the fixed branch\n\nThe next step is to upload the new branch to the remote repository so that your boss can download it and give you a huge bonus for helping you fix their branch.\n\n$ git push -u origin rescue-the-boss\n\nCleaning up and getting back to work\n\nWith your boss rescued, and your bonus secured, you can now delete the local temporary branches.\n\n$ git branch --delete rescue-the-boss\n$ git branch --delete helpful-boss-branch\n\nAnd settle back into your chair to wait for Saint Nicholas with your book, your branch, and possibly your cat.\n\n$ git checkout waiting-for-st-nicholas\n$ git stash pop\n\nYour working directory has been returned to exactly the same state you were in at the beginning of the article.\n\nHaving fun with analogies\n\nI\u2019ve had a bit of fun with analogies in this article. But sometimes those little twists on ideas can really help someone pick up a new idea (git stash: it\u2019s like when Christmas comes around and everyone throws their fashion sense out the window and puts on a reindeer sweater for the holiday party; or git bisect: it\u2019s like trying to find that one broken light on the string of Christmas lights). It doesn\u2019t matter if the analogy isn\u2019t perfect. It\u2019s just a way to give someone a temporary hook into a concept in a way that makes the concept accessible while the learner becomes comfortable with it. As the learner\u2019s comfort increases, the analogies can drop away, making room for the technically correct definition of how something works.\n\nOr, if you\u2019re like me, you can choose to never grow old and just keep mucking about in the analogies. I\u2019d argue it\u2019s a lot more fun to play with a string of Christmas lights and some holiday cheer than a directed acyclic graph anyway.", "year": "2014", "author": "Emma Jane Westby", "author_slug": "emmajanewestby", "published": "2014-12-02T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/dealing-with-emergencies-in-git/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 37, "title": "JavaScript Modules the ES6 Way", "contents": "JavaScript admittedly has plenty of flaws, but one of the largest and most prominent is the lack of a module system: a way to split up your application into a series of smaller files that can depend on each other to function correctly. \n\nThis is something nearly all other languages come with out of the box, whether it be Ruby\u2019s require, Python\u2019s import, or any other language you\u2019re familiar with. Even CSS has @import! JavaScript has nothing of that sort, and this has caused problems for application developers as they go from working with small websites to full client-side applications. Let\u2019s be clear: it doesn\u2019t mean the new module system in the upcoming version of JavaScript won\u2019t be useful to you if you\u2019re building smaller websites rather than the next Instagram.\n\nThankfully, the lack of a module system will soon be a problem of the past. The next version of JavaScript, ECMAScript 6, will bring with it a full-featured module and dependency management solution for JavaScript. The bad news is that it won\u2019t be landing in browsers for a while yet \u2013 but the good news is that the specification for the module system and how it will look has been finalised. The even better news is that there are tools available to get it all working in browsers today without too much hassle. In this post I\u2019d like to give you the gift of JS modules and show you the syntax, and how to use them in browsers today. It\u2019s much simpler than you might think.\n\nWhat is ES6?\n\nECMAScript is a scripting language that is standardised by a company called Ecma International. JavaScript is an implementation of ECMAScript. ECMAScript 6 is simply the next version of the ECMAScript standard and, hence, the next version of JavaScript. The spec aims to be fully comfirmed and complete by the end of 2014, with a target initial release date of June 2015. It\u2019s impossible to know when we will have full feature support across the most popular browsers, but already some ES6 features are landing in the latest builds of Chrome and Firefox. You shouldn\u2019t expect to be able to use the new features across browsers without some form of additional tooling or library for a while yet.\n\nThe ES6 module spec\n\nThe ES6 module spec was fully confirmed in July 2014, so all the syntax I will show you in this article is not expected to change. I\u2019ll first show you the syntax and the new APIs being added to the language, and then look at how to use them today. There are two parts to the new module system. The first is the syntax for declaring modules and dependencies in your JS files, and the second is a programmatic API for loading in modules manually. The first is what most people are expected to use most of the time, so it\u2019s what I\u2019ll focus on more.\n\nModule syntax\n\nThe key thing to understand here is that modules have two key components. First, they have dependencies. These are things that the module you are writing depends on to function correctly. For example, if you were building a carousel module that used jQuery, you would say that jQuery is a dependency of your carousel. You import these dependencies into your module, and we\u2019ll see how to do that in a minute. Second, modules have exports. These are the functions or variables that your module exposes publicly to anything that imports it. Using jQuery as the example again, you could say that jQuery exports the $ function. Modules that depend on and hence import jQuery get access to the $ function, because jQuery exports it.\n\nAnother important thing to note is that when I discuss a module, all I really mean is a JavaScript file. There\u2019s no extra syntax to use other than the new ES6 syntax. Once ES6 lands, modules and files will be analogous.\n\nNamed exports\n\nModules can export multiple objects, which can be either plain old variables or JavaScript functions. You denote something to be exported with the export keyword:\n\nexport function double(x) {\n return x + x;\n};\n\n\nYou can also store something in a variable then export it. If you do that, you have to wrap the variable in a set of curly braces.\n\nvar double = function(x) {\n return x + x;\n}\n\nexport { double };\n\nA module can then import the double function like so:\n\nimport { double } from 'mymodule';\ndouble(2); // 4\n\nAgain, curly braces are required around the variable you would like to import. It\u2019s also important to note that from 'mymodule' will look for a file called mymodule.js in the same directory as the file you are requesting the import from. There is no need to add the .js extension.\n\nThe reason for those extra braces is that this syntax lets you export multiple variables:\n\nvar double = function(x) {\n return x + x;\n}\n\nvar square = function(x) {\n return x * x;\n}\n\nexport { double, square }\n\nI personally prefer this syntax over the export function \u2026, but only because it makes it much clearer to me what the module exports. Typically I will have my export {\u2026} line at the bottom of the file, which means I can quickly look in one place to determine what the module is exporting.\n\nA file importing both double and square can do so in just the way you\u2019d expect:\n\nimport { double, square } from 'mymodule';\ndouble(2); // 4\nsquare(3); // 9\n\nWith this approach you can\u2019t easily import an entire module and all its methods. This is by design \u2013 it\u2019s much better and you\u2019re encouraged to import just the functions you need to use.\n\nDefault exports\n\nAlong with named exports, the system also lets a module have a default export. This is useful when you are working with a large library such as jQuery, Underscore, Backbone and others, and just want to import the entire library. A module can define its default export (it can only ever have one default export) like so:\n\nexport default function(x) {\n return x + x;\n}\n\nAnd that can be imported:\n\nimport double from 'mymodule';\ndouble(2); // 4\n\n\nThis time you do not use the curly braces around the name of the object you are importing. Also notice how you can name the import whatever you\u2019d like. Default exports are not named, so you can import them as anything you like:\n\nimport christmas from 'mymodule';\nchristmas(2); // 4\n\nThe above is entirely valid.\n\nAlthough it\u2019s not something that is used too often, a module can have both named exports and a default export, if you wish.\n\nOne of the design goals of the ES6 modules spec was to favour default exports. There are many reasons behind this, and there is a very detailed discussion on the ES Discuss site about it. That said, if you find yourself preferring named exports, that\u2019s fine, and you shouldn\u2019t change that to meet the preferences of those designing the spec.\n\nProgrammatic API\n\nAlong with the syntax above, there is also a new API being added to the language so you can programmatically import modules. It\u2019s pretty rare you would use this, but one obvious example is loading a module conditionally based on some variable or property. You could easily import a polyfill, for example, if the user\u2019s browser didn\u2019t support a feature your app relied on. An example of doing this is:\n\nif(someFeatureNotSupported) {\n System.import('my-polyfill').then(function(myPolyFill) {\n // use the module from here\n });\n}\n\nSystem.import will return a promise, which, if you\u2019re not familiar, you can read about in this excellent article on HTMl5 Rocks by Jake Archibald. A promise basically lets you attach callback functions that are run when the asynchronous operation (in this case, System.import), is complete.\n\nThis programmatic API opens up a lot of possibilities and will also provide hooks to allow you to register callbacks that will run at certain points in the lifetime of a module. Those hooks and that syntax are slightly less set in stone, but when they are confirmed they will provide really useful functionality. For example, you could write code that would run every module that you import through something like JSHint before importing it. In development that would provide you with an easy way to keep your code quality high without having to run a command line watch task.\n\nHow to use it today\n\nIt\u2019s all well and good having this new syntax, but right now it won\u2019t work in any browser \u2013 and it\u2019s not likely to for a long time. Maybe in next year\u2019s 24 ways there will be an article on how you can use ES6 modules with no extra work in the browser, but for now we\u2019re stuck with a bit of extra work.\n\nES6 module transpiler\n\nOne solution is to use the ES6 module transpiler, a compiler that lets you write your JavaScript using the ES6 module syntax (actually a subset of it \u2013 not quite everything is supported, but the main features are) and have it compiled into either CommonJS-style code (CommonJS is the module specification that NodeJS and Browserify use), or into AMD-style code (the spec RequireJS uses). There are also plugins for all the popular build tools, including Grunt and Gulp.\n\nThe advantage of using this transpiler is that if you are already using a tool like RequireJS or Browserify, you can drop the transpiler in, start writing in ES6 and not worry about any additional work to make the code work in the browser, because you should already have that set up already. If you don\u2019t have any system in place for handling modules in the browser, using the transpiler doesn\u2019t really make sense. Remember, all this does is convert ES6 module code into CommonJS- or AMD-compliant JavaScript. It doesn\u2019t do anything to help you get that code running in the browser, but if you have that part sorted it\u2019s a really nice addition to your workflow. If you would like a tutorial on how to do this, I wrote a post back in June 2014 on using ES6 with the ES6 module transpiler.\n\nSystemJS\n\nAnother solution is SystemJS. It\u2019s the best solution in my opinion, particularly if you are starting a new project from scratch, or want to use ES6 modules on a project where you have no current module system in place. SystemJS is a spec-compliant universal module loader: it loads ES6 modules, AMD modules, CommonJS modules, as well as modules that just add a variable to the global scope (window, in the browser).\n\nTo load in ES6 files, SystemJS also depends on two other libraries: the ES6 module loader polyfill; and Traceur. Traceur is best accessed through the bower-traceur package, as the main repository doesn\u2019t have an easy to find downloadable version. The ES6 module load polyfill implements System.import, and lets you load in files using it. Traceur is an ES6-to-ES5 module loader. It takes code written in ES6, the newest version of JavaScript, and transpiles it into ES5, the version of JavaScript widely implemented in browsers. The advantage of this is that you can play with the new features of the language today, even though they are not supported in browsers. The drawback is that you have to run all your files through Traceur every time you save them, but this is easily automated. Additionally, if you use SystemJS, the Traceur compilation is done automatically for you.\n\nAll you need to do to get SystemJS running is to add a \n\nWhen you load the page, app.js will be asynchronously loaded. Within app.js, you can now use ES6 modules. SystemJS will detect that the file is an ES6 file, automatically load Traceur, and compile the file into ES5 so that it works in the browser. It does all this dynamically in the browser, but there are tools to bundle your application in production, so it doesn\u2019t make a lot of requests on the live site. In development though, it makes for a really nice workflow.\n\nWhen working with SystemJS and modules in general, the best approach is to have a main module (in our case app.js) that is the main entry point for your application. app.js should then be responsible for loading all your application\u2019s modules. This forces you to keep your application organised by only loading one file initially, and having the rest dealt with by that file.\n\nSystemJS also provides a workflow for bundling your application together into one file.\n\nConclusion\n\nES6 modules may be at least six months to a year away (if not more) but that doesn\u2019t mean they can\u2019t be used today. Although there is an overhead to using them now \u2013 with the work required to set up SystemJS, the module transpiler, or another solution \u2013 that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not worthwhile. Using any module system in the browser, whether that be RequireJS, Browserify or another alternative, requires extra tooling and libraries to support it, and I would argue that the effort to set up SystemJS is no greater than that required to configure any other tool. It also comes with the extra benefit that when the syntax is supported in browsers, you get a free upgrade. You\u2019ll be able to remove SystemJS and have everything continue to work, backed by the native browser solution.\n\nIf you are starting a new project, I would strongly advocate using ES6 modules. It is a syntax and specification that is not going away at all, and will soon be supported in browsers. Investing time in learning it now will pay off hugely further down the road.\n\nFurther reading\n\nIf you\u2019d like to delve further into ES6 modules (or ES6 generally) and using them today, I recommend the following resources:\n\n\n\tECMAScript 6 modules: the final syntax by Axel Rauschmayer\n\tPractical Workflows for ES6 Modules by Guy Bedford\n\tECMAScript 6 resources for the curious JavaScripter by Addy Osmani\n\tTracking ES6 support by Addy Osmani\n\tES6 Tools List by Addy Osmani\n\tUsing Grunt and the ES6 Module Transpiler by Thomas Boyt\n\tJavaScript Modules and Dependencies with jspm by myself\n\tUsing ES6 Modules Today by Guy Bedford", "year": "2014", "author": "Jack Franklin", "author_slug": "jackfranklin", "published": "2014-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/javascript-modules-the-es6-way/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 47, "title": "Developing Robust Deployment Procedures", "contents": "Once you have developed your site, how do you make it live on your web hosting? For many years the answer was to log on to your server and upload the files via FTP. Over time most hosts and FTP clients began to support SFTP, ensuring your files were transmitted over a secure connection. The process of deploying a site however remained the same.\n\nThere are issues with deploying a site in this way. You are essentially transferring files one by one to the server without any real management of that transfer. If the transfer fails for some reason, you may end up with a site that is only half updated. It can then be really difficult to work out what hasn\u2019t been replaced or added, especially where you are updating an existing site. If you are updating some third-party software your update may include files that should be removed, but that may not be obvious to you and you risk leaving outdated files littering your file system. Updating using (S)FTP is a fragile process that leaves you open to problems caused by both connectivity and human error. Is there a better way to do this?\n\nYou\u2019ll be glad to know that there is. A modern professional deployment workflow should have you moving away from fragile manual file transfers to deployments linked to code committed into source control.\n\nThe benefits of good practice\n\nYou may never have experienced any major issues while uploading files over FTP, and good FTP clients can help. However, there are other benefits to moving to modern deployment practices.\n\nNo surprises when you launch\n\nIf you are deploying in the way I suggest in this article you should have no surprises when you launch because the code you committed from your local environment should be the same code you deploy \u2013 and to staging if you have a staging server. A missing vital file won\u2019t cause things to start throwing errors on updating the live site.\n\nBeing able to work collaboratively\n\nSource control and good deployment practice makes working with your clients and other developers easy. Deploying first to a staging server means you can show your client updates and then push them live. If you subcontract some part of the work, you can give your subcontractor the ability to deploy to staging, leaving you with the final push to launch, once you know you are happy with the work.\n\nHaving a proper backup of site files with access to them from anywhere\n\nThe process I will outline requires the use of hosted, external source control. This gives you a backup of your latest commit and the ability to clone those files and start working on them from any machine, wherever you are.\n\nBeing able to jump back into a site quickly when the client wants a few changes\n\nWhen doing client work it is common for some work to be handed over, then several months might go by without you needing to update the site. If you don\u2019t have a good process in place, just getting back to work on it may take several hours for what could be only a few hours of work in itself. A solid method for getting your local copy up to date and deploying your changes live can cut that set-up time down to a few minutes.\n\nThe tool chain\n\nIn the rest of this article I assume that your current practice is to deploy your files over (S)FTP, using an FTP client. You would like to move to a more robust method of deployment, but without blowing apart your workflow and spending all Christmas trying to put it back together again. Therefore I\u2019m selecting the most straightforward tools to get you from A to B.\n\nSource control\n\nPerhaps you already use some kind of source control for your sites. Today that is likely to be Git but you might also use Subversion or Mercurial. If you are not using any source control at all then I would suggest you choose Git, and that is what I will be working with in this article.\n\nWhen you work with Git, you always have a local repository. This is where your changes are committed. You also have the option to push those changes to a remote repository; for example, GitHub. You may well have come across GitHub as somewhere you can go to download open source code. However, you can also set up private repositories for sites whose code you don\u2019t want to make publicly accessible.\n\nA hosted Git repository gives you somewhere to push your commits to and deploy from, so it\u2019s a crucial part of our tool chain.\n\nA deployment service\n\nOnce you have your files pushed to a remote repository, you then need a way to deploy them to your staging environment and live server. This is the job of a deployment service.\n\nThis service will connect securely to your hosting, and either automatically (or on the click of a button) transfer files from your Git commit to the hosting server. If files need removing, the service should also do this too, so you can be absolutely sure that your various environments are the same.\n\nTools to choose from\n\nWhat follows are not exhaustive lists, but any of these should allow you to deploy your sites without FTP.\n\nHosted Git repositories\n\n\n\tGitHub\n\tBeanstalk\n\tBitbucket\n\n\nStandalone deployment tools\n\n\n\tDeploy\n\tdploy.io\n\tFTPloy\n\n\nI\u2019ve listed Beanstalk as a hosted Git repository, though it also includes a bundled deployment tool. Dploy.io is a standalone version of that tool just for deployment. In this tutorial I have chosen two separate services to show how everything fits together, and because you may already be using source control. If you are setting up all of this for the first time then using Beanstalk saves having two accounts \u2013 and I can personally recommend them.