{"rowid": 314, "title": "Easy Ajax with Prototype", "contents": "There\u2019s little more impressive on the web today than a appropriate touch of Ajax. Used well, Ajax brings a web interface much closer to the experience of a desktop app, and can turn a bear of an task into a pleasurable activity.\n\nBut it\u2019s really hard, right? It involves all the nasty JavaScript that no one ever does often enough to get really good at, and the browser support is patchy, and urgh it\u2019s just so much damn effort. Well, the good news is that \u2013 ta-da \u2013 it doesn\u2019t have to be a headache. But man does it still look impressive. Here\u2019s how to amaze your friends.\n\nIntroducing prototype.js\n\nPrototype is a JavaScript framework by Sam Stephenson designed to help make developing dynamic web apps a whole lot easier. In basic terms, it\u2019s a JavaScript file which you link into your page that then enables you to do cool stuff.\n\nThere\u2019s loads of capability built in, a portion of which covers our beloved Ajax. The whole thing is freely distributable under an MIT-style license, so it\u2019s good to go. What a nice man that Mr Stephenson is \u2013 friends, let us raise a hearty cup of mulled wine to his good name. Cheers! sluurrrrp.\n\nFirst step is to download the latest Prototype and put it somewhere safe. I suggest underneath the Christmas tree.\n\nCutting to the chase\n\nBefore I go on and set up an example of how to use this, let\u2019s just get to the crux. Here\u2019s how Prototype enables you to make a simple Ajax call and dump the results back to the page:\n\nvar url = 'myscript.php';\nvar pars = 'foo=bar';\nvar target = 'output-div';\t\nvar myAjax = new Ajax.Updater(target, url, {method: 'get', parameters: pars});\n\nThis snippet of JavaScript does a GET to myscript.php, with the parameter foo=bar, and when a result is returned, it places it inside the element with the ID output-div on your page.\n\nKnocking up a basic example\n\nSo to get this show on the road, there are three files we need to set up in our site alongside prototype.js. Obviously we need a basic HTML page with prototype.js linked in. This is the page the user interacts with. Secondly, we need our own JavaScript file for the glue between the interface and the stuff Prototype is doing. Lastly, we need the page (a PHP script in my case) that the Ajax is going to make its call too.\n\nSo, to that basic HTML page for the user to interact with. Here\u2019s one I found whilst out carol singing:\n\n\n\n\n \n Easy Ajax\n \n \n \n\n \n\n\n\nAs you can see, I\u2019ve linked in prototype.js, and also a file called ajax.js, which is where we\u2019ll be putting our glue. (Careful where you leave your glue, kids.)\n\nOur basic example is just going to take a name and then echo it back in the form of a seasonal greeting. There\u2019s a form with an input field for a name, and crucially a DIV (greeting) for the result of our call. You\u2019ll also notice that the form has a submit button \u2013 this is so that it can function as a regular form when no JavaScript is available. It\u2019s important not to get carried away and forget the basics of accessibility.\n\nMeanwhile, back at the server\n\nSo we need a script at the server which is going to take input from the Ajax call and return some output. This is normally where you\u2019d hook into a database and do whatever transaction you need to before returning a result. To keep this as simple as possible, all this example here will do is take the name the user has given and add it to a greeting message. Not exactly Web 2-point-HoHoHo, but there you have it.\n\nHere\u2019s a quick PHP script \u2013 greeting.php \u2013 that Santa brought me early.\n\nSeason's Greetings, $the_name!

\";\n?>\n\nYou\u2019ll perhaps want to do something a little more complex within your own projects. Just sayin\u2019.\n\nGluing it all together\n\nInside our ajax.js file, we need to hook this all together. We\u2019re going to take advantage of some of the handy listener routines and such that Prototype also makes available. The first task is to attach a listener to set the scene once the window has loaded. He\u2019s how we attach an onload event to the window object and get it to call a function named init():\n\nEvent.observe(window, 'load', init, false);\n\nNow we create our init() function to do our evil bidding. Its first job of the day is to hide the submit button for those with JavaScript enabled. After that, it attaches a listener to watch for the user typing in the name field.\n\nfunction init(){\n $('greeting-submit').style.display = 'none';\n Event.observe('greeting-name', 'keyup', greet, false);\n}\n\nAs you can see, this is going to make a call to a function called greet() onkeyup in the greeting-name field. That function looks like this:\n\nfunction greet(){\n var url = 'greeting.php';\n var pars = 'greeting-name='+escape($F('greeting-name'));\n var target = 'greeting';\n var myAjax = new Ajax.Updater(target, url, {method: 'get', parameters: pars});\n}\n\nThe key points to note here are that any user input needs to be escaped before putting into the parameters so that it\u2019s URL-ready. The target is the ID of the element on the page (a DIV in our case) which will be the recipient of the output from the Ajax call.\n\nThat\u2019s it\n\nNo, seriously. That\u2019s everything. Try the example. Amaze your friends with your 1337 Ajax sk1llz.", "year": "2005", "author": "Drew McLellan", "author_slug": "drewmclellan", "published": "2005-12-01T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/easy-ajax-with-prototype/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 315, "title": "Edit-in-Place with Ajax", "contents": "Back on day one we looked at using the Prototype library to take all the hard work out of making a simple Ajax call. While that was fun and all, it didn\u2019t go that far towards implementing something really practical. We dipped our toes in, but haven\u2019t learned to swim yet.\n\nSo here is swimming lesson number one. Anyone who\u2019s used Flickr to publish their photos will be familiar with the edit-in-place system used for quickly amending titles and descriptions on photographs. Hovering over an item turns its background yellow to indicate it is editable. A simple click loads the text into an edit box, right there on the page.\n\n\n\nPrototype includes all sorts of useful methods to help reproduce something like this for our own projects. As well as the simple Ajax GETs we learned how to do last time, we can also do POSTs (which we\u2019ll need here) and a whole bunch of manipulations to the user interface \u2013 all through simple library calls. Here\u2019s what we\u2019re building, so let\u2019s do it.\n\nGetting Started\n\nThere are two major components to this process; the user interface manipulation and the Ajax call itself. Our set-up is much the same as last time (you may wish to read the first article if you\u2019ve not already done so). We have a basic HTML page which links in the prototype.js file and our own editinplace.js. Here\u2019s what Santa dropped down my chimney: \n\n\n \n \n \n Edit-in-Place with Ajax\n \n \n \n \n\n

Edit-in-place

Dashing through the snow on a one horse open sleigh.

\n \n \n\nSo that\u2019s our page. The editable item is going to be the

called desc. The process goes something like this:\n\n\n\tHighlight the area onMouseOver\n\tClear the highlight onMouseOut\n\tIf the user clicks, hide the area and replace with a and buttons\n\tRemove all of the above if the user cancels the operation\n\tWhen the Save button is clicked, make an Ajax POST and show that something\u2019s happening\n\tWhen the Ajax call comes back, update the page with the new content\n\n\nEvents and Highlighting\n\nThe first step is to offer feedback to the user that the item is editable. This is done by shading the background colour when the user mouses over. Of course, the CSS :hover pseudo class is a straightforward way to do this, but for three reasons, I\u2019m using JavaScript to switch class names.\n\n\n\t:hover isn\u2019t supported on many elements in Internet Explorer for Windows\n\tI want to keep control over when the highlight switches off after an update, regardless of mouse position\n\tIf JavaScript isn\u2019t available we don\u2019t want to end up with the CSS suggesting it might be\n\n\nWith this in mind, here\u2019s how editinplace.js starts:\n\nEvent.observe(window, 'load', init, false);\n\n function init(){\n makeEditable('desc');\n }\n\n function makeEditable(id){\n Event.observe(id, 'click', function(){edit($(id))}, false);\n Event.observe(id, 'mouseover', function(){showAsEditable($(id))}, false);\n Event.observe(id, 'mouseout', function(){showAsEditable($(id), true)}, false);\n }\n\n function showAsEditable(obj, clear){\n if (!clear){\n Element.addClassName(obj, 'editable');\n }else{\n Element.removeClassName(obj, 'editable');\n }\n }\n\nThe first line attaches an onLoad event to the window, so that the function init() gets called once the page has loaded. In turn, init() sets up all the items on the page that we want to make editable. In this example I\u2019ve just got one, but you can add as many as you like.\n\nThe function madeEditable() attaches the mouseover, mouseout and click events to the item we\u2019re making editable. All showAsEditable does is add and remove the class name editable from the object. This uses the particularly cunning methods Element.addClassName() and Element.removeClassName() which enable you to cleanly add and remove effects without affecting any styling the object may otherwise have.\n\nOh, remember to add a rule for .editable to your style sheet:\n\n.editable{\n color: #000;\n background-color: #ffffd3;\n }\n\nThe Switch\n\nAs you can see above, when the user clicks on an editable item, a call is made to the function edit(). This is where we switch out the static item for a nice editable textarea. Here\u2019s how that function looks.\n\nfunction edit(obj){\n Element.hide(obj);\n\n var textarea ='<div id=\"' + obj.id + '_editor\">\n <textarea id=\"' + obj.id + '_edit\" name=\"' + obj.id + '\" rows=\"4\" cols=\"60\">'\n + obj.innerHTML + '';\n\n var button = ' OR \n ';\n\n new Insertion.After(obj, textarea+button);\n\n Event.observe(obj.id+'_save', 'click', function(){saveChanges(obj)}, false);\n Event.observe(obj.id+'_cancel', 'click', function(){cleanUp(obj)}, false);\n\n }\n\nThe first thing to do is to hide the object. Prototype comes to the rescue with Element.hide() (and of course, Element.show() too). Following that, we build up the textarea and buttons as a string, and then use Insertion.After() to place our new editor underneath the (now hidden) editable object.\n\nThe last thing to do before we leave the user to edit is it attach listeners to the Save and Cancel buttons to call either the saveChanges() function, or to cleanUp() after a cancel.\n\nIn the event of a cancel, we can clean up behind ourselves like so:\n\nfunction cleanUp(obj, keepEditable){\n Element.remove(obj.id+'_editor');\n Element.show(obj);\n if (!keepEditable) showAsEditable(obj, true);\n }\n\nSaving the Changes\n\nThis is where all the Ajax fun occurs. Whilst the previous article introduced Ajax.Updater() for simple Ajax calls, in this case we need a little bit more control over what happens once the response is received. For this purpose, Ajax.Request() is perfect. We can use the onSuccess and onFailure parameters to register functions to handle the response.\n\nfunction saveChanges(obj){\n var new_content = escape($F(obj.id+'_edit'));\n\n obj.innerHTML = \"Saving...\";\n cleanUp(obj, true);\n\n var success = function(t){editComplete(t, obj);}\n var failure = function(t){editFailed(t, obj);}\n\n var url = 'edit.php';\n var pars = 'id=' + obj.id + '&content=' + new_content;\n var myAjax = new Ajax.Request(url, {method:'post',\n postBody:pars, onSuccess:success, onFailure:failure});\n }\n\n function editComplete(t, obj){\n obj.innerHTML = t.responseText;\n showAsEditable(obj, true);\n }\n\n function editFailed(t, obj){\n obj.innerHTML = 'Sorry, the update failed.';\n cleanUp(obj);\n }\n\nAs you can see, we first grab in the contents of the textarea into the variable new_content. We then remove the editor, set the content of the original object to \u201cSaving\u2026\u201d to show that an update is occurring, and make the Ajax POST.\n\nIf the Ajax fails, editFailed() sets the contents of the object to \u201cSorry, the update failed.\u201d Admittedly, that\u2019s not a very helpful way to handle the error but I have to limit the scope of this article somewhere. It might be a good idea to stow away the original contents of the object (obj.preUpdate = obj.innerHTML) for later retrieval before setting the content to \u201cSaving\u2026\u201d. No one likes a failure \u2013 especially a messy one.\n\nIf the Ajax call is successful, the server-side script returns the edited content, which we then place back inside the object from editComplete, and tidy up.\n\nMeanwhile, back at the server\n\nThe missing piece of the puzzle is the server-side script for committing the changes to your database. Obviously, any solution I provide here is not going to fit your particular application. For the purposes of getting a functional demo going, here\u2019s what I have in PHP.\n\n\n\nNot exactly rocket science is it? I\u2019m just catching the content item from the POST and echoing it back. For your application to be useful, however, you\u2019ll need to know exactly which record you should be updating. I\u2019m passing in the ID of my

, which is not a fat lot of use. You can modify saveChanges() to post back whatever information your app needs to know in order to process the update.\n\nYou should also check the user\u2019s credentials to make sure they have permission to edit whatever it is they\u2019re editing. Basically the same rules apply as with any script in your application.\n\nLimitations\n\nThere are a few bits and bobs that in an ideal world I would tidy up. The first is the error handling, as I\u2019ve already mentioned. The second is that from an idealistic standpoint, I\u2019d rather not be using innerHTML. However, the reality is that it\u2019s presently the most efficient way of making large changes to the document. If you\u2019re serving as XML, remember that you\u2019ll need to replace these with proper DOM nodes.\n\nIt\u2019s also important to note that it\u2019s quite difficult to make something like this universally accessible. Whenever you start updating large chunks of a document based on user interaction, a lot of non-traditional devices don\u2019t cope well. The benefit of this technique, though, is that if JavaScript is unavailable none of the functionality gets implemented at all \u2013 it fails silently. It is for this reason that this shouldn\u2019t be used as a complete replacement for a traditional, universally accessible edit form. It\u2019s a great time-saver for those with the ability to use it, but it\u2019s no replacement.\n\nSee it in action\n\nI\u2019ve put together an example page using the inert PHP script above. That is to say, your edits aren\u2019t committed to a database, so the example is reset when the page is reloaded.", "year": "2005", "author": "Drew McLellan", "author_slug": "drewmclellan", "published": "2005-12-23T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/edit-in-place-with-ajax/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 318, "title": "Auto-Selecting Navigation", "contents": "In the article Centered Tabs with CSS Ethan laid out a tabbed navigation system which can be centred on the page. A frequent requirement for any tab-based navigation is to be able to visually represent the currently selected tab in some way.\n\nIf you\u2019re using a server-side language such as PHP, it\u2019s quite easy to write something like class=\"selected\" into your markup, but it can be even simpler than that.\n\nLet\u2019s take the navigation div from Ethan\u2019s article as an example.\n\n\n\nAs you can see we have a standard unordered list which is then styled with CSS to look like tabs. By giving each tab a class which describes it\u2019s logical section of the site, if we were to then apply a class to the body tag of each page showing the same, we could write a clever CSS selector to highlight the correct tab on any given page. \n\nSound complicated? Well, it\u2019s not a trivial concept, but actually applying it is dead simple.\n\nModifying the markup\n\nFirst thing is to place a class name on each li in the list:\n\n\n\nThen, on each page of your site, apply the a matching class to the body tag to indicate which section of the site that page is in. For example, on your About page:\n\n...\n\nWriting the CSS selector\n\nYou can now write a single CSS rule to match the selected tab on any given page. The logic is that you want to match the \u2018about\u2019 tab on the \u2018about\u2019 page and the \u2018products\u2019 tab on the \u2018products\u2019 page, so the selector looks like this:\n\nbody.home #navigation li.home,\n body.about #navigation li.about,\n body.work #navigation li.work,\n body.products #navigation li.products,\n body.contact #navigation li.contact{\n ... whatever styles you need to show the tab selected ...\n } \n\nSo all you need to do when you create a new page in your site is to apply a class to the body tag to say which section it\u2019s in. The CSS will do the rest for you \u2013 without any server-side help.", "year": "2005", "author": "Drew McLellan", "author_slug": "drewmclellan", "published": "2005-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/auto-selecting-navigation/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 336, "title": "Practical Microformats with hCard", "contents": "You\u2019ve probably heard about microformats over the last few months. You may have even read the easily digestible introduction at Digital Web Magazine, but perhaps you\u2019ve not found time to actually implement much yet. That\u2019s understandable, as it can sometimes be difficult to see exactly what you\u2019re adding by applying a microformat to a page. Sure, you\u2019re semantically enhancing the information you\u2019re marking up, and the Semantic Web is a great idea and all, but what benefit is it right now, today? \n\nWell, the answer to that question is simple: you\u2019re adding lots of information that can be and is being used on the web here and now. The big ongoing battle amongst the big web companies if one of territory over information. Everyone\u2019s grasping for as much data as possible. Some of that information many of us are cautious to give away, but a lot of is happy to be freely available. Of the data you\u2019re giving away, it makes sense to give it as much meaning as possible, thus enabling anyone from your friends and family to the giant search company down the road to make the most of it.\n\nOk, enough of the waffle, let\u2019s get working.\n\nIntroducing hCard\n\nYou may have come across hCard. It\u2019s a microformat for describing contact information (or really address book information) from within your HTML. It\u2019s based on the vCard format, which is the format the contacts/address book program on your computer uses. All the usual fields are available \u2013 name, address, town, website, email, you name it.\n\nIf you\u2019re running Firefox and Greasemonkey (or if you can, just to try this out), install this user script. What it does is look for instances of the hCard microformat in a page, and then add in a link to pass any hCards it finds to a web service which will convert it to a vCard. Take a look at the About the author box at the bottom of this article. It\u2019s a hCard, so you should be able to click the icon the user script inserts and add me to your Outlook contacts or OS X Address Book with just a click.\n\nSo microformats are useful after all. Free microformats all round!\n\nImplementing hCard\n\nThis is the really easy bit. All the hCard microformat is, is a bunch of predefined class names that you apply to the markup you\u2019ve probably already got around your contact information. Let\u2019s take the example of the About the author box from this article. Here\u2019s how the markup looks without hCard:\n\n

About the author

Drew McLellan is a web developer, author and no-good swindler from \n just outside London, England. At the \n Web Standards Project he works \n on press, strategy and tools. Drew keeps a \n personal weblog covering web \n development issues and themes.

\n\nThis is a really simple example because there\u2019s only two key bits of address book information here:- my name and my website address. Let\u2019s push it a little and say that the Web Standards Project is the organisation I work for \u2013 that gives us Name, Company and URL.\n\nTo kick off an hCard, you need a containing object with a class of vcard. The div I already have with a class of bio is perfect for this \u2013 all it needs to do is contain the rest of the contact information.\n\nThe next thing to identify is my name. hCard uses a class of fn (meaning Full Name) to identify a name. As is this case there\u2019s no element surrounding my name, we can just use a span. These changes give us:\n\n

About the author

Drew McLellan is a web developer...\n\nThe two remaining items are my URL and the organisation I belong to. The class names designated for those are url and org respectively. As both of those items are links in this case, I can apply the classes to those links. So here\u2019s the finished hCard.\n\n

About the author

Drew McLellan is a web developer, author and \n no-good swindler from just outside London, England. \n At the Web Standards Project \n he works on press, strategy and tools. Drew keeps a \n personal weblog covering web \n development issues and themes.

\n\nOK, that was easy. By just applying a few easy class names to the HTML I was already publishing, I\u2019ve implemented an hCard that right now anyone with Greasemonkey can click to add to their address book, that Google and Yahoo! and whoever else can index and work out important things like which websites are associated with my name if they so choose (and boy, will they so choose), and in the future who knows what. In terms of effort, practically nil.\n\nWhere next?\n\nSo that was a trivial example, but to be honest it doesn\u2019t really get much more complex even with the most pernickety permutations. Because hCard is based on vCard (a mature and well thought-out standard), it\u2019s all tried and tested. Here\u2019s some good next steps.\n\n\n\tPlay with the hCard Creator\n\tTake a deep breath and read the spec\n\tStart implementing hCard as you go on your own projects \u2013 it takes very little time\n\n\nhCard is just one of an ever-increasing number of microformats. If this tickled your fancy, I suggest subscribing to the microformats site in your RSS reader to keep in touch with new developments.\n\nWhat\u2019s the take-away?\n\nThe take-away is this. They may sound like just more Web 2-point-HoHoHo hype, but microformats are a well thought-out, and easy to implement way of adding greater depth to the information you publish online. They have some nice benefits right away \u2013 certainly at geek-level \u2013 but in the longer term they become much more significant. We\u2019ve been at this long enough to know that the web has a long, long memory and that what you publish today will likely be around for years. But putting the extra depth of meaning into your documents now you can help guard that they\u2019ll continue to be useful in the future, and not just a bunch of flat ASCII.", "year": "2005", "author": "Drew McLellan", "author_slug": "drewmclellan", "published": "2005-12-06T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/practical-microformats-with-hcard/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 222, "title": "Golden Spirals", "contents": "As building blocks go, the rectangle is not one to overwhelm the designer with decisions. On the face of it, you have two options: you can set the width, and the height. But despite this apparent simplicity, there are combinations of width and height that can look unbalanced. If a rectangle is too tall and slim, it might appear precarious. If it is not tall enough, it may simply look flat. But like a guitar string that\u2019s out of tune, you can tweak the proportions little by little until a rectangle feels, as Goldilocks said, just right.\n\nA golden rectangle has its height and width in the golden ratio, which is approximately 1:1.618. These proportions have long been recognised as being aesthetically harmonious. Whether through instruction or by intuition, artists have understood how to exploit these proportions over the centuries. Examples can be found in classical architecture, medieval book construction, and even in the recent #newtwitter redesign.\n\nA mathematical curiosity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe golden rectangle is unique, in that if you remove a square section from it, what is left behind is itself a golden rectangle. The removal of a square can be repeated on the rectangle that is left behind, and then repeated again, as many times as you like. This means that the golden rectangle can be treated as a building block for recursive patterns. In this article, we will exploit this property to build a golden spiral, using only HTML and CSS.\n\nThe markup\n\nThe HTML we\u2019ll use for this study is simply a series of nested

s.\n\n\n\t

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\n\n\nThe first of these has the class cycle, and so does every fourth ancestor thereafter. The spiral completes a cycle every four steps, so this class allows styles to be reused on

s that appear at the same position in each cycle.\n\nGolden proportions\n\nTo create our spiral we are going to exploit the unique properties of the golden rectangle, so our first priority is to ensure that we have a golden rectangle to begin with. If we pick a length for the short edge \u2013 say, 288 pixels \u2013 we can then calculate the length of the long edge by multiplying this value by 1.618. In this case, 288\u2009\u00d7\u20091.618\u2009=\u2009466, so our starting point will be a

with these properties:\n\n#container > div {\n width: 466px;\n height: 288px;\n}\n\nThe greater than symbol is used here to single out the immediate child of the #container element, without affecting the grandchild or any of the more distant descendants.\n\nWe could go on to specify the precise pixel dimensions of every child element, but that means doing a lot of sums. It would be much easier if we just specified the dimensions for each element as a percentage of the width and height of its parent. This also has the advantage that if you change the size of the outermost container, all nested elements would be resized automatically \u2013 something that we shall exploit later.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe approximate value of 38.2% can be derived from (100\u2009\u00d7\u20091\u2009\u2212\u2009phi)\u2009\u00f7\u2009phi, where the Greek letter phi (\u03d5) stands for the golden ratio. The value of phi can be expressed as phi\u2009=\u2009(1\u2009+\u2009\u221a5\u2009)\u2009\u00f7\u20092, which is approximately 1.618. You don\u2019t have to understand the derivation to use it. Just remember that if you start with a golden rectangle, you can slice 38.2% from it to create a new golden rectangle.\n\nThis can be expressed in CSS quite simply:\n\n.cycle,\n.cycle > div > div {\n height: 38.2%;\n width: 100%;\n}\n.cycle > div,\n.cycle > div > div > div {\n width: 38.2%;\n height: 100%;\n}\n\nYou can see the result so far by visiting Demo One. With no borders or shading, there is nothing to see yet, so let\u2019s address that next.\n\nShading with transparency\n\nWe\u2019ll need to apply some shading to distinguish each segment of the spiral from its neighbours. We could start with a white background, then progress through shades of grey: #eee, #ddd, #ccc and so on, but this means hard-coding the background-color for every element. A more elegant solution would be to use the same colour for every element, but to make each one slightly transparent.\n\nThe nested

s that we are working with could be compared to layers in Photoshop. By applying a semi-transparent shade of grey, each successive layer can build on top of the darker layers beneath it. The effect accumulates, causing each successive layer to appear slightly darker than the last. In his 2009 article for 24 ways, Drew McLellan showed how to create a semi-transparent effect by working with RGBA colour. Here, we\u2019ll use the colour black with an alpha value of 0.07.\n\n#container div { background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.07) }\n\nNote that I haven\u2019t used the immediate child selector here, which means that this rule will apply to all

elements inside the #container, no matter how deeply nested they are. You can view the result in Demo Two. As you can see, the golden rectangles alternate between landscape and portrait orientation.\n\n\n\nDemo Three).\n\n\n\nCSS3 specification indicates that a percentage can be used to set the border-radius property, but using percentages does not achieve consistent results in browsers today. Luckily, if you specify a border-radius in pixels using a value that is greater than the width and height of the element, then the resulting curve will use the shorter length side as its radius. This produces exactly the effect that we want, so we\u2019ll use an arbitrarily high value of 10,000 pixels for each border-radius:\n\n.cycle {\n border-radius: 0px;\n border-bottom-left-radius: 10000px;\n}\n.cycle > div {\n border-radius: 0px;\n border-bottom-right-radius: 10000px;\n}\n.cycle > div > div {\n border-radius: 0px;\n border-top-right-radius: 10000px;\n}\n.cycle > div > div > div {\n border-radius: 0px;\n border-top-left-radius: 10000px;\n}\n\nNote that the specification for the border-radius property is still in flux, so it is advisable to use vendor-specific prefixes. I have omitted them from the example above for the sake of clarity, but if you view source on Demo Four then you\u2019ll see that the actual styles are not quite as brief.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFilling the available space\n\nWe have created an approximation of the Golden Spiral using only HTML and CSS. Neat! It\u2019s a shame that it occupies just a fraction of the available space. As a finishing touch, let\u2019s make the golden spiral expand or contract to use the full space available to it.\n\nIdeally, the outermost container should use the full available width or height that could accomodate a rectangle of golden proportions. This behaviour is available for background images using the \u201c background-size: contain; property, but I know of no way to make block level HTML elements behave in this fashion (if I\u2019m missing something, please enlighten me). Where CSS fails to deliver, JavaScript can usually provide a workaround. This snippet requires jQuery:\n\n$(document).ready(function() {\n\tvar phi = (1 + Math.sqrt(5))/2;\n\n\t$(window).resize(function() {\n\t\tvar goldenWidth = windowWidth = $(this).width(),\n\t\t\tgoldenHeight = windowHeight = $(this).height();\n\n\t\tif (windowWidth/windowHeight > phi) {\n\t\t\t// panoramic viewport \u2013 use full height\n\t\t\tgoldenWidth = windowHeight * phi;\n\t\t} else {\n\t\t\t// portrait viewport \u2013 use full width\n\t\t\tgoldenHeight = windowWidth / phi;\n\t\t};\n\n\t$(\"#container > div.cycle\")\n\t\t.width(goldenWidth)\n\t\t.height(goldenHeight);\n\n\t}).resize();\n\n});\n\nYou can view the result by visiting Demo Five.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIs it just me, or can you see an elephant in there?\n\nYou can probably think of many ways to enhance this further, but for this study we\u2019ll leave it there. It has been a good excuse to play with proportions, positioning and the immediate child selector, as well as new CSS3 features such as border-radius and RGBA colours. If you are not already designing with golden proportions, then perhaps this will inspire you to begin.", "year": "2010", "author": "Drew Neil", "author_slug": "drewneil", "published": "2010-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/golden-spirals/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 323, "title": "Introducing UDASSS!", "contents": "Okay. What\u2019s that mean?\n\nUnobtrusive Degradable Ajax Style Sheet Switcher!\n\nBoy are you in for treat today \u2018cause we\u2019re gonna have a whole lotta Ajaxifida Unobtrucitosity CSS swappin\u2019 Fun!\n\nOkay are you really kidding? Nope. I\u2019ve even impressed myself on this one. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t have much time to tell you the ins and outs of what I actually did to get this to work. We\u2019re talking JavaScript, CSS, PHP\u2026Ajax. But don\u2019t worry about that. I\u2019ve always believed that a good A.P.I. is an invisible A.P.I\u2026 and this I felt I achieved. The only thing you need to know is how it works and what to do.\n\nA Quick Introduction Anyway\u2026\n\nFirst of all, the idea is very simple. I wanted something just like what Paul Sowden put together in \nAlternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets from Alistapart Magazine EXCEPT a few minor (not-so-minor actually) differences which I\u2019ve listed briefly below:\n\n\n\n\tAllow users to switch styles without JavaScript enabled (degradable)\n\tPreventing the F.O.U.C. before the window \u2018load\u2019 when getting preferred styles\n\tKeep the JavaScript entirely off our markup (no onclick\u2019s or onload\u2019s)\n\tMake it very very easy to implement (ok, Paul did that too)\n\n\nWhat I did to achieve this was used server-side cookies instead of JavaScript cookies. Hence, PHP. However this isn\u2019t a \u201cPHP style switcher\u201d \u2013 which is where Ajax comes in. For the extreme technical folks, no, there is no xml involved here, or even a callback response. I only say Ajax because everyone knows what \u2018it\u2019 means. With that said, it\u2019s the Ajax that sets the cookies \u2018on the fly\u2019. Got it? Awesome!\n\nWhat you need\n\nLuckily, I\u2019ve done the work for you. It\u2019s all packaged up in a nice zip file (at the end\u2026keep reading for now) \u2013 so from here on out, \njust follow these instructions\n\nAs I\u2019ve mentioned, one of the things we\u2019ll be working with is PHP. So, first things first, open up a file called index and save it with a \u2018.php\u2019 extension.\n\nNext, place the following text at the top of your document (even above your DOCTYPE)\n\nadd('css/global.css','screen,projection'); // [Global Styles]\n $styleSheet->add('css/preferred.css','screen,projection','Wog Standard'); // [Preferred Styles]\n $styleSheet->add('css/alternate.css','screen,projection','Tiny Fonts',true); // [Alternate Styles]\n $styleSheet->add('css/alternate2.css','screen,projection','Big O Fonts',true); // // [Alternate Styles]\n $styleSheet->getPreferredStyles();\n ?>\n\nThe way this works is REALLY EASY. Pay attention closely.\n\nNotice in the first line we\u2019ve included our style-switcher.php file.\n\nNext we instantiate a PHP class called AlternateStyles() which will allow us to configure our style sheets. \nSo for kicks, let\u2019s just call our object $styleSheet\n\nAs part of the AlternateStyles object, there lies a public method called add. So naturally with our $styleSheet object, we can call it to (da \u2013 da-da-da!) Add Style Sheets!\n\nHow the add() method works\n\nThe add method takes in a possible four arguments, only one is required. However, you\u2019ll want to add some\u2026 since the whole point is working with alternate style sheets.\n\n$path can simply be a uri, absolute, or relative path to your style sheet. $media adds a media attribute to your style sheets. $title gives a name to your style sheets (via title attribute).$alternate (which shows boolean) simply tells us that these are the alternate style sheets.\n\nadd() Tips\n\nFor all global style sheets (meaning the ones that will always be seen and will not be swapped out), simply use the add method as shown next to // [Global Styles].\n\nTo add preferred styles, do the same, but add a \u2018title\u2019.\n\nTo add the alternate styles, do the same as what we\u2019ve done to add preferred styles, but add the extra boolean and set it to true.\n\nNote following when adding style sheets\n\n\n\tMultiple global style sheets are allowed\n\tYou can only have one preferred style sheet (That\u2019s a browser rule)\n\tFeel free to add as many alternate style sheets as you like\n\n\nMoving on\n\nSimply add the following snippet to the of your web document:\n\n\n \n \n drop();\n ?>\n\nNothing much to explain here. Just use your copy & paste powers.\n\nHow to Switch Styles\n\nWhether you knew it or not, this baby already has the built in \u2018ubobtrusive\u2019 functionality that lets you switch styles by the drop of any link with a class name of \u2018altCss\u2018. Just drop them where ever you like in your document as follows:\n\nBog Standard\n Small Fonts\n Large Fonts\n\nTake special note where the file is linking to. Yep. Just linking right back to the page we\u2019re on. The only extra parameters we pass in is a variable called \u2018css\u2019 \u2013 and within that we append the names of our style sheets.\n\nAlso take very special note on the names of the style sheets have an under_score to take place of any spaces we might have.\n\nGo ahead\u2026 play around and change the style sheet on the example page. Try disabling JavaScript and refreshing your browser. Still works!\n\nCool eh?\n\nWell, I put this together in one night so it\u2019s still a work in progress and very beta. If you\u2019d like to hear more about it and its future development, be sure stop on by my site where I\u2019ll definitely be maintaining it.\n\nDownload the beta anyway\n\nWell this wouldn\u2019t be fun if there was nothing to download. So we\u2019re hooking you up so you don\u2019t go home (or logoff) unhappy\n\n Download U.D.A.S.S.S | V0.8\n\nMerry Christmas!\n\nThanks for listening and I hope U.D.A.S.S.S. has been well worth your time and will bring many years of Ajaxy Style Switchin\u2019 Fun!\n\nMany Blessings, Merry Christmas and have a great new year!", "year": "2005", "author": "Dustin Diaz", "author_slug": "dustindiaz", "published": "2005-12-18T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/introducing-udasss/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 62, "title": "Being Customer Supportive", "contents": "Every day in customer support is an inbox, a Twitter feed, or a software forum full of new questions. Each is brimming with your customers looking for advice, reassurance, or fixes for their software problems. Each one is an opportunity to take a break from wrestling with your own troublesome tasks and assist someone else in solving theirs.\nSometimes the questions are straightforward and can be answered in a few minutes with a short greeting, a link to a help page, or a prewritten bit of text you use regularly: how to print a receipt, reset a password, or even, sadly, close your account.\nMore often, a support email requires you to spend some time unpacking the question, asking for more information, and writing a detailed personal response, tailored to help that particular user on this particular day.\nHere I offer a few of my own guidelines on how to make today\u2019s email the best support experience for both me and my customer. And even if you don\u2019t consider what you do to be customer support, you might still find the suggestions useful for the next time you need to communicate with a client, to solve a software problem with teammates, or even reach out and ask for help yourself.\n(All the examples appearing in this article are fictional. Any resemblance to quotes from real, software-using persons is entirely coincidental. Except for the bit about Star Wars. That happened.)\nWho\u2019s TAHT girl\nI\u2019ll be honest: I briefly tried making these recommendations into a clever mnemonic like FAST (facial drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulties, time) or PAD (pressure, antiseptic, dressing). But instead, you get TAHT: tone, ask, help, thank. Ah, well.\nAs I work through each message in my support queue, I\n\nlisten to the tone of the email\nask clarifying questions\nbring in extra help as needed\nand thank the customer when the problem is solved.\n\nLet\u2019s open an email and get started!\nLeave your message at the sound of the tone\nWith our enthusiasm for emoji, it can be very hard to infer someone\u2019s tone from plain text. How much time have you spent pondering why your friend responded with \u201cThanks.\u201d instead of \u201cThanks!\u201d? I mean, why didn\u2019t she :grin: or :wink: too?\nOur support customers, however, are often direct about how they\u2019re feeling:\n\nI\u2019m working against a deadline. Need this fixed ASAP!!!!\nThis hasn\u2019t worked in a week and I am getting really frustrated.\nI\u2019ve done this ten times before and it\u2019s always worked. I must be missing something simple.\n\nThey want us to understand the urgency of this from their point of view, just as much as we want to help them in a timely manner. How this information is conveyed gives us an instant sense of whether they are frustrated, angry, or confused\u2014and, just as importantly, how frustrated-angry-confused they are. \nListen to this tone before you start writing your reply. Here are two ways I might open an email:\n\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry that you ran into trouble with this.\u201d\n\u201cSorry you ran into trouble with this!\u201d\n\nThe content is largely the same, but the tone is markedly different. The first version is a serious, staid reaction to the problem the customer is having; the second version is more relaxed, but no less sincere.\nMatching the tone to the sender\u2019s is an important first step. Overusing exclamation points or dropping in too-casual language may further upset someone who is already having a crummy time with your product. But to a cheerful user, a formal reply or an impersonal form response can be off-putting, and damage a good relationship.\nWhen in doubt, I err on the side of being too formal, rather than sending a reply that may be read as flip or insincere. But whichever you choose, matching your correspondent\u2019s tone will make for a more comfortable conversation.\nCatch the ball and throw it back\nOnce you\u2019ve got that tone on lock, it\u2019s time to tackle the question at hand. Let\u2019s see what our customer needs help with today:\n\nI tried everything in the troubleshooting page but I can\u2019t get it to work again. I am on a Mac. Please help.\n\nHmm, not much information here. Now, if I got this short email after helping five other people with the same problem on Mac OS X, I would be sorely tempted to send this customer that common solution in my first reply. I\u2019ve found it\u2019s important to resist the urge to assume this sixth person needs the same answer as the other five, though: there isn\u2019t enough to connect this email to the ones that came before hers. \nInstead, ask a few questions to start. Invest some time to see if there are other symptoms in common, like so:\n\nI\u2019m sorry that you ran into trouble with this! I\u2019ll need a little more information to see what\u2019s happening here.\n[questions]\nThank you for your help.\n\nThose questions are customized for the customer\u2019s issue as much as possible, and can be fairly wide-ranging. They may include asking for log files, getting some screenshots, or simply checking the browser and operating system version she\u2019s using. I\u2019ll ask anything that might make a connection to the previous cases I\u2019ve answered\u2014or, just as importantly, confirm that there isn\u2019t a connection. What\u2019s more, a few well-placed questions may save us both from pursuing the wrong path and building additional frustration. \n(A note on that closing: \u201cThank you for your help\u201d\u2013I often end an email this way when I\u2019ve asked for a significant amount of follow up information. After all, I\u2019m imposing on my customer\u2019s time to run any number of tests. It\u2019s a necessary step, but I feel that thanking them is a nice acknowledgment we\u2019re in this together.)\nHaving said that, though, let\u2019s bring tone back into the mix:\n\nI tried everything in the troubleshooting but I can\u2019t get it to work again. I am on a Mac. I\u2019m working against a deadline. Need this fixed ASAP!!!!\n\nThis customer wants answers now. I\u2019ll still ask for more details, but would consider including the solution to the previous problem in my initial reply as well. (But only if doing so can\u2019t make the situation worse!)\n\nI\u2019m sorry that you ran into trouble with this! I\u2019ll need a little more information to see what\u2019s happening here.\n[questions]\nIf you\u2019d like to try something in the meantime, delete the file named xyz.txt. (If this isn\u2019t the cause of the problem, deleting the file won\u2019t hurt anything.) Here\u2019s how to find that file on your computer:\n[steps]\nLet me know how it goes!\n\nIn the best case, the suggestion works and the customer is on her way. If it doesn\u2019t solve the problem, you will get more information in answer to your questions and can explore other options. And you\u2019ve given the customer an opportunity to be involved in fixing the issue, and some new tools which might come in handy again in the future.\nBring in help\nThe support software I use counts how many emails the customer and I have exchanged, and reports it in a summary line in my inbox. It\u2019s an easy, passive reminder of how long the customer and I have been working together on a problem, especially first thing in the morning when I\u2019m reacquainting myself with my open support cases.\nThree is the smallest number I\u2019ll see there: the customer sends the initial question (1 email); I reply with an answer (2 emails); the customer confirms the problem is solved (3 emails). But the most complicated, stickiest tickets climb into double-digit replies, and anything that stretches beyond a dozen is worthy of a cheer in Slack when we finally get to the root of the problem and get it fixed.\nWhile an extra round of questions and answers will nudge that number higher, it gives me the chance to feel out the technical comfort level of the person I\u2019m helping. If I ask the customer to send some screenshots or log files and he isn\u2019t sure how to do that, I will use that information to adjust my instructions on next steps. I may still ask him to try running a traceroute on his computer, but I\u2019ll break down the steps into a concise, numbered list, and attach screenshots of each step to illustrate it.\nIf the issue at hand is getting complicated, take note if the customer starts to feel out of their depth technically\u2014either because they tell you so directly or because you sense a shift in tone. If that happens, propose bringing some outside help into the conversation:\n\nDo you have a network firewall or do you use any antivirus software? One of those might be blocking a connection that the software needs to work properly; here\u2019s a list of the required connections [link]. If you have an IT department in-house, they should be able to help confirm that none of those are being blocked.\n\nor:\n\nThis error message means you don\u2019t have permission to install the software on your own computer. Is there a systems administrator in the office that may be able to help with this? \n\nFor email-based support cases, I\u2019ll even offer to add someone from their IT department to the thread, so we can discuss the problem together rather than have the customer relay questions and answers back and forth.\nSimilarly, there are occasionally times when my way of describing things doesn\u2019t fit how the customer understands them. Rather than bang our heads against our keyboards, I will ask one of my support colleagues to join the conversation from our side, and see if he can explain things more clearly than I\u2019ve been able to do.\nWe appreciate your business. Please call again\nAnd then, o frabjous day, you get your reward: the reply which says the problem has been solved. \n\nThat worked!! Thank you so much for saving my day!\nI wish I could send you some cookies!\nIf you were here, I would give you my tickets to Star Wars.\n[Reply is an animated gif.]\n\nSometimes the reply is a bit more understated:\n\nThat fixed it. Thanks.\n\nWhether the customer is elated, satisfied, or frankly happy to be done with emailing support, I like to close longer email threads or short, complicated issues with a final thanks and reminder that we\u2019re here to help: \n\nThank you for the update; I\u2019m glad to hear that solved the problem for you! I hope everything goes smoothly for you now, but feel free to email us again if you run into any other questions or problems. Best,\n\nThen mark that support case closed, and move on to the next question. Because even with the most thoughtfully designed software product, there will always be customers with questions for your capable support team to answer.\nTone, ask, help, thank\nSo there you have it: TAHT. Pay attention to tone; ask questions; bring in help; thank your customer.\n(Lack of) catchy mnemonics aside, good customer support is about listening, paying attention, and taking care in your replies. I think it can be summed up beautifully by this quote from Pamela Marie (as tweeted by Chris Coyier):\n\nGolden rule asking a question: imagine trying to answer it \nGolden rule in answering: imagine getting your answer \n\nYou and your teammates are applying a variation of this golden rule in every email you write. You\u2019re the software ambassadors to your customers and clients. You get the brunt of the problems and complaints, but you also get to help fix them. You write the apologies, but you also have the chance to make each person\u2019s experience with your company or product a little bit better for next time.\nI hope that your holidays are merry and bright, and may all your support inboxes be light.", "year": "2015", "author": "Elizabeth Galle", "author_slug": "elizabethgalle", "published": "2015-12-02T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/being-customer-supportive/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 99, "title": "A Christmas hCard From Me To You", "contents": "So apparently Christmas is coming. And what is Christmas all about? Well, cleaning out your address book, of course! What better time to go through your contacts, making sure everyone\u2019s details are up date and that you\u2019ve deleted all those nasty clients who never paid on time?\n\nIt\u2019s also a good time to make sure your current clients and colleagues have your most up-to-date details, so instead of filling up their inboxes with e-cards, why not send them something useful? Something like a\u2026 vCard! (See what I did there?)\n\nJust in case you\u2019ve been working in a magical toy factory in the upper reaches of Scandinavia for the last few years, I\u2019m going to tell you that now would also be the perfect time to get into microformats. Using the hCard format, we\u2019ll build a very simple web page and markup our contact details in such a way that they\u2019ll be understood by microformats plugins, like Operator or Tails for Firefox, or the cross-browser Microformats Bookmarklet.\n\nOh, and because Christmas is all about dressing up and being silly, we\u2019ll make the whole thing look nice and have a bit of fun with some CSS3 progressive enhancement. \n\nIf you can\u2019t wait to see what we end up with, you can preview it here.\n\n\n\nStep 1: Contact Details\n\nFirst, let\u2019s decide what details we want to put on the page. I\u2019d put my full name, my email address, my phone number, and my postal address, but I\u2019d rather not get surprise visits from strangers when I\u2019m fannying about with my baubles, so I\u2019m going to use Father Christmas instead (that\u2019s Santa to you Yanks).\n\nFather Christmas\nfatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com\n25 Laughingallthe Way\nSnow Falls\nLapland\nFinland\n010 60 58 000\n\nStep 2: hCard Creator\n\nNow I\u2019m not sure about you, but I rather like getting the magical robot pixies to do the work for me, so head on over to the hCard Creator and put those pixies to work! Pop in your details and they\u2019ll give you some nice microformatted HTML in turn.\n\n\n\n

\n\tFather Christmas\n\t fatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com\n\t

\n\t

25 Laughingallthe Way

\n\tSnow Falls\n\t, \n\tLapland\n\t, \n\tFI-00101\n\tFinland\n

010 60 58 000

\n\t

This hCard created with the hCard creator.