\n\nPutting it all together\n\nThe steps we are going to work through are:\n\n\n\tGetting your local site into a local Git repository\n\tPushing the files to a hosted repository\n\tConnecting a deployment tool to your web hosting\n\tSetting up a deployment\n\n\nGet your local site into a local Git repository\n\nDownload and install Git for your operating system.\n\nOpen up a Terminal window and tell Git your name using the following command (use the name you will set up on your hosted repository).\n\n> git config --global user.name \"YOUR NAME\"\n\n\nUse the next command to give Git your email address. This should be the address that you will use to sign up for your remote repository.\n\n> git config --global user.email \"YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS\"\n\n\nStaying in the command line, change to the directory where you keep your site files. If your files are in /Users/rachel/Sites/mynicewebite you would type:\n\n> cd /Users/rachel/Sites/mynicewebsite\n\n\nThe next command tells Git that we want to create a new Git repository here.\n\n> git init\n\n\nWe then add our files:\n\n> git add .\n\n\nThen commit the files:\n\n> git commit -m \u201cAdding initial files\u201d\n\n\nThe bit in quotes after -m is a message describing what you are doing with this commit. It\u2019s important to add something useful here to remind yourself later why you made the changes included in the commit.\n\nYour local files are now in a Git repository! However, everything should be just the same as before in terms of working on the files or viewing them in a local web server. The only difference is that you can add and commit changes to this local repository.\n\nWant to know more about Git? There are some excellent resources in a range of formats here.\n\nSetting up a hosted Git repository\n\nI\u2019m going to use Atlassian Bitbucket for my first example as they offer a free hosted and private repository.\n\nCreate an account on Bitbucket. Then create a new empty repository and give it a name that will identify the repository easily.\n\nClick Getting Started and under Command Line select \u201cI have an existing project\u201d. This will give you a set of instructions to run on the command line. The first instruction is just to change into your working directory as we did before. We then add a remote repository, and run two commands to push everything up to Bitbucket.\n\ncd /path/to/my/repo\ngit remote add origin https://myuser@bitbucket.org/myname/24ways-tutorial.git\ngit push -u origin --all \ngit push -u origin --tags \n\n\nWhen you run the push command you will be asked for the password that you set for Bitbucket. Having entered that, you should be able to view the files of your site on Bitbucket by selecting the navigation option Source in the sidebar.\n\nYou will also be able to see commits. When we initially committed our files locally we added the message \u201cAdding initial files\u201d. If you select Commits from the sidebar you\u2019ll see we have one commit, with the message we set locally. You can imagine how useful this becomes when you can look back and see why you made certain changes to a project that perhaps you haven\u2019t worked on for six months.\n\nBefore working on your site locally you should run:\n\n> git pull\n\n\nin your working directory to make sure you have all of the most up-to-date files. This is especially important if someone else might work on them, or you just use multiple machines.\n\nYou then make your changes and add any changed or modified files, for example:\n\n> git add index.php\n\n\nCommit the change locally:\n\n> git commit -m \u201cupdated the homepage\u201d\n\n\nThen push it to Bitbucket:\n\n> git push origin master\n\n\nIf you want to work on your files on a different computer you clone them using the following command:\n\n> git clone https://myuser@bitbucket.org/myname/24ways-tutorial.git\n\n\nYou then have a copy of your files that is already a Git repository with the Bitbucket repository set up as a remote, so you are all ready to start work.\n\nConnecting a deployment tool to your repository and web hosting\n\nThe next step is deploying files. I have chosen to use a deployment tool called Deploy as it has support for Bitbucket. It does have a monthly charge \u2013 but offers a free account for open source projects.\n\nSign up for your account then log in and create your first project. Select Create an empty project. Under Configure Repository Details choose Bitbucket and enter your username and password.\n\nIf Deploy can connect, it will show you your list of projects. Select the one you want.\n\nThe next screen is Add New Server and here you need to configure the server that you want to deploy to. You might set up more than one server per project. In an ideal world you would deploy to a staging server for your client preview changes and then deploy once everything is signed off. For now I\u2019ll assume you just want to set up your live site.\n\nGive the server a name; I usually use Production for the live web server. Then choose the protocol to connect with. Unless your host really does not support SFTP (which is pretty rare) I would choose that instead of FTP.\n\nYou now add the same details your host gave you to log in with your SFTP client, including the username and password. The Path on server should be where your files are on the server. When you log in with an SFTP client and you get put in the directory above public_html then you should just be able to add public_html here.\n\nOnce your server is configured you can deploy. Click Deploy now and choose the server you just set up. Then choose the last commit (which will probably be selected for you) and click Preview deployment. You will then get a preview of which files will change if you run the deployment: the files that will be added and any that will be removed. At the very top of that screen you should see the commit message you entered right back when you initially committed your files locally.\n\nIf all looks good, run the deployment.\n\nYou have taken the first steps to a more consistent and robust way of deploying your websites. It might seem like quite a few steps at first, but you will very soon come to realise how much easier deploying a live site is through this process.\n\nYour new procedure step by step\n\n\n\tEdit your files locally as before, testing them through a web server on your own computer.\n\tCommit your changes to your local Git repository.\n\tPush changes to the remote repository.\n\tLog into the deployment service.\n\tHit the Deploy now button.\n\tPreview the changes.\n\tRun the deployment and then check your live site.\n\n\nTaking it further\n\nI have tried to keep things simple in this article because so often, once you start to improve processes, it is easy to get bogged down in all the possible complexities. If you move from deploying with an FTP client to working in the way I have outlined above, you\u2019ve taken a great step forward in creating more robust processes. You can continue to improve your procedures from this point.\n\nStaging servers for client preview\n\nWhen we added our server we could have added an additional server to use as a staging server for clients to preview their site on. This is a great use of a cheap VPS server, for example. You can set each client up with a subdomain \u2013 clientname.yourcompany.com \u2013 and this becomes the place where they can view changes before you deploy them.\n\nIn that case you might deploy to the staging server, let the client check it out and then go back and deploy the same commit to the live server.\n\nUsing Git branches\n\nAs you become more familiar with using Git, and especially if you start working with other people, you might need to start developing using branches. You can then have a staging branch that deploys to staging and a production branch that is always a snapshot of what has been pushed to production. This guide from Beanstalk explains how this works.\n\nAutomatic deployment to staging\n\nI wouldn\u2019t suggest doing automatic deployment to the live site. It\u2019s worth having someone on hand hitting the button and checking that everything worked nicely. If you have configured a staging server, however, you can set it up to deploy the changes each time a commit is pushed to it.\n\nIf you use Bitbucket and Deploy you would create a deployment hook on Bitbucket to post to a URL on Deploy when a push happens to deploy the code. This can save you a few steps when you are just testing out changes. Even if you have made lots of changes to the staging deployment, the commit that you push live will include them all, so you can do that manually once you are happy with how things look in staging.\n\nFurther Reading\n\n\n\tThe tutorials from Git Client Tower, already mentioned in this article, are a great place to start if you are new to Git.\n\tA presentation from Liam Dempsey showing how to use the GitHub App to connect to Bitbucket\n\tTry Git from Code School\n\tThe Git Workbook a self study guide to Git from Lorna Mitchell\n\n\nGet set up for the new year\n\nI love to start the New Year with a clean slate and improved processes. If you are still wrangling files with FTP then this is one thing you could tick off your list to save you time and energy in 2015. Post to the comments if you have suggestions of tools or ideas for ways to enhance this type of set-up for those who have already taken the first steps.", "year": "2014", "author": "Rachel Andrew", "author_slug": "rachelandrew", "published": "2014-12-04T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/developing-robust-deployment-procedures/", "topic": "process"}
{"rowid": 41, "title": "What Is Vagrant and Why Should I Care?", "contents": "If you run a web server, a database server and your scripting language(s) of choice on your main machine and you have not yet switched to using virtualisation in your workflow then this essay may be of some value to you.\n\nI know you exist because I bump into you daily: freelancers coming in to work on our projects; internet friends complaining about reinstalling a development environment because of an operating system upgrade; fellow agency owners who struggle to brief external help when getting a particular project up and running; or even hardcore back-end developers who \u201cdon\u2019t do ops\u201d and prefer to run their development stack of choice locally.\n\nThere are many perfectly reasonable arguments as to why you may not have already made the switch, from being simply too busy, all the way through to a distrust of the new. I\u2019ll admit that there are many new technologies or workflows that I hear of daily and instantly disregard because I have tool overload, that feeling I get when I hear about a new shiny thing and think \u201cWell, what I do now works \u2013 I\u2019ll leave it for others to play with.\u201d If that\u2019s you when it comes to Vagrant then I hope you\u2019ll hear me out. The business case is compelling enough for you to make that switch; as a bonus it\u2019s also really easy to get going.\n\nIn this article we\u2019ll start off by going through the high level, the tools available and how it all fits together. Then we\u2019ll touch on the justification for making the switch, providing a few use cases that might resonate with you. Finally, I\u2019ll provide a very simple example that you can follow to get yourself up and running.\n\nWhat?\n\nYou already know what virtualisation is. You use the ability to run an operating system within another operating system every day. Whether that\u2019s Parallels or VMware on your laptop or similar server-based tools that drive the \u2018cloud\u2019, squeezing lots of machines on to physical hardware and making it really easy to copy servers and even clusters of servers from one place to another. It\u2019s an amazing technology which has changed the face of the internet over the past fifteen years.\n\nSimply put, Vagrant makes it really easy to work with virtual machines. According to the Vagrant docs:\n\n\n\tIf you\u2019re a designer, Vagrant will automatically set everything up that is required for that web app in order for you to focus on doing what you do best: design. Once a developer configures Vagrant, you don\u2019t need to worry about how to get that app running ever again. No more bothering other developers to help you fix your environment so you can test designs. Just check out the code, vagrant up, and start designing.\n\n\nWhile I\u2019m not sure I agree with the implication that all designers would get others to do the configuring, I think you\u2019ll agree that the \u201cJust check out the code\u2026 and start designing\u201d premise is very compelling.\n\nYou don\u2019t need Vagrant to develop your web applications on virtual machines. All you need is a virtualisation software package, something like VMware Workstation or VirtualBox, and some code. Download the half-gigabyte operating system image that you want and install it. Then download and configure the stack you\u2019ll be working with: let\u2019s say Apache, MySQL, PHP. Then install some libraries, CuRL and ImageMagick maybe, and finally configure the ability to easily copy files from your machine to the new virtual one, something like Samba, or install an FTP server. Once this is all done, copy the code over, import the database, configure Apache\u2019s virtual host, restart and cross your fingers.\n\nIf you\u2019re a bit weird like me then the above is pretty easy to do and secretly quite fun. Indeed, the amount of traffic to one of my more popular blog posts proves that a lot of people have been building themselves development servers from scratch for some time (or at least trying to anyway), whether that\u2019s on virtual or physical hardware.\n\nOr you could use Vagrant. It allows you, or someone else, to specify in plain text how the machine\u2019s virtual hardware should be configured and what should be installed on it. It also makes it insanely easy to get the code on the server. You check out your project, type vagrant up and start work.\n\nWhy?\n\nIt\u2019s worth labouring the point that Vagrant makes it really easy; I mean look-no-tangle-of-wires-or-using-vim-and-loads-of-annoying-command-line-stuff easy to run a development environment.\n\nThat\u2019s all well and good, I hear you say, but there\u2019s a steep learning curve, an overhead to switch. You\u2019re busy and this all sounds great but you need to get on; you\u2019ve got a career to build or a business to run and you don\u2019t have time to learn new stuff right now.\n\nIn short, what\u2019s the business case?\n\nThe business case involves saved time, a very low barrier to entry and the ability to give the exact same environment to somebody else.\n\nGetting your first development virtual machine running will take minutes, not counting download time. Seriously, use pre-built Vagrant files and provisioners (we\u2019ll touch on this below) and you can start developing immediately.\n\nOnce you\u2019ve finished developing you can check in your changes, ask a colleague or freelancer to check them out, and then they run the code on the exact same machine \u2013 even if they are on the other side of the world and regardless of whether they are on Windows, Linux or Apple OS X.\n\nThe configuration to build the machine isn\u2019t a huge binary disk image that\u2019ll take ages to download from Git; it\u2019s two small text files that can be version controlled too, so you can see any changes made to the config and roll back if needed.\n\nNo more \u2018It works for me\u2019 reports; no \u2018Oh, I was using PHP 5.3.3, not PHP 5.3.11\u2019 \u2013 you\u2019re both working on exact same copies of the development environment. With a tested and verified provisioning file you\u2019ll have the confidence that when you brief your next freelancer in to your team there won\u2019t be that painful to and fro of getting the system up and running, where you\u2019re on a Skype call and they are uttering the immortal words, \u2018It still doesn\u2019t work\u2019. You know it works because you can run it too.\n\nThis portability becomes even more important when you\u2019re working on larger sites and systems. Need a load balancer? Multiple front-end servers and a clustered database back-end? No problem. Add each server into the same Vagrant file and a single command will build all of them. As you\u2019ll know if you work on larger, business critical systems, keeping the operating systems in sync is a real problem: one server with a slightly different library causing sporadic and hard to trace issues is a genuine time black hole. Well, the good news is that you can use the same provisioning files to keep test and production machines in sync using your current build workflow.\n\nLet\u2019s also not forget the most simple use case: a single developer with multiple websites running on a single machine. If that\u2019s you and you switch to using Vagrant-managed virtual machines then the next time you upgrade your operating system or do a fresh install there\u2019s no chance that things will all stop working. The server config is all tucked away in version control with your code. Just pull it down and carry on coding.\n\nOK, got it. Show me already\n\nIf you want to try this out you\u2019ll need to install the latest VirtualBox and Vagrant for your platform. If you already have VMware Workstation or another supported virtualisation package installed you can use that instead but you may need to tweak my Vagrant file below. Depending on your operating system, a reboot might also be wise.\n\nNote: the commands below were executed on my MacBook, but should also work on Windows and Linux. If you\u2019re using Windows make sure to run the command prompt as Administrator or it\u2019ll fall over when trying to update the hosts file.\n\nAs a quick sanity check let\u2019s just make sure that we have the vagrant command in our path, so fire up a terminal and check the version number:\n\n$ vagrant -v\nVagrant 1.6.5\n\nWe\u2019ve one final thing to install and that\u2019s the vagrant-hostsupdater plugin. Once again, in your terminal:\n\n$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostsupdater\nInstalling the 'vagrant-hostsupdater' plugin. This can take a few minutes...\nInstalled the plugin 'vagrant-hostsupdater (0.0.11)'!\n\nHopefully that wasn\u2019t too painful for you.\n\nThere are two things that you need to manage a virtual machine with Vagrant:\n\n\n\ta Vagrant file: this tells Vagrant what hardware to spin up\n\ta provisioning file: this tells Vagrant what to do on the machine\n\n\nTo save you copying and pasting I\u2019ve supplied you with a simple example (ZIP) containing both of these. Unzip it somewhere sensible and in your terminal make sure you are inside the Vagrant folder:\n\n$ cd where/you/placed/it/24ways\n\n$ ls -l\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 bealers staff 11055 9 Nov 09:16 bealers-24ways.md\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 bealers staff 118152 9 Nov 10:08 it-works.png\ndrwxr-xr-x 5 bealers staff 170 8 Nov 22:54 vagrant\n\n$ cd vagrant/\n\n$ ls -l\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 bealers staff 1661 8 Nov 21:50 Vagrantfile\n-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 bealers staff 3841 9 Nov 08:00 provision.sh\n\nThe Vagrant file tells Vagrant how to configure the virtual hardware of your development machine. Skipping over some of the finer details, here\u2019s what\u2019s in that Vagrant file:\n\nwww.vm.box = \"ubuntu/trusty64\" \n\nUse Ubuntu 14.04 for the VM\u2019s OS. Vagrant will only download this once. If another project uses the same OS, Vagrant will use a cached version.\n\nwww.vm.hostname = \"bealers-24ways.dev\" \n\nSet the machine\u2019s hostname. If, like us, you\u2019re using the vagrant-hostsupdater plugin, this will also get added to your hosts file, pointing to the virtual machine\u2019s IP address.\n\nwww.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb|\n vb.customize [\"modifyvm\", :id, \"--cpus\", \"2\" ]\nend\n\nHere\u2019s an example of configuring the virtual machine\u2019s hardware on the fly. In this case we want two virtual processors.\n\nNote: this is specific for the VirtualBox provider, but you could also have a section for VMware or other supported virtualisation software.\n\nwww.vm.network \"private_network\", ip: \"192.168.13.37\" \n\nThis specifies that we want a private networking link between your computer and the virtual machine. It\u2019s probably best to use a reserved private subnet like 192.168.0.0/16 or 10.0.0.0/8\n\nwww.vm.synced_folder \"../\", \"/var/www/24ways\",\n owner: \"www-data\", group: \"www-data\"\n\nA particularly handy bit of Vagrant magic. This maps your local 24ways parent folder to /var/www/24ways on the virtual machine. This means the virtual machine already has direct access to your code and so do you. There\u2019s no messy copying or synchronisation \u2013 just edit your files and immediately run them on the server.\n\nwww.vm.provision :shell, :path => \"provision.sh\"\n\nThis is where we specify the provisioner, the script that will be executed on the machine.\n\nIf you open up the provisioner you\u2019ll see it\u2019s a bash script that does things like:\n\n\n\tinstall Apache, PHP, MySQL and related libraries\n\tconfigure the libraries: set permissions, enable logging\n\tcreate a database and grant some access rights\n\tset up some code for us to develop on; in this case, fire up a vanilla WordPress installation\n\n\nTo get this all up and running you simply need to run Vagrant from within the vagrant folder:\n\n$ vagrant up\n\nYou should now get a Matrix-like stream of stuff shooting up the screen. If this is the first time Vagrant has used this particular operating system image \u2013 remember we\u2019ve specified the latest version of Ubuntu \u2013 it\u2019ll download the disc image and cache it for future reuse. Then all the packages are downloaded and installed and finally all our configuration steps occur incluing the download and configuration of WordPress.