\n\nStep 3: Editing The Code\n\nOne of the great things about microformats is that you can use pretty much whichever HTML tags you want, so just because the hCard Creator Fairies say something should be wrapped in a doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t change it to a . Actually, no, don\u2019t do that. That\u2019s not even excusable at Christmas.\n\nI personally have a penchant for marking up each line of an address inside a

tag, where the parent url retains the class of adr. As long as you keep the class names the same, you\u2019ll be fine.\n\n

\n\t

Father Christmas

\n\tfatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com\n\t

25 Laughingallthe Way
Snow Falls
Lapland
FI-00101
Finland

\n\t010 60 58 000\n

\n\nStep 4: Testing The Microformats\n\nWith our microformats in place, now would be a good time to test that they\u2019re working before we start making things look pretty. If you\u2019re on Firefox, you can install the Operator or Tails extensions, but if you\u2019re on another browser, just add the Microformats Bookmarklet. Regardless of your choice, the results is the same: if you\u2019ve code microformatted content on a web page, one of these bad boys should pick it up for you and allow you to export the contact info. Give it a try and you should see father Christmas appearing in your address book of choice. Now you\u2019ll never forget where to send those Christmas lists!\n\n\n\nStep 5: Some Extra Markup\n\nOne of the first things we\u2019re going to do is put a photo of Father Christmas on the hCard. We\u2019ll be using CSS to apply a background image to a div, so we\u2019ll be needing an extra div with a class name of \u201cphoto\u201d. In turn, we\u2019ll wrap the text-based elements of our hCard inside a div cunningly called \u201ctext\u201d. Unfortunately, because of the float technique we\u2019ll be using, we\u2019ll have to use one of those nasty float-clearing techniques. I shall call this \u201cchristmas-cheer\u201d, since that is what its presence will inevitably bring, of course.\n\nOh, and let\u2019s add a bit of text to give the page context, too:\n\n

Send your Christmas lists my way...

\n\t

\n\t\t

Father Christmas

\n\t\tfatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com\n\t\t

25 Laughingallthe Way
Snow Falls
Lapland
FI-00101
Finland

\n\t\t010 60 58 000\n\t

\n\t

\n\t
\n

\n\t

A tutorial by Elliot Jay Stocks for 24 Ways

\n\t

Background: stock.xchng | Father Christmas: iStockPhoto

\n\nStep 6: Some Christmas Sparkle\n\nSo far, our hCard-housing web page is slightly less than inspiring, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s time to add a bit of CSS. There\u2019s nothing particularly radical going on here; just a simple layout, some basic typographic treatment, and the placement of the Father Christmas photo. I\u2019d usually use a more thorough CSS reset like the one found in the YUI or Eric Meyer\u2019s, but for this basic page, the simple * solution will do.\n\nCheck out the step 6 demo to see our basic styles in place.\n\nFrom this\u2026\n\n\n\n\u2026 to this:\n\n\n\nStep 7: Fun With imagery\n\nNow it\u2019s time to introduce a repeating background image to the element. This will seamlessly repeat for as wide as the browser window becomes.\n\nBut that\u2019s fairly straightforward. How about having some fun with the Father Christmas image? If you look at the image file itself, you\u2019ll see that it\u2019s twice as wide as the area we can see and contains a \u2018hidden\u2019 photo of our rather camp St. Nick.\n\n\n\nAs a light-hearted visual\u2026 er\u2026 \u2018treat\u2019 for users who move their mouse over the image, we move the position of the background image on the \u201cphoto\u201d div. Check out the step 7 demo to see it working.\n\nStep 8: Progressive Enhancement\n\nFinally, this fun little project is a great opportunity for us to mess around with some advanced CSS features (some from the CSS3 spec) that we rarely get to use on client projects. (Don\u2019t forget: no Christmas pressies for clients who want you to support IE6!)\n\nHere are the rules we\u2019re using to give some browsers a superior viewing experience:\n\n\n\t@font-face allows us to use Jos Buivenga\u2019s free font \u2018Fertigo Pro\u2019 on all text;\n\ttext-shadow adds a little emphasis on the opening paragraph;\n\tbody > p:first-child causes only the first paragraph to receive this treatment;\n\tborder-radius created rounded corners on our main div and the links within it;\n\tand webkit-transition allows us to gently fade in between the default and hover states of those links.\n\n\nAnd with that, we\u2019re done! You can see the results here. It\u2019s time to customise the page to your liking, upload it to your site, and send out the URL. And do it quickly, because I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve got some last-minute Christmas shopping to finish off!", "year": "2008", "author": "Elliot Jay Stocks", "author_slug": "elliotjaystocks", "published": "2008-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/a-christmas-hcard-from-me-to-you/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 145, "title": "The Neverending (Background Image) Story", "contents": "Everyone likes candy for Christmas, and there\u2019s none better than eye candy. Well, that, and just more of the stuff. Today we\u2019re going to combine both of those good points and look at how to create a beautiful background image that goes on and on\u2026 forever!\n\nOf course, each background image is different, so instead of agonising over each and every pixel, I\u2019m going to concentrate on five key steps that you can apply to any of your own repeating background images. In this example, we\u2019ll look at the Miami Beach background image used on the new FOWA site, which I\u2019m afraid is about as un-festive as you can get.\n\n1. Choose your image wisely\n\nI find there are three main criteria when judging photos you\u2019re considering for repetition manipulation (or \u2018repetulation\u2019, as I like to say)\u2026\n\n\n\tsimplicity (beware of complex patterns)\n\tangle and perspective (watch out for shadows and obvious vanishing points)\n\tconsistent elements (for easy cloning)\n\n\nYou might want to check out this annotated version of the image, where I\u2019ve highlighted elements of the photo that led me to choose it as the right one.\n\nThe original image purchased from iStockPhoto.\n\nThe Photoshopped version used on the FOWA site.\n\n2. The power of horizontal lines\n\nWith the image chosen and your cursor poised for some Photoshop magic, the most useful thing you can do is drag out the edge pixels from one side of the image to create a kind of rough colour \u2018template\u2019 on which to work over. It doesn\u2019t matter which side you choose, although you might find it beneficial to use the one with the simplest spread of colour and complex elements.\n\nClick and hold on the marquee tool in the toolbar and select the \u2018single column marquee tool\u2019, which will span the full height of your document but will only be one pixel wide. Make the selection right at the edge of your document, press ctrl-c / cmd-c to copy the selection you made, create a new layer, and hit ctrl-v / cmd-v to paste the selection onto your new layer. using free transform (ctrl-t / cmd-t), drag out your selection so that it becomes as wide as your entire canvas. \n\nA one-pixel-wide selection stretched out to the entire width of the canvas.\n\n3. Cloning\n\nIt goes without saying that the trusty clone tool is one of the most important in the process of creating a seamlessly repeating background image, but I think it\u2019s important to be fairly loose with it. Always clone on to a new layer so that you\u2019ve got the freedom to move it around, but above all else, use the eraser tool to tweak your cloned areas: let that handle the precision stuff and you won\u2019t have to worry about getting your clones right first time.\n\nIn the example below, you can see how I overcame the problem of the far-left tree shadow being chopped off by cloning the shadow from the tree on its right. \n\nThe edge of the shadow is cut off and needs to be \u2018made\u2019 from a pre-existing element.\n\nThe successful clone completes the missing shadow.\n\nThe two elements are obviously very similar but it doesn\u2019t look like a clone because the majority of the shape is \u2018genuine\u2019 and only a small part is a duplicate. Also, after cloning I transformed the duplicate, erased parts of it, used gradients, and \u2014 ooh, did someone mention gradients?\n\n4. Never underestimate a gradient\n\nFor this image, I used gradients in a similar way to a brush: covering large parts of the canvas with a colour that faded out to a desired point, before erasing certain parts for accuracy.\n\nSeveral of the gradients and brushes that make up the \u2018customised\u2019 part of the image, visible when the main photograph layer is hidden.\n\nThe full composite.\n\nGradients are also a bit of an easy fix: you can use a gradient on one side of the image, flip it horizontally, and then use it again on the opposite side to make a more seamless join.\n\nSpeaking of which\u2026\n\n5. Sewing the seams\n\nNo matter what kind of magic Photoshop dust you sprinkle over your image, there will still always be the area where the two edges meet: that scary \u2018loop\u2019 point. Fret ye not, however, for there\u2019s help at hand in the form of a nice little cheat. Even though the loop point might still be apparent, we can help hide it by doing something to throw viewers off the scent.\n\nThe seam is usually easy to spot because it\u2019s a blank area with not much detail or colour variation, so in order to disguise it, go against the rule: put something across it!\n\nThis isn\u2019t quite as challenging as it may sound, because if we intentionally make our own \u2018object\u2019 to span the join, we can accurately measure the exact halfway point where we need to split it across the two sides of the image. This is exactly what I did with the FOWA background image: I made some clouds!\n\nA sky with no clouds in an unhappy one.\n\nA simple soft white brush creates a cloud-like formation in the sky.\n\nAfter taking the cloud\u2019s opacity down to 20%, I used free transform to highlight the boundaries of the layer. I then moved it over to the right, so that the middle of the layer perfectly aligned with the right side of the canvas.\n\nFinally, I duplicated the layer and did the same in reverse: dragging the layer over to the left and making sure that the middle of the duplicate layer perfectly aligned with the left side of the canvas.\n\nAnd there you have it! Boom! Ta-da! Et Voila! To see the repeating background image in action, visit futureofwebapps.com on a large widescreen monitor or see a simulation of the effect.\n\nThanks for reading, folks. Have a great Christmas!", "year": "2007", "author": "Elliot Jay Stocks", "author_slug": "elliotjaystocks", "published": "2007-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/the-neverending-background-image-story/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 170, "title": "A Pet Project is For Life, Not Just for Christmas", "contents": "I\u2019m excited: as December rolls on, I\u2019m winding down from client work and indulging in a big pet project I\u2019ve been dreaming up for quite some time, with the aim of releasing it early next year. I\u2019ve always been a bit of a sucker for pet projects and currently have a few in the works: the big one, two collaborations with friends, and my continuing (and completely un-web-related) attempt at music. But when I think about the other designers and developers out there whose work I admire, one thing becomes obvious: they\u2019ve all got pet projects! Look around the web and you\u2019ll see that anyone worth their salt has some sort of side project on the go. If you don\u2019t have yours yet, now\u2019s the time!\n\nHave a pet project to collaborate with your friends\n\nIt\u2019s not uncommon to find me staring at my screen, looking at beautiful websites my friends have made, grinning inanely because I feel so honoured to know such talented individuals. But one thing really frustrates me: I hardly ever get to work with these people! Sure, there are times when it\u2019s possible to do so, but due to various project situations, it\u2019s a rarity.\n\nSo, in order to work with my friends, I\u2019ve found the best way is to instigate the collaboration outside of client work; in other words, have a pet project together! Free from the hard realities of budgets, time restraints, and client demands, you and your friends can come up with something purely for your own pleasures. If you\u2019ve been looking for an excuse to work with other designers or developers whose work you love, the pet project is that excuse. They don\u2019t necessarily have to be friends, either: if the respect is mutual, it can be a great way of breaking the ice and getting to know someone. \n\n Figure 1: A forthcoming secret love-child from myself and Tim Van Damme\n\nHave a pet project to escape from your day job\n\nWe all like to moan about our clients and bosses, don\u2019t we? But if leaving your job or firing your evil client just isn\u2019t an option, why not escape from all that and pour your creative energies into something you genuinely enjoy? \n\nIt\u2019s not just about reacting to negativity, either: a pet project is a great way to give yourself a bit of variety. As web designers, our day-to-day work forces us to work within a set of web-related contraints and sometimes it can be demoralising to spend so many hours fixing IE bugs. The perfect antidote? Go and do some print design! If it\u2019s not possible in your day job or client work, the pet project is the perfect place to exercise your other creative muscles. Yes, print design (or your chosen alternative) has its own constraints, but if they\u2019re different to those you experience on a daily basis, it\u2019ll be a welcome relief and you\u2019ll return to your regular work feeling refreshed.\n\n Figure 2: Ligature, Loop & Stem, from Scott Boms & Luke Dorny\n\nHave a pet project to fulfill your own needs\n\nMany pet projects come into being because the designers and/or developers behind them are looking for a tool to accomplish a task and find that it doesn\u2019t exist, thus prompting them to create their own solution. In fact, the very app I\u2019m using to write this article \u2014 Ommwriter, from Herraiz Soto & Co \u2014 was originally a tool they\u2019d created for their internal staff, before releasing it to the public so that it could be enjoyed by others.\n\nJust last week, Tina Roth Eisenberg launched Teux Deux, a pet project she\u2019d designed to meet her own requirements for a to-do list, having found that no existing apps fulfilled her needs. Oh, and it was a collaboration with her studio mate Cameron. Remember what I was saying about working with your friends?\n\n Figure 3: Teux Deux, the GTD pet project that launched just last week\n\nHave a pet project to help people out\n\nOmmwriter and Teux Deux are free for anyone to use. Let\u2019s just think about that for a moment: the creators have invested their time and effort in the project, and then given it away to be used by others. That\u2019s very cool and something we\u2019re used to seeing a lot of in the web community (how lucky we are)! People love free stuff and giving away the fruits of your labour will earn you major kudos. Of course, there\u2019s nothing wrong with making some money, either \u2014 more on that in a second.\n\n Figure 4: Dan Rubin\u2018s extremely helpful Make Photoshop Faster\n\nHave a pet project to raise your profile\n\nSo, giving away free stuff earns you kudos. And kudos usually helps you raise your profile in the industry. We all like a bit of shameless fame, don\u2019t we? But seriously, if you want to become well known, make something cool. It could be free (to buy you the love and respect of the community) or it could be purchasable (if you\u2019ve made something that\u2019s cool enough to deserve hard-earned cash), but ultimately it needs to be something that people will love. \n\n Figure 5: Type designer Jos Buivenga has shot to fame thanks to his beautiful typefaces and \u2018freemium\u2019 business model\n\nIf you\u2019re a developer with no design skills, team up with a good designer so that the design community appreciate its aesthetic. If you\u2019re a designer with no development skills, team up with a good developer so that it works. Oh, and not that I\u2019d recommend you ever do this for selfish reasons, but collaborating with someone you admire \u2014 whose work is well-respected by the community \u2014 will also help raise your profile.\n\nHave a pet project to make money\n\nIn spite of our best hippy-esque intentions to give away free stuff to the masses, there\u2019s also nothing wrong with making a bit of money from your pet project. In fact, if your project involves you having to make a considerable financial investment, it\u2019s probably a good idea to try and recoup those costs in some way.\n\n Figure 6: The success of Shaun Inman\u2018s various pet projects \u2014 Mint, Fever, Horror Vacui, etc. \u2014 have allowed him to give up client work entirely.\n\nA very common way to do that in both the online and offline worlds is to get some sort of advertising. For a slightly different approach, try contacting a company who are relevant to your audience and ask them if they\u2019d be interesting in sponsoring your project, which would usually just mean having their brand associated with yours in some way. This is still a form of advertising but tends to allow for a more tasteful implementation, so it\u2019s worth pursuing. \n\nAdvertising is a great way to cover your own costs and keep things free for your audience, but when costs are considerably higher (like if you\u2019re producing a magazine with high production values, for instance), there\u2019s nothing wrong with charging people for your product. But, as I mentioned above, you\u2019ve got to be positive that it\u2019s worth paying for!\n\nHave a pet project just for fun\n\nSometimes there\u2019s a very good reason for having a pet project \u2014 and sometimes even a viable business reason \u2014 but actually you don\u2019t need any reason at all. Wanting to have fun is just as worthy a motivation, and if you\u2019re not going to have fun doing it, then what\u2019s the point? Assuming that almost all pet projects are designed, developed, written, printed, marketed and supported in our free time, why not do something enjoyable?\n\n Figure 7: Jessica Hische\u2018s beautiful Daily Drop Cap\n\nIn conclusion\n\nThe fact that you\u2019re reading 24 ways shows that you have a passion for the web, and that\u2019s something I\u2019m happy to see in abundance throughout our community. Passion is a term that\u2019s thrown about all over the place, but it really is evident in the work that people do. It\u2019s perhaps most evident, however, in the pet projects that people create. Don\u2019t forget that the very site you\u2019re reading this article on is\u2026 a pet project.\n\nIf you\u2019ve yet to do so, make it a new year\u2019s resolution for 2010 to have your own pet project so that you can collaborate with your friends, escape from your day job, fulfil your own needs, help people out, raise your profile, make money, and \u2014 above all \u2014 have fun.", "year": "2009", "author": "Elliot Jay Stocks", "author_slug": "elliotjaystocks", "published": "2009-12-18T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/a-pet-project-is-for-life-not-just-for-christmas/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 270, "title": "From Side Project to Not So Side Project", "contents": "In the last article I wrote for 24 ways, back in 2009, I enthused about the benefits of having a pet project, suggesting that we should all have at least one so that we could collaborate with our friends, escape our day jobs, fulfil our own needs, help others out, raise our profiles, make money, and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 have fun. I don\u2019t think I need to offer any further persuasions: it seems that designers and developers are launching their own pet projects left, right and centre. This makes me very happy.\n\nHowever, there still seems to be something of a disconnect between having a side project and turning it into something that is moderately successful; in particular, the challenge of making enough money to sustain the project and perhaps even elevating it from the sidelines so that it becomes something not so on the side at all.\n\nBefore we even begin this, let\u2019s spend a moment talking about money, also known as\u2026\n\nEvil, nasty, filthy money\n\nOver the last couple of years, I\u2019ve started referring to myself as an accidental businessman. I say accidental because my view of the typical businessman is someone who is driven by money, and I usually can\u2019t stand such people. Those who are motivated by profit, obsessed with growth, and take an active interest in the world\u2019s financial systems don\u2019t tend to be folks with whom I share a beer, unless it\u2019s to pour it over them. Especially if they\u2019re wearing pinstriped suits.\n\nThat said, we all want to make money, don\u2019t we? And most of us want to make a relatively decent amount, too. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any harm in admitting that, is there? Hello, I\u2019m Elliot and I\u2019m a capitalist.\n\nThe key is making money from doing what we love. For most people I know in our community, we\u2019ve already achieved that \u2014 I\u2019m hard-pressed to think of anyone who isn\u2019t extremely passionate about working in our industry and I think it\u2019s one of the most positive, unifying benefits we enjoy as a group of like-minded people \u2014 but side projects usually arise from another kind of passion: a passion for something other than what we do as our day jobs. Perhaps it\u2019s because your clients are driving you mental and you need a break; perhaps it\u2019s because you want to create something that is truly your own; perhaps it\u2019s because you\u2019re sick of seeing your online work disappear so fast and you want to try your hand at print in order to make a more permanent mark.\n\nThe three factors I listed there led me to create 8 Faces, a printed magazine about typography that started as a side project and is now a very significant part of my yearly output and income.\n\nLike many things that prove fruitful, 8 Faces\u2019 success was something of an accident, too. For a start, the magazine was never meant to be profitable; its only purpose at all was to scratch my own itch. Then, after the first issue took off and I realized how much time I needed to spend in order to make the next one decent, it became clear that I would have to cover more than just the production costs: I\u2019d have to take time out from client work as well. Doing this meant I\u2019d have to earn some money. Probably not enough to equate to the exact amount of time lost when I could be doing client work (not that you could ever describe time as being lost when you work on something you love), but enough to survive; for me to feel that I was getting paid while doing all of the work that 8 Faces entailed. The answer was to raise money through partnerships with some cool companies who were happy to be associated with my little project.\n\nA sustainable business model\n\nBusiness model! I can\u2019t believe I just wrote those words! But a business model is really just a loose plan for how not to screw up. And all that stuff I wrote in the paragraph above about partnering with companies so I could get some money in while I put the magazine together? Well, that\u2019s my business model. \n\nIf you\u2019re making any product that has some sort of production cost, whether that\u2019s physical print run expenses or up-front dev work to get an app built, covering those costs before you even release your product means that you\u2019ll be in profit from the first copy you sell. This is no small point: production expenses are pretty much the only cost you\u2019ll ever need to recoup, so having them covered before you launch anything is pretty much the best possible position in which you could place yourself. Happy days, as Jamie Oliver would say.\n\nObtaining these initial funds through partnerships has another benefit. Sure, it\u2019s a form of advertising but, done right, your partners can potentially provide you with great content, too. In the case of 8 Faces, the ads look as nice as the rest of the magazine, and a couple of our partners also provide proper articles: genuinely meaningful, relevant, reader-pleasing articles at that. You\u2019d be amazed at how many companies are willing to become partners and, as the old adage goes, if you don\u2019t ask, you don\u2019t get.\n\nWith profit comes responsibility\n\nDon\u2019t forget about the responsibility you have to your audience if you engage in a relationship with a partner or any type of advertiser: although I may have freely admitted my capitalist leanings, I\u2019m still essentially a hairy hippy, and I feel that any partnership should be good for me as a publisher, good for the partner and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 good for the reader. Really, the key word here is relevance, and that\u2019s where 99.9% of advertising fails abysmally. \n\n(99.9% is not a scientific figure, but you know what I\u2019m on about.)\n\nThe main grey area when a side project becomes profitable is how you share that profit, partly because \u2014 in my opinion, at least \u2014 the transition from non-profitable side project to relatively successful source of income can be a little blurred. Asking for help for nothing when there\u2019s no money to be had is pretty normal, but sometimes it\u2019s easy to get used to that free help even once you start making money. I believe the best approach is to ask for help with the promise that it will always be rewarded as soon as there\u2019s money available. (Oh, god: this sounds like one of those nightmarish client proposals. It\u2019s not, honest.) If you\u2019re making something cool, people won\u2019t mind helping out while you find your feet.\n\nEvents often think that they\u2019re exempt from sharing profit. Perhaps that\u2019s because many event organizers think they\u2019re doing the speakers a favour rather than the other way around (that\u2019s a whole separate article), but it\u2019s shocking to see how many people seem to think they can profit from content-makers \u2014 speakers, for example \u2014 and yet not pay for that content. It was for this reason that Keir and I paid all of our speakers for our Insites: The Tour side project, which we ran back in July. We probably could\u2019ve got away without paying them, especially as the gig was so informal, but it was the right thing to do.\n\nIn conclusion: money as a by-product\n\nLet\u2019s conclude by returning to the slightly problematic nature of money, because it\u2019s the pivot on which your side project\u2019s success can swing, regardless of whether you measure success by monetary gain. I would argue that success has nothing to do with profit \u2014 it\u2019s about you being able to spend the time you want on the project. Unfortunately, that is almost always linked to money: money to pay yourself while you work on your dream idea; money to pay for more servers when your web app hits the big time; money to pay for efforts to get the word out there. The key, then, is to judge success on your own terms, and seek to generate as much money as you see fit, whether it\u2019s purely to cover your running costs, or enough to buy a small country. There\u2019s nothing wrong with profit, as long as you\u2019re ethical about it. (Pro tip: if you\u2019ve earned enough to buy a small country, you\u2019ve probably been unethical along the way.)\n\nThe point at which individuals and companies fail \u2014 in the moral sense, for sure, but often in the competitive sense, too \u2014 is when money is the primary motivation. It should never be the primary motivation. If you\u2019re not passionate enough about something to do it as an unprofitable side project, you shouldn\u2019t be doing it all. \n\nEarning money should be a by-product of doing what you love. And who doesn\u2019t want to spend their life doing what they love?", "year": "2011", "author": "Elliot Jay Stocks", "author_slug": "elliotjaystocks", "published": "2011-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/from-side-project-to-not-so-side-project/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 17, "title": "Bringing Design and Research Closer Together", "contents": "The \u2018should designers be able to code\u2019 debate has raged for some time, but I\u2019m interested in another debate: should designers be able to research? \n\nAre you a designer who can do research? Good research and the insights you uncover inspire fresh ways of thinking and get your creative juices flowing. Good research brings clarity to a woolly brief. Audience insight helps sharpen your focus on what\u2019s really important. Experimentation through research and design brings a sense of playfulness and curiosity to your work. Good research helps you do good design.\n\nBeing a web designer today is pretty tough, particularly if you\u2019re a freelancer and work on your own. There are so many new ideas, approaches to workflow and trends and tools to keep up with. How do you decide which things to do and which to ignore? A modern web designer needs to be able to consider the needs of the audience, design appropriate IAs and layouts, choose colour palettes, pick appropriate typefaces and type layouts, wrangle with content, style, code, dabble in SEO, and the list goes on and on. Not only that, but today\u2019s web designer also has to keep up with the latest talking points in the industry: responsive design, Agile, accessibility, Sass, Git, lean UX, content first, mobile first, blah blah blah. Any good web designer doesn\u2019t need to be persuaded about the merits of including research in their toolkit, but do you really have time to include research too? \n\nWho is responsible for research?\n\nGenerally, research in the web industry forms part of other disciplines and isn\u2019t so much a discipline in its own right. It\u2019s very often thought of as part of UX, or activities that make up a process such as IA or content strategy. Research is often undertaken by UX designers, information architects or content strategists and isn\u2019t something designers or developers get that involved in. Some people lump all of these activities together and label it design research and have design researchers to do it. Some companies, such as the one I run with my husband Mark, are lucky enough to have someone with specialist research knowledge (yup, that would be me folks) who can lead all or most of the research work undertaken by the company. See also Mule Design, GOV.UK, the BBC, Mailchimp, Facebook and Twitter. \n\nWhat if you\u2019re not lucky enough to have your own researcher or team of researchers? Often research is the kind of thing that\u2019s nice to have, or it can be cut from scope when doing the budget dance with a client. It often forms part of the discovery phase of a project and sometimes just becomes a tick-box exercise. But research isn\u2019t just user testing and it shouldn\u2019t just live in a report on Basecamp that no one reads. I would argue that research and experimentation is a way of working or an approach to how you design. Research can be used during the whole design process and must be a vital part of a designer\u2019s workflow on every project. Even if you work in a small studio, you can still create a culture of audience insight. Even if you work on your own, you can still absorb yourself in as much audience data as you can throughout the project life cycle. Here\u2019s how.\n\nResearch is everyone\u2019s job\n\nThere is a subtle difference between writing a research report and delivering it to a client, and them actually using it and applying the insights to their thought process. In my experience of working in the audiences team at the BBC, research was most effective when the role was embedded in the production team and insights were used as part of the editorial process.\n\nIn this section I\u2019ll talk through some common problems you might encounter in a typical project life cycle and show you ways you can use research to help you. For the sake of this article, let\u2019s imagine that we\u2019re talking about a particular project here and not ongoing product development. The same principles can of course be applied then, but even if you work in-house rather than on the agency side, you\u2019re probably used to working on distinct projects or phases of work.\n\n1. Problem: I want to come up with a new product idea. \n\nSolution: Inspiration through insights.\n\nBefore you begin a new project, a good way of quickly absorbing all the existing knowledge that there maybe about a theme, product type or website is to literally surround yourself with it. This is especially relevant for new ideas or product development. Create an incident room if you can: fill the walls of your meeting room, the walls near your desk, or even just use a pinboard or online pinboard if space is tight or you\u2019re working with a dispersed team. The same process can be used throughout a project\u2019s or product life cycle \u2014 read about how MailChimp has applied this idea. \n\nLet\u2019s take a new product idea as an example. Say you wanted to develop a responsive tool for web designers but you weren\u2019t sure what aspect of responsive design to focus on. First of all, you should pose a hypothesis or problem statement to gather ideas around. For example: \u201cHow to speed up a designer\u2019s responsive workflow.\u201d You would then need to gather insights around this topic. You could run some interviews with freelance designers about how they work responsively. You could shadow a development team for the day to understand their processes. You could observe conversations on Twitter or IRC or wherever your target audience interact to see what people talk about. You could search out industry data and articles currently available.\n\nThe next stage is to comb through this data and extract insights from it. You can use good old Post-it notes and a sharpie: capture one insight or thought per Post-it. If one insight leads into another, use two Post-its. The objective is volume. Try to ensure clarity in each Post-it so you don\u2019t have to go back and reference material again (maybe you could use a key if you think it\u2019ll get confusing).\n\n\n\nAfter this, stick them all up and synthesise the same way you would for any kind of cluster or affinity sort. Organise into broad themes. These themes then become springboards for further exploration and idea generation. You might see a gap or opportunity in one particular area, both from a workflow perspective but also from a business perspective. Bingo. Your insights then become the fuel for ideas generation.\n\nThis method doesn\u2019t just have to be used for new products \u2014 it works particularly well in a discovery phase for new projects or for new features in an existing product. We\u2019re doing something similar for our own responsive tool, Gridset at the moment.\n\nResources:\n\n\n\tSticky Wisdom by Dave Allan, Matt Kingdon, Kris Murrin, Daz Rudkin\n\tThe Science of Serendipity by Matt Kingdon\n\tThe Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley\n\n\n2. Problem: You\u2019re starting a new project and need to know the basics before you get headlong into designing or building. \n\nSolution: Quantitative survey.\n\nCommon questions might be:\n\n\n\tWho are the users?\n\tHow many are there?\n\tWhat are they like?\n\tWhy do they use the site?\n\tWhat do they need from the site?\n\tWhat are their goals?\n\n\nPrint out and stick up what you already know and have in your project space or \u2018incident room\u2019: any reports you have found or been given, analytics graphs, personas, pen portraits, as well as screengrabs of the current website, product or branding. Spend time looking through it all and identify the gaps. \n\nIf you have very little existing audience data, a quick and easy way to get some baseline information is to run a quick user survey on a current website. You can establish basic demographic information, appreciation and views of the website as it stands, as well as delve a little deeper into needs and wants. This is also vital if you want some kind of trackable measures to go back to once you have designed and built your shiny new website for your client \u2014 read more in my article for 24 ways last year.)\n\n\n\nWe use surveys a lot at Mark Boulton Design for our client work. Here\u2019s a screen grab of one we ran in March on http://info.cern.ch before we redesigned the site and did the work on the First Website Project. We repeated the survey after the new website went live and were able to compare the results. Both surveys were a great source of insight to the project team as well as for the project stakeholders who needed to pitch the idea of the hack days and fundraise for them.\n\n\n\nOnce you\u2019ve run your survey, you should always write up a short summary for yourself and your client to refer to. If you\u2019re not a trained researcher, you should try to read up on analysis techniques or data visualisation. It can be easy to misinterpret data and make it bend to the story you are trying to tell. You should be looking for the story in the data and present it without bias. \n\nIf you\u2019re using the \u2018incident room\u2019 method I mentioned earlier on, you can also extract the insights onto post it notes and add them to your growing body of knowledge.\n\nResources: \n\n\n\tUsing Questionnaires for Design Research by Emma Boulton\n\tData-driven Design with an Annual Survey by Aarron Walter\n\tResearch Methods for Product Design by Alex Milton and Paul Rodgers\n\tA Practical Guide to Designing with Data by Brian Suda\n\n\n3. Problem: You have a prototype of a new design and you need some feedback from real users. \n\nSolution: User interviews and task based testing.\n\nInterviewing is a staple research method that every designer should master as it can be used throughout a project life cycle. Erika Hall recently wrote a great article on the basics for A List Apart. From stakeholder interviews in a discovery phase, to initial user research, right through to task based testing and iteration, interviews can be enormously helpful. They are very time-consuming, however, and although speaking to someone is better than speaking to no one, it\u2019s always better to plan to do a few interviews at once, rather than one or two. I generally find that patterns only start to emerge after I\u2019ve spoken to 4 or 5 people. Interviews are another thing we do a lot of at Mark Boulton Design. Most of the interviews we do are remote due to the location of our clients and their users. \n\n\n\nRigour is an important consideration in all research activities and especially if you\u2019re a non-researcher. Interviews particularly can be easily skewed by an inexperienced facilitator, which is why pairing can be a good approach. Building rapport, questioning, time keeping, note taking and thinking on your feet can be difficult to do all at once, so having a colleague take notes while you concentrate on leading the conversation can work really well. It\u2019s important for the note taker to sit in on more than one interview so that they get a more rounded view of the feedback. The same person should also be involved in the analysis of the data. \n\n\n\nInterviews can be analysed and written up in a report or summary as with other types of research. I often use the same kind of collaborative process detailed earlier for deciding on themes, particularly if multiple members of the team have been involved in interviewing. \n\nInterviews are particularly useful for our incident room and can provide much colour and insight to an exploratory process. I often find verbatim quotes to be the most insightful type of data. You might find that an inexperienced researcher (or designer who is used to solving problems) will jump to interpretation too soon and forget to just listen to what the interviewee is saying. Capturing the exact form of words a person uses can help get away from this.\n\nResources: \n\n\n\tInterviewing Humans by Erika Hall\n\tA Pocket Guide to Interviewing for Research by Andrew Travers\n\tInterviewing Users by Steve Portigal\n\n\n4. Problem: How successful have I been with this new design? \n\nSolution: Key performance indicators\n\nOnce your new design has been realised, it\u2019s important to evaluate it. What works, what doesn\u2019t work so well? As well as a straightforward design crit, don\u2019t forget to introduce audience insights into a review meeting or project wash up. \n\n\n\nWork out what your KPIs \u2014 your key performance indicators \u2014 will be beforehand and then you can start to track them over time. For example, number of visits, appreciation of the site, willingness to recommend the site to a friend, number of sales, and number of conversions are all sensible measures to track. Interviews can again be helpful but cold, hard numbers are often better here. Read Corey Vilhauer\u2019s take on this on A List Apart.\n\nConsistency is key here. If you have looked at your analytics and done a survey beforehand, you will have a baseline to start from. Don\u2019t keep changing your measures and questions, or your data will not be comparable. Pick a few key questions or a set of measures, create a survey and then run it once a month, once a quarter, every six months or annually. You\u2019ll start to see changes over time as the design beds in. You may see seasonal trends and spot patterns in the data related to other activities like marketing, promotion and so on. Keeping a record of all of this will increase your understanding of your audience. We\u2019ve created a satisfaction survey for Gridset with a number of measures that we track on an ongoing basis. MailChimp has also created an annual survey with the aim of tracking their audience measures over time\n\nResources:\n\n\n\tSearch Analytics by Louis Rosenfeld\n\tA Primer on A/B Testing by Lara Swanson\n\tLean UX by Jeff Gothelf\n\n\nAnyone can do research\n\nResearch can be brought into the project life cycle at any stage. And of course, anyone can do research \u2014 you don\u2019t need to be a researcher. Some of the main skills most designers possess are also key research skills: inquisitive nature, problem solving, playfulness, empathy, and so on.\n\nWe have a small team at Mark Boulton Design. Most of the team are designers and the rest of us focus on supporting the team and clients both in terms of billable work (research, content strategy, project management) as well as the non-billable things like finance and studio management.\n\nDespite my best intentions, in the past I\u2019ve undertaken research for clients in isolation \u2014 first being briefed by the design lead, carrying out the research and then delivering the findings back, trusting the design team to take the findings on board. This was often due to time and availability of resources.\n\nWe\u2019ve been trying hard to join up our processes and collaborate even more across the team. Undertaking heuristic or design reviews collaboratively; taking part in frequent critiques of our work and the work of others together; pairing a researcher and a designer to run interviews; workshopping results from interviews to come up with recommendations; working closely together on questionnaire design; shadowing each other on tasks that don\u2019t fall within our core skills. A little thing like moving our desks around has also helped us have more conversations that we can all be a part of.\n\n\n\nI\u2019ve come to the conclusion that my role as the research director at Mark Boulton Design is actually a facilitator of research. As well as carrying out research, I am responsible for ensuring that research happens consistently across the team. I am responsible for empowering and training our designers so they feel confident in carrying out their own user, audience or design research for clients. So they know what to look for, when to listen, when to probe and when to take note of something. So they know how to look for themes, how to synthesise insights from research and how to apply them to their work.\n\nBetter research leads to better design\n\nSo, are you a designer who can do research? Are you a researcher who can design? The best designers are a lucky combination of researcher and designer. If you\u2019re not one of those, look at ways of enhancing the skills you lack. Because there\u2019s no doubt in my mind, that becoming a better researcher will make you a better designer.\n\nGeneral resources: \n\n\n\tSeeing the Elephant by Louis Rosenfeld\n\tConnected UX by Aarron Walter\n\tBeyond Usability Testing by Devan Goldstein\n\tJust Enough Research by Erika Hall\n\tThe User Experience Team of One by Leah Buley\n\tUndercover User Experience Design by Cennydd Bowles and James Box\n\tA Pocket Guide to Psychology for Designers by Joe Leech\n\tA Pocket Guide to International User Research by Chui Chui Tan\n\tRemote Research by Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte\n\tA Pocket Guide to Experiments for Designers by Colin McFarland", "year": "2013", "author": "Emma Boulton", "author_slug": "emmaboulton", "published": "2013-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2013/bringing-design-and-research-closer-together/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 94, "title": "Using Questionnaires for Design Research", "contents": "How do you ask the right questions? \n\nIn this article, I share a bunch of tips and practical advice on how to write and use your own surveys for design research.\n\nI\u2019m an audience researcher \u2013 I\u2019m not a designer or developer. I\u2019ve spent much of the last thirteen years working with audience data both in creative agencies and on the client-side. I\u2019m also a member of the Market Research Society. I run user surveys and undertake user research for our clients at the design studio I run with my husband \u2013 Mark Boulton Design.\n\nSo let\u2019s get started!\n\nWho are you designing for?\n\nGood web designers and developers appreciate the importance of understanding the audience they are designing or building a website or app for. I\u2019m assuming that because you are reading a quality publication like 24 ways that you fall into this category, and so I won\u2019t begin this article with a lecture.\n\nSuffice it to say, it\u2019s a good idea to involve research of some sort during the life cycle of every project you undertake. I don\u2019t just mean visual or competitor research, which of course is also very important. I mean looking at or finding your own audience or user data. Whether that be auditing existing data or research available from the client, carrying out user interviews, A/B testing, or conducting a simple questionnaire with users, any research is better than none. If you create personas as a design tool, they should always be based on research, so you will need to have plenty of data to hand for that.\n\nWhere do I start?\n\nIn the initial kick-off stages of a project, it\u2019s a good idea to start by asking your client (when working in-house you still have a client \u2013 you might even be the client) what research or audience data they have available. Some will have loads \u2013 analytics, surveys, focus groups and insights \u2013 from talking to customers. Some won\u2019t have much at all and you\u2019ll be hard pressed to find out much about the audience. It\u2019s best to review existing research first without rushing headlong into doing new research. Get a picture of what the data tells you and perhaps get this into a document \u2013 who, what, why and how are they using this website or app? What gaps are there in existing research? What else do you need to know? Then you can decide what else you need to do to plug these gaps. Think about the information first before deciding on the methodology. The rest of my article talks mostly about running self-completion online surveys. You can of course do face-to-face surveys, self-completion written questionnaires or phone polls, but I won\u2019t cover those here. That\u2019s for another article.\n\nWhy run a survey?\n\nSurveys are great for getting a broad picture of your audience. As long as they are designed carefully, you can create an overview of them, how they use the site and their opinions of it, with an idea of which parts of this picture are more important than others. By using a limited amount of open-ended questions, you can also get some more qualitative feedback or insights on your website or app. The clients we work with surprisingly often don\u2019t have much in the way of audience research available, even basic analytics, so I will often suggest running a short survey, just to create a picture of who is out there.\n\nOK, what should I do first?\n\nBefore you rush into writing questions, stop and think about what you\u2019re trying to find out. Remember being in school when you studied science and you had to propose a hypothesis? This could be a starting point \u2013 something to prove or disprove. Or, even better, write a research brief. It doesn\u2019t have to be long; it can be just a sentence that encapsulates what you\u2019re trying to do, like a good creative brief. For the purposes of this article, I created a short, slightly silly survey on Christmas and beliefs in Father Christmas.\n\nMy research brief was:\n\n\n\tTo find out more about people\u2019s beliefs about Father Christmas and their experiences of Christmas.\n\n\nInevitably, as you start thinking of what questions to ask, you will find that you go off at tangents or your client will want you to add in everything but the kitchen sink. In order for your questionnaire not to get too long and lose focus, you could write lists of what it is and what it\u2019s not. This is how I\u2019d apply it to my Christmas questionnaire example:\n\nWhat it is about\n\n\n\tHow people communicate with Father Christmas\n\tIf someone\u2019s background has affected their likelihood of believing in Father Christmas\n\n\nWhat it is not about\n\n\n\tWhat colour to change Father Christmas\u2019s coat to\n\tFather Christmas\u2019s elves\n\n\nLet\u2019s get down to business: the questions. \n\nKinds of questions\n\nThere are two basic kinds of questions: open-ended and closed. Closed questions limit answers by giving the respondent a number of predefined lists of options to choose from. Typically, these are multiple-choice questions with a list of responses. You can either select one or tick all that apply. Another useful type of closed question I often use is a rating scale, where a respondent can assess a situation along a continuum of values. These can also be useful as a measure of advocacy or strength of feeling about something. There is a standard measure called the Net Promoter score, which measures how likely someone is to recommend your product or service to a friend or acquaintance. It\u2019s a useful benchmark as you can compare your scores to others in a similar sector.\n\n\n\nOpen-ended questions often take the form of a statement which requires a response. Generally, respondents are given a text box to fill in. It\u2019s useful to limit this in some way so that people have an idea of how long the expected response should be; for example, a single line for an email address (Q18), or a larger text area for a longer response (Q6).\n\nIf you plan to send your survey out to a large number of people, I would suggest using mostly closed questions, unless you want to spend a long time wading through comments and hand-coded responses. I\u2019d always advise adding a general request at the end of a survey (\u2018Is there anything else you\u2019d like to tell us?\u2019). You\u2019d be surprised how many interesting and insightful comments people will add.\n\nThere are times when it\u2019s better to provide an open-ended text box rather than a predefined list makes assumptions about your audience\u2019s groupings. For example, we ran a short survey for our Gridset beta testers and rather than assume we knew who they were, we decided to ask an open-ended question: \u201cWhat is your current job title?\u201d\n\n\n\nThe analysis took quite a bit longer than responses using a predefined list, but it meant that we were able to make sure we didn\u2019t miss anyone. And next time we run a survey for Gridset, I can use the responses gathered from this survey to help create a predefined list to make analysis easier.\n\nWhat to ask\n\nThe questions to ask depend on what you want to know, but your brief and lists of what the survey is and isn\u2019t should help here. I always ask the design team and client to give me ideas of what they are interested in finding out, and combine this with a mix of new and standard questions I have used in other surveys. I find Survey Monkey\u2019s question bank a very useful source of example questions and help with tricky wording.\n\nI always include simple demographics so I can compare my results to the population at large or internet users as a whole \u2013 just going on age, gender and location can be quite illuminating. For example, with the Christmas survey, I can see that the respondents were typical of the online design and dev community, mainly young and male.\n\nIf appropriate, I add questions on disability, ethnic background, religion and community of interest. Questions about ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, disability and other sensitive subjects can feel awkward and difficult to ask. This is not a good reason to not ask them. Perhaps you\u2019re working for a public sector client, like a local council, so it\u2019s likely you will need to consider groups of people who maybe under-represented, who may have differing views to others, or who you need to look at specifically as a subset.\n\nHow to ask\n\nAlthough they may seem clunky and wordy, it\u2019s often best to use the census wording or professional body wording for such demographic questions. For example, I used the UK census 2011 wording for Wales on my Christmas questionnaire in my questions on religion [PDF] (Q16) and ethnicity [PDF] (Q17). I had to adapt them slightly for the Survey Monkey format \u2013 self-completion online, rather than pen and paper \u2013 which is why \u201cWhite Welsh\u201d came up as the first option for the ethnicity question. For similar questions for US audiences, try the Census Bureau website.\n\nWhen conducting a survey for a project that has a global audience, you need to consider who your primary audience is. For example, I recently created a questionnaire for a global news website. A large proportion of its audience is based in the USA, so I was careful to word things in a way Americans would find familiar. I used the US ethnic background census question wording and options, and looked at data for US competitor news websites to decide which to include.\n\nYou should also consider people whose first language isn\u2019t English. Working as an audience researcher at BBC Wales, every survey we did was bilingual. I\u2019ve also recently run a user survey in Arabic using Google Forms. During this project, we found that while Survey Monkey supports different languages, including Arabic, the text ran left to right with no option to change it to right to left \u2013 an essential when it comes to reading Arabic! If research is a deliverable in a client project, and you know you\u2019ll need to conduct it in a foreign language, always build in extra time for translation at both the questionnaire design and analysis stages. Make sure you also allow for plenty of checks. In this case we had to change to Google Forms after initially creating our survey with Survey Monkey to get the functionality we needed.\n\nLook and feel\n\nThink about the survey as another way your audience will experience your brand. Take care getting the tone of voice right. There are plenty of great articles and books out there about tone of voice \u2013 try Letting Go of the Words by Ginny Redish for starters, or Brand Language by Liz Doig. The basic rule of thumb is to sound like a human, and use clear and friendly language. If, like me, you are lucky enough to work with journalists or copy editors, you should ask for their help, particularly in the preamble, linking text and closing statements. I find it helpful to break my questions down into sections and to have a page for each. I then have an introductory piece of text for each section to guide the respondent through the survey.\n\nYou should also make sure you check with your designers how your survey looks \u2013 use a company logo and branding, and make the typography legible. Many survey apps like Survey Monkey and Google Forms have a progress bar. This is helpful for users to see how far through your survey they are. I generally time the survey and give an indication in the preamble: \u201cThis survey will only take five minutes of your time.\u201d\n\nYou also need to think about how you will technically serve the questionnaire. For example, will it be via email, social media, a pop-up or lightbox on your website, or (not recommended but possible) in an ad space?\n\nEthical considerations\n\nSomething else to think about are any local laws that govern how you collect and store data, such as the Data Protection Act in the UK. As a member of the Market Research Society, I am also obliged to consider its guidelines, but even if you\u2019re not, it\u2019s always a good idea to deal with personal data ethically.\n\nIf you collect personal data that can identify individuals, you must ask their permission to share it with others, and store it securely for no longer than two years. If you want to contact people afterwards, you must ask for their permission. If you ask for email addresses, as I did in question 18, you have a ready-made sample for a further survey, interviews or focus groups. Remember, you shouldn\u2019t survey people under sixteen years old without the permission of their parents or legal guardians, so if you know your website is likely to be used by children, you must ask for verification of age early on, and your survey should close someone answers that they are under sixteen. The ESOMAR guidelines for online research [PDF] are well worth reading, as they go into detail about such issues, as well as privacy guidelines \u2013 using cookies, storing IP addresses, and so on.\n\nTools\n\nUnless you work in-house and have proprietary software, or at a market research agency and you\u2019re using specialist software such as Snap or IBM SPSS Statistics (previously just SPSS), you will need to use a good tool to run your survey, collect your responses and, ideally, help with the analysis. I like Survey Monkey because of the question bank and analysis tools. The software graphs your results and does simple cross-tabbing and filtering. What this means is you can slice the data in more interesting ways and delve a bit deeper. For example, in the Gridset questionnaire I mentioned earlier, I cross-tabbed responses to questions against whether a person worked in-house, for an agency or as a freelancer. \n\nOther well known online tools that I also use from time to time are Wufoo and Google Forms. Smart Surveys is a similar service to Survey Monkey and it\u2019s used by many leading brands in the UK. Snap Surveys mentioned above is a well-established player in the market research scene, used a lot for face-to-face surveys and also on tablets and smartphones.