\n\nHalfway through proceedings it\u2019s likely that the process will halt at a prompt something like this:\n\n==> www: adding to (/etc/hosts) : 192.168.13.37 bealers-24ways.dev # VAGRANT: 2dbfbced1b1e79d2a0942728a0a57ece (www) / 899bd80d-4251-4f6f-91a0-d30f2d9918cc\nPassword:\n\nYou need to enter your password to give vagrant sudo rights to add the IP address and hostname mapping to your local hosts file.\n\nOnce finished, fire up your browser and go to http://bealers-24ways.dev. You should see a default WordPress installation. The username for wp-admin is admin and the password is 24ways.\n\n\n\nIf you take a look at your local filesystem the 24ways folder should now look like:\n\n$ cd ../\n\n$ ls -l\n\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 bealers staff 13074 9 Nov 10:14 bealers-24ways.md\ndrwxr-xr-x 21 bealers staff 714 9 Nov 10:06 code\ndrwxr-xr-x 3 bealers staff 102 9 Nov 10:06 etc\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 bealers staff 118152 9 Nov 10:08 it-works.png\ndrwxr-xr-x 5 bealers staff 170 9 Nov 10:03 vagrant\n-rwxr-xr-x 1 bealers staff 1315849 9 Nov 10:06 wp-cli\n\n$ cd vagrant/\n\n$ ls -l\n-rw-r--r--@ 1 bealers staff 1661 9 Nov 09:41 Vagrantfile\n-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 bealers staff 3836 9 Nov 10:06 provision.sh\n\nThe code folder contains all the WordPress files. You can edit these directly and refresh that page to see your changes instantly.\n\nStaying in the vagrant folder, we\u2019ll now SSH to the machine and have a quick poke around.\n\n$ vagrant ssh\nWelcome to Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-39-generic x86_64)\n\n* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/\n\nSystem information as of Sun Nov 9 10:03:38 UTC 2014\n\nSystem load: 1.35 Processes: 102\nUsage of /: 2.7% of 39.34GB Users logged in: 0\nMemory usage: 16% IP address for eth0: 10.0.2.15\nSwap usage: 0%\n\nGraph this data and manage this system at:\nhttps://landscape.canonical.com/\n\nGet cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest:\nhttp://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud\n\n0 packages can be updated.\n0 updates are security updates.\n\nvagrant@bealers-24ways:~$\n\nYou\u2019re now logged in as the Vagrant user; if you want to become root this is easy:\n\nvagrant@bealers-24ways:~$ sudo su -\nroot@bealers-24ways:~# \n\nOr you could become the webserver user, which is a good idea if you\u2019re editing the web files directly on the server:\n\nroot@bealers-24ways:~# su - www-data\nwww-data@bealers-24ways:~$\n\nwww-data\u2019s home directory is /var/www so we should be able to see our magically mapped files:\n\nwww-data@bealers-24ways:~$ ls -l\ntotal 4\ndrwxr-xr-x 1 www-data www-data 306 Nov 9 10:09 24ways\ndrwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 9 10:05 html\n\nwww-data@bealers-24ways:~$ cd 24ways/\n\nwww-data@bealers-24ways:~/24ways$ ls -l\ntotal 1420\n-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 13682 Nov 9 10:19 bealers-24ways.md\ndrwxr-xr-x 1 www-data www-data 714 Nov 9 10:06 code\ndrwxr-xr-x 1 www-data www-data 102 Nov 9 10:06 etc\n-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 118152 Nov 9 10:08 it-works.png\ndrwxr-xr-x 1 www-data www-data 170 Nov 9 10:03 vagrant\n-rwxr-xr-x 1 www-data www-data 1315849 Nov 9 10:06 wp-cli\n\nWe can also see some of our bespoke configurations:\n\nwww-data@bealers-24ways:~/24ways$ cat /etc/php5/mods-available/siftware.ini \nupload_max_filesize = 15M\nlog_errors = On\ndisplay_errors = On\ndisplay_startup_errors = On\nerror_log = /var/log/apache2/php.log\nmemory_limit = 1024M\ndate.timezone = Europe/London\n\nwww-data@bealers-24ways:~/24ways$ ls -l /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/\ntotal 0\nlrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 43 Nov 9 10:06 bealers-24ways.dev.conf -> /var/www/24ways/etc/bealers-24ways.dev.conf\n\nIf you want to leave the server, simply type Ctrl+D a few times and you\u2019ll be back where you started.\n\nwww-data@bealers-24ways:~/24ways$ logout\nroot@bealers-24ways:~# logout\nvagrant@bealers-24ways:~$ logout\nConnection to 127.0.0.1 closed.\n$ \n\nYou can now halt the machine:\n\n$ vagrant halt\n==> www: Attempting graceful shutdown of VM...\n==> www: Removing hosts\n\nBonus level\n\nThe example I\u2019ve provided isn\u2019t very realistic. In the real world I\u2019d expect the Vagrant file and provisioner to be included with the project and for it not to create the directory structure, which should already exist in your project. The same goes for the Apache VirtualHost file. You\u2019ll also probably have a default SQL script to populate the database.\n\nAs you work with Vagrant you might start to find bash provisioning to be quite limiting, especially if you are working on larger projects which use more than one server. In that case I would suggest you take a look at Ansible, Puppet or Chef. We use Ansible because we like YAML but they all do the same sort of thing. The main benefit is being able to use the same Vagrant provisioning scripts to also provision test, staging and production environments using your build workflows.\n\nHaving to supply a password so the hosts file can be updated gets annoying very quicky so you can give Vagrant sudo rights:\n\n$ sudo visudo\n\nAdd these lines to the bottom (Shift+G then i then Ctrl+V then Esc then :wq)\n\nCmnd_Alias VAGRANT_HOSTS_ADD = /bin/sh -c echo \"*\" >> /etc/hosts\nCmnd_Alias VAGRANT_HOSTS_REMOVE = /usr/bin/sed -i -e /*/ d /etc/hosts\n%staff ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: VAGRANT_HOSTS_ADD, VAGRANT_HOSTS_REMOVE\n\nVagrant caches the operating system images that you download but it\u2019ll download the installed software packages every time. You can get around this by using a plugin like vagrant-cachier or, if you\u2019re really keen, maintain local Apt repositories (or whatever the equivalent is for your server architecture).\n\nAt some point you might start getting a large number of virtual machines running on your poor hardware all at the same time, especially if you\u2019re switching between projects a lot and each of those projects use lots of servers. We\u2019re just getting to that stage now, so are considering a medium-term move to a containerised option like Docker, which seems to be maturing now.\n\nIf you are keen not to use any command line tools whatsoever and you\u2019re on OS X then you could check out Vagrant Manager as it looks quite shiny.\n\nFinally, there are a huge amount of resources to give you pre-built Vagrant machines from the likes of VVV for Wordpress, something similar for Perch, PuPHPet for generating various configurations, and a long list of pre-built operating systems at VagrantBox.es.\n\nWrapping up\n\nHopefully you can now see why it might be worthwhile to add Vagrant to your development workflow. Whether you\u2019re an agency drafting in freelancers or a one-person band running lots of sites on your laptop using MAMP or something similar.\n\nVagrant makes it easy to launch exact copies of the same machine in a repeatable and version controlled way. The learning curve isn\u2019t too steep and, once configured, you can forget about it and focus on getting your work done.", "year": "2014", "author": "Darren Beale", "author_slug": "darrenbeale", "published": "2014-12-05T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/what-is-vagrant-and-why-should-i-care/", "topic": "process"}
{"rowid": 40, "title": "Don\u2019t Push Through the Pain", "contents": "In 2004, I lost my web career. In a single day, it was gone. I was in too much pain to use a keyboard, a Wacom tablet (I couldn\u2019t even click the pen), or a trackball. Switching my mouse to use my left (non-dominant) hand only helped a bit; then that hand went, too. I tried all the easy-to-find equipment out there, except for expensive gizmos with foot pedals. I had tingling in my fingers\u2014which, when I was away from the computer, would rhythmically move as if some other being controlled them. I worried about Parkinson\u2019s because the movements were so dramatic. Pen on paper was painful. Finally, I discovered one day that I couldn\u2019t even turn a doorknob.\n\nThe only highlight was that I couldn\u2019t dust, scrub, or vacuum. We were forced to hire someone to come in once a week for an hour to whip through the house. You can imagine my disappointment. \n\nMy injuries had gradually slithered into my life without notice. I\u2019d occasionally have sore elbows, or my wrist might ache for a day, or my shoulders feel tight. But nothing to keyboard home about. That\u2019s the critical bit of news. One day, you\u2019re pretty fine. The next day, you don\u2019t have your job\u2014or any job that requires the use of your hands and wrists. \n\nI had to walk away from the computer for over four months\u2014and partially for several months more. That\u2019s right: no income. If I hadn\u2019t found a gifted massage therapist, the right book of stretches, the equipment I should have been using all along, and learned how to pay attention to my body\u2014even just a little bit more\u2014I quite possibly wouldn\u2019t be writing this article today. I wouldn\u2019t be writing anything, anywhere. \n\nMost of us have heard of (and even claimed to have read all of) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, who describes the state of flow\u2014the place our minds go when we are fully engaged and in our element. This lovely state of highly focused activity is deeply satisfying, often creative, and quite familiar to many of us on the web who just can\u2019t quit until the copy sings or the code is untangled or we get our highest score yet in Angry Birds. Our minds may enter that flow, but too often as our brains take flight, all else recedes. And we leave something very important behind. \n\nOur bodies. \n\nMy body wasn\u2019t made to make the same minute movements thousands of times a day, most days of the year, for decades, and neither was yours. The wear and tear sneaks up on you, especially if you\u2019re the obsessive perfectionist that we all pretend not to be. Oh? You\u2019re not obsessed? I wasn\u2019t like this all the time, but I remember sitting across from my husband, eating dinner, and I didn\u2019t hear a word he said. I\u2019d left my brain upstairs in my office, where it was wrestling in a death match with the box model or, God help us all, IE 5.2. I was a writer, too, and I was having my first inkling that I was a content strategist. Work was exciting. I could sit up late, in the flow, fingers flying at warp speed. I could sit until those wretched birds outside mocked me with their damn, cheerful \u201cHurray, it\u2019s morning!\u201d songs. Suddenly, while, say, washing dishes, the one magical phrase that captured the essence of a voice or idea would pop up, and I would have mowed down small animals and toddlers to get to my computer and hammer out that website or article, to capture that thought before it escaped. Note my use of the word hammer. Sound at all familiar? \n\nBut where was my body during my work? Jaw jutting forward to see the screen, feet oddly positioned\u2014and then left in place like chunks of marble\u2014back unsupported, fingers pounding the keys, wrists and arms permanently twisted in unnatural angles that we thought were natural. And clicking. Clicking, clicking, clicking that mouse. Thumbing tiny keyboards on phones. A lethal little gesture for tiny little tendons. Though I was fine from, say 1997 to 2004, by the end of 2004 this behavior culminated in disaster. I had repetitive stress injuries, aka repetitive motion injuries. As the Apple site says, \u201cA brief exposure to these conditions would not cause harm. But a prolonged exposure may, in some people, result in reduced ability to function.\u201d I\u2019ll say. \n\nI frantically turned to people on lists and forums. \u201cTry a track ball.\u201d Already did that. \u201cTry a tablet.\u201d Worse. One person wrote, \u201cI still come here once in a while and can type a couple sentences, but I\u2019ve permanently got thoracic outlet syndrome and I\u2019ll never work again.\u201d Oh, beauteous web, oh, long-distance friends, farewell. \n\nThe Wrist Bone\u2019s Connected to the Brain Bone\n\nThat variation on the old song tells part of the story. Most people (and many of their physicians) believe that tingling fingers and aching wrists MUST be carpel tunnel syndrome. Nope. If your neck juts forward, it tenses and stays tense the entire time you work in that position. Remember how your muscles felt after holding a landline phone with your neck tilted to one side for a long client meeting? Regrettable. Tensing your shoulders because your chair\u2019s not designed properly puts you at risk for thoracic outlet syndrome, a career-killer if ever there was one. The nerves and tendons in your neck and shoulder refer down your arms, and muscles swell around nerves, causing pain and dysfunction. Your elbows have a tendon that is especially vulnerable to repetitive movements (think tennis elbow). Your wrists are performing something akin to a circus act with one thousand shows a day. \n\nSo, all the fine tendons and ligaments in your fingers have problems that may not start at your wrists at all. Though some people truly do have carpal tunnel syndrome, my finger and wrist problems weren\u2019t solved by heavily massaging my fingers (though, that was helpful, too) or my wrists. They were fixed by work on my neck, upper back, shoulders, arms, and elbows. This explains why many people have surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome and just months later say, \u201cWhat?! How can I possibly have it again? I had an operation!\u201d Well, fellow buckaroo, you may never have had carpel tunnel syndrome. You may have had\u2014or perhaps will have\u2014one long disaster area from your neck to your fingertips. \n\nHow to Crawl Back \n\nBefore trying extreme measures, you may be able to function again even if you feel hopeless. I managed to heal, and so have others, but I\u2019ll always be at risk. \n\nAs Jen Simmons, of The Web Ahead podcast and other projects told me, \u201cIt took a long time to injure myself. It took a long time to get back to where I was. My right arm between my elbow and wrist would start aching intermittently. Eventually, my arm even ached at night. I started each day with yesterday\u2019s pain.\u201d Simple measures, used consistently, helped her back. \n\n1. Massage therapy\n\nI don\u2019t remember what the rest of the world is like, but in Portland, Oregon, we have more than one massage therapy college. (Of course we do.) I saw a former teacher at the most respected school. This is not your \u201cIt was all so soothing. Why, I fell asleep!\u201d massage. This is \u201cHoly crap, he\u2019s grinding his elbow into my armpit!\u201c massage therapy, with the emphasis on therapy. I owe him everything. Make sure you have someone who really knows what they\u2019re doing. Get many referrals. Try a question, \u201cDoes my psoas muscle affect my back?\u201d If they can\u2019t answer it, flee. Regularly see the one you choose and after a while, depending on how injured you are, you may be able to taper off. \n\n2. Change your equipment\n\nYou may need to be hands-on with several pieces of equipment before you find the ones that don\u2019t cause more pain. Many companies have restocking fees, charges to ship the equipment you want to return, and other retail atrocities. Always be sure to ask what the return policies are at any company before purchasing.\n\nMice \n\nYou may have more success than I did with equipment such as the Wacom tablet. Mine came with a pen, and it hurt to repetitively click it. Trackballs are another option but, for many, they are better at prevention than recovery. But let\u2019s get to the really effective stuff. One of the biggest sources of pain is using your mouse. One major reason is that your hand and wrist are in a perpetually unnatural position and you\u2019re also moving your arm quite a bit. Each time you move the mouse, it is placing stress on your neck, shoulders and arms, because you need to lift them slightly in order to move the mouse and you need to angle your wrist. You may also be too injured to use the trackpad all the time, and this mouse, the vertical mouse is a dandy preventative measure, too. Shaking up your patterns is a wise move. I have long fingers, not especially thin, yet the small size works best for me. (They have larger choices available.) What?! A sideways mouse? Yep. All the weight of your hand will be resting on it in the handshake position. Your forearms aren\u2019t constantly twisting over hill and dale. You aren\u2019t using any muscles in your wrist or hand. They are relaxing. You\u2019ll adapt in a day, and oh, oh, what a relief it is. \n\nKeyboards\n\nI really liked doing business with the people at Kinesis-Ergo. (I\u2019m not affiliated with them in any way.) They have the vertical mouse and a number of keyboards. The one that felt the most natural to me, and, once again, it only takes a day to adapt, is the Freestyle2 for the Mac. They have several options. I kept the keyboard halves attached to each other at first, and then spread them apart a little more. I recommend choosing one that slants and can separate. You can adjust the angle. For a little extra, they\u2019ll make sure it\u2019s all set up and ready to go for you. I\u2019m guessing that some Googling will find you similar equipment, wherever you live. \n\nWarning: if you use the ergonomic keyboards, you may have fewer USB ports. The laptop will be too far away to see unless you find a satisfactory setup using a stand. This is the perfect excuse for purchasing a humongous display. \n\nYou may not look cool while jetting coast to coast in your skinny jeans and what appears to be the old-time orthopedic shoe version of computing gear. But once you have rested and used many of these suggestions consistently, you may be able to use your laptop or other device in all its lovely sleekness during the trip. \n\nOther doohickies\n\nThe Kinesis site and The Human Solution have a wide selection of ergonomic products: standing desks, ergonomically correct chairs, and, yes, even things with foot pedals. Explore! \n\n3. Stop clicking, at least for a while\n\nUse keyboard shortcuts, but use them slowly. This is not the time to show off your skillz. You\u2019ll be sort of like a recovering alcoholic, in that you\u2019ll be a recovering repetitive stress survivor for the rest of your life, once you really injure yourself. Always be vigilant. There\u2019s also a bit of software sold by The Human Solution and other places, and it was my salvation. It\u2019s called the McNib for Macs, and the Nib for PCs. (I\u2019ve only used the McNib.) It\u2019s for click-free mousing. I found it tricky to use when writing markup and code, but you may become quite adept at it. A little rectangle pops up on your screen, you mouse over it and choose, let\u2019s say, \u201cDouble-click.\u201d Until you change that choice, if you mouse over a link or anything else, it will double-click it for you. All you do is glide your mouse around. Awkward for a day or two, but you\u2019ll pick it up quickly. Though you can use it all day for work, even if you just use this for browsing LOLcats or Gary Vaynerchuk\u2019s YouTube videos, it will help you by giving your fingers a sweet break. \n\nBut here\u2019s the sad news. The developer who invented this died a few years ago. (Yes, I used to speak to him on the phone.) While it is for sale, it isn\u2019t compatible with Mac OS X Lion or anything subsequent. PowerPC strikes again. His site is still up. Demos for use with older software can be downloaded free at his old site, or at The Human Solution. Perhaps an enterprising developer can invent something that would provide this help, without interfering with patents. Rumor has it among ergonomic retailers (yes, I\u2019m like a police dog sniffing my way to a criminal once I head down a trail) that his company was purchased by a company in China, with no update in sight. \n\n4. Use built-in features\n\nThat little microphone icon that comes up alongside the keyboard on your iPhone allows you to speak your message instead of incessantly thumbing it. I believe it works in any program that uses the keyboard. It\u2019s not Siri. She\u2019s for other things, like having a personal relationship with an inanimate object. Apple even has a good section on ergonomics. You think I\u2019m intense about this subject? To improve your repetitive stress, Apple doesn\u2019t want you to use oral contraceptives, alcohol, or tobacco, to which I say, \u201cHave as much sex, bacon, and chocolate as possible to make up for it.\u201d \n\nApple\u2019s info even has illustrations of things like a faucet dripping into what is labeled a bucket full of \u201cTRAUMA.