\n\nAnalysis\n\nAnalysis is often overlooked but is as important as the design of the questionnaire. Don\u2019t just rely on looking at the summary report and charts generated as standard by your form or survey software. Spend time with your data. Spend at least a week now and then if you can, looking at the data. Keep coming back to it and tweaking or cutting it a different way to see if there are any different pictures. Slice it up in different ways to reveal new insights. Here is the data from my dummy survey (apart from the open-ended responses). \n\nFor open-ended questions, you can analyse collaboratively. Print and cut out the open-ended responses and do a cluster analysis or affinity sort with a colleague. \n\n\n\nDiscussing the comments helps you to understand them. You will also find the design team are more likely to buy into the research as they have uncovered the insights for themselves. Always make sure to treat open-ended responses sensitively and don\u2019t share anything publicly in a way that identifies the respondent.\n\nWrite a report\n\nNever hand over a dataset to your client without a summary of the findings. Data on its own can be skewed to suit the reader\u2019s needs, and not everyone is able to find the story in a dataset. Even if it\u2019s not a deliverable, it\u2019s always a good idea to capture your findings in a report of some sort. Use graphs sparingly to show really interesting things or to aid the reader\u2019s understanding. I have written a quick dummy report using the data from the Christmas questionnaire so you can see how it\u2019s done.\n\nI highly recommend Brian Suda\u2019s book A Practical Guide to Designing with Data for tips on how to present data effectively, but that\u2019s a subject that benefits a whole article (indeed book) in itself. \n\nI am not a designer. I am a researcher, so I never write design recommendations in a report unless they have been talked about or suggested by the designers I work with. More often, I write up the results and we talk about them and what impact they have on the project or design. Often they lead to more questions or further research.\n\nSo that\u2019s it: a brief introduction to using questionnaires for design research. Here\u2019s a quick summary to remind you what I have talked about, and a list of resources if you\u2019re interested in reading further.\n\nTop 10 things to remember when using questionnaires for design research:\n\n\n\tStart by auditing existing research to identify gaps in data.\n\tWrite a research brief. Work out exactly what you\u2019re trying to find out \u2013 what is the survey about, and what is it not about?\n\tThe two basic kinds of questions are open-ended and closed.\n\tClosed questions limit responses by giving the respondent a number of predefined lists of options to choose from (multiple choice, rating scales, and so on).\n\tOpen-ended questions are often in the form of a statement which requires a response. Always ask one at the end of a questionnaire.\n\tAlways include simple demographics to enable you to compare your sample against the population in general.\n\tIt\u2019s best to use official census or professional body wording for questions on ethnicity, disability and religion.\n\tBe sure to think carefully about your tone of voice and the look of your questionnaire.\n\tPay attention to guidelines and laws on storing personal data, cookies and privacy.\n\tInvest plenty of time in analysis and report writing. Don\u2019t just look at the obvious \u2013 dig deep for more interesting insights.\n\n\nSome useful resources for further study\n\nOnline research\n\n\n\tDesign Research: Methods and Perspectives edited by Brenda Laurel\n\tOnline Research Essentials by Brenda Russell and John Purcell\n\tHandbook of Online and Social Media Research by Ray Poynter\n\tESOMAR guidelines for online research [PDF]\n\tOnline questionnaires\n\n\nMarket research books on questionnaire design\n\n\n\tUsing Questionnaires in Small-Scale Research: A Beginner\u2019s Guide by Pamela Munn\n\tQuestionnaire Design by A N Oppenheim\n\tDeveloping a Questionnaire by Bill Gillham", "year": "2012", "author": "Emma Boulton", "author_slug": "emmaboulton", "published": "2012-12-14T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/using-questionnaires-for-design-research/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 15, "title": "Git for Grown-ups", "contents": "You are a clever and talented person. You create beautiful designs, or perhaps you have architected a system that even my cat could use. Your peers adore you. Your clients love you. But, until now, you haven\u2019t *&^#^! been able to make Git work. It makes you angry inside that you have to ask your co-worker, again, for that *&^#^! command to upload your work.\n\nIt\u2019s not you. It\u2019s Git. Promise.\n\nYes, this is an article about the popular version control system, Git. But unlike just about every other article written about Git, I\u2019m not going to give you the top five commands that you need to memorize; and I\u2019m not going to tell you all your problems would be solved if only you were using this GUI wrapper or that particular workflow. You see, I\u2019ve come to a grand realization: when we teach Git, we\u2019re doing it wrong.\n\nLet me back up for a second and tell you a little bit about the field of adult education. (Bear with me, it gets good and will leave you feeling both empowered and righteous.) Andragogy, unlike pedagogy, is a learner-driven educational experience. There are six main tenets to adult education: \n\n\n\tAdults prefer to know why they are learning something.\n\tThe foundation of the learning activities should include experience.\n\tAdults prefer to be able to plan and evaluate their own instruction.\n\tAdults are more interested in learning things which directly impact their daily activities.\n\tAdults prefer learning to be oriented not towards content, but towards problems.\n\tAdults relate more to their own motivators than to external ones.\n\n\nNowhere in this list does it include \u201cmemorize the five most popular Git commands\u201d. And yet this is how we teach version control: init, add, commit, branch, push. You\u2019re an expert! Sound familiar? In the hierarchy of learning, memorizing commands is the lowest, or most basic, form of learning. At the peak of learning you are able to not just analyze and evaluate a problem space, but create your own understanding in relation to your existing body of knowledge.\n\n\u201cFine,\u201d I can hear you saying to yourself. \u201cBut I\u2019m here to learn about version control.\u201d Right you are! So how can we use this knowledge to master Git? First of all: I give you permission to use Git as a tool. A tool which you control and which you assign tasks to. A tool like a hammer, or a saw. Yes, your mastery of your tools will shape the kinds of interactions you have with your work, and your peers. But it\u2019s yours to control. Git was written by kernel developers for kernel development. The web world has adopted Git, but it is not a tool designed for us and by us. It\u2019s no Sass, y\u2019know? Git wasn\u2019t developed out of our frustration with managing CSS files in an increasingly complex ecosystem of components and atomic design. So, as you work through the next part of this article, give yourself a bit of a break. We\u2019re in this together, and it\u2019s going to be OK.\n\nWe\u2019re going to do a little activity. We\u2019re going to create your perfect Git cheatsheet.\n\nI want you to start by writing down a list of all the people on your code team. This list may include:\n\n\n\tdevelopers\n\tdesigners\n\tproject managers\n\tclients\n\n\nNext, I want you to write down a list of all the ways you interact with your team. Maybe you\u2019re a solo developer and you do all the tasks. Maybe you only do a few things. But I want you to write down a list of all the tasks you\u2019re actually responsible for. For example, my list looks like this:\n\n\n\twriting code\n\treviewing code\n\tpublishing tested code to your server(s)\n\ttroubleshooting broken code\n\n\nThe next list will end up being a series of boxes in a diagram. But to start, I want you to write down a list of your tools and constraints. This list potentially has a lot of noun-like items and verb-like items:\n\n\n\tcode hosting system (Bitbucket? GitHub? Unfuddle? self-hosted?)\n\tserver ecosystem (dev/staging/live)\n\tautomated testing systems or review gates\n\tautomated build systems (that Jenkins dude people keep referring to)\n\n\nBrilliant! Now you\u2019ve got your actors and your actions, it\u2019s time to shuffle them into a diagram. There are many popular workflow patterns. None are inherently right or wrong; rather, some are more or less appropriate for what you are trying to accomplish.\n\nCentralized workflow\n\nEveryone saves to a single place. This workflow may mean no version control, or a very rudimentary version control system which only ever has a single copy of the work available to the team at any point in time.\n\n \n\nBranching workflow\n\nEveryone works from a copy of the same place, merging their changes into the main copy as their work is completed. Think of the branches as a motorcycle sidecar: they\u2019re along for the ride and probably cannot exist in isolation of the main project for long without serious danger coming to the either the driver or sidecar passenger. Branches are a fundamental concept in version control \u2014 they allow you to work on new features, bug fixes, and experimental changes within a single repository, but without forcing the changes onto others working from the same branch.\n\n \n\nForking workflow\n\nEveryone works from their own, independent repository. A fork is an exact duplicate of a repository that a developer can make their own changes to. It can be kept up to date with additional changes made in other repositories, but it cannot force its changes onto another\u2019s repository. A fork is a complete repository which can use its own workflow strategies. If developers wish to merge their work with the main project, they must make a request of some kind (submit a patch, or a pull request) which the project collaborators may choose to adopt or reject. This workflow is popular for open source projects as it enforces a review process.\n\n \n\nGitflow workflow\n\nA specific workflow convention which includes five streams of parallel coding efforts: master, development, feature branches, release branches, and hot fixes. This workflow is often simplified down to a few elements by web teams, but may be used wholesale by software product teams. The original article describing this workflow was written by Vincent Driessen back in January 2010.\n\n \n\nBut these workflows aren\u2019t about you yet, are they? So let\u2019s make the connections.\n\nFrom the list of people on your team you identified earlier, draw a little circle. Give each of these circles some eyes and a smile. Now I want you to draw arrows between each of these people in the direction that code (ideally) flows. Does your designer create responsive prototypes which are pushed to the developer? Draw an arrow to represent this.\n\nChances are high that you don\u2019t just have people on your team, but you also have some kind of infrastructure. Hopefully you wrote about it earlier. For each of the servers and code repositories in your infrastructure, draw a square. Now, add to your diagram the relationships between the people and each of the machines in the infrastructure. Who can deploy code to the live server? How does it really get there? I bet it goes through some kind of code hosting system, such as GitHub. Draw in those arrows.\n\nBut wait!\n\nThe code that\u2019s on your development machine isn\u2019t the same as the live code. This is where we introduce the concept of a branch in version control. In Git, a repository contains all of the code (sort of). A branch is a fragment of the code that has been worked on in isolation to the other branches within a repository. Often branches will have elements in common. When we compare two (or more) branches, we are asking about the difference (or diff) between these two slivers. Often the master branch is used on production, and the development branch is used on our dev server. The difference between these two branches is the untested code that is not yet deployed.\n\nOn your diagram, see if you can colour-code according to the branch names at each of the locations within your infrastructure. You might find it useful to make a few different copies of the diagram to isolate each of the tasks you need to perform. For example: our team has a peer review process that each branch must go through before it is merged into the shared development branch.\n\nFinally, we are ready to add the Git commands necessary to make sense of the arrows in our diagram. If we are bringing code to our own workstation we will issue one of the following commands: clone (the first time we bring code to our workstation) or pull. Remembering that a repository contains all branches, we will issue the command checkout to switch from one branch to another within our own workstation. If we want to share a particular branch with one of our team mates, we will push this branch back to the place we retrieved it from (the origin). Along each of the arrows in your diagram, write the name of the command you are are going to use when you perform that particular task.\n\n \n\nFrom here, it\u2019s up to you to be selfish. Before asking Git what command it would like you to use, sketch the diagram of what you want. Git is your tool, you are not Git\u2019s tool. Draw the diagram. Communicate your tasks with your team as explicitly as you can. Insist on being a selfish adult learner \u2014 demand that others explain to you, in ways that are relevant to you, how to do the things you need to do today.", "year": "2013", "author": "Emma Jane Westby", "author_slug": "emmajanewestby", "published": "2013-12-04T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2013/git-for-grownups/", "topic": "code"} {"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": 52, "title": "Git Rebasing: An Elfin Workshop Workflow", "contents": "This year Santa\u2019s helpers have been tasked with making a garland. It\u2019s a pretty simple task: string beads onto yarn in a specific order. When the garland reaches a specific length, add it to the main workshop garland. Each elf has a specific sequence they\u2019re supposed to chain, which is given to them via a work order. (This is starting to sound like one of those horrible calculus problems. I promise it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s worse; it\u2019s about Git.)\nFor the most part, the system works really well. The elves are able to quickly build up a shared chain because each elf specialises on their own bit of garland, and then links the garland together. Because of this they\u2019re able to work independently, but towards the common goal of making a beautiful garland.\nAt first the elves are really careful with each bead they put onto the garland. They check with one another before merging their work, and review each new link carefully. As time crunches on, the elves pour a little more cheer into the eggnog cooler, and the quality of work starts to degrade. Tensions rise as mistakes are made and unkind words are said. The elves quickly realise they\u2019re going to need a system to change the beads out when mistakes are made in the chain.\nThe first common mistake is not looking to see what the latest chain is that\u2019s been added to the main garland. The garland is huge, and it sits on a roll in one of the corners of the workshop. It\u2019s a big workshop, so it is incredibly impractical to walk all the way to the roll to check what the last link is on the chain. The elves, being magical, have set up a monitoring system that allows them to keep a local copy of the main garland at their workstation. It\u2019s an imperfect system though, so the elves have to request a manual refresh to see the latest copy. They can request a new copy by running the command\ngit pull --rebase=preserve\n(They found that if they ran git pull on its own, they ended up with weird loops of extra beads off the main garland, so they\u2019ve opted to use this method.) This keeps the shared garland up to date, which makes things a lot easier. A visualisation of the rebase process is available.\nThe next thing the elves noticed is that if they worked on the main workshop garland, they were always running into problems when they tried to share their work back with the rest of the workshop. It was fine if they were working late at night by themselves, but in the middle of the day, it was horrible. (I\u2019ve been asked not to talk about that time the fight broke out.) Instead of trying to share everything on their local copy of the main garland, the elves have realised it\u2019s a lot easier to work on a new string and then knot this onto the main garland when their pattern repeat is finished. They generate a new string by issuing the following commands:\ngit checkout master\ngit checkout -b 1234_pattern-name\n1234 represents the work order number and pattern-name describes the pattern they\u2019re adding. Each bead is then added to the new link (git add bead.txt) and locked into place (git commit). Each elf repeats this process until the sequence of beads described in the work order has been added to their mini garland.\nTo combine their work with the main garland, the elves need to make a few decisions. If they\u2019re making a single strand, they issue the following commands:\ngit checkout master\ngit merge --ff-only 1234_pattern-name\nTo share their work they publish the new version of the main garland to the workshop spool with the command git push origin master.\nSometimes this fails. Sharing work fails because the workshop spool has gotten new links added since the elf last updated their copy of the main workshop spool. This makes the elves both happy and sad. It makes them happy because it means the other elves have been working too, but it makes them sad because they now need to do a bit of extra work to close their work order. \nTo update the local copy of the workshop spool, the elf first unlinks the chain they just linked by running the command:\ngit reset --merge ORIG_HEAD\nThis works because the garland magic notices when the elves are doing a particularly dangerous thing and places a temporary, invisible bookmark to the last safe bead in the chain before the dangerous thing happened. The garland no longer has the elf\u2019s work, and can be updated safely. The elf runs the command git pull --rebase=preserve and the changes all the other elves have made are applied locally.\nWith these new beads in place, the elf now has to restring their own chain so that it starts at the right place. To do this, the elf turns back to their own chain (git checkout 1234_pattern-name) and runs the command git rebase master. Assuming their bead pattern is completely unique, the process will run and the elf\u2019s beads will be restrung on the tip of the main workshop garland.\nSometimes the magic fails and the elf has to deal with merge conflicts. These are kind of annoying, so the elf uses a special inspector tool to figure things out. The elf opens the inspector by running the command git mergetool to work through places where their beads have been added at the same points as another elf\u2019s beads. Once all the conflicts are resolved, the elf saves their work, and quits the inspector. They might need to do this a few times if there are a lot of new beads, so the elf has learned to follow this update process regularly instead of just waiting until they\u2019re ready to close out their work order.\nOnce their link is up to date, the elf can now reapply their chain as before, publish their work to the main workshop garland, and close their work order:\ngit checkout master\ngit merge --ff-only 1234_pattern-name\ngit push origin master\nGenerally this process works well for the elves. Sometimes, though, when they\u2019re tired or bored or a little drunk on festive cheer, they realise there\u2019s a mistake in their chain of beads. Fortunately they can fix the beads without anyone else knowing. These tools can be applied to the whole workshop chain as well, but it causes problems because the magic assumes that elves are only ever adding to the main chain, not removing or reordering beads on the fly. Depending on where the mistake is, the elf has a few different options.\nLet\u2019s pretend the elf has a sequence of five beads she\u2019s been working on. The work order says the pattern should be red-blue-red-blue-red.\n\nIf the sequence of beads is wrong (for example, blue-blue-red-red-red), the elf can remove the beads from the chain, but keep the beads in her workstation using the command git reset --soft HEAD~5.\n\nIf she\u2019s been using the wrong colours and the wrong pattern (for example, green-green-yellow-yellow-green), she can remove the beads from her chain and discard them from her workstation using the command git reset --hard HEAD~5.\n\nIf one of the beads is missing (for example, red-blue-blue-red), she can restring the beads using the first method, or she can use a bit of magic to add the missing bead into the sequence.\n\nUsing a tool that\u2019s a bit like orthoscopic surgery, she first selects a sequence of beads which contains the problem. A visualisation of this process is available.\nStart the garland surgery process with the command:\ngit rebase --interactive HEAD~4\nA new screen comes up with the following information (the oldest bead is on top):\npick c2e4877 Red bead\npick 9b5555e Blue bead\npick 7afd66b Blue bead\npick e1f2537 Red bead\nThe elf adjusts the list, changing \u201cpick\u201d to \u201cedit\u201d next to the first blue bead:\npick c2e4877 Red bead\nedit 9b5555e Blue bead\npick 7afd66b Blue bead\npick e1f2537 Red bead\nShe then saves her work and quits the editor. The garland magic has placed her back in time at the moment just after she added the first blue bead.\n\nShe needs to manually fix up her garland to add the new red bead. If the beads were files, she might run commands like vim beads.txt and edit the file to make the necessary changes.\nOnce she\u2019s finished her changes, she needs to add her new bead to the garland (git add --all) and lock it into place (git commit). This time she assigns the commit message \u201cRed bead \u2013 added\u201d so she can easily find it.\n\nThe garland magic has replaced the bead, but she still needs to verify the remaining beads on the garland. This is a mostly automatic process which is started by running the command git rebase --continue.\nThe new red bead has been assigned a position formerly held by the blue bead, and so the elf must deal with a merge conflict. She opens up a new program to help resolve the conflict by running git mergetool.\n\nShe knows she wants both of these beads in place, so the elf edits the file to include both the red and blue beads.\n\nWith the conflict resolved, the elf saves her changes and quits the mergetool.\nBack at the command line, the elf checks the status of her work using the command git status.\nrebase in progress; onto 4a9cb9d\nYou are currently rebasing branch '2_RBRBR' on '4a9cb9d'.\n (all conflicts fixed: run \"git rebase --continue\")\n\nChanges to be committed:\n (use \"git reset HEAD ...\" to unstage)\n\n modified: beads.txt\n\nUntracked files:\n (use \"git add ...\" to include in what will be committed)\n\n beads.txt.orig\nShe removes the file added by the mergetool with the command rm beads.txt.orig and commits the edits she just made to the bead file using the commands:\ngit add beads.txt\ngit commit --message \"Blue bead -- resolved conflict\"\n\nWith the conflict resolved, the elf is able to continue with the rebasing process using the command git rebase --continue. There is one final conflict the elf needs to resolve. Once again, she opens up the visualisation tool and takes a look at the two conflicting files.\n\nShe incorporates the changes from the left and right column to ensure her bead sequence is correct.\n\nOnce the merge conflict is resolved, the elf saves the file and quits the mergetool. Once again, she cleans out the backup file added by the mergetool (rm beads.txt.orig) and commits her changes to the garland:\ngit add beads.txt\ngit commit --message \"Red bead -- resolved conflict\"\nand then runs the final verification steps in the rebase process (git rebase --continue).\n\nThe verification process runs through to the end, and the elf checks her work using the command git log --oneline.\n9269914 Red bead -- resolved conflict\n4916353 Blue bead -- resolved conflict\naef0d5c Red bead -- added\n9b5555e Blue bead\nc2e4877 Red bead\nShe knows she needs to read the sequence from bottom to top (the oldest bead is on the bottom). Reviewing the list she sees that the sequence is now correct.\nSometimes, late at night, the elf makes new copies of the workshop garland so she can play around with the bead sequencer just to see what happens. It\u2019s made her more confident at restringing beads when she\u2019s found real mistakes. And she doesn\u2019t mind helping her fellow elves when they run into trouble with their beads. The sugar cookies they leave her as thanks don\u2019t hurt either. If you would also like to play with the bead sequencer, you can get a copy of the branches the elf worked.\n\nOur lessons from the workshop:\n\nBy using rebase to update your branches, you avoid merge commits and keep a clean commit history.\nIf you make a mistake on one of your local branches, you can use reset to take commits off your branch. If you want to save the work, but uncommit it, add the parameter --soft. If you want to completely discard the work, use the parameter, --hard.\nIf you have merged working branch changes to the local copy of your master branch and it is preventing you from pushing your work to a remote repository, remove these changes using the command reset with the parameter --merge ORIG_HEAD before updating your local copy of the remote master branch.\nIf you want to make a change to work that was committed a little while ago, you can use the command rebase with the parameter --interactive. You will need to include how many commits back in time you want to review.", "year": "2015", "author": "Emma Jane Westby", "author_slug": "emmajanewestby", "published": "2015-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/git-rebasing/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 262, "title": "Be the Villain", "contents": "Inclusive Design is the practice of making products and services accessible to, and usable by as many people as reasonably possible without the need for specialized accommodations. The practice was popularized by author and User Experience Design Director Kat Holmes. If getting you to discover her work is the only thing this article succeeds in doing then I\u2019ll consider it a success.\nAs a framework for creating resilient solutions to problems, Inclusive Design is incredible. However, the aimless idealistic aspirations many of its newer practitioners default to can oftentimes run into trouble. Without outlining concrete, actionable outcomes that are then vetted by the people you intend to serve, there is the potential to do more harm than good. \nWhen designing, you take a user flow and make sure it can\u2019t be broken. Ensuring that if something is removed, it can be restored. Or that something editable can also be updated at a later date\u2014you know, that kind of thing. What we want to do is avoid surprises. Much like a water slide with a section of pipe missing, a broken flow forcibly ejects a user, to great surprise and frustration. Interactions within a user flow also have to be small enough to be self-contained, so as to avoid creating a none pizza with left beef scenario.\nLately, I\u2019ve been thinking about how to expand on this practice. Watertight user flows make for a great immediate experience, but it\u2019s all too easy to miss the forest for the trees when you\u2019re a product designer focused on cranking out features. \nWhat I\u2019m concerned about is while to trying to envision how a user flow could be broken, you also think about how it could be subverted. In addition to preventing the removal of a section of water slide, you also keep someone from mugging the user when they shoot out the end.\nIf you pay attention, you\u2019ll start to notice this subversion with increasing frequency:\n\nDomestic abusers using internet-controlled devices to spy on and control their partner.\nZealots tanking a business\u2019 rating on Google because its owners spoke out against unchecked gun violence.\nForcing people to choose between TV or stalking because the messaging center portion of a cable provider\u2019s entertainment package lacks muting or blocking features.\nWhite supremacists tricking celebrities into endorsing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.\nFacebook repeatedly allowing housing, credit, and employment advertisers to discriminate against users by their race, ability, and religion.\nWhite supremacists also using a video game chat service as a recruiting tool.\nThe unchecked harassment of minors on Instagram.\nSwatting.\n\nIf I were to guess why we haven\u2019t heard more about this problem, I\u2019d say that optimistically, people have settled out of court. Pessimistically, it\u2019s most likely because we ignore, dismiss, downplay, and suppress those who try to bring it to our attention. \nSubverted design isn\u2019t the practice of employing Dark Patterns to achieve your business goals. If you are not familiar with the term, Dark Patterns are the use of cheap user interface tricks and psychological manipulation to get users to act against their own best interests. User Experience consultant Chris Nodder wrote Evil By Design, a fantastic book that unpacks how to detect and think about them, if you\u2019re interested in this kind of thing\nSubverted design also isn\u2019t beholden design, or simple lack of attention. This phenomenon isn\u2019t even necessarily premeditated. I think it arises from na\u00efve (or willfully ignorant) design decisions being executed at a historically unprecedented pace and scale. These decisions are then preyed on by the shrewd and opportunistic, used to control and inflict harm on the undeserving. Have system, will game.\nThis is worth discussing. As the field of design continues to industrialize empathy, it also continues to ignore the very established practice of threat modeling. Most times, framing user experience in terms of how to best funnel people into a service comes with an implicit agreement that the larger system that necessitates the service is worth supporting. \nTo achieve success in the eyes of their superiors, designers may turn to emotional empathy exercises. By projecting themselves into the perceived surface-level experiences of others, they play-act at understanding how to nudge their targeted demographics into a conversion funnel. This roleplaying exercise has the effect of scoping concerns to the immediate, while simultaneously reinforcing the idea of engagement at all cost within the identified demographic.\nThe thing is, pure engagement leaves the door wide open for bad actors. Even within the scope of a limited population, the assumption that everyone entering into the funnel is acting with good intentions is a poor one. Security researchers, network administrators, and other professionals who practice threat modeling understand that the opposite is true. By preventing everyone save for well-intentioned users from operating a system within the parameters you set for them, you intentionally limit the scope of abuse that can be enacted.\nDon\u2019t get me wrong: being able to escort as many users as you can to the happy path is a foundational skill. But we should also be having uncomfortable conversations about why something unthinkable may in fact not be. \nThey\u2019re not going to be fun conversations. It\u2019s not going to be easy convincing others that these aren\u2019t paranoid delusions best tucked out of sight in the darkest, dustiest corner of the backlog. Realistically, talking about it may even harm your career.\nBut consider the alternative. The controlled environment of the hypothetical allows us to explore these issues without propagating harm. Better to be viewed as the office\u2019s resident villain than to have to live with something like this:\n\nIf the past few years have taught us anything, it\u2019s that the choices we make\u2014or avoid making\u2014have consequences. Design has been doing a lot of growing up as of late, including waking up to the idea that technology isn\u2019t neutral. \nYou\u2019re going to have to start thinking the way a monster does\u2014if you can imagine it, chances are someone else can as well. To get into this kind of mindset, inverting the Inclusive Design Principles is a good place to start:\n\nProviding a comparable experience becomes forcing a single path.\nConsidering situation becomes ignoring circumstance.\nBeing consistent becomes acting capriciously.\nGiving control becomes removing autonomy. \nOffering choice becomes limiting options. \nPrioritizing content becomes obfuscating purpose.\nAdding value becomes filling with gibberish. \n\nCombined, these inverted principles start to paint a picture of something we\u2019re all familiar with: a half-baked, unscrupulous service that will jump at the chance to take advantage of you. This environment is also a perfect breeding ground for spawning bad actors.\nThese kinds of services limit you in the ways you can interact with them. They kick you out or lock you in if you don\u2019t meet their unnamed criteria. They force you to parse layout, prices, and policies that change without notification or justification. Their controls operate in ways that are unexpected and may shift throughout the experience. Their terms are dictated to you, gaslighting you to extract profit. Heaps of jargon and flashy, unnecessary features are showered on you to distract from larger structural and conceptual flaws.\nSo, how else can we go about preventing subverted design? Marli Mesibov, Content Strategist and Managing Editor of UX Booth, wrote a brilliant article about how to use Dark Patterns for good\u2014perhaps the most important takeaway being admitting you have a problem in the first place. \nAnother exercise is asking the question, \u201cWhat is the evil version of this feature?\u201d Ask it during the ideation phase. Ask it as part of acceptance criteria. Heck, ask it over lunch. I honestly don\u2019t care when, so long as the question is actually raised. \nIn keeping with the spirit of this article, we can also expand on this line of thinking. Author, scientist, feminist, and pacifist Ursula Franklin urges us to ask, \u201cWhose benefits? Whose risks?\u201d instead of \u201cWhat benefits? What risks?\u201d in her talk, When the Seven Deadly Sins Became the Seven Cardinal Virtues. Inspired by the talk, Ethan Marcotte discusses how this relates to the web platform in his powerful post, Seven into seven.\nFew things in this world are intrinsically altruistic or good\u2014it\u2019s just the nature of the beast. However, that doesn\u2019t mean we have to stand idly by when harm is created. If we can add terms like \u201canti-pattern\u201d to our professional vocabulary, we can certainly also incorporate phrases like \u201cabuser flow.\u201d \nDesign finally got a seat at the table. We should use this newfound privilege wisely. Listen to women. Listen to minorities, listen to immigrants, the unhoused, the less economically advantaged, and the less technologically-literate. Listen to the underrepresented and the underprivileged.\nSubverted design is a huge problem, likely one that will never completely go away. However, the more of us who put the hard work into being the villain, the more we can lessen the scope of its impact.", "year": "2018", "author": "Eric Bailey", "author_slug": "ericbailey", "published": "2018-12-06T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/be-the-villain/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 65, "title": "The Accessibility Mindset", "contents": "Accessibility is often characterized as additional work, hard to learn and only affecting a small number of people. Those myths have no logical foundation and often stem from outdated information or misconceptions.\nIndeed, it is an additional skill set to acquire, quite like learning new JavaScript frameworks, CSS layout techniques or new HTML elements. But it isn\u2019t particularly harder to learn than those other skills.\nA World Health Organization (WHO) report on disabilities states that,\n\n[i]ncluding children, over a billion people (or about 15% of the world\u2019s population) were estimated to be living with disability.\n\nBeing disabled is not as unusual as one might think. Due to chronic health conditions and older people having a higher risk of disability, we are also currently paving the cowpath to an internet that we can still use in the future.\nAccessibility has a very close relationship with usability, and advancements in accessibility often yield improvements in the usability of a website. Websites are also more adaptable to users\u2019 needs when they are built in an accessible fashion.\nBeyond the bare minimum\nIn the time of table layouts, web developers could create code that passed validation rules but didn\u2019t adhere to the underlying semantic HTML model. We later developed best practices, like using lists for navigation, and with HTML5 we started to wrap those lists in nav elements. Working with accessibility standards is similar. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 can inform your decision to make websites accessible and can be used to test that you met the success criteria. What it can\u2019t do is measure how well you met them. \nW3C developed a long list of techniques that can be used to make your website accessible, but you might find yourself in a situation where you need to adapt those techniques to be the most usable solution for your particular problem.\nThe checkbox below is implemented in an accessible way: The input element has an id and the label associated with the checkbox refers to the input using the for attribute. The hover area is shown with a yellow background and a black dotted border:\nOpen video\n \nThe label is clickable and the checkbox has an accessible description. Job done, right? Not really. Take a look at the space between the label and the checkbox:\nOpen video\n \nThe gutter is created using a right margin which pushes the label to the right. Users would certainly expect this space to be clickable as well. The simple solution is to wrap the label around the checkbox and the text:\nOpen video\n \nYou can also set the label to display:block; to further increase the clickable area:\nOpen video\n \nAnd while we\u2019re at it, users might expect the whole box to be clickable anyway. Let\u2019s apply the CSS that was on a wrapping div element to the label directly:\nOpen video\n \nThe result enhances the usability of your form element tremendously for people with lower dexterity, using a voice mouse, or using touch interfaces. And we only used basic HTML and CSS techniques; no JavaScript was added and not one extra line of CSS.\n \nButton Example\nThe button below looks like a typical edit button: a pencil icon on a real button element. But if you are using a screen reader or a braille keyboard, the button is just read as \u201cbutton\u201d without any indication of what this button is for.\nOpen video\n A screen reader announcing a button. Contains audio.\nThe code snippet shows why the button is not properly announced:\n\nAn icon font is used to display the icon and no text alternative is given. A possible solution to this problem is to use the title or aria-label attributes, which solves the alternative text use case for screen reader users:\nOpen video\n A screen reader announcing a button with a title.\nHowever, screen readers are not the only way people with and without disabilities interact with websites. For example, users can reset or change font families and sizes at will. This helps many users make websites easier to read, including people with dyslexia. Your icon font might be replaced by a font that doesn\u2019t include the glyphs that are icons. Additionally, the icon font may not load for users on slow connections, like on mobile phones inside trains, or because users decided to block external fonts altogether. The following screenshots show the mobile GitHub view with and without external fonts:\nThe mobile GitHub view with and without external fonts.\nEven if the title/aria-label approach was used, the lack of visual labels is a barrier for most people under those circumstances. One way to tackle this is using the old-fashioned img element with an appropriate alt attribute, but surprisingly not every browser displays the alternative text visually when the image doesn\u2019t load.\n\nProviding always visible text is an alternative that can work well if you have the space. It also helps users understand the meaning of the icons.\n\nThis also reads just fine in screen readers:\nOpen video\n A screen reader announcing the revised button.\nClever usability enhancements don\u2019t stop at a technical implementation level. Take the BBC iPlayer pages as an example: when a user navigates the \u201ccaptioned videos\u201d or \u201caudio description\u201d categories and clicks on one of the videos, captions or audio descriptions are automatically switched on. Small things like this enhance the usability and don\u2019t need a lot of engineering resources. It is more about connecting the usability dots for people with disabilities. Read more about the BBC iPlayer accessibility case study.\nMore information\nW3C has created several documents that make it easier to get the gist of what web accessibility is and how it can benefit everyone. You can find out \u201cHow People with Disabilities Use the Web\u201d, there are \u201cTips for Getting Started\u201d for developers, designers and content writers. And for the more seasoned developer there is a set of tutorials on web accessibility, including information on crafting accessible forms and how to use images in an accessible way.\nConclusion\nYou can only produce a web project with long-lasting accessibility if accessibility is not an afterthought. Your organization, your division, your team need to think about accessibility as something that is the foundation of your website or project. It needs to be at the same level as performance, code quality and design, and it needs the same attention. Users often don\u2019t notice when those fundamental aspects of good website design and development are done right. But they\u2019ll always know when they are implemented poorly.\nIf you take all this into consideration, you can create accessibility solutions based on the available data and bring accessibility to people who didn\u2019t know they\u2019d need it:\nOpen video\n \nIn this video from the latest Apple keynote, the Apple TV is operated by voice input through a remote. When the user asks \u201cWhat did she say?\u201d the video jumps back fifteen seconds and captions are switched on for a brief time. All three, the remote, voice input and captions have their roots in assisting people with disabilities. Now they benefit everyone.", "year": "2015", "author": "Eric Eggert", "author_slug": "ericeggert", "published": "2015-12-17T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/the-accessibility-mindset/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 154, "title": "Diagnostic Styling", "contents": "We\u2019re all used to using CSS to make our designs live and breathe, but there\u2019s another way to use CSS: to find out where our markup might be choking on missing accessibility features, targetless links, and just plain missing content. \n\nNote: the techniques discussed here mostly work in Firefox, Safari, and Opera, but not Internet Explorer. I\u2019ll explain why that\u2019s not really a problem near the end of the article \u2014 and no, the reason is not \u201ceveryone should just ignore IE anyway\u201d.\n\nBasic Diagnostics\n\nTo pick a simple example, suppose you want to call out all holdover font and center elements in a site. Simple: you just add the following to your styles.\n\nfont, center {outline: 5px solid red;}\n\nYou could take it further and add in a nice lime background or some such, but big thick red outlines should suffice. Now you\u2019ll be able to see the offenders wherever as you move through the site. (Of course, if you do this on your public server, everyone else will see the outlines too. So this is probably best done on a development server or local copy of the site.)\n\nNot everyone may be familiar with outlines, which were introduced in CSS2, so a word on those before we move on. Outlines are much like borders, except outlines don\u2019t affect layout. Eh? Here\u2019s a comparison.\n\n\n\nOn the left, you have a border. On the right, an outline. The border takes up layout space, pushing other content around and generally being a nuisance. The outline, on the other hand, just draws into quietly into place. In most current browsers, it will overdraw any content already onscreen, and will be overdrawn by any content placed later \u2014 which is why it overlaps the images above it, and is overlapped by those below it.\n\nOkay, so we can outline deprecated elements like font and center. Is that all? Oh no.\n\nAttribution\n\nLet\u2019s suppose you also want to find any instances of inline style \u2014 that is, use of the style attribute on elements in the markup. This is generally discouraged (outside of HTML e-mails, which I\u2019m not going to get anywhere near), as it\u2019s just another side of the same coin of using font: baking the presentation into the document structure instead of putting it somewhere more manageable. So:\n\n*[style], font, center {outline: 5px solid red;}\n\nAdding that attribute selector to the rule\u2019s grouped selector means that we\u2019ll now be outlining any element with a style attribute.\n\nThere\u2019s a lot more that attribute selectors will let use diagnose. For example, we can highlight any images that have empty alt or title text.\n\nimg[alt=\"\"] {border: 3px dotted red;}\nimg[title=\"\"] {outline: 3px dotted fuchsia;}\n\nNow, you may wonder why one of these rules calls for a border, and the other for an outline. That\u2019s because I want them to \u201cadd together\u201d \u2014 that is, if I have an image which possesses both alt and title, and the values of both are empty, then I want it to be doubly marked.\n\n\n\nSee how the middle image there has both red and fuchsia dots running around it? (And am I the only one who sorely misses the actual circular dots drawn by IE5/Mac?) That\u2019s due to its markup, which we can see here in a fragment showing the whole table row.\n\n\nempty title\n $\"\"$ \n $\"\"$ \n $\"comical\"$ \n\n\nRight, that\u2019s all well and good, but it misses a rather more serious situation: the selector img[alt=\"\"] won\u2019t match an img element that doesn\u2019t even have an alt attribute. How to tackle this problem?\n\nNot a Problem\n\nWell, if you want to select something based on a negative, you need a negative selector.\n\nimg:not([alt]) {border: 5px solid red;}\n\nThis is really quite a break from the rest of CSS selection, which is all positive: \u201cselect anything that has these characteristics\u201d. With :not(), we have the ability to say (in supporting browsers) \u201cselect anything that hasn\u2019t these characteristics\u201d. In the above example, only img elements that do not have an alt attribute will be selected. So we expand our list of image-related rules to read:\n\nimg[alt=\"\"] {border: 3px dotted red;}\nimg[title=\"\"] {outline: 3px dotted fuchsia;}\nimg:not([alt]) {border: 5px solid red;}\nimg:not([title]) {outline: 5px solid fuchsia;}\n\nWith the following results:\n\n\n\nWe could expand this general idea to pick up tables who lack a summary, or have an empty summary attribute.\n\ntable[summary=\"\"] {outline: 3px dotted red;}\ntable:not([summary]) {outline: 5px solid red;}\n\nWhen it comes to selecting header cells that lack the proper scope, however, we have a trickier situation. Finding headers with no scope attribute is easy enough, but what about those that have a scope attribute with an incorrect value?\n\nIn this case, we actually need to pull an on-off maneuver. This has us setting all th elements to have a highlight style, and then turn it off for the elements that meet our criteria.\n\nth {border: 2px solid red;}\nth[scope=\"col\"], th[scope=\"row\"] {border: none;}\n\nThis was necessary because of the way CSS selectors work. For example, consider this:\n\nth:not([scope=\"col\"]), th:not([scope=\"row\"]) {border: 2px solid red;}\n\nThat would select\u2026all th elements, regardless of their attrributes. That\u2019s because every th element doesn\u2019t have a scope of col, doesn\u2019t have a scope of row, or doesn\u2019t have either. There\u2019s no escaping this selector o\u2019 doom!\n\nThis limitation arises because :not() is limited to containing a single \u201cthing\u201d within its parentheses. You can\u2019t, for example, say \u201cselect all elements except those that are images which descend from list items\u201d. Reportedly, this limitation was imposed to make browser implementation of :not() easier.\n\nStill, we can make good use of :not() in the service of further diagnosing. Calling out links in trouble is a breeze:\n\na[href]:not([title]) {border: 5px solid red;}\na[title=\"\"] {outline: 3px dotted red;}\na[href=\"#\"] {background: lime;}\na[href=\"\"] {background: fuchsia;}\n\n\n\nHere we have a set that will call our attention to links missing title information, as well as links that have no valid target, whether through a missing URL or a JavaScript-driven page where there are no link fallbacks in the case of missing or disabled JavaScript (href=\"#\").\n\nAnd What About IE?\n\nAs I said at the beginning, much of what I covered here doesn\u2019t work in Internet Explorer, most particularly :not() and outline. (Oh, so basically everything? -Ed.)\n\nI can\u2019t do much about the latter. For the former, however, it\u2019s possible to hack your way around the problem by doing some layered on-off stuff. For example, for images, you replace the previously-shown rules with the following:\n\nimg {border: 5px solid red;}\nimg[alt][title] {border-width: 0;}\nimg[alt] {border-color: fuchsia;}\nimg[alt], img[title] {border-style: double;}\nimg[alt=\"\"][title],\nimg[alt][title=\"\"] {border-width: 3px;}\nimg[alt=\"\"][title=\"\"] {border-style: dotted;}\n\nIt won\u2019t have exactly the same set of effects, given the inability to use both borders and outlines, but will still highlight troublesome images.\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s also the case that IE6 and earlier lack support for even attribute selectors, whereas IE7 added pretty much all the attribute selector types there are, so the previous code block won\u2019t have any effect previous to IE7.\n\nIn a broader sense, though, these kinds of styles probably aren\u2019t going to be used in the wild, as it were. Diagnostic styles are something only you see as you work on a site, so you can make sure to use a browser that supports outlines and :not() when you\u2019re diagnosing. The fact that IE users won\u2019t see these styles is irrelevant since users of any browser probably won\u2019t be seeing these styles.\n\nPersonally, I always develop in Firefox anyway, thanks to its ability to become a full-featured IDE through the addition of extensions like Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar.\n\n\nYeah, About That\u2026\n\nIt\u2019s true that much of what I describe in this article is available in the WDT. I feel there are two advantages to writing your own set of diagnostic styles.\n\n\n\tWhen you write your own styles, you can define exactly what the visual results will be, and how they will interact. The WDT doesn\u2019t let you make its outlines thicker or change their colors.\n\tYou can combine a bunch of diagnostics into a single set of rules and add it to your site\u2019s style sheet during the diagnostic portion, thus ensuring they persist as you surf around. This can be done in the WDT, but it isn\u2019t as easy (and, at least for me, not as reliable).\n\n\nIt\u2019s also true that a markup validator will catch many of the errors I mentioned, such as missing alt and summary attributes. For some, that\u2019s sufficient. But it won\u2019t catch everything diagnostic styles can, like empty alt values or untargeted links, which are perfectly valid, syntactically speaking.\n\n\nDiagnosis Complete?\n\nI hope this has been a fun look at the concept of diagnostic styling as well as a quick introduction into possibly new concepts like :not() and outlines. This isn\u2019t all there is to say, of course: there is plenty more that could be added to a diagnostic style sheet. And everyone\u2019s diagnostics will be different, tuned to meet each person\u2019s unique situation.\n\nMostly, though, I hope this small exploration triggers some creative thinking about the use of CSS to do more than just lay out pages and colorize text. Given the familiarity we acquire with CSS, it only makes sense to use it wherever it might be useful, and setting up visible diagnostic flags is just one more place for it to help us.", "year": "2007", "author": "Eric Meyer", "author_slug": "ericmeyer", "published": "2007-12-20T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/diagnostic-styling/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 241, "title": "Jank-Free Image Loads", "contents": "There are a few fundamental problems with embedding images in pages of hypertext; perhaps chief among them is this: text is very light and loads rather fast; images are much heavier and arrive much later. Consequently, millions (billions?) of times a day, a hapless Web surfer will start reading some text on a page, and then \u2014\nYour browser doesn\u2019t support HTML5 video. Here is\n a link to the video instead.\n\n\u2014 oops! \u2014 an image pops in above it, pushing said text down the page, and our poor reader loses their place.\nBy default, partially-loaded pages have the user experience of a slippery fish, or spilled jar of jumping beans. For the rest of this article, I shall call that jarring, no-good jumpiness by its name: jank. And I\u2019ll chart a path into a jank-free future \u2013 one in which it\u2019s easy and natural to author elements that load like this:\nYour browser doesn\u2019t support HTML5 video. Here is\n a link to the video instead.\n\nJank is a very old problem, and there is a very old solution to it: the width and height attributes on . The idea is: if we stick an image\u2019s dimensions right into the HTML, browsers can know those dimensions before the image loads, and reserve some space on the layout for it so that nothing gets bumped down the page when the image finally arrives.\n\nwidth\nSpecifies the intended width of the image in pixels. When given together with the height, this allows user agents to reserve screen space for the image before the image data has arrived over the network.\n\n\u2014The HTML 3.2 Specification, published on January 14 1997\nUnfortunately for us, when width and height were first spec\u2019d and implemented, layouts were largely fixed and images were usually only intended to render at their fixed, actual dimensions. When image sizing gets fluid, width and height get weird:\nSee the Pen fluid width + fixed height = distortion by Eric Portis (@eeeps) on CodePen.\n\nwidth and height are too rigid for the responsive world. What we need, and have needed for a very long time, is a way to specify fixed aspect ratios, to pair with our fluid widths.\nI have good news, bad news, and great news.\nThe good news is, there are ways to do this, now, that work in every browser. Responsible sites, and responsible developers, go through the effort to do them.\nThe bad news is that these techniques are all terrible, cumbersome hacks. They\u2019re difficult to remember, difficult to understand, and they can interact with other pieces of CSS in unexpected ways.\nSo, the great news: there are two on-the-horizon web platform features that are trying to make no-jank, fixed-aspect-ratio, fluid-width images a natural part of the web platform.\naspect-ratio in CSS\nThe first proposed feature? An aspect-ratio property in CSS!\nThis would allow us to write CSS like this:\nimg {\n width: 100%;\n}\n\n.thumb {\n aspect-ratio: 1/1;\n}\n\n.hero {\n aspect-ratio: 16/9;\n}\nThis\u2019ll work wonders when we need to set aspect ratios for whole classes of images, which are all sized to fit within pre-defined layout slots, like the .thumb and .hero images, above.\nAlas, the harder problem, in my experience, is not images with known-ahead-of-time aspect ratios. It\u2019s images \u2013 possibly user generated images \u2013 that can have any aspect ratio. The really tricky problem is unknown-when-you\u2019re-writing-your-CSS aspect ratios that can vary per-image. Using aspect-ratio to reserve space for images like this requires inline styles:\n

\nAnd inline styles give me the heebie-jeebies! As a web developer of a certain age, I have a tiny man in a blue beanie permanently embedded deep within my hindbrain, who cries out in agony whenever I author a style=\"\" attribute. And you know what? The old man has a point! By sticking super-high-specificity inline styles in my content, I\u2019m cutting off my, (or anyone else\u2019s) ability to change those aspect ratios, for whatever reason, later.\nHow might we specify aspect ratios at a lower level? How might we give browsers information about an image\u2019s dimensions, without giving them explicit instructions about how to style it?\nI\u2019ll tell you: we could give browsers the intrinsic aspect ratio of the image in our HTML, rather than specifying an extrinsic aspect ratio!\nA brief note on intrinsic and extrinsic sizing\nWhat do I mean by \u201cintrinsic\u201d and \u201cextrinsic?\u201d\nThe intrinsic size of an image is, put simply, how big it\u2019d be if you plopped it onto a page and applied no CSS to it whatsoever. An 800\u00d7600 image has an intrinsic width of 800px.\nThe extrinsic size of an image, then, is how large it ends up after CSS has been applied. Stick a width: 300px rule on that same 800\u00d7600 image, and its intrinsic size (accessible via the Image.naturalWidth property, in JavaScript) doesn\u2019t change: its intrinsic size is still 800px. But this image now has an extrinsic size (accessible via Image.clientWidth) of 300px.\nIt surprised me to learn this year that height and width are interpreted as presentational hints and that they end up setting extrinsic dimensions (albeit ones that, unlike inline styles, have absolutely no specificity).\nCSS aspect-ratio lets us avoid setting extrinsic heights and widths \u2013 and instead lets us give images (or anything else) an extrinsic aspect ratio, so that as soon as we set one dimension (possibly to a fluid width, like 100%!), the other dimension is set automatically in relation to it.\nThe last tool I\u2019m going to talk about gets us out of the extrinsic sizing game all together \u2014 which, I think, is only appropriate for a feature that we\u2019re going to be using in HTML.\nintrinsicsize in HTML\nThe proposed intrinsicsize attribute will let you do this:\n