\u201d Sounds like upgrading to Yosemite, but I digress. \n\n5. Take breaks \n\nIf it\u2019s a game or other non-essential activity, take a break for a month. Fine, now that I\u2019ve called games non-essential, I suppose you\u2019ll all unfollow me on Twitter. \n\n6. Whether you are sore or not, do stretches throughout the day \n\nThis is a big one. Really big. The best book on the subject of repetitive stress injuries is Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Other Repetitive Strain Injuries: A Self-Care Program by Sharon J. Butler. Don\u2019t worry, most of it is illustrations. Pretend it\u2019s a graphic novel. \n\nI\u2019m notorious for never reading instructions, and who on earth reads the introduction of a book, unless they wrote it? I wrote a book a long time ago, and I bet my house, husband, and life savings that my own parents never read the intro. Well, I did read the intro to this book, and you should, too. Stretching correctly, in a way that doesn\u2019t further hurt you, that keeps you flexible if you aren\u2019t injured, that actually heals you, calls for precision. Read and you\u2019ll see. The key is to stretch just until you start to feel the stretch, even if that\u2019s merely a tiny movement. Don\u2019t force anything past that point. Kindly nurse yourself back to health, or nurture your still-healthy body by stretching. Over the following days, weeks, months, you\u2019ll be moving well past that initial stretch point. \n\nThe book is brimming with examples. You only have to pick a few stretches, if this is too much to handle. Do it every single day. I can tell you some of the best ones for me, but it depends on the person. You\u2019ll also discover in Butler\u2019s book that areas that you think are the problem are sometimes actually adjacent to the muscle or tendon that is the source of the problem. Add a few stretches or two for that area, too. \n\nBut please follow the instructions in the introduction. If you overdo it, or perform some other crazy-ass hijinks, as I would be tempted to do, I am not responsible for your outcome. I give you fair warning that I am not a healthcare provider. I\u2019m just telling you as a friend, an untrained one, at that, who has been through this experience. \n\n7. Follow good habits\n\nDevelop habits like drinking lots of water (which helps with lactic acid buildup in muscles), looking away from the computer for twenty seconds every twenty to thirty minutes, eating right, and probably doing everything else your mother told you to do. Maybe this is a good time to bring up flossing your teeth, and going outside to play instead of watching TV. As your mom would say, \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful day outside, what are you kids doing in here?\u201d \n\n8. Speak instead of writing, if you can \n\nAmber Simmons, who is very smart and funny, once tweeted in front of the whole world that, \u201c@carywood is a Skype whore.\u201d I was always asking people on Twitter if we could Skype instead of using iChat or exchanging emails. (I prefer the audio version so I don\u2019t have to, you know, do something drastic like comb my hair.) Keyboarding is tough on hands, whether you notice it or not at the time, and when doing rapid-fire back-and-forthing with people, you tend to speed up your typing and not take any breaks. This is a hand-killer. Voice chats have made such a difference for me that I am still a rabid Skype whore. Wait, did I say that out loud? \n\nSpeak your text or emails, using Dragon Dictate or other software. In about 2005, accessibility and user experience design expert, Derek Featherstone, in Canada, and I, at home, chatted over the internet, each of us using a different voice-to-text program. The programs made so many mistakes communicating with each other that we began that sort of endless, tearful laughing that makes you think someone may need to call an ambulance. This type of software has improved quite a bit over the years, thank goodness. Lack of accessibility of any kind isn\u2019t funny to Derek or me or to anyone who can\u2019t use the web without pain. \n\n9. Watch your position \n\nFor example, if you lift up your arms to use the computer, or stare down at your laptop, you\u2019ll need to rearrange your equipment. The internet has a lot of information about ideal ergonomic work areas. Please use a keyboard drawer. Be sure to measure the height carefully so that even a tented keyboard, like the one I recommend, will fit. I also recommend getting the version of the Freestyle with palm supports. Just these two measures did much to help both Jen Simmons and me. \n\n10. If you need to take anti-inflammatories, stop working\n\nIf you are all drugged up on ibuprofen, and pounding and clicking like mad, your body will not know when you are tired or injuring yourself. I don\u2019t recommend taking these while using your computing devices. Perhaps just take it at night, though I\u2019m not a fan of that category of medications. Check with your healthcare provider. At least ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory, which may help you. In contrast, acetaminophen (paracetamol) only makes your body think it\u2019s not in pain. Ice is great, as is switching back and forth between ice and heat. But again, if you need ice and ibuprofen you really need to take a major break. \n\n11. Don\u2019t forget the rest of your body\n\nI\u2019ve zeroed in on my personal area of knowledge and experience, but you may be setting yourself up for problems in other areas of your body. There\u2019s what is known to bad writers as \u201ca veritable cornucopia\u201d of information on the web about how to help the rest of your body. A wee bit of research on the web and you\u2019ll discover simple exercises and stretches for the rest of your potential catastrophic areas: your upper back, your lower back, your legs, ankles, and eyes. Do gentle stretches, three or four times a day, rather than powering your way through. Ease into new equipment such as standing desks. Stretch those newly challenged areas until your body adapts. Pay attention to your body, even though I too often forget mine. \n\n12. Remember the children\n\nKids are using equipment to play highly addictive games or to explore amazing software, and if these call for repetitive motions, children are being set up for future injuries. They\u2019ll grab hold of something, as parents out there know, and play it 3,742 times. That afternoon. Perhaps by the time they are adults, everything will just be holograms and mind-reading, but adult fingers and hands are used for most things in life, not just computing devices and phones with keyboards sized for baby chipmunks. \n\nI\u2019ll be watching you\n\nQuickly now, while I (possibly) have your attention. Don\u2019t move a muscle. Is your neck tense? Are you unconsciously lifting your shoulders up? How long since you stopped staring at the screen? How bright is your screen? Are you slumping (c\u2019mon now, \u2018fess up) and inviting sciatica problems? Do you have to turn your hands at an angle relative to your wrist in order to type? Uh-oh. That\u2019s a bad one. Your hands, wrists, and forearms should be one straight line while keyboarding. Future you is begging you to change your ways. Don\u2019t let your #ThrowbackThursday in 2020 say, \u201cHere\u2019s a photo from when I used to be able to do so many wonderful things that I can\u2019t do now.\u201d And, whatever you do, don\u2019t try for even a nanosecond to push through the pain, or the next thing you know, you\u2019ll be an unpaid extra in The Expendables 7.", "year": "2014", "author": "Carolyn Wood", "author_slug": "carolynwood", "published": "2014-12-06T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/dont-push-through-the-pain/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 34, "title": "Collaborative Responsive Design Workflows", "contents": "Much has been written about workflow and designer-developer collaboration in web design, but many teams still struggle with this issue; either with how to adapt their internal workflow, or how to communicate the need for best practices like mobile first and progressive enhancement to their teams and clients. Christmas seems like a good time to have another look at what doesn\u2019t work between us and how we can improve matters.\n\nWhy is it so difficult?\n\nWe\u2019re still beginning to understand responsive design workflows, acknowledging the need to move away from static design tools and towards best practices in development. It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t want to change\u00a0\u2013 so why is it so difficult?\n\nChanging the way we do something that has become routine is always problematic, even with small things, and the changes today\u2019s web environment requires from web design and development teams are anything but small.\n\nAlthough developers also have a host of new skills to learn and things to consider, designers are probably the ones pushed furthest out of their comfort zones: as well as graphic design, a web designer today also needs an understanding of interaction design and ergonomics, because more and more websites are becoming tools rather than pages meant to be read like a book or magazine. In addition to that there are thousands of different devices and screen sizes on the market today that layout and interactions need to work on.\n\nThese aspects make it impossible to design in a static design tool, so beyond having to learn about new aspects of design, the designer has to either learn how to code or learn to work with a responsive design tool.\n\nWhy do it\n\nThat alone is enough to leave anyone overwhelmed, as learning a new skill takes time and slows you down in a project \u2013 and on most projects time is in short supply. Yet we have to make time or fall behind in the industry as others pitch better, interactive designs. For an efficient workflow, both designers and developers must familiarise themselves with new tools and techniques.\n\nA designer has to be able to play with ideas, make small adjustments here and there, look at the result, go back to the settings and make further adjustments, and so on. You can only realistically do that if you are able to play with all the elements of a design, including interactivity, accessibility and responsiveness.\n\nFiguring out the right breakpoints in a layout is one of the foremost reasons for designing in a responsive design tool. Even if you create layouts for three viewport sizes (i.e. smartphone, tablet and the most common desktop size), you\u2019d only cover around 30% of visitors and you might miss problems like line breaks and padding at other viewport sizes.\n\nAnother advantage is consistency. In static design tools changes will not be applied across all your other layouts. A developer referring back to last week\u2019s comps might work with outdated metrics. Furthermore, you cannot easily test what impact changes might have on previously designed areas. In a dynamic design tool such changes will be applied to the entire design and allow you to test things in site areas you had already finished.\n\nNo static design tool allows you to do this, and having somebody else produce a mockup from your static designs or wireframes will duplicate work and is inefficient.\n\nHow to do it\n\nWhen working in a responsive design tool rather than in the browser, there is still the question of how and when to communicate with the developer. I have found that working with Sass in combination with a visual style guide is very efficient, but it does need careful planning: fundamental metrics for padding, margins and font sizes, but also design elements like sliders, forms, tabs, buttons and navigational elements, should be defined at the beginning of a project and used consistently across the site. Working with a grid can help you develop a consistent design language across your site.\n\nCreate a visual style guide that shows what the elements look like and how they behave across different screen sizes \u2013 and when interacted with. Put all metrics on paddings, margins, breakpoints, widths, colours and so on in a text document, ideally with names that your developer can use as Sass variables in the CSS. For example:\n\n$padding-default-vertical: 1.5em;\n\nDevelopers, too, need an efficient workflow to keep code maintainable and speed up the time needed for more complex interactions with an eye on accessibility and performance. CSS preprocessors like Sass allow you to work with variables and mixins for default rules, as well as style sheet partials for different site areas or design elements. Create your own boilerplate to use for your projects and then update your variables with the information from your designer for each individual project.\n\nHow to get buy-in\n\nOne obstacle when implementing responsive design, accessibility and content strategy is the logistics of learning new skills and iterating on your workflow. Another is how to sell it. You might expect everyone on a project (including the client) to want to design and develop the best website possible: ultimately, a great site will lead to more conversions. However, we often hear that people find it difficult to convince their teammates, bosses or clients to implement best practices.\n\nWhy is that? Well, I believe a lot of it is down to how we sell it. You will have experienced this yourself: some people you trust to know what they are talking about, and others you don\u2019t. Think about why you trust that first person but don\u2019t buy what the other one is telling you. It is likely because person A has a self-assured, calm and assertive demeanour, while person B seems insecure and apologetic. To sell our ideas, we need to become person A! For a timid designer or developer suffering from imposter syndrome (like many of us do in this industry) that is a difficult task. So how can we become more confident in selling our expertise?\n\nWrite\n\nWe need to become experts. And I mean not just in writing great code or coming up with beautiful designs but at explaining why we\u2019re doing what we\u2019re doing. Why do you code this way or that? Why is this the best layout? Why does a website have to be accessible and responsive? Write about it. Putting your thoughts down on paper or screen is a really efficient way of getting your head around a topic and learning to make a case for something. You may even find that you come up with new ideas as you are writing, so you\u2019ll become a better designer or developer along the way.\n\nTalk\n\nThen, talk about it. Start out in front of your team, then do a lightning talk at a web event near you, then a longer talk or workshop. Having to talk about a topic is going to help you put into spoken words the argument that you\u2019ve previously put together in writing. Writing comes more easily when you\u2019re starting out but we use a different register when writing than talking and you need to learn how to speak your case. Do the talk a couple of times and after each talk make adjustments where you found it didn\u2019t work well. By this time, you are more than ready to make your case to the client. In fact, you\u2019ve been ready since that first talk in front of your colleagues ;)\n\nPitch\n\nPitches used to be based on a presentation of static layouts for for three to five typical pages and three different designs. But if we want to sell interactivity, structure, usability, accessibility and responsiveness, we need to demonstrate these things and I believe that it can only do us good. I have seen a few pitches sitting in the client\u2019s chair and static layouts are always sort of dull. What makes a website a website is the fact that I can interact with it and smooth interactions or animations add that extra sparkle.\n\nI can\u2019t claim personal experience for this one but I\u2019d be bold and go for only one design. One demo page matching the client\u2019s corporate design but not any specific page for the final site. Include design elements like navigation, photography, typefaces, article layout (with real content), sliders, tabs, accordions, buttons, forms, tables (yes, tables) \u2013 everything you would include in a style tiles document, only interactive. Demonstrate how the elements behave when clicked, hovered and touched, and how they change across different screen sizes. You may even want to demonstrate accessibility features like tabbed navigation and screen reader use.\n\nObviously, there are many approaches that will work in different situations but don\u2019t give up on finding a process that works for you and that ultimately allows you to build delightful, accessible, responsive user experiences for the web. Make time to try new tools and techniques and don\u2019t just work on them on the side \u2013 start using them on an actual project. It is only when we use a tool or process in the real world that we become true experts. Remember your driving lessons: once the instructor had explained how to operate the car, you were sent to practise driving on the road in actual traffic!", "year": "2014", "author": "Sibylle Weber", "author_slug": "sibylleweber", "published": "2014-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/collaborative-responsive-design-workflows/", "topic": "process"}
{"rowid": 38, "title": "Websites of Christmas Past, Present and Future", "contents": "The websites of Christmas past\n\nThe first website was created at CERN. It was launched on 20 December 1990 (just in time for Christmas!), and it still works today, after twenty-four years. Isn\u2019t that incredible?!\n\nWhy does this website still work after all this time? I can think of a few reasons.\n\nFirst, the authors of this document chose HTML. Of course they couldn\u2019t have known back then the extent to which we would be creating documents in HTML, but HTML always had a lot going for it. It\u2019s built on top of plain text, which means it can be opened in any text editor, and it\u2019s pretty readable, even without any parsing.\n\nDespite the fact that HTML has changed quite a lot over the past twenty-four years, extensions to the specification have always been implemented in a backwards-compatible manner. Reading through the 1992 W3C document HTML Tags, you\u2019ll see just how it has evolved. We still have h1 \u2013 h6 elements, but I\u2019d not heard of the element before. Despite being deprecated since HTML2, it still works in several browsers. You can see it in action on my website.\n\nAs well as being written in HTML, there is no run-time compilation of code; the first website simply consists of HTML files transmitted over the web. Due to its lack of complexity, it stood a good chance of surviving in the turbulent World Wide Web.\n\nThat\u2019s all well and good for a simple, static website. But websites created today are increasingly interactive. Many require a login and provide experiences that are tailored to the individual user. This type of dynamic website requires code to be executed somewhere.\n\nTraditionally, dynamic websites would execute such code on the server, and transmit a simple HTML file to the user. As far as the browser was concerned, this wasn\u2019t much different from the first website, as the additional complexity all happened before the document was sent to the browser.\n\nDoing it all in the browser\n\nIn 2003, the first single page interface was created at slashdotslash.com. A single page interface or single page app is a website where the page is created in the browser via JavaScript. The benefit of this technique is that, after the initial page load, subsequent interactions can happen instantly, or very quickly, as they all happen in the browser.\n\nWhen software runs on the client rather than the server, it is often referred to as a fat client. This means that the bulk of the processing happens on the client rather than the server (which can now be thin).\n\nA fat client is preferred over a thin client because:\n\n\n\tIt takes some processing requirements away from the server, thereby reducing the cost of servers (a thin server requires cheaper, or fewer servers).\n\tThey can often continue working offline, provided no server communication is required to complete tasks after initial load.\n\tThe latency of internet communications is bypassed after initial load, as interactions can appear near instantaneous when compared to waiting for a response from the server.\n\n\nBut there are also some big downsides, and these are often overlooked:\n\n\n\tThey can\u2019t work without JavaScript. Obviously JavaScript is a requirement for any client-side code execution. And as the UK Government Digital Service discovered, 1.1% of their visitors did not receive JavaScript enhancements. Of that 1.1%, 81% had JavaScript enabled, but their browsers failed to execute it (possibly due to dropping the internet connection). If you care about 1.1% of your visitors, you should care about the non-JavaScript experience for your website.\n\tThe browser needs to do all the processing. This means that the hardware it runs on needs to be fast. It also means that we require all clients to have largely the same capabilities and browser APIs.\n\tThe initial payload is often much larger, and nothing will be rendered for the user until this payload has been fully downloaded and executed. If the connection drops at any point, or the code fails to execute owing to a bug, we\u2019re left with the non-JavaScript experience.\n\tThey are not easily indexed as every crawler now needs to run JavaScript just to receive the content of the website.\n\n\nThese are not merely edge case issues to shirk off. The first three issues will affect some of your visitors; the fourth affects everyone, including you.\n\nWhat problem are we trying to solve?\n\nSo what can be done to address these issues? Whereas fat clients solve some inherent issues with the web, they seem to create as many problems. When attempting to resolve any issue, it\u2019s always good to try to uncover the original problem and work forwards from there. One of the best ways to frame a problem is as a user story. A user story considers the who, what and why of a need. Here\u2019s a template:\n\n\n\tAs a {who} I want {what} so that {why}\n\n\nI haven\u2019t got a specific project in mind, so let\u2019s refer to the who as user. Here\u2019s one that could explain the use of thick clients.\n\n\n\tAs a user I want the site to respond to my actions quickly so that I get immediate feedback when I do something.\n\n\nThis user story could probably apply to a great number of websites, but so could this:\n\n\n\tAs a user I want to get to the content quickly, so that I don\u2019t have to wait too long to find out what the site is all about or get the content I need.\n\n\nA better solution\n\nHow can we balance both these user needs? How can we have a website that loads fast, and also reacts fast? The solution is to have a thick server, that serves the complete document, and then a thick client, that manages subsequent actions and replaces parts of the page. What we\u2019re talking about here is simply progressive enhancement, but from the user\u2019s perspective.