\nThat tells the browser, \u201chey, this image.jpg that I\u2019m using here \u2013 I know you haven\u2019t loaded it yet but I\u2019m just going to let you know right away that it\u2019s going to have an intrinsic size of 800\u00d7600.\u201d This gives the browser enough information to reserve space on the layout for the image, and ensures that any and all extrinsic sizing instructions, specified in our CSS, will layer cleanly on top of this, the image\u2019s intrinsic size.\nYou may ask (I did!): wait, what if my references multiple resources, which all have different intrinsic sizes? Well, if you\u2019re using srcset, intrinsicsize is a bit of a misnomer \u2013 what the attribute will do then, is specify an intrinsic aspect ratio:\n\nIn the future (and behind the \u201cExperimental Web Platform Features\u201d flag right now, in Chrome 71+), asking this image for its .naturalWidth would not return 3 \u2013 it will return whatever 75vw is, given the current viewport width. And Image.naturalHeight will return that width, divided by the intrinsic aspect ratio: 3/2.\nCan\u2019t wait\nI seem to have gotten myself into the weeds a bit. Sizing on the web is complicated!\nDon\u2019t let all of these details bury the big takeaway here: sometime soon (\ud83e\udd1e 2019\u203d \ud83e\udd1e), we\u2019ll be able to toss our terrible aspect-ratio hacks into the dustbin of history, get in the habit of setting aspect-ratios in CSS and/or intrinsicsizes in HTML, and surf a less-frustrating, more-performant, less-janky web. I can\u2019t wait!", "year": "2018", "author": "Eric Portis", "author_slug": "ericportis", "published": "2018-12-21T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/jank-free-image-loads/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 87, "title": "Content Planning Demystified", "contents": "The first thing you learn as a junior editor is that you can\u2019t do everything yourself. You must rely on someone else to do at least part of what must be done: the long-range planning, the initial drafting or shooting or recording, the editing, the production, the final polish. All of those pieces of work that belong to someone else take quite a lot of time \u2014 days, weeks, sometimes months. If you\u2019re the sort of person who wrote college term papers the night before they were due, this can come as a bit of a shock. To my twenty-two-year-old self, it certainly did. \n\nIt turns out that the only real way to avoid a trainwreck with editorial work is to get ahead of the trouble, line everything up carefully, and leave oodles of room for all the pieces to connect on time. The same is true of content strategy, content planning, and just about everything to do with content on the web, except for the writing itself \u2014 and that, too, usually takes far longer than anyone expects. If you\u2019re not a professional editor and you suddenly find yourself dealing with content creation, you\u2019re almost certainly going to underestimate the time and effort involved, or to skip something important in the planning process that pops up to bite you later. \n\nWithout good content, it doesn\u2019t matter how well designed or coded your web project is, because it won\u2019t be doing the thing it\u2019s meant to do. And even if content is far from your specialty, you may well end up being the only one willing to coordinate it far enough in advance to avoid a chaotic ending. Whether you\u2019re hiring writers and editors for a big project, working with a small client, or coaxing some editorial help out of a co-worker, getting the planning work done correctly \u2014 and ahead of time \u2014 will allow you to orchestrate a glorious ballet of togetherness, instead of feverishly scraping together something to put on your site when the deadline looms. So get out the graph paper and the pocket protector, because we\u2019re going to go Full Nerd on this problem.\n\nKnow your poison\n\nAnyone who\u2019s seen a project delayed for six months by content trouble, or derailed by content that\u2019s bland and unhelpful, knows this stuff can make you feel like a dead sock. To get ahead of the problem, you\u2019re going to have to learn to spot common problems and plan your way around them. On web projects without a dedicated editorial lead, you\u2019re likely to encounter content that is:\n\n\n\tUseless \u2013 Content that doesn\u2019t serve your readers\u2019 needs in some way is pointless. And because it takes up your time and crowds out genuinely helpful things, it\u2019s actually damaging. The logic is simple: you can make content that\u2019s all about you, and that serves your stated messaging goals, but if no one is motivated to read it, it\u2019s a waste of everyone\u2019s time.\n\tBadly written \u2013 When you publish articles or instructions or other content that is too stiffly formal, overly wordy, hard to understand, offensive, unintentionally cheesy, or otherwise off in tone or style, you\u2019re doing two things. First, you\u2019re weakening the information you\u2019re trying to convey by making it obscure or annoying. Second \u2014 and this one is even more damaging \u2014 you\u2019re demonstrating bad taste. When you get the cultural elements of publishing wrong, you encourage your readers to believe that you either don\u2019t understand them or don\u2019t care about getting it wrong.\n\tGooey \u2013 Content strategists have been talking about structured content (that\u2019s chunks versus blobs) for years. If you\u2019re publishing more than a few dozen pages without thinking through the structure of your content, you\u2019re probably missing a chance to improve your long-term efficiency. If you\u2019re publishing more than a couple of thousand pages without taking care of your content structure, you\u2019re probably doing a lot more manual wrangling (or cumbersome CMS work) than you need to be, especially when it comes to cross-platform publishing.\n\tUnregulated \u2013 If you\u2019re not tracking what works and what doesn\u2019t \u2014 and especially if you don\u2019t know what \u201cworks\u201d means for your project or organization \u2014 you\u2019re almost certainly getting worse results than you should be, for more work.\n\tOverabundant \u2013 As demonstrated by the cinnamon challenge, too much of a delicious thing can be a giant and publicly embarrassing disaster. For most projects and organizations, if you\u2019re making more stuff than your readers can handle, or if you\u2019re spreading your creative and editorial resources too thinly, that\u2019s bad. Spammers, content farms, and barrel-bottom tabloids have their own special math, the side effects of which include insomnia, irritability, and crying in traffic while silently mouthing Wilson Phillips lyrics.\n\n\n\nPrevent all preventable damage\n\nOnce you know what kind of trouble to look for, you can prevent a lot of it by doing some smart planning well before someone starts writing (or recording or shooting video).\n\n\n\tTo prevent uselessness: Know your readers and decide what you\u2019re trying to accomplish \u2014 with your website as a whole, and with each piece of content, always. Once you know what you\u2019re trying to achieve, you can evaluate your work as you go to make sure that it\u2019s actually doing the right thing. (I\u2019ve written a lot more about this for A List Apart and in The Elements of Content Strategy.)\n\tTo prevent bad writing: Establish a consistent and appropriate style using examples (and a style guide if you need one), designate an editor, hire good writers, and make time for quality control. Kate Kiefer\u2019s style guide for MailChimp is a superb example of style-wrangling that everyone can use.\n\tTo prevent repulsive goo: Give your content as much structure as possible, and know how structure relates to your entire publishing ecosystem, including all those mobile devices. Sara Wachter-Boettcher\u2019s Content Everywhere and Karen McGrane\u2019s Content Strategy for Mobile offer brilliant yet friendly introductions to the wide world of structured content.\n\tTo prevent unregulated chaos: Measure everything that matters to your project, your client, your organization, and especially your readers \u2014 not generic measures of someone else\u2019s success. Measure it all regularly. Be disciplined. Adjust at regular intervals. Rick Allen\u2019s series on content strategy analytics is an excellent place to begin (part one; part two).\n\tTo prevent overabundance: Stop trying to do everything and focus on giving your readers just a few things they want and genuinely need. Don\u2019t establish a schedule your writers might not be able to keep, and focus on differentiating yourself with quality, not quantity. (And while you\u2019re at it, scratch the auto-posting to social networks and the cross-posting between them. It\u2019s about as engaging as an automated phone system.)\n\n\nAt a slightly higher level, pick the right content person (or team) for the work. If you really only need a few pages of copy, find a smart writer who does good work for multi-platform readers. If you\u2019re slinging tens of thousands of pages of content, get someone with field experience in high-level editorial planning and the ability to turn blobs into chunks and melted goo into Legos. If you\u2019re starting a project that involves making a lot of content over time, bring in someone with journalism experience (or get your client to do so). \n\n\u201cBut wait!\u201d you may say. \u201cI\u2019m not hiring anyone. I have to do this all myself.\u201d That\u2019s not uncommon at all. The bad news is, you have to learn a bunch of stuff. The good news is, you get to learn a bunch of awesome stuff. Figure out what the project needs, just as though you were going to hire someone, and then give yourself time to get up to speed. If it\u2019s a really complicated project, you\u2019re probably going to have trouble unless you eventually get professional help. But if it\u2019s small and you can do it in steps, you can certainly do much better by giving yourself a plan and working on the things that matter most.\n\n\nPlan for the marathon, not the sprint\n\nLaunching with awesome content is a tiny fraction of a victory, which is why it\u2019s so important that your content not be gooey or unregulated. It also means that if you don\u2019t plan for a realistic publication schedule, you are going to slam into reality in a really unpleasant way not too long after you\u2019ve begun. If you\u2019re asking people to make words (or videos or whatever) for you, they\u2019re going to have to do less of something else, so plan for that beforehand. \n\nAnd while you\u2019re at it, unless publishing is your core business, ditch the feed-the-beast plan that leads to fluffy blog posts and spiritless, unhelpful social media content. It\u2019s antisocial for your reading community, offers short-term gains at best, and will burn you out or lower your standards until you don\u2019t even know you\u2019re doing lousy work. Good content is expensive, no matter how you do it, but spreading yourself too thin is a much worse investment than doing a smaller thing well and gradually building up a body of superb content that people want to share and keep and return to.", "year": "2012", "author": "Erin Kissane", "author_slug": "erinkissane", "published": "2012-12-20T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/content-planning-demystified/", "topic": "content"} {"rowid": 54, "title": "Putting My Patterns through Their Paces", "contents": "Over the last few years, the conversation around responsive design has shifted subtly, focusing not on designing pages, but on patterns: understanding the small, reusable elements that comprise a larger design system. And given that many of those patterns are themselves responsive, learning to manage these small layout systems has become a big part of my work.\nThe thing is, the more pattern-driven work I do, the more I realize my design process has changed in a number of subtle, important ways. I suppose you might even say that pattern-driven design has, in a few ways, redesigned me.\nMeet the Teaser\nHere\u2019s a recent example. A few months ago, some friends and I redesigned The Toast. (It was a really, really fun project, and we learned a lot.) Each page of the site is, as you might guess, stitched together from a host of tiny, reusable patterns. Some of them, like the search form and footer, are fairly unique, and used once per page; others are used more liberally, and built for reuse. The most prevalent example of these more generic patterns is the teaser, which is classed as, uh, .teaser. (Look, I never said I was especially clever.)\nIn its simplest form, a teaser contains a headline, which links to an article:\n\nFairly straightforward, sure. But it\u2019s just the foundation: from there, teasers can have a byline, a description, a thumbnail, and a comment count. In other words, we have a basic building block (.teaser) that contains a few discrete content types \u2013 some required, some not. In fact, very few of those pieces need to be present; to qualify as a teaser, all we really need is a link and a headline. But by adding more elements, we can build slight variations of our teaser, and make it much, much more versatile.\n\n Nearly every element visible on this page is built out of our generic \u201cteaser\u201d pattern.\n \nBut the teaser variation I\u2019d like to call out is the one that appears on The Toast\u2019s homepage, on search results or on section fronts. In the main content area, each teaser in the list features larger images, as well as an interesting visual treatment: the byline and comment count were the most prominent elements within each teaser, appearing above the headline.\n\n The approved visual design of our teaser, as it appears on lists on the homepage and the section fronts.\n \nAnd this is, as it happens, the teaser variation that gave me pause. Back in the old days \u2013 you know, like six months ago \u2013 I probably would\u2019ve marked this module up to match the design. In other words, I would\u2019ve looked at the module\u2019s visual hierarchy (metadata up top, headline and content below) and written the following HTML:\n

By Author Name

\n 126 comments\n

Article Title

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur\u2026

\nBut then I caught myself, and realized this wasn\u2019t the best approach.\nMoving Beyond Layout\nSince I\u2019ve started working responsively, there\u2019s a question I work into every step of my design process. Whether I\u2019m working in Sketch, CSSing a thing, or researching a project, I try to constantly ask myself:\n\nWhat if someone doesn\u2019t browse the web like I do?\n\n\u2026Okay, that doesn\u2019t seem especially fancy. (And maybe you came here for fancy.) But as straightforward as that question might seem, it\u2019s been invaluable to so many aspects of my practice. If I\u2019m working on a widescreen layout, that question helps me remember the constraints of the small screen; if I\u2019m working on an interface that has some enhancements for touch, it helps me consider other input modes as I work. It\u2019s also helpful as a reminder that many might not see the screen the same way I do, and that accessibility (in all its forms) should be a throughline for our work on the web.\nAnd that last point, thankfully, was what caught me here. While having the byline and comment count at the top was a lovely visual treatment, it made for a terrible content hierarchy. For example, it\u2019d be a little weird if the page was being read aloud in a speaking browser: the name of the author and the number of comments would be read aloud before the title of the article with which they\u2019re associated.\nThat\u2019s why I find it\u2019s helpful to begin designing a pattern\u2019s hierarchy before its layout: to move past the visual presentation in front of me, and focus on the underlying content I\u2019m trying to support. In other words, if someone\u2019s encountering my design without the CSS I\u2019ve written, what should their experience be?\nSo I took a step back, and came up with a different approach:\n

Article Title

By Author Name

\n Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur\u2026\n 126 comments\n

\nMuch, much better. This felt like a better match for the content I was designing: the headline \u2013 easily most important element \u2013 was at the top, followed by the author\u2019s name and an excerpt. And while the comment count is visually the most prominent element in the teaser, I decided it was hierarchically the least critical: that\u2019s why it\u2019s at the very end of the excerpt, the last element within our teaser. And with some light styling, we\u2019ve got a respectable-looking hierarchy in place:\n\nYeah, you\u2019re right \u2013 it\u2019s not our final design. But from this basic-looking foundation, we can layer on a bit more complexity. First, we\u2019ll bolster the markup with an extra element around our title and byline:\n