\n\nThe initial payload contains the entire document. At this point, all interactions would happen in a traditional way using links or form elements. Then, once we\u2019ve downloaded the JavaScript (asynchronously, after load) we can enhance the experience with JavaScript interactions. If for whatever reason our JavaScript fails to download or execute, it\u2019s no biggie \u2013 we\u2019ve already got a fully functioning website. If an API that we need isn\u2019t available in this browser, it\u2019s not a problem. We just fall back to the basic experience.\n\nThis second point, of having some minimum requirement for an enhanced experience, is often referred to as cutting the mustard, first used in this sense by the BBC News team. Essentially it\u2019s an if statement like this:\n\nif('querySelector' in document\n && 'localStorage' in window\n && 'addEventListener' in window) {\n // bootstrap the JavaScript application\n }\n\nThis code states that the browser must support the following methods before downloading and executing the JavaScript:\n\n\n\tdocument.querySelector (can it find elements by CSS selectors)\n\twindow.localStorage (can it store strings)\n\twindow.addEventListener (can it bind to events in a standards-compliant way)\n\n\nThese three properties are what the BBC News team decided to test for, as they are present in their website\u2019s JavaScript. Each website will have its own requirements. The last method, window.addEventListener is in interesting one. Although it\u2019s simple to bind to events on IE8 and earlier, these browsers have very inconsistent support for standards. Making any JavaScript-heavy website work on IE8 and earlier is a painful exercise, and comes at a cost to all users on other browsers, as they\u2019ll download unnecessary code to patch support for IE.\n\n JavaScript API support by browser.\n\nI discovered that IE8 supports 12% of the current JavaScript APIs, while IE9 supports 16%, and IE10 51%. It seems, then, that IE10 could be the earliest version of IE that I\u2019d like to develop JavaScript for. That doesn\u2019t mean that users on browsers earlier than 10 can\u2019t use the website. On the contrary, they get the core experience, and because it\u2019s just HTML and CSS, it\u2019s much more likely to be bug-free, and could even provide a better experience than trying to run JavaScript in their browser. They receive the thin client experience.\n\nBy reducing the number of platforms that our enhanced JavaScript version supports, we can better focus our efforts on those platforms and offer an even greater experience to those users. But we can only do that if we use progressive enhancement. Otherwise our website would be completely broken for all other users.\n\nSo what we have is a thick server, capable of serving the entire website to our users, complete with all core functionality needed for our users to complete their tasks; and we have a thick client on supported browsers, which can bring an even greater experience to those users.\n\nThis is all transparent to users. They may notice that the website seems snappier on the new iPhone they received for Christmas than on the Windows 7 machine they got five years ago, but then they probably expected it to be faster on their iPhone anyway.\n\nIsn\u2019t this just more work?\n\nIt\u2019s true that making a thick server and a thick client is more work than just making one or the other. But there are some big advantages:\n\n\n\tThe website works for everyone.\n\tYou can decide when users get the enhanced experience.\n\tYou can enhance features in an iterative (or agile) manner.\n\tWhen the website breaks, it doesn\u2019t break down.\n\tThe more you practise this approach, the quicker you will become.\n\n\nThe websites of Christmas present\n\nThe best way to discover websites using this technique of progressive enhancement is to disable JavaScript and see if the website breaks. I use the Web Developer extension, which is available for Chrome and Firefox. It lets me quickly disable JavaScript.\n\n Web Developer extension.\n\n24 ways works with and without JavaScript. Try using the menu icon to view the navigation. Without JavaScript, it\u2019s a jump link to the bottom of the page, but with JavaScript, the menu slides in from the right.\n\n 24 ways navigation with JavaScript disabled.\n\n 24 ways navigation with working JavaScript.\n\nGoogle search will also work without JavaScript. You won\u2019t get instant search results or any prerendering, because those are enhancements.\n\nFor a more app-like example, try using Twitter. Without JavaScript, it still works, and looks nearly identical. But when you load JavaScript, links open in modal windows and all pages are navigated much quicker, as only the content that has changed is loaded. You can read about how they achieved this in Twitter\u2019s blog posts Improving performance on twitter.com and Implementing pushState for twitter.com.\n\nUnfortunately Facebook doesn\u2019t use progressive enhancement, which not only means that the website doesn\u2019t work without JavaScript, but it takes longer to load. I tested it on WebPagetest and if you compare the load times of Twitter and Facebook, you\u2019ll notice that, despite putting similar content on the page, Facebook takes two and a half times longer to render the core content on the page.\n\n Facebook takes two and a half times longer to load than Twitter.\n\nWebsites of Christmas yet to come\n\nEvery project is different, and making a website that enjoys a long life, or serves a larger number of users may or may not be a high priority. But I hope I\u2019ve convinced you that it certainly is possible to look to the past and future simultaneously, and that there can be significant advantages to doing so.", "year": "2014", "author": "Josh Emerson", "author_slug": "joshemerson", "published": "2014-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/websites-of-christmas-past-present-and-future/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 46, "title": "Responsive Enhancement", "contents": "24 ways has been going strong for ten years. That\u2019s an aeon in internet timescales. Just think of all the changes we\u2019ve seen in that time: the rise of Ajax, the explosion of mobile devices, the unrecognisably changed landscape of front-end tooling.\n\nTools and technologies come and go, but one thing has remained constant for me over the past decade: progressive enhancement.\n\nProgressive enhancement isn\u2019t a technology. It\u2019s more like a way of thinking. Instead of thinking about the specifics of how a finished website might look, progressive enhancement encourages you to think about the fundamental meaning of what the website is providing. So instead of thinking of a website in terms of its ideal state in a modern browser on a nice widescreen device, progressive enhancement allows you to think about the core functionality in a more abstract way.\n\nOnce you\u2019ve figured out what the core functionality is \u2013 adding an item to a shopping cart, posting a message, sharing a photo \u2013 then you can enable that functionality in the simplest possible way. That usually means starting with good old-fashioned HTML. Links and forms are often all you need. Then, once you have the core functionality working in a basic way, you can start to enhance to make a progressively better experience for more modern browsers.\n\nThe advantage of working this way isn\u2019t just that your site will work in older browsers (albeit in a rudimentary way). It also ensures that if anything goes wrong in a modern browser, it won\u2019t be catastrophic.\n\nThere\u2019s a common misconception that progressive enhancement means that you\u2019ll spend your time dealing with older browsers, but in fact the opposite is true. Putting the basic functionality into place doesn\u2019t take very long at all. And once you\u2019ve done that, you\u2019re free to spend all your time experimenting with the latest and greatest browser technologies, secure in the knowledge that even if they aren\u2019t universally supported yet, that\u2019s OK: you\u2019ve already got your fallback in place.\n\nThe key to thinking about web development this way is realising that there isn\u2019t one final interface \u2013 there could be many, slightly different interfaces depending on the properties and capabilities of any particular user agent at any particular moment. And that\u2019s OK. Websites do not need to look the same in every browser.\n\nOnce you truly accept that, it\u2019s an immensely liberating idea. Instead of spending your time trying to make websites look the same in wildly varying browsers, you can spend your time making sure that the core functionality of what you build works everywhere, while providing the best possible experience for more capable browsers.\n\nAllow me to demonstrate with a simple example: navigation.\n\nStep one: core functionality\n\nLet\u2019s say we have a straightforward website about the twelve days of Christmas, with a page for each day. The core functionality is pretty clear:\n\n\n\tTo read about any particular day.\n\tTo browse from day to day.\n\n\nThe first is easily satisfied by marking up the text with headings, paragraphs and all the usual structural HTML elements. The second is satisfied by providing a list of good ol\u2019 hyperlinks.\n\nNow where\u2019s the best place to position this navigation list? Personally, I\u2019m a big fan of the jump-to-footer pattern. This puts the content first and the navigation second. At the top of the page there\u2019s a link with an href attribute pointing to the fragment identifier for the navigation.\n\n\n \n Menu\n ...\n \n \n\n\nSee the footer-anchor pattern in action.\n\nBecause it\u2019s nothing more than a hyperlink, this works in just about every browser since the dawn of the web. Following hyperlinks is what web browsers were made to do (hence the name).\n\nStep two: layout as an enhancement\n\nThe footer-anchor pattern is a particularly neat solution on small-screen devices, like mobile phones. Once more screen real estate is available, I can use the magic of CSS to reposition the navigation above the content. I could use position: absolute, flexbox or, in this case, display: table.\n\n@media all and (min-width: 35em) {\n .control {\n display: none;\n }\n body {\n display: table;\n }\n [role=\"navigation\"] {\n display: table-caption;\n columns: 6 15em;\n }\n}\n\nSee the styles for wider screens in action\n\nStep three: enhance!\n\nRight. At this point I\u2019m providing core functionality to everyone, and I\u2019ve got nice responsive styles for wider screens. I could stop here, but the real advantage of progressive enhancement is that I don\u2019t have to. From here on, I can go crazy adding all sorts of fancy enhancements for modern browsers, without having to worry about providing a fallback for older browsers \u2013 the fallback is already in place.\n\nWhat I\u2019d really like is to provide a swish off-canvas pattern for small-screen devices. Here\u2019s my plan:\n\n\n\tPosition the navigation under the main content.\n\tListen out for the .control links being activated and intercept that action.\n\tWhen those links are activated, toggle a class of .active on the body.\n\tIf the .active class exists, slide the content out to reveal the navigation.\n\n\nHere\u2019s the CSS for positioning the content and navigation:\n\n@media all and (max-width: 35em) {\n [role=\"main\"] {\n transition: all .25s;\n width: 100%;\n position: absolute;\n z-index: 2;\n top: 0;\n right: 0;\n }\n [role=\"navigation\"] {\n width: 75%;\n position: absolute;\n z-index: 1;\n top: 0;\n right: 0;\n }\n .active [role=\"main\"] {\n transform: translateX(-75%);\n }\n}\n\nIn my JavaScript, I\u2019m going to listen out for any clicks on the .control links and toggle the .active class on the body accordingly:\n\n(function (win, doc) {\n 'use strict';\n var linkclass = 'control',\n activeclass = 'active',\n toggleClassName = function (element, toggleClass) {\n var reg = new RegExp('(s|^)' + toggleClass + '(s|$)');\n if (!element.className.match(reg)) {\n element.className += ' ' + toggleClass;\n } else {\n element.className = element.className.replace(reg, '');\n }\n },\n navListener = function (ev) {\n ev = ev || win.event;\n var target = ev.target || ev.srcElement;\n if (target.className.indexOf(linkclass) !== -1) {\n ev.preventDefault();\n toggleClassName(doc.body, activeclass);\n }\n };\n doc.addEventListener('click', navListener, false);\n}(this, this.document));\n\nI\u2019m all set, right? Not so fast!\n\nCutting the mustard\n\nI\u2019ve made the assumption that addEventListener will be available in my JavaScript. That isn\u2019t a safe assumption. That\u2019s because JavaScript \u2013 unlike HTML or CSS \u2013 isn\u2019t fault-tolerant. If you use an HTML element or attribute that a browser doesn\u2019t understand, or if you use a CSS selector, property or value that a browser doesn\u2019t understand, it\u2019s no big deal. The browser will just ignore what it doesn\u2019t understand: it won\u2019t throw an error, and it won\u2019t stop parsing the file.\n\nJavaScript is different. If you make an error in your JavaScript, or use a JavaScript method or property that a browser doesn\u2019t recognise, that browser will throw an error, and it will stop parsing the file. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to test for features before using them in JavaScript. That\u2019s also why it isn\u2019t safe to rely on JavaScript for core functionality.\n\nIn my case, I need to test for the existence of addEventListener:\n\n(function (win, doc) {\n if (!win.addEventListener) {\n return;\n }\n ...\n}(this, this.document));\n\nThe good folk over at the BBC call this kind of feature test cutting the mustard. If a browser passes the test, it cuts the mustard, and so it gets the enhancements. If a browser doesn\u2019t cut the mustard, it doesn\u2019t get the enhancements. And that\u2019s fine because, remember, websites don\u2019t need to look the same in every browser.\n\nI want to make sure that my off-canvas styles are only going to apply to mustard-cutting browsers. I\u2019m going to use JavaScript to add a class of .cutsthemustard to the document:\n\n(function (win, doc) {\n if (!win.addEventListener) {\n return;\n }\n ...\n var enhanceclass = 'cutsthemustard';\n doc.documentElement.className += ' ' + enhanceclass;\n}(this, this.document));\n\nNow I can use the existence of that class name to adjust my CSS:\n\n@media all and (max-width: 35em) {\n .cutsthemustard [role=\"main\"] {\n transition: all .25s;\n width: 100%;\n position: absolute;\n z-index: 2;\n top: 0;\n right: 0;\n }\n .cutsthemustard [role=\"navigation\"] {\n width: 75%;\n position: absolute;\n z-index: 1;\n top: 0;\n right: 0;\n }\n .cutsthemustard .active [role=\"main\"] {\n transform: translateX(-75%);\n }\n}\n\nSee the enhanced mustard-cutting off-canvas navigation. Remember, this only applies to small screens so you might have to squish your browser window.\n\nEnhance all the things!\n\nThis was a relatively simple example, but it illustrates the thinking behind progressive enhancement: once you\u2019re providing the core functionality to everyone, you\u2019re free to go crazy with all the latest enhancements for modern browsers.\n\nProgressive enhancement doesn\u2019t mean you have to provide all the same functionality to everyone \u2013 quite the opposite. That\u2019s why it\u2019s key to figure out early on what the core functionality is, and make sure that it can be provided with the most basic technology. But from that point on, you\u2019re free to add many more features that aren\u2019t mission-critical. You should reward more capable browsers by giving them more of those features, such as animation in CSS, geolocation in JavaScript, and new input types in HTML.\n\nLike I said, progressive enhancement isn\u2019t a technology. It\u2019s a way of thinking. Once you start thinking this way, you\u2019ll be prepared for whatever the next ten years throws at us.", "year": "2014", "author": "Jeremy Keith", "author_slug": "jeremykeith", "published": "2014-12-09T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/responsive-enhancement/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 30, "title": "Making Sites More Responsive, Responsibly", "contents": "With digital projects we\u2019re used to shifting our thinking to align with our target audience. We may undertake research, create personas, identify key tasks, or observe usage patterns, with our findings helping to refine our ongoing creations.\u00a0A product\u2019s overall experience can make or break its success, and when it comes to defining these experiences our development choices play a huge role alongside more traditional user-focused activities.\n\nThe popularisation of responsive web design is a great example of how we are able to shape the web\u2019s direction through using technology to provide better experiences. If we think back to the move from table-based layouts to CSS, initially our clients often didn\u2019t know or care about the difference in these approaches, but\u00a0we\u00a0did. Responsive design was similar in this respect \u2013 momentum grew through the web industry choosing to use an approach that we felt would give a better experience, and which was more future-friendly.\u00a0\n\nWe tend to think of responsive design as a means of displaying content appropriately across a range of devices, but the technology and our implementation of it can facilitate much more. A responsive layout not only helps your content work when the newest smartphone comes out, but it also ensures your layout suitably adapts if a visually impaired user drastically changes the size of the text.\n\n The 24 ways site at 400% on a Retina MacBook Pro displays a layout more typically used for small screens.\n\nWhen we think more broadly, we realise that our technical choices and approaches to implementation can have knock-on effects for the greater good, and beyond our initial target audiences. We can make our experiences more\u00a0responsive to people\u2019s needs, enhancing their usability and accessibility along the way.\n\nBeing responsibly responsive\n\nOf course, when we think about being more responsive, there\u2019s a fine line between creating useful functionality and becoming intrusive and overly complex. In the excellent Responsible Responsive Design, Scott Jehl states that:\n\n\nA responsible responsive design equally considers the following throughout a project:\n\nUsability: The way a website\u2019s user interface is presented to the user, and how that UI responds to browsing conditions and user interactions.\nAccess: The ability for users of all devices, browsers, and assistive technologies to access and understand a site\u2019s features and content.\nSustainability: The ability for the technology driving a site or application to work for devices that exist today and to continue to be usable and accessible to users, devices, and browsers in the future.\nPerformance: The speed at which a site\u2019s features and content are perceived to be delivered to the user and the efficiency with which they operate within the user interface.\n\n\n\nScott\u2019s book covers these ideas in a lot more detail than I\u2019ll be able to here (put it on your Christmas list if it\u2019s not there already), but for now let\u2019s think a bit more about our roles as digital creators\u00a0and the power this gives us.\n\nOur choices around technology and the decisions we have to make can be extremely wide-ranging. Solutions will vary hugely depending on the needs of each project, though we can further explore the concept of making our creations more responsive through the use of humble web technologies.\n\nThe power of the web\n\nWe all know that under the HTML5 umbrella are some great new capabilities, including a number of JavaScript APIs such as geolocation, web audio, the file API and many more. We often use these to enhance the functionality of our sites and apps, to add in new features, or to facilitate device-specific interactions.\n\nYou\u2019ll have seen articles with flashy titles such as \u201cTop 5 JavaScript APIs You\u2019ve Never Heard Of!\u201d, which you\u2019ll probably read, think \u201cThat\u2019s quite cool\u201d, yet never use in any real work.\n\nThere is great potential for technologies like these\u00a0to be misused, but there are also great prospects for them to be used well to enhance experiences. Let\u2019s have a look at a few\u00a0examples you may not have considered.\n\nOffline first\n\nWhen we make websites, many of us follow a process which involves user stories \u2013 standardised snippets of context explaining who needs what, and why.\n\n\u201cAs a student I want to pay online for my course so I don\u2019t have to visit the college in person.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs a retailer I want to generate unique product codes so I can manage my stock.\u201d\n\nWe very often focus heavily on what\u00a0needs doing, but may not consider carefully how it will be done. As in Scott\u2019s list, accessibility is extremely important, not only in terms of providing a great experience to users of assistive technologies, but also to make your creation more accessible in the general sense \u2013 including under different conditions.\n\nOffline first is yet another \u2018first\u2019 methodology (my personal favourite being \u2018tea first\u2019), which encourages us to develop so that connectivity\u00a0itself is an enhancement \u2013 letting\u00a0users continue with tasks even when they\u2019re offline. Despite the rapid growth in public Wi-Fi, if we consider data costs and connectivity in developing countries, our travel habits with planes, underground trains and roaming (or simply if you live in the UK\u2019s signal-barren East Anglian wilderness as I do), then you\u2019ll realise that connectivity isn\u2019t as ubiquitous as our internet-addled brains would make us believe. Take a scenario that I\u2019m sure we\u2019re all familiar with \u2013 the digital conference. Your venue may be in a city served by high-speed networks, but after overloading capacity with a full house of hashtag-hungry attendees, each carrying several devices, then everyone\u2019s likely to be offline after all. Wouldn\u2019t it be better if we could do something like this instead?\n\n\n\tSomeone visits our conference website.\n\tOn this initial run, some assets may be cached for future use: the conference schedule, the site\u2019s CSS, photos of the speakers.\n\tWhen the attendee revisits the site on the day, the page shell loads up from the cache.\n\tIf we have cached content (our session timetable, speaker photos or anything else), we can load it directly from the cache. We might then try to update this, or get some new content from the internet, but the conference attendee already has a base experience to use.\n\tIf we don\u2019t have something cached already, then we can try\u00a0grabbing it online.\n\tIf for any reason our requests for new content fail (we\u2019re offline), then we can display a pre-cached error message from the initial load, perhaps providing our users with alternative suggestions from what is\u00a0cached.\n\n\nThere are a number of ways we can make something like this, including using the application cache (AppCache) if you\u2019re that way inclined. However, you may want to look into service workers\u00a0instead. There are also some great resources on Offline First!\u00a0if you\u2019d like to find out more about this.\n\nBuilding in offline functionality isn\u2019t necessarily about starting offline first, and it\u2019s also perfectly possible to retrofit sites and apps to catch offline scenarios, but this kind of graceful degradation can end up being more complex than if we\u2019d considered it from the start. By treating connectivity as an enhancement, we can improve the experience and provide better performance than we can when waiting to counter failures. Our websites can respond to connectivity and usage scenarios, on top of adapting how we present our content. Thinking in this way can enhance each point in Scott\u2019s criteria.\n\nAs I mentioned, this isn\u2019t necessarily the kind of development choice that our clients will ask us for, but it\u2019s one we may decide is simply the right way to build based on our project, enhancing the experience we provide to people, and making it more responsive to their situation.\n\nEven more accessible\n\nWe\u2019ve looked at accessibility in terms of broadening when we can interact with a website, but what about how? Our user stories and personas are often of limited use. We refer in very general terms to students, retailers, and sometimes just users. What if we have a student whose needs are very different from another student? Can we make our sites even more usable and accessible through our development choices?\n\nAgain using JavaScript to illustrate this concept, we can do a lot more with the ways people interact with our websites, and with the feedback we provide, than simply accepting keyboard, mouse and touch inputs and displaying output on a screen.\n\nInput\n\nAmbient light detection is one of those features that looks great in simple demos, but which we struggle to put to practical use. It\u2019s not new \u2013 many satnav systems automatically change the contrast for driving at night or in tunnels, and our laptops may alter the screen brightness or keyboard backlighting to better adapt to our surroundings. Using web technologies we can adapt our presentation to be better suited to ambient light levels.\n\nIf our device has an appropriate light sensor and runs a browser that supports the API, we can grab the ambient light in units using ambient light events, in JavaScript. We may then change our presentation based on different bandings, perhaps like this:\n\nwindow.addEventListener('devicelight', function(e) {\n var lux = e.value;\n\n if (lux < 50) {\n //Change things for dim light\n }\n if (lux >= 50 && lux <= 10000) {\n //Change things for normal light\n }\n if (lux > 10000) {\n //Change things for bright light\n }\n});\n\nLive demo\u00a0(requires light sensor and supported browser).\n\nSoon we may also be able to do such detection through CSS, with light-level being cited in the Media Queries Level 4 specification. If that becomes the case, it\u2019ll probably look something like this:\n\n@media (light-level: dim) {\n /*Change things for dim light*/\n}\n\n@media (light-level: normal) {\n /*Change things for normal light*/\n}\n\n@media (light-level: washed) {\n /*Change things for bright light*/\n}\n\nWhile we may be quick to dismiss this kind of detection as being a gimmick, it\u2019s important to consider that apps such as Light Detector, listed on Apple\u2019s accessibility page, provide important context around exactly this functionality.\n\n\n\t\u201cIf you are blind, Light Detector helps you to be more independent in many daily activities. At home, point your iPhone towards the ceiling to understand where the light fixtures are and whether they are switched on. In a room, move the device along the wall to check if there is a window and where it is. You can find out whether the shades are drawn by moving the device up and down.\u201d\n\n\teverywaretechnologies.com/apps/lightdetector\n\n\nInput can be about so much more than what we enter through keyboards. Both an ever increasing amount of available sensors and more APIs being supported by the major browsers will allow us to cater for more scenarios and respond to them accordingly. This can be as complex or simple as you need; for instance, while x-webkit-speech has been deprecated, the web speech API is available for a number of browsers, and research into sign language detection is also being performed by organisations such as Microsoft.\n\nOutput\n\nWeb technologies give us some great enhancements around input, allowing us to adapt our experiences accordingly. They also provide us with some nice ways to provide feedback to users.\n\nWhen we play video games, many of our modern consoles come with the ability to have rumble effects on our controller pads. These are a great example of an enhancement, as they provide a level of feedback that is entirely optional, but which can give a great deal of extra information to the player in the right circumstances, and broaden the scope of our comprehension beyond what we\u2019re seeing and hearing.\n\nHaptic feedback is possible on the web as well. We could use this in any number of responsible applications, such as alerting a user to changes or using different patterns as a communication mechanism. If you find yourself in a pickle, here\u2019s how to print out SOS in Morse code through the vibration API. The following code indicates the length of vibration in milliseconds, interspersed by pauses in milliseconds.\n\nnavigator.vibrate([100, 300, 100, 300, 100, 300, 600, 300, 600, 300, 600, 300, 100, 300, 100, 300, 100]);\n\nLive demo\u00a0(requires supported browser)\n\nWith great power\u2026\n\nWhat you\u2019ve no doubt come to realise by now is that these are just more examples of progressive enhancement, whose inclusion will provide a better experience if the capabilities are available, but which we should not rely on. This idea isn\u2019t new, but the most important thing to remember, and what I would like you to take away from this article, is that it is up to us to decide to include these kind of approaches within our projects \u2013 if we don\u2019t root for them, they probably won\u2019t happen. This is where our professional responsibility comes in.\n\nWe won\u2019t necessarily be asked to implement solutions for the scenarios above, but they illustrate how we can help to push the boundaries of experiences. Maybe we\u2019ll have to switch our thinking about how we build, but we can create more usable products for a diverse range of people and usage scenarios through the choices we make around technology. Let\u2019s stop thinking simply in terms of features inside a narrow view of our target users, and work out how we can extend these to cater for a wider set of situations.\n\nWhen you plan your next digital project, consider the power of the web and the enhancements we can use, and try to make your projects even more responsive and responsible.", "year": "2014", "author": "Sally Jenkinson", "author_slug": "sallyjenkinson", "published": "2014-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/making-sites-more-responsive-responsibly/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 27, "title": "Putting Design on the Map", "contents": "The web can leave us feeling quite detached from the real world. Every site we make is really just a set of abstract concepts manifested as tools for communication and expression. At any minute, websites can disappear, overwritten by a newfangled version or simply gone. I think this is why so many of us have desires to create a product, write a book, or play with the internet of things. We need to keep in touch with the physical world and to prove (if only to ourselves) that we do make real things.\n\nI could go on and on about preserving the web, the challenges of writing a book, or thoughts about how we can deal with the need to make real things. Instead, I\u2019m going to explore something that gives us a direct relationship between a website and the physical world \u2013 maps.\n\n\n\tA map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected.\nReif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet\n\n\nThe simplest form of map on a website tends to be used for showing where a place is and often directions on how to get to it. That\u2019s an incredibly powerful tool. So why is it, then, that so many sites just plonk in a default Google Map and leave it as that? You wouldn\u2019t just use dark grey Helvetica on every site, would you? Where\u2019s the personality? Where\u2019s the tailored experience? Where is the design?\n\nJumping into design\n\nLet\u2019s keep this simple \u2013 we all want to be better web folk, not cartographers. We don\u2019t need to go into the history, mathematics or technology of map making (although all of those areas are really interesting to research). For the sake of our sanity, I\u2019m going to gloss over some of the technical areas and focus on the practical concepts.\n\nTiles\n\nIf you\u2019ve ever noticed a map loading in sections, it\u2019s because it uses tiles that are downloaded individually instead of requiring the user to download everything that they might need. These tiles come in many styles and can be used for anything that covers large areas, such as base maps and data. You\u2019ve seen examples of alternative base maps when you use Google Maps as Google provides both satellite imagery and road maps, both of which are forms of base maps. They are used to provide context for the real world, or any other world for that matter. A marker on a blank page is useless.\n\nThe tiles are representations of the physical; they do not have to be photographic imagery to provide context. This means you can design the map itself. The easiest way to conceive this is by comparing Google\u2019s road maps with Ordnance Survey road maps. Everything about the two maps is different: the colours, the label fonts and the symbols used. Yet they still provide the exact same context (other maps may provide different context such as terrain contours).\n\n Comparison of Google Maps (top) and the Ordnance Survey (bottom).\n\nCarefully designing the base map tiles is as important as any other part of the website. The most obvious, yet often overlooked, aspect are aesthetics and branding. Maps could fit in with the rest of the site; for example, by matching the colours and line weights, they can enhance the full design rather than inhibiting it. You\u2019re also able to define the exact purpose of the map, so instead of showing everything you could specify which symbols or labels to show and hide.\n\nI\u2019ve not done any real research on the accessibility of base maps but, having looked at some of the available options, I think a focus on the typography of labels and the colour of the various elements is crucial. While you can choose to hide labels, quite often they provide the data required to make sense of the map. Therefore, make sure each zoom level is not too cluttered and shows enough to give context. Also be as careful when choosing the typeface as you are in any other design work. As for colour, you need to pay closer attention to issues like colour-blindness when using colour to convey information. Quite often a spectrum of colour will be used to show data, or to show the topography, so you need to be aware that some people struggle to see colour differences within a spectrum.\n\nA nice example of a customised base map can be found on Michael K Owens\u2019 check-in pages:\n\n One of Michael K Owens\u2019 check-in pages.\n\nAs I\u2019ve already mentioned, tiles are not just for base maps: they are also for data. In the screenshot below you can see how Plymouth Marine Laboratory uses tiles to show data with a spectrum of colour.\n\n A map from the Marine Operational Ecology data portal, showing data of adult cod in the North Sea.\n\nTechnical\n\nYou\u2019re probably wondering how to design the base layers. I will briefly explain the concepts here and give you tools to use at the end of the article. If you\u2019re worried about the time it takes to design the maps, don\u2019t be \u2013 you can automate most of it. You don\u2019t need to manually draw each tile for the entire world!\n\nWe\u2019ve learned the importance of web standards the hard way, so you\u2019ll be glad (and I won\u2019t have to explain the advantages) of the standard for web mapping from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) called the Web Map Service (WMS). You can use conventional file formats for the imagery but you need a way to query for the particular tiles to show for the area and zoom level, that is what WMS does.\n\nFeatures\n\nTiles are great for covering large areas but sometimes you need specific smaller areas. We call these features and they usually consist of polygons, lines or points. Examples include postcode boundaries and routes between places, or even something more dynamic such as borders of nations changing over time.\n\nShowing features on a map presents interesting design challenges. If the colour or shape conveys some kind of data beyond geographical boundaries then it needs to be made obvious. This is actually really hard, without building complicated user interfaces. For example, in the image below, is it obvious that there is a relationship between the colours? Does it need a way of showing what the colours represent?\n\n Choropleth map showing ranked postcode areas, using ViziCities.\n\n\n\tFeatures are represented by means of lines or colors; and the effective use of lines or colors requires more than knowledge of the subject \u2013 it requires artistic judgement.\nErwin Josephus Raisz, cartographer (1893\u20131968)\n\n\nWhere lots of boundaries are small and close together (such as a high street or shopping centre) will it be obvious where the boundaries are and what they represent? When designing maps, the hardest challenge is dealing with how the data is represented and how it is understood by the user.\n\nTechnical\n\nAs you probably gathered, we use WMS for tiles and another standard called the web feature service (WFS) for specific features. I need to stress that the difference between the two is that WMS is for tiling, whereas WFS is for specific features. Both can use similar file formats but should be used for their particular use cases. You may be wondering why you can\u2019t just use a vector format such as KML, GeoJSON (or even SVG) \u2013 and you can \u2013 but the issue is the same as for WMS: you need a way to query the data to get the correct area and zoom level.\n\nUser interface\n\nThere is of course never a correct way to design an interface as there are so many different factors to take into consideration for each individual project. Maps can be used in a variety of ways, to provide simple information about directions or for complex visualisations to explain large amounts of data. I would like to just touch on matters that need to be taken into account when working with maps.\n\nAs I mentioned at the beginning, there are so many Google Maps on the web that people seem to think that its UI is the only way you can use a map. To some degree we don\u2019t want to change that, as people know how to use them; but does every map require a zoom slider or base map toggle? In fact, does the user need to zoom at all? The answer to that one is generally yes, zooming does provide more context to where the map is zoomed in on.\n\nIn some cases you will need to let users choose what goes on the map (such as data layers or directions), so how do they show and hide the data? Does a simple drop-down box work, or do you need search? Google\u2019s base map toggle is quite nice since it doesn\u2019t offer many options yet provides very different contexts and styling.\n\nIt isn\u2019t until we get to this point that we realise just plonking a quick Google map is really quite ridiculous, especially when compared to the amount of effort we make in other areas such as colour, typography or how the CSS is written. Each of these is important but we need to make sure the whole site is designed, and that includes the maps as much as any other content.\n\nPutting it into practice\n\nI could ramble on for ages about what we can do to customise maps to fit a site\u2019s personality and correctly represent the data. I wanted to focus on concepts and standards because tools constantly change and it is never good to just rely on a tool to do the work. That said, there are a large variety of tools that will help you turn these concepts into reality. This is not a comparison; I just want to show you a few of the many options you have for maps on the web.\n\nGoogle\n\nOK, I\u2019ve been quite critical so far about Google Maps but that is only because there is such a large amount of the default maps across the web. You can style them almost as much as anything else. They may not allow you to use custom WMS layers but Google Maps does have its own version, called styled maps. Using an array of map features (in the sense of roads and lakes and landmarks rather than the kind WFS is used for), you can style the base map with JavaScript. It even lets you toggle visibility, which helps to avoid the issue of too much clutter on the map. As well as lacking WMS, it doesn\u2019t support WFS, but it does support GeoJSON and KML so you can still show the features on the map. You should also check out Google Maps Engine (the new version of My Maps), which provides an interface for creating more advanced maps with a selection of different base maps. A premium version is available, essentially for creating map-based visualisations, and it provides a step up from the main Google Maps offering. A useful feature in some cases is that it gives you access to many datasets.\n\nLeaflet\n\nYou have probably seen Leaflet before. It isn\u2019t quite as popular as Google Maps but it is definitely used often and for good reason. Leaflet is a lightweight open source JavaScript library. It is not a service so you don\u2019t have to worry about API throttling and longevity. It gives you two options for tiling, the ability to use WMS, or to directly get the file using variables in the filename such as /{z}/{x}/{y}.png. I would recommend using WMS over dynamic file names because it is a standard, but the ability to use variables in a file name could be useful in some situations. Leaflet has a strong community and a well-documented API.\n\nMapbox\n\nAs a freemium service, Mapbox may not be perfect for every use case but it\u2019s definitely worth looking into. The service offers incredible customisation tools as well as lots of data sources and hosting for the maps. It also provides plenty of libraries for the various platforms, so you don\u2019t have to only use the maps on the web.\n\nMapbox is a service, though its map design tool is open source. Mapbox Studio is a vector-only version of their previous tool called Tilemill. Earlier I wrote about how typography and colour are as important to maps as they are to the rest of a website; if you thought, \u201cYes, but how on earth can I design those parts of a map?\u201d then this is the tool for you. It is incredibly easy to use. Essentially each map has a stylesheet.\n\nIf you do not want to open a paid-for Mapbox account, then you can export the tiles (as PNG, SVG etc.) to use with other map tools.\n\nOpenLayers\n\nAfter a long wait, OpenLayers 3 has been released. It is similar to Leaflet in that it is a library not a service, but it has a much broader scope. During the last year I worked on the GIS portal at Plymouth Marine Laboratory (which I used to show the data tiles earlier), it essentially used OpenLayers 2 to create a web-based geographic information system, taking a large amount of data and permitting analysis (such as graphs) without downloading entire datasets and complicated software. OpenLayers 3 has improved greatly on the previous version in both performance and accessibility. It is the ideal tool for complex map-based web apps, though it can be used for the simple use cases too.\n\nOpenStreetMap\n\nI couldn\u2019t write an article about maps on the web without at least mentioning OpenStreetMap. It is the place to go for crowd-sourced data about any location, with complete road maps and a strong API.\n\nViziCities\n\nThe newest project on this list is ViziCities by Robin Hawkes and Peter Smart. It is a open source 3-D visualisation tool, currently in the very early stages of development. The basic example shows 3-D buildings around the world using OpenStreetMap data. Robin has used it to create some incredible demos such as real-time London underground trains, and planes landing at an airport. Edward Greer and I are currently working on using ViziCities to show ideal housing areas based on particular personas. We chose it because the 3-D aspect gives us interesting possibilities for the data we are able to visualise (such as bar charts on the actual map instead of in the UI). Despite not being a completely stable, fully featured system, ViziCities is worth taking a look at for some use cases and is definitely going to go from strength to strength.\n\n\n\nSo there you have it \u2013 a whistle-stop tour of how maps can be customised. Now please stop plonking in maps without thinking about it and design them as you design the rest of your content.", "year": "2014", "author": "Shane Hudson", "author_slug": "shanehudson", "published": "2014-12-11T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/putting-design-on-the-map/", "topic": "design"}
{"rowid": 45, "title": "Is Agile Harder for Agencies?", "contents": "I once sat in a pitch meeting and watched a new business exec tell a potential client that his agency followed an agile workflow process at all times. The potential client nodded wisely, and they both agreed that agile was indeed the way to go.\n\nThe meeting progressed and they signed off on a contract for a massive project, to be delivered in a standard waterfall fashion, with all manner of phases and key deliverables.\n\nOf course both of them left the meeting perfectly happy, because neither of them knew nor cared what an agile workflow process might be.\n\nThat was about five years ago. As 2015 heaves into view I think it\u2019s fair to say that attitudes have changed. Perhaps the same number of people claim to do Agile\u2122 now as in 2010, but I think more of them are telling the truth.\n\nAs a developer in an agency that works primarily with larger organisations, this year I have started to see a shift from agencies pushing agile methodologies with their clients, to clients requesting and even demanding agile practices from their agencies. Only a couple of years ago this would have been unusual behaviour.\n\nSo what\u2019s the problem?\n\nWe should be happy then, no? Those of us in agencies will get to spend more time delivering great products, and less time arguing over out-of-date functional specs or battling through an adversarial change management procedure because somebody had a good idea during development rather than planning. We get to be a little bit more like our brothers and sisters in vaunted teams like the Government Digital Service, which is using agile approaches to great effect on projects that have a real benefit to their users.\n\nAlmost. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that adhering to an agile framework such as scrum is more difficult within an agency/client structure than it is for an in-house development team.\n\nThis is no surprise. The Agile Manifesto was written in 2001 by a group of software developers for their own use. Many of the underlying principles of a framework like Scrum assume the existence of an in-house team, working on a highly technical project, and working for the business that employs them. The agency/client model must to some extent be retrofitted into agile frameworks. It can be done though, and there are plenty of agencies out there doing it well.\n\nThis article isn\u2019t meant to be another introduction to agile techniques \u2013 there are too many of those online already. This article is for people just dipping their toes into this way of working. I\u2019ve laid out a few of the key reasons why adopting a more fully agile approach seems difficult, at least initially, for those of us working in agencies.\n\n1. Agile asks more of your clients\n\nWhen a team adopts Scrum everyone has to get used to a number of unfamiliar roles and rituals. Few team members have a steeper learning curve than the person designated as the product owner.\n\nThe product owner carries a lot of weight on their shoulders. They have to uphold the overall vision for the project. They are also meant to be the primary author of the project\u2019s user stories (short atomic descriptions of project features which are testable and relate to a real business need). They should own this list of stories (called a backlog) and should be able to prioritise the order in which the stories are developed, to ensure that the project is delivering real value to the business early and often.\n\nWhen a burst of work is completed (bursts of work in Scrum are called sprints), the product owner leads a review or show-and-tell session with the wider project stakeholders. The product owner needs to understand the work that has been completed, and must champion it to the business. Finally, and most importantly, the product owner is responsible for managing the feedback and requests from stakeholders in such a way that they don\u2019t derail the project team\u2019s agreed workload for any given sprint, without upsetting or offending any of the stakeholders \u2013 some of whom may outrank the product owner.\n\nIf you follow that spec, this is a job for a superhuman in any organisational context. And within the agency/client structure this superhuman needs to be client-side for the process to be at its most effective.\n\nSo your client, who in the past might have briefed a project to an agency team and then had the work presented back to them every few weeks, is now asked to be involved with the team on a daily basis; to fight on behalf of the team when new or difficult requests come in from senior figures within their organisation; and to present the agency\u2019s work to their own colleagues after each sprint. It\u2019s a big change if all that gets dropped into someone\u2019s lap without warning.\n\nThere are several ways agencies can mitigate this issue. The ScrumAlliance suggests some alternative ways to structure the product owner role. The approach I have taken in the past is simply to start slow, and gradually move more of the product owner role over to the client side as and when they feel comfortable with it. If you\u2019re working together long-term on a project, and you both see tangible improvements in the quality of the work after adopting an agile process, then your client is more likely to be open to further changes as the partnership progresses.\n\n2. My client wants fixed costs, fixed deadlines and a fixed scope\n\nI know. Mine too. Of course they do \u2013 it is the way that agencies and clients have agreed to work in digital and other creative service industries for a very long time. On both sides of the fence we\u2019re used to thinking about projects in this way.\n\nOf the three, fixing scope is the one that agile purists would rail hardest against. The more time we spend working on digital projects, the less sense it makes. James Archer, CEO of UI/UX design agency Forty puts it like this:\n\n\n\tFor me, the Agile approach is really about acknowledging that disturbing truth that every project manager knows, but has trouble admitting. The truth that the project plan is wrong. Scope creep. Change orders. Shifting priorities. New directions. We act shocked and appalled when those things happen during our carefully planned project, even though they happen on every project ever.\n\n\nSuccessful relationships require trust and honesty, and we shouldn\u2019t be afraid of discussing this aspect of project management. If you do move away from a fixed scope of work, then the other two items (costs and timings) can be fixed \u2013 more or less. If you can get your clients to buy into this from a standing start then you are doing well. In fact you probably deserve a promotion. For most of us this is a continual discussion.\n\nAnyway, as soon as you\u2019ve made headway on the argument that it makes little or no sense to try and fix the scope of a digital project, you usually run into a related concern, which we\u2019ll look at next.\n\n3. Fear of uncontrolled costs\n\nWe all know that a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. At this time of year perhaps we should reiterate to everyone that digital products and services also need support and love once we have taken the decision to bring them into the world.\n\nMore organisations are realising that their investment in digital platforms should be viewed as an operational expenditure rather than a capital expenditure. But from time to time we will find ourselves working on projects for people who have a finite amount of money to invest in a product at a given point in time. When agencies start talking about these projects as rolling investments those responsible can understandably worry about their costs running out of control.\n\nThere\u2019s another factor at play here. Agile, on the whole, prefers to derive a cost for services from the hours a team spends working on a project. In other industries this is referred to as charging for time and materials, and there seems to be an ingrained distrust in this approach among people in general. See, for example, the Citizens Advice Bureau\u2019s \u201cTop tips for employing a builder\u201d:\n\n\n\t\u201cBear in mind that if you pay a daily rate, this makes it easier for a builder to string the work out and get more money so agree what you will do if the job takes longer than expected.\u201d\n\n\nIt\u2019s hard not to feel stung if you are in the builder\u2019s shoes here, as we are when we\u2019re talking about our role as an agency. But if you\u2019ve ever haggled with a builder over time and materials, and also moaned about your clients misunderstanding agile methods, take a moment to reflect on the similarities from your client\u2019s point of view.\n\nAgain, there are some things we can do to mitigate this issue. Some agencies put in place a service level agreement around their team\u2019s velocity (an agile-related term related to how much work a team delivers in any given sprint) and this can help.\n\nAs the industry moves further towards a long-term approach to investment in digital I hope this fear will subside. But that shift in approach leads to the final concern I want to address.\n\n4. Agency structures need shaking up\n\nIf you work for a company that has spent many years developing a business model around the waterfall process, you may have to break through many layers of entrenched thinking in order to establish new practices and effect organisational change.\n\nThere are consultancies that exist specifically to help agencies through their own agile transformation. One of these companies, AgencyAgile, provides a helpful list of common pitfalls. They emphasise the need to look at your whole agency\u2019s structure, rather than simply encouraging project teams to adopt new workflows.\n\n\n\tEven awesomely run Agile projects can have a limited impact on the overall organization.\n\n\nIf you\u2019re serious about changing the way your company approaches projects then try talking to people who sit outside the usual project delivery team. Speak to the finance department if you have one, and try to convince your senior management team if they\u2019re not already on board. And definitely speak to your new business people, who go out there and win the projects you get to work on.\n\nIt\u2019s these people who need to understand the potential business benefits of working in a new way, and also which of their existing habits and behaviours they might need to change to accommodate a new approach.\n\nOtherwise you\u2019ll find yourself with a team of designers, developers and project managers who are ready and waiting to deliver work in an iterative and collaborative way, but by the time they get hold of the project a cost has already been agreed, a deadline has been imposed, and a functional requirements document has been painstakingly put together. Nobody wins in this situation.\n\nConclusion\n\nSo where should we go from here? I certainly don\u2019t have hard and fast answers \u2013 I\u2019m not sure that they exist in a one-size-fits-all approach for agencies.\n\nThere are plenty of smart people thinking about this problem. It\u2019s a hot topic right now. Earlier in the year a London-based meetup was established called Agile for Agencies. If you\u2019re in the capital and want to discuss these issues with your peers it\u2019s a great opportunity to do so.\n\nI\u2019ve mentioned James Archer and Forty already. Both James and Paul Boag have written in the last twelve months on this subject. They both come out on the side of the argument that suggests you adopt agile principles, but don\u2019t have to worry about the rituals if they don\u2019t fit in with your practices.\n\nPersonally, I think the rituals and the discipline mandated by an agile framework like Scrum can provide a great deal of value to your team, even it if is hard to implement within an agency culture that has traditionally structured its work and its services in another way.\n\nIn whatever way you figure out the details, when your teams collaborate with your clients rather than work for them at arm\u2019s length, and when everyone prioritises frequent delivery, reflection and iteration over exhaustive scoping and planning, I believe you\u2019ll see a tangible difference in the quality of the work that you create.", "year": "2014", "author": "Charlie Perrins", "author_slug": "charlieperrins", "published": "2014-12-12T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/is-agile-harder-for-agencies/", "topic": "process"}
{"rowid": 25, "title": "The Introvert Owner\u2019s Manual", "contents": "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.\nAlbert Camus\n\n\n\u201cWhatever you plan, just make sure there are lots of people there,\u201d said my husband in the run-up to his birthday last year. A few months later, before my own birthday, I uttered, \u201cWhatever you plan, just make sure it is only me and you.\u201d\n\nI am an introvert. It is very likely some of you are too, or that you live, work or fraternise with one. Despite there being quite a few of us out there \u2013 some say as many as one third of the population, others as little as ten per cent \u2013 I think our professional and social lives are biased towards a definition of normality that is more accepting of the extrovert. I hope that by reading this article you will gain some insight to what goes on inside the head of the introvert(s) that you know and understand how to relate to them in a way that respects their disposition.\n\nBefore we go any further, I should define what exactly being an introvert means, and, equally important, what it does not. Only once this is established will you be able to handle your introvert correctly.\n\nWhat defines an introvert\n\nThe simplest and most accurate way of describing an introvert is that she uses up energy in social situations and needs to be in solitude to recharge.\n\nTo explain what I mean, let us take the example of the The Sims: when you create a Sim, you can choose (among other characteristics) whether it will be outgoing or not. If the Sim is outgoing, when you play the game you need to make sure it interacts as much as possible with other Sims or its mood indicator (the plumbob) will become red and that is a bad thing. Conversely, if your Sim is not outgoing, when you put it in too many social situations its plumbob will become red too.\n\nSo your (real life) introvert might think you are great (you might even be her best friend, her spouse or her child), but if her plumbob is red, or nearly, she might just need a little time and space to recharge before she is ready to interact.\n\nThis is not the same thing as being shy or in a bad mood all the time. We are not necessarily awkward in social situations, but, if we have not had the time to recharge, being social might be almost impossible. This explains why your introvert will likely ask who will be at the gathering you have planned, for how long she will have to stay there, and what she will be doing before and after the event. It is the equivalent of you wanting to know if there will be power sockets in the restaurant to charge your iPhone \u2013 asking this does not mean you don\u2019t want to attend.\n\nThe explanation above might be a simplistic way of looking at things, but I would say it is one that introverts can relate to; call it a minimalist approach to socialisation.\n\nCaring for your introvert\n\nArticles and conversations about introversion usually focus on how to fix the condition and how to make introverts more outgoing: a clear example of our society\u2019s bias towards the normality of extroversion. Avoid this. You will not be able to convert your introvert into an extrovert. Believe it or not, there is nothing wrong with her.\n\nIn her 2012 TED talk, \u201cThe power of introverts\u201d, Susan Cain pointed to the fact that places like school and work are designed for extroverts: students and workers are required to constantly work in groups and speaking up is highly valued. Both types are evaluated against the same criteria and more often than not people are expected to excel at being outspoken to be considered well rounded.\n\nObviously, this is not the right way to appraise your introvert. Comparing your introvert with an extrovert using the same parameters and simply asking her to behave more like an extrovert is a mistake and something that will only perpetuate an introvert\u2019s idea that the problem lies with her.\n\nSpeaking up\n\nYour introvert is likely to have strong opinions and ideas, and to have been listening to other people speak at meetings and workshops. Help her voice those thoughts by creating an environment where everyone stops and listens when someone speaks instead of one which fosters interruptions. Show her that it is acceptable for someone to take time to think before they speak: silences are OK. Allow her the freedom to be herself instead of pressuring her to change an innate quality.\n\nIt is not uncommon to find an introvert who likes to express ideas in writing. The world of web professionals excels in the spread of knowledge that is shared and sought through the written word. Give your introvert the necessary time and tools to write about the job, if she is that way inclined; this might be a good alternative to asking her to speak out.\n\nGroup work\n\nI remember the sinking feeling whenever I heard my teachers say the dreaded words: \u201cAnd now you\u2019re going to break out into groups of\u2026\u201d Being an introvert does not mean you do not like people (or like to be around or work with others). It is just that activities such as group work will invariably drain your introvert\u2019s energy rapidly. Your introvert\u2019s batteries will need to be fully charged for her to be at her best and afterwards she will most likely need to recharge.\n\nQuiet time\n\nThese days, one of the things that I value most at work is the ability to have moments to create and to think in solitude. When I am able to have those moments at the right time I will in turn be happy to participate in group conversations and tasks. Allow your introvert to have those moments: this does not mean she will have to work from home one day a week (but maybe it will); it might simply mean allowing her to take her laptop and her notebook and work from the empty side of the office, or from the coffee shop downstairs for an hour or two. In all likelihood she will come back fully recharged and ready to engage in more social activities \u2013 her plumbob will again be bright green.\n\nLeadership\n\nDo not think that your introvert cannot lead. Cain notes that introverted leaders are more likely to let their proactive employees run with their ideas instead of taking the ideas as their own. I would say that is a positive attribute in a leader. Maybe next time a project starts, talk to your introvert about the possibility of her being in a leadership position or of having more responsibility: you might be surprised at her ability to plan and foresee potential obstacles in the project.\n\nFinal thoughts\n\nYou would not tell someone with dyslexia to get better at spelling without giving her the right tools and enough time to do so. Equally, do not ask your introvert to be more outgoing, or to turn her frown upside down, without giving her the space to do so.\n\nI believe that everyone is an introvert at some point. Everyone needs a moment of solitude now and then, and the work we do requires frequent periods of deep focus and concentration. Striving to create workplaces, classrooms, homes that allow introverts to shine and be comfortable in their skin has the potential to also make those places more balanced for everyone else.\n\nResources and further reading\n\n\n\tThe power of introverts\n\t10 myths about introverts\n\tSusan Cain\u2019s 2014 TED Talk | Announcing the Quiet Revolution\n\tHelp Shy Kids \u2014 Don\u2019t Punish Them\n\tThe Introvert Advantage\n\t6 Things You Thought Wrong About Introverts\n\tExtraversion and introversion", "year": "2014", "author": "Inayaili de Le\u00f3n Persson", "author_slug": "inayailideleon", "published": "2014-12-13T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/the-introvert-owners-manual/", "topic": "process"}
{"rowid": 33, "title": "Five Ways to Animate Responsibly", "contents": "It\u2019s been two years since I wrote about \u201cFlashless Animation\u201d on this very site. Since then, animation has steadily begun popping up on websites, from sleek app-like user interfaces to interactive magazine-like spreads. It\u2019s an exciting time for web animation wonks, interaction developers, UXers, UI designers and a host of other acronyms! \n\nBut in our rush to experiment with animation it seems that we\u2019re having fewer conversations about whether or not we should use it, and more discussions about what we can do with it. We spend more time fretting over how to animate all the things at 60fps than we do devising ways to avoid incapacitating users with vestibular disorders.\n\nI love web animation. I live it. And I make adorably silly things with it that have no place on a self-respecting production website. I know it can be abused. We\u2019ve all made fun of Flash-turbation. But how quickly we forget the lessons we learned from that period of web design. Parallax scrolling effects may be the skip intro of this generation. Surely we have learned better in the sobering up period between Flash and the web animation API.\n\nSo here are five bits of advice we can use to pull back from the edge of animation abuse. With these thoughts in mind, we can make 2015 the year web animation came into its own. \n\nAnimate deliberately\n\nSadly, animation is considered decorative by the bulk of the web development community. UI designers and interaction developers know better, of course. But when I\u2019m teaching a workshop on animation for interaction, I know that my students face an uphill battle against decision makers who consider it nice to have, and tack it on at the end of a project, if at all. \n\nThis stigma is hard to shake. But it starts with us using animation deliberately or not at all. Poorly considered, tacked-on animation will often cause more harm than good. Users may complain that it\u2019s too slow or too fast, or that they have no idea what just happened.\n\nWhen I was at Chrome Dev Summit this year, I had the privilege to speak with Roma Sha, the UX lead behind Polymer\u2019s material design (with the wonderful animation documentation). I asked her what advice she\u2019d give to people using animation and transitions in their own designs. She responded simply: animate deliberately. If you cannot afford to slow down to think about animation and make well-informed and well-articulated decisions on behalf of the user, it is better that you not attempt it at all. Animation takes energy to perform, and a bad animation is worse than none at all. \n\nIt takes more than twelve principles\n\nWe always try to draw correlations between disparate things that spark our interest. Recently it feels like more and more people are putting the The Illusion of Life on their reading shelf next to Understanding Comics. These books give us so many useful insights from other industries. However, we should never mistake a website for a comic book or an animated feature film. Some of these concepts, while they help us see our work in a new light, can be more or less relevant to producing said work. \n\n\nThe illusion of life from cento lodigiani on Vimeo.\n\nI am specifically thinking of the twelve principles of animation put forth by Disney studio veterans in that great tome The Illusion of Life. These principles are very useful for making engaging, lifelike animation, like a ball bouncing or a squirrel scampering, or the physics behind how a lightbox should feel transitioning off a page. But they provide no direction at all for when or how something should be animated as part of a greater interactive experience, like how long a drop-down should take to fully extend or if a group of manipulable objects should be animated sequentially or as a whole.\n\nThe twelve principles are a great place to start, but we have so much more to learn. I\u2019ve documented at least six more functions of interactive animation that apply to web and app design. When thinking about animation, we should consider why and how, not just what, the physics. Beautiful physics mean nothing if the animation is superfluous or confusing.\n\nUseful and necessary, then beautiful\n\nThere is a Shaker saying: \u201cDon\u2019t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don\u2019t hesitate to make it beautiful.\u201d When it comes to animation and the web, currently there is very little documentation about what makes it useful or necessary. We tend to focus more on the beautiful, the delightful, the aesthetic. And while aesthetics are important, they take a back seat to the user\u2019s overall experience. \n\n\n\nThe first time I saw the load screen for Pokemon Yellow on my Game Boy, I was enthralled. By the sixth time, I was mashing the start button as soon as Game Freak\u2019s logo hit the screen. What\u2019s delightful and meaningful to us while working on a project is not always so for our users. And even when a purely delightful animation is favorably received, as with Pokemon Yellow\u2019s adorable opening screen, too many repetitions of the cutest but ultimately useless animation, and users start to resent it as a hindrance.\n\n \n\nIf an animation doesn\u2019t help the user in some way, by showing them where they are or how two elements on a page relate to each other, then it\u2019s using up battery juice and processing cycles solely for the purpose of delight. Hardly the best use of resources.\n\nRather than animating solely for the sake of delight, we should first be able to articulate two things the animation does for the user. As an example, take this menu icon from Finethought.com (found via Use Your Interface). The menu icon does two things when clicked: \n\n\n\tIt gives the user feedback by animating, letting the user know its been clicked.\n\tIt demonstrates its changed relationship to the page\u2019s content by morphing into a close button.\n\n\n\n\nAssuming we have two good reasons to animate something, there is no reason our third cannot be to delight the user. \n\nGo four times faster\n\nThere is a rule of thumb in the world of traditional animation which is applicable to web animation: however long you think your animation should last, take that time and halve it. Then halve it again! When we work on an animation for hours, our sense of time dilates. What seems fast to us is actually unbearably slow for most users. In fact, the most recent criticism from users of animated interfaces on websites seems to be, \u201cIt\u2019s so slow!\u201d A good animation is unobtrusive, and that often means running fast.\n\nWhen getting your animations ready for prime time, reduce those durations to 25% of their original speed: a four-second fade out should be over in one. \n\nInstall a kill switch\n\nNo matter how thoughtful and necessary an animation, there will be people who become physically sick from seeing it. For these people, we must add a way to turn off animations on the website. \n\nFortunately, web designers are already thinking of ways to empower users to make their own decisions about how they experience the web. As an example, this site for the animated film Little from the Fish Shop allows users to turn off most of the parallax effects. While it doesn\u2019t remove the animation entirely, this website does reduce the most nauseating of the animations. \t\n\n\n\n\n\nAnimation is a powerful tool in our web design arsenal. But we must take care: if we abuse animation it might get a bad reputation; if we underestimate it, it won\u2019t be prioritized. But if we wield it thoughtfully, use it where it is both necessary and useful, and empower users to turn it off, animation is a tool that will help us build things that are easier to use and more delightful for years to come.\n\nLet\u2019s make 2015 the year web animation went to work for users.", "year": "2014", "author": "Rachel Nabors", "author_slug": "rachelnabors", "published": "2014-12-14T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/five-ways-to-animate-responsibly/", "topic": "ux"}
{"rowid": 35, "title": "SEO in 2015 (and Why You Should Care)", "contents": "If your business is healthy, you can always find plenty of reasons to leave SEO on your to-do list in perpetuity. After all, SEO is technical, complicated, time-consuming and potentially dangerous. The SEO industry is full of self-proclaimed gurus whose lack of knowledge can be deadly. There\u2019s the terrifying fact that even if you dabble in SEO in the most gentle and innocent way, you might actually end up in a worse state than you were to begin with.\n\nTo make matters worse, Google keeps changing the rules. There have been a bewildering number of major updates, which despite their cuddly names have had a horrific impact on website owners worldwide.\n\nFear aside, there\u2019s also the issue of time. It\u2019s probably tricky enough to find the time to read this article. Setting up, planning and executing an SEO campaign might well seem like an insurmountable obstacle.\n\nSo why should you care enough about SEO to do it anyway?\n\nThe main reason is that you probably already see between 30% and 60% of your website traffic come from the search engines. That might make you think that you don\u2019t need to bother, because you\u2019re already doing so well. But you\u2019re almost certainly wrong.\n\nIf you have a look through the keyword data in your Google Webmaster Tools account, you\u2019ll probably see that around 30\u201350% of the keywords used to find your website are brand names \u2013 the names of your products or companies. These are searches carried out by people who already know about you. But the people who don\u2019t know who you are but are searching for what you sell aren\u2019t finding you right now. This is your opportunity.\n\nIf a person goes looking for a company or product by name, Google will steer them towards what they\u2019re looking for. Their intelligence does have limits, however, and even though they know your name they won\u2019t be completely clear about what you sell. That\u2019s where SEO would come in.\n\nStill need more convincing? How about the fact that the seeming complexities of SEO mean that your competition are almost certainly neglecting it too. They have the same reservations as you about complexity, time and danger, and hopefully they aren\u2019t reading this article and so are none the wiser of the well-kept secret: that 70% of SEO is easy.\n\nI\u2019m going to lead you through what you need to do to tap into that stream of people looking for what you sell right now.\n\nWhat is real SEO?\n\nReal SEO is all about helping Google understand the content of your website. It\u2019s about steering, guiding and assisting Google. Not manipulating it.\n\nIt\u2019s easy to assume that Google already understands the content and relevance of each and every page on your website, but the fact is that it needs a fair amount of hand-holding. Fortunately, helping Google along really isn\u2019t very difficult at all.\n\nRest assured that real SEO has nothing to do with keyword stuffing, keyword density, hacks, tricks or cunning techniques. If you hear any of these terms from your SEO advisor, run away from them as quickly as you can.\n\nUnderstanding your current situation \u2013 Google Analytics\n\nBefore you can do anything to improve your SEO status, you need to get an idea of how you\u2019re already doing. Below is a very quick and easy way of doing so.\n\n1. Open up your Google Analytics account.\n\n2. Click on the date range selector on the top-right of the interface and change the year of the first date to last year. So 12 Dec 2014 will become 12 Dec 2013. Then click on Apply.\n\n3. Click on the All Sessions rectangle towards the top-left, click once on Organic Traffic and click Apply.\n\n4. Click the little black-and-white squares icon that has now appeared under the date selector on the top-right, and drag the slider all the way over to Higher Precision.\n\n5. Change the interval buttons on the top-right of the graph to Week to make this easier to digest.\n\nAt this point your graph should look something like this:\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s worth noting the approximate proportion of your visitors that currently come from organic sources.\n\n6. Click the little downwards arrow to the right of the All Sessions rectangle and choose Remove, so that we\u2019re only looking at the organic traffic on its own.\n\n7. Click on Select a metric next to the Sessions button above the graph and select Pages / Session. You should then see something like this:\n\n\n\nIn the example above we can see that the quantity of traffic has been increasing since the middle of August, but the quality of the traffic (as measured by the number of pages per session) has fallen significantly. \n\nHow you choose to view this is down to your own graph, recent history and interpretation of events, but this should give you an indication of how things stand at the present time. Trends are often much more revealing than a snapshot of a brief moment in time.\n\nYour Google Webmaster Tools data\n\nIf you\u2019re not very familiar with your Google Webmaster Tools account, it\u2019s really worth taking ten to fifteen minutes to see what\u2019s on offer. I can\u2019t recommend this enough. From the point of view of an SEO health check, I\u2019d advise you to look into the HTML Improvements, Crawl Errors and Crawl Stats, and most importantly the Search Queries.\n\nFrom what you see here and the trends shown in your Analytics data, you should now have a good idea of your current status. If you want to explore further, I recommend Screaming Frog as a good diagnostics tool, or Botify if your website is large or unusually complex.\n\nCombining the data into something useful\n\nYour Google Analytics session will have shown you how you\u2019re doing from an SEO point of view in terms of the quantity and, to some extent, the quality of your visitors. But it\u2019s only showing you what is already working. In other words: the people who are finding you on the search engines, and clicking on your links.\n\nThe Google Webmaster Tools search query data, on the other hand, will give you a better idea of what isn\u2019t working. It will show you the keyword searches that are getting you listed in the results, but which aren\u2019t necessarily getting clicked. And it doesn\u2019t take much by the way of expertise to see why.\n\nFor example, if you see your targeted keyword, which you feel is extremely relevant, has generated over 2,000 impressions in the last month but produced only two clicks, you\u2019ll probably find a very low average position. Bear in mind that an average position of fourteen will mean being around halfway down the second page of results. Think about how rarely you go beyond the first two or three listings, never mind to the second page of results, and you\u2019ll understand why the click-through rate is so low.\n\nSo now you have an idea of what you\u2019re being found for at the present time. But what about the other terms?\n\nWhat would you like to be found for?\n\nThis is one of the more common SEO mistakes, on a number of different levels. \n\nMany businesses assume that they don\u2019t need to worry about keyword research. They think they know what terms people use to find what they sell, and they also assume that Google understands the content on their website. This is incorrect on all counts.\n\nA better starting point is to brainstorm a small number of your most obvious keywords, then run them through Google\u2019s Keyword Planner. Ignore the information in the Ad group ideas tab, and instead go straight to the Keyword ideas tab. Rather than wade through the very unfriendly interface, I recommend downloading the data as a spreadsheet, in which not only is more detail included, but you can also slice, dice, sort and report the data as required.\n\nFrom there you can delete all the irrelevant columns, and start working your way through the list, deleting any irrelevant keywords as you go along.\n\nIt\u2019s around this stage that you may hit a problem in terms of where to focus your efforts. The number of reported searches for a given keyword is of course important, but so is the level of competition. Ideally, you\u2019d like keywords with plenty of searches but not too much competition.\n\nI personally like to factor both together by adding a column that simply divides the number of searches squared by the level of competition:\n\n(number of searches \u00d7 number of searches) \u00f7 competition\n\nThere are plenty of alternatives to this basic formula, but I like it for ease of use and simplicity. Once I\u2019ve added this column, I then sort the data by this value (largest to smallest) and I then only usually need ten to fifteen keywords at most to give me plenty of ideas to work with.\n\nThis is a slightly involved but effective methodology for keyword research, as what you\u2019re left with is a list of keywords that both Google and you consider to be relevant to the content of your website. And relevance is an important concept in SEO.\n\nReal SEO keyword research is about making sure that your customers, website and Google are all in agreement and alignment over the content of your website. Other sources of inspiration and ideas include having a look at what terms your competition are targeting, Google Trends and, of course, Google Suggest. If you\u2019re not sure where to find these things, you can probably work out where to search for them!\n\nIf you want to dive further into understanding your current search engine status, search for some of the better keywords that you just discovered and see where you rank compared to your competition. Note that it\u2019s vital to avoid Google serving up personalised results, so either use the privacy, incognito or anonymous mode of your browser for the searches, or use a browser that you don\u2019t normally use. I hope this is Internet Explorer. If what you find isn\u2019t great, don\u2019t despair: everything in SEO is fixable (terms and conditions may apply).\n\nPutting it all together\n\nYou should now have a good idea of where things stand with your current search engine traffic, and a solid list of keywords that you\u2019re not getting visitors for but very much want.\n\nAll that\u2019s left now is to work out how to use these keywords. But before we do, let\u2019s take a quick step back.\n\nIf you have in any way kept up with what\u2019s been happening in SEO over the last couple of years, you\u2019ll have probably heard about Google updates with names like Panda, Hummingbird, Phantom, Pirate and more.\n\nI won\u2019t go into the technical details of what Google is doing, but it is important to understand why they\u2019re trying to do it. At the most basic level, Google understands that there\u2019s a very real problem with people who are trying manipulate its index. In response to this, Google is trying to clean up its results. They don\u2019t want people getting fed up with bad results and considering other options \u2013 have you even tried Bing?\n\nThis is extremely important. Remember earlier when I said that 70% of SEO was easy? That rule still applies. So, for example, if you have a list of keywords that you know are relevant to what you sell, then all you need to do is create great content for them. Incredibly, that\u2019s all there is to it (terms and conditions apply again, unfortunately \u2013 see below).\n\nThere is, however, one simple rule to be consistently followed without exception: that the content you create should not only be good quality and completely original, but it should also be written primarily for the human visitor and not the search engine spider.\n\nIn other words, if you create some fantastic content for a keyword like \u201cchoosing a small business HR service\u201d, then the article should not only make perfect sense if read out loud (as opposed to the same phrase being repeated fifteen times), but also provide real value to the person reading it.\n\nSo the process is simple:\n\n\n\tChoose your keywords\n\tCreate spectacular content\n\n\nWait. Is it really that simple?\n\nUnfortunately there\u2019s a lot more to the other 30% of SEO than just creating great content and waiting for the visitors. There are issues like helping Google understand the content on your pages and website, incoming links, page authority, domain authority, usage patterns, spam factors, canonical issues and much more.\n\nBut there\u2019s the often overlooked fact about Google: it actually does a reasonable job of working out what\u2019s on your website and (to some extent) understanding the gist of it. If you\u2019ve never done any SEO on your website but still get some traffic from Google, this is why.\n\nEven without dabbling in the other 30% of SEO, by creating the right content for the right visitors using the precise language and terminology that your potential customers are using, you\u2019re significantly better off than your competition. And you can only gain from this.\n\nWhen you\u2019ve checked this off your to-do list and made it an ingrained part of your content creation process, then you\u2019re ready to delve into the other 30% of SEO. The not-so-easy side.\n\nUntil then, work on understanding your current situation, exploring the opportunities, creating a list of good keywords, creating the right content for them, and starting 2015 with a little bit of smart, safe and real SEO.", "year": "2014", "author": "Dave Collins", "author_slug": "davecollins", "published": "2014-12-15T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/seo-in-2015-and-why-you-should-care/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 42, "title": "An Overview of SVG Sprite Creation Techniques", "contents": "SVG can be used as an icon system to replace icon fonts. The reasons why SVG makes for a superior icon system are numerous, but we won\u2019t be going over them in this article. If you don\u2019t use SVG icons and are interested in knowing why you may want to use them, I recommend you check out \u201cInline SVG vs Icon Fonts\u201d by Chris Coyier \u2013 it covers the most important aspects of both systems and compares them with each other to help you make a better decision about which system to choose.\n\nOnce you\u2019ve made the decision to use SVG instead of icon fonts, you\u2019ll need to think of the best way to optimise the delivery of your icons, and ways to make the creation and use of icons faster.\n\nJust like bitmaps, we can create image sprites with SVG \u2013 they don\u2019t look or work exactly alike, but the basic concept is pretty much the same.\n\nThere are several ways to create SVG sprites, and this article will give you an overview of three of them. While we\u2019re at it, we\u2019re going to take a look at some of the available tools used to automate sprite creation and fallback for us.\n\nPrerequisites\n\nThe content of this article assumes you are familiar with SVG. If you\u2019ve never worked with SVG before, you may want to look at some of the introductory tutorials covering SVG syntax, structure and embedding techniques. I recommend the following:\n\n\n\tSVG basics: Using SVG.\n\tStructure: Structuring, Grouping, and Referencing in SVG \u2014 The ,