Article Title

By Author Name

\n \u2026\n

\nWith that in place, we can use flexbox to tweak our layout, like so:\n.teaser-hed {\n display: flex;\n flex-direction: column-reverse;\n}\nflex-direction: column-reverse acts a bit like a change in gravity within our teaser-hed element, vertically swapping its two children.\n\nGetting closer! But as great as flexbox is, it doesn\u2019t do anything for elements outside our container, like our little comment count, which is, as you\u2019ve probably noticed, still stranded at the very bottom of our teaser.\nFlexbox is, as you might already know, wonderful! And while it enjoys incredibly broad support, there are enough implementations of old versions of Flexbox (in addition to plenty of bugs) that I tend to use a feature test to check if the browser\u2019s using a sufficiently modern version of flexbox. Here\u2019s the one we used:\nvar doc = document.body || document.documentElement;\nvar style = doc.style;\n\nif ( style.webkitFlexWrap == '' ||\n style.msFlexWrap == '' ||\n style.flexWrap == '' ) {\n doc.className += \" supports-flex\";\n}\nEagle-eyed readers will note we could have used @supports feature queries to ask browsers if they support certain CSS properties, removing the JavaScript dependency. But since we wanted to serve the layout to IE we opted to write a little question in JavaScript, asking the browser if it supports flex-wrap, a property used elsewhere in the design. If the browser passes the test, then a class of supports-flex gets applied to our html element. And with that class in place, we can safely quarantine our flexbox-enabled layout from less-capable browsers, and finish our teaser\u2019s design:\n.supports-flex .teaser-hed {\n display: flex;\n flex-direction: column-reverse;\n}\n.supports-flex .teaser .comment-count {\n position: absolute;\n right: 0;\n top: 1.1em;\n}\nIf the supports-flex class is present, we can apply our flexbox layout to the title area, sure \u2013 but we can also safely use absolute positioning to pull our comment count out of its default position, and anchor it to the top right of our teaser. In other words, the browsers that don\u2019t meet our threshold for our advanced styles are left with an attractive design that matches our HTML\u2019s content hierarchy; but the ones that pass our test receive the finished, final design.\n\nAnd with that, our teaser\u2019s complete.\nDiving Into Device-Agnostic Design\nThis is, admittedly, a pretty modest application of flexbox. (For some truly next-level work, I\u2019d recommend Heydon Pickering\u2019s \u201cFlexbox Grid Finesse\u201d, or anything Zoe Mickley Gillenwater publishes.) And for such a simple module, you might feel like this is, well, quite a bit of work. And you\u2019d be right! In fact, it\u2019s not one layout, but two: a lightly styled content hierarchy served to everyone, with the finished design served conditionally to the browsers that can successfully implement it. But I\u2019ve found that thinking about my design as existing in broad experience tiers \u2013 in layers \u2013 is one of the best ways of designing for the modern web. And what\u2019s more, it works not just for simple modules like our teaser, but for more complex or interactive patterns as well.\nOpen video\n \n Even a simple search form can be conditionally enhanced, given a little layered thinking.\n \nThis more layered approach to interface design isn\u2019t a new one, mind you: it\u2019s been championed by everyone from Filament Group to the BBC. And with all the challenges we keep uncovering, a more device-agnostic approach is one of the best ways I\u2019ve found to practice responsive design. As Trent Walton once wrote,\n\nLike cars designed to perform in extreme heat or on icy roads, websites should be built to face the reality of the web\u2019s inherent variability.\n\nWe have a weird job, working on the web. We\u2019re designing for the latest mobile devices, sure, but we\u2019re increasingly aware that our definition of \u201csmartphone\u201d is much too narrow. Browsers have started appearing on our wrists and in our cars\u2019 dashboards, but much of the world\u2019s mobile data flows over sub-3G networks. After all, the web\u2019s evolution has never been charted along a straight line: it\u2019s simultaneously getting slower and faster, with devices new and old coming online every day. With all the challenges in front of us, including many we don\u2019t yet know about, a more device-agnostic, more layered design process can better prepare our patterns \u2013 and ourselves \u2013 for the future.\n(It won\u2019t help you get enough to eat at holiday parties, though.)", "year": "2015", "author": "Ethan Marcotte", "author_slug": "ethanmarcotte", "published": "2015-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/putting-my-patterns-through-their-paces/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 162, "title": "Conditional Love", "contents": "\u201cBrowser.\u201d The four-letter word of web design.\n\nI mean, let\u2019s face it: on the good days, when things just work in your target browsers, it\u2019s marvelous. The air smells sweeter, birds\u2019 songs sound more melodious, and both your design and your code are looking sharp.\n\nBut on the less-than-good days (which is, frankly, most of them), you\u2019re compelled to tie up all your browsers in a sack, heave them into the nearest river, and start designing all-imagemap websites. We all play favorites, after all: some will swear by Firefox, Opera fans are allegedly legion, and others still will frown upon anything less than the latest WebKit nightly.\n\nThankfully, we do have an out for those little inconsistencies that crop up when dealing with cross-browser testing: CSS patches.\n\nSpare the Rod, Hack the Browser\n\nBefore committing browsercide over some rendering bug, a designer will typically reach for a snippet of CSS fix the faulty browser. Historically referred to as \u201chacks,\u201d I prefer Dan Cederholm\u2019s more client-friendly alternative, \u201cpatches\u201d.\n\nBut whatever you call them, CSS patches all work along the same principle: supply the proper property value to the good browsers, while giving higher maintenance other browsers an incorrect value that their frustrating idiosyncratic rendering engine can understand.\n\nTraditionally, this has been done either by exploiting incomplete CSS support:\n\n#content {\n\theight: 1%;\t // Let's force hasLayout for old versions of IE.\n\tline-height: 1.6;\n\tpadding: 1em;\n}\nhtml>body #content {\n\theight: auto; // Modern browsers get a proper height value.\n}\n\nor by exploiting bugs in their rendering engine to deliver alternate style rules:\n\n#content p {\n\tfont-size: .8em;\n\t/* Hide from Mac IE5 \\*/\n\tfont-size: .9em;\n\t/* End hiding from Mac IE5 */\n}\n\nWe\u2019ve even used these exploits to serve up whole stylesheets altogether:\n\n@import url(\"core.css\");\n@media tty {\n\ti{content:\"\\\";/*\" \"*/}} @import 'windows-ie5.css'; /*\";}\n}/* */\n\nThe list goes on, and on, and on. For every browser, for every bug, there\u2019s a patch available to fix some rendering bug.\n\nBut after some time working with standards-based layouts, I\u2019ve found that CSS patches, as we\u2019ve traditionally used them, become increasingly difficult to maintain. As stylesheets are modified over the course of a site\u2019s lifetime, inline fixes we\u2019ve written may become obsolete, making them difficult to find, update, or prune out of our CSS. A good patch requires a constant gardener to ensure that it adds more than just bloat to a stylesheet, and inline patches can be very hard to weed out of a decently sized CSS file.\n\nGiving the Kids Separate Rooms\n\nSince I joined Airbag Industries earlier this year, every project we\u2019ve worked on has this in the head of its templates:\n\n\n\n\n\nThe first element is, simply enough, a link element that points to the project\u2019s main CSS file. No patches, no hacks: just pure, modern browser-friendly style rules. Which, nine times out of ten, will net you a design that looks like spilled eggnog in various versions of Internet Explorer.\n\nBut don\u2019t reach for the mulled wine quite yet. Immediately after, we\u2019ve got a brace of conditional comments wrapped around two other link elements. These odd-looking comments allow us to selectively serve up additional stylesheets just to the version of IE that needs them. We\u2019ve got one for IE 6 and below:\n\n\n\nAnd another for IE7 and above:\n\n\n\nMicrosoft\u2019s conditional comments aren\u2019t exactly new, but they can be a valuable alternative to cooking CSS patches directly into a master stylesheet. And though they\u2019re not a W3C-approved markup structure, I think they\u2019re just brilliant because they innovate within the spec: non-IE devices will assume that the comments are just that, and ignore the markup altogether.\n\nThis does, of course, mean that there\u2019s a little extra markup in the head of our documents. But this approach can seriously cut down on the unnecessary patches served up to the browsers that don\u2019t need them. Namely, we no longer have to write rules like this in our main stylesheet:\n\n#content {\n\theight: 1%;\t// Let's force hasLayout for old versions of IE.\n\tline-height: 1.6;\n\tpadding: 1em;\n}\nhtml>body #content {\n\theight: auto;\t// Modern browsers get a proper height value.\n}\n\nRather, we can simply write an un-patched rule in our core stylesheet:\n\n#content {\n\tline-height: 1.6;\n\tpadding: 1em;\n}\n\nAnd now, our patch for older versions of IE goes in\u2014you guessed it\u2014the stylesheet for older versions of IE:\n\n#content {\n\theight: 1%;\n}\n\nThe hasLayout patch is applied, our design\u2019s repaired, and\u2014most importantly\u2014the patch is only seen by the browser that needs it. The \u201cgood\u201d browsers don\u2019t have to incur any added stylesheet weight from our IE patches, and Internet Explorer gets the conditional love it deserves.\n\nMost importantly, this \u201ccompartmentalized\u201d approach to CSS patching makes it much easier for me to patch and maintain the fixes applied to a particular browser. If I need to track down a bug for IE7, I don\u2019t need to scroll through dozens or hundreds of rules in my core stylesheet: instead, I just open the considerably slimmer IE7-specific patch file, make my edits, and move right along.\n\nEven Good Children Misbehave\n\nWhile IE may occupy the bulk of our debugging time, there\u2019s no denying that other popular, modern browsers will occasionally disagree on how certain bits of CSS should be rendered. But without something as, well, pimp as conditional comments at our disposal, how do we bring the so-called \u201cgood browsers\u201d back in line with our design?\n\nAssuming you\u2019re loving the \u201cone patch file per browser\u201d model as much as I do, there\u2019s just one alternative: JavaScript.\n\nfunction isSaf() {\n\tvar isSaf = (document.childNodes && !document.all && !navigator.taintEnabled && !navigator.accentColorName) ? true : false;\n\treturn isSaf;\n}\nfunction isOp() {\n\tvar isOp = (window.opera) ? true : false;\n\treturn isOp;\n}\n\nInstead of relying on dotcom-era tactics of parsing the browser\u2019s user-agent string, we\u2019re testing here for support for various DOM objects, whose presence or absence we can use to reasonably infer the browser we\u2019re looking at. So running the isOp() function, for example, will test for Opera\u2019s proprietary window.opera object, and thereby accurately tell you if your user\u2019s running Norway\u2019s finest browser.\n\nWith scripts such as isOp() and isSaf() in place, you can then reasonably test which browser\u2019s viewing your content, and insert additional link elements as needed.\n\nfunction loadPatches(dir) {\n\tif (document.getElementsByTagName() && document.createElement()) {\n\t\tvar head = document.getElementsByTagName(\"head\")[0];\n\t\tif (head) {\n\t\t\tvar css = new Array();\n\t\t\tif (isSaf()) {\n\t\t\t\tcss.push(\"saf.css\");\n\t\t\t} else if (isOp()) {\n\t\t\t\tcss.push(\"opera.css\");\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\tif (css.length) {\n\t\t\t\tvar link = document.createElement(\"link\");\n\t\t\t\tlink.setAttribute(\"rel\", \"stylesheet\");\n\t\t\t\tlink.setAttribute(\"type\", \"text/css\");\n\t\t\t\tlink.setAttribute(\"media\", \"screen, projection\");\n\t\t\t\tfor (var i = 0; i < css.length; i++) {\n\t\t\t\t\tvar tag = link.cloneNode(true);\n\t\t\t\t\ttag.setAttribute(\"href\", dir + css[0]);\n\t\t\t\t\thead.appendChild(tag);\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t}\n\t}\n}\n\nHere, we\u2019re testing the results of isSaf() and isOp(), one after the other. For each function that returns true, then the name of a new stylesheet is added to the oh-so-cleverly named css array. Then, for each entry in css, we create a new link element, point it at our patch file, and insert it into the head of our template.\n\nFire it up using your favorite onload or DOMContentLoaded function, and you\u2019re good to go.\n\nScripteat Emptor\n\nAt this point, some of the audience\u2019s more conscientious \u2018scripters may be preparing to lob figgy pudding at this author\u2019s head. And that\u2019s perfectly understandable; relying on JavaScript to patch CSS chafes a bit against the normally clean separation we have between our pages\u2019 content, presentation, and behavior layers.\n\nAnd beyond the philosophical concerns, this approach comes with a few technical caveats attached:\n\nBrowser detection? So un-133t.\n\nBrowser detection is not something I\u2019d typically recommend. Whenever possible, a proper DOM script should check for the support of a given object or method, rather than the device with which your users view your content.\n\nIt\u2019s JavaScript, so don\u2019t count on it being available.\n\nAccording to one site, roughly four percent of Internet users don\u2019t have JavaScript enabled. Your site\u2019s stats might be higher or lower than this number, but still: don\u2019t expect that every member of your audience will see these additional stylesheets, and ensure that your content\u2019s still accessible with JS turned off.\n\nBe a constant gardener.\n\nThe sample isSaf() and isOp() functions I\u2019ve written will tell you if the user\u2019s browser is Safari or Opera. As a result, stylesheets written to patch issues in an old browser may break when later releases repair the relevant CSS bugs.\n\nYou can, of course, add logic to these simple little scripts to serve up version-specific stylesheets, but that way madness may lie. In any event, test your work vigorously, and keep testing it when new versions of the targeted browsers come out. Make sure that a patch written today doesn\u2019t become a bug tomorrow.\n\nPatching Firefox, Opera, and Safari isn\u2019t something I\u2019ve had to do frequently: still, there have been occasions where the above script\u2019s come in handy. Between conditional comments, careful CSS auditing, and some judicious JavaScript, browser-based bugs can be handled with near-surgical precision.\n\nSo pass the \u2018nog. It\u2019s patchin\u2019 time.", "year": "2007", "author": "Ethan Marcotte", "author_slug": "ethanmarcotte", "published": "2007-12-15T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/conditional-love/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 238, "title": "Everything You Wanted To Know About Gradients (And a Few Things You Didn\u2019t)", "contents": "Hello. I am here to discuss CSS3 gradients. Because, let\u2019s face it, what the web really needed was more gradients.\n\nStill, despite their widespread use (or is it overuse?), the smartly applied gradient can be a valuable contributor to a designer\u2019s vocabulary. There\u2019s always been a tension between the inherently two-dimensional nature of our medium, and our desire for more intensity, more depth in our designs. And a gradient can evoke so much: the splay of light across your desk, the slow decrease in volume toward the end of your favorite song, the sunset after a long day. When properly applied, graded colors bring a much needed softness to our work.\n\nOf course, that whole \u2018proper application\u2019 thing is the tricky bit.\n\nBut given their place in our toolkit and their prominence online, it really is heartening to see we can create gradients directly with CSS. They\u2019re part of the draft images module, and implemented in two of the major rendering engines.\n\nStill, I\u2019ve always found CSS gradients to be one of the more confusing aspects of CSS3. So if you\u2019ll indulge me, let\u2019s take a quick look at how to create CSS gradients\u2014hopefully we can make them seem a bit more accessible, and bring a bit more art into the browser.\n\nGradient theory 101 (I hope that\u2019s not really a thing)\n\nRight. So before we dive into the code, let\u2019s cover a few basics. Every gradient, no matter how complex, shares a few common characteristics. Here\u2019s a straightforward one:\n\n I spent seconds hours designing this gradient. I hope you like it.\n\nAt either end of our image, we have a final color value, or color stop: on the left, our stop is white; on the right, black. And more color-rich gradients are no different:\n\n (Don\u2019t ever really do this. Please. I beg you.)\n\nIt\u2019s visually more intricate, sure. But at the heart of it, we have just seven color stops (red, orange, yellow, and so on), making for a fantastic gradient all the way.\n\nNow, color stops alone do not a gradient make. Between each is a transition point, the fail-over point between the two stops. Now, the transition point doesn\u2019t need to fall exactly between stops: it can be brought closer to one stop or the other, influencing the overall shape of the gradient.\n\nA tale of two syntaxes\n\nArmed with our new vocabulary, let\u2019s look at a CSS gradient in the wild. Behold, the simple input button:\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s a simple linear gradient applied vertically across the button, moving from a bright sunflowerish hue (#FAA51A, for you hex nuts in the audience) to a much richer orange (#F47A20). And here\u2019s the CSS that makes it happen:\n\ninput[type=submit] {\n\tbackground-color: #F47A20;\n\tbackground-image: -moz-linear-gradient(\n\t\t#FAA51A,\n\t\t#F47A20\n\t\t);\n\tbackground-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0 0, 0 100%,\n\t\tcolor-stop(0, #FAA51A),\n\t\tcolor-stop(1, #F47A20)\n\t\t);\n}\n\nI\u2019ve borrowed David DeSandro\u2019s most excellent formatting suggestions for gradients to make this snippet a bit more legible but, still, the code above might have turned your stomach a bit. And that\u2019s perfectly understandable\u2014heck, it sort of turned mine. But let\u2019s step through the CSS slowly, and see if we can\u2019t make it a little less terrifying.\n\nVerbose WebKit is verbose\n\nHere\u2019s the syntax for our little gradient on WebKit:\n\nbackground-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0 0, 0 100%,\n\tcolor-stop(0, #FAA51A),\n\tcolor-stop(1, #F47A20)\n\t);\n\nWoof. Quite a mouthful, no? Well, here\u2019s what we\u2019re looking at:\n\n\n\tWebKit has a single -webkit-gradient property, which can be used to create either linear or radial gradients.\n\tThe next two values are the starting and ending positions for our gradient (0 0 and 0 100%, respectively). Linear gradients are simply drawn along the path between those two points, which allows us to change the direction of our gradient simply by altering its start and end points.\n\tAfterward, we specify our color stops with the oh-so-aptly named color-stop parameter, which takes the stop\u2019s position on the gradient (0 being the beginning, and 100% or 1 being the end) and the color itself.\n\n\nFor a simple two-color gradient like this, -webkit-gradient has a bit of shorthand notation to offer us:\n\nbackground-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0 0, 0 100%,\n\tfrom(#FAA51A),\n\tto(#FAA51A)\n\t);\n\nfrom(#FAA51A) is equivalent to writing color-stop(0, #FAA51A), and to(#FAA51A) is the same as color-stop(1, #FAA51A) or color-stop(100%, #FAA51A)\u2014in both cases, we\u2019re simply declaring the first and last color stops in our gradient.\n\nTerse Gecko is terse\n\nWebKit proposed its syntax back in 2008, heavily inspired by the way gradients are drawn in the canvas specification. However, a different, leaner syntax came to the fore, eventually appearing in a draft module specification in CSS3.\n\nNaturally, because nothing on the web was meant to be easy, this is the one that Mozilla has implemented.\n\nHere\u2019s how we get gradient-y in Gecko:\n\nbackground-image: -moz-linear-gradient(\n\t#FAA51A,\n\t#F47A20\n\t);\n\nWait, what? Done already? That\u2019s right. By default, -moz-linear-gradient assumes you\u2019re trying to create a vertical gradient, starting from the top of your element and moving to the bottom. And, if that\u2019s the case, then you simply need to specify your color stops, delimited with a few commas.\n\nI know: that was almost\u2026 painless. But the W3C/Mozilla syntax also affords us a fair amount of flexibility and control, by introducing features as we need them.\n\nWe can specify an origin point for our gradient:\n\nbackground-image: -moz-linear-gradient(50% 100%,\n\t#FAA51A,\n\t#F47A20\n\t);\n\nAs well as an angle, to give it a direction:\n\nbackground-image: -moz-linear-gradient(50% 100%, 45deg,\n\t#FAA51A,\n\t#F47A20\n\t);\n\nAnd we can specify multiple stops, simply by adding to our comma-delimited list:\n\nbackground-image: -moz-linear-gradient(50% 100%, 45deg,\n\t#FAA51A,\n\t#FCC,\n\t#F47A20\n\t);\n\nBy adding a percentage after a given color value, we can determine its position along the gradient path:\n\nbackground-image: -moz-linear-gradient(50% 100%, 45deg,\n\t#FAA51A,\n\t#FCC 20%,\n\t#F47A20\n\t);\n\nSo that\u2019s some of the flexibility implicit in the W3C/Mozilla-style syntax.\n\nNow, I should note that both syntaxes have their respective fans. I will say that the W3C/Mozilla-style syntax makes much more sense to me, and lines up with how I think about creating gradients. But I can totally understand why some might prefer WebKit\u2019s more verbose approach to the, well, looseness behind the -moz syntax. \u00c0 chacun son gradient syntax.\n\nStill, as the language gets refined by the W3C, I really hope some consensus is reached by the browser vendors. And with Opera signaling that it will support the W3C syntax, I suppose it falls on WebKit to do the same.\n\nReusing color stops for fun and profit\n\nBut CSS gradients aren\u2019t all simple colors and shapes and whatnot: by getting inventive with individual color stops, you can create some really complex, compelling effects.\n\nTim Van Damme, whose brain, I believe, should be posthumously donated to science, has a particularly clever application of gradients on The Box, a site dedicated to his occasional podcast series. Now, there are a fair number of gradients applied throughout the UI, but it\u2019s the feature image that really catches the eye.\n\nYou see, there\u2019s nothing that says you can\u2019t reuse color stops. And Tim\u2019s exploited that perfectly.\n\nHe\u2019s created a linear gradient, angled at forty-five degrees from the top left corner of the photo, starting with a fully transparent white (rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)). At the halfway mark, he\u2019s established another color stop at an only slightly more opaque white (rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.1)), making for that incredibly gradual brightening toward the middle of the photo.\n\n\n\nBut then he has set another color stop immediately on top of it, bringing it back down to rgba(255, 255, 255, 0) again. This creates that fantastically hard edge that diagonally bisects the photo, giving the image that subtle gloss.\n\n\n\nAnd his final color stop ends at the same fully transparent white, completing the effect. Hot? I do believe so.\n\nRocking the radials\n\nWe\u2019ve been looking at linear gradients pretty exclusively. But I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t at least mention radial gradients as a viable option, including a modest one as a link accent on a navigation bar:\n\n\n\nAnd here\u2019s the relevant CSS:\n\nbackground: -moz-radial-gradient(50% 100%, farthest-side,\n\trgb(204, 255, 255) 1%,\n\trgb(85, 85, 85) 15%,\n\trgba(85, 85, 85, 0)\n\t);\nbackground: -webkit-gradient(radial, 50% 100%, 0, 50% 100%, 15,\n\tfrom(rgb(204, 255, 255)),\n\tto(rgba(85, 85, 85, 0))\n\t);\n\nNow, the syntax builds on what we\u2019ve already learned about linear gradients, so much of it might be familiar to you, picking out color stops and transition points, as well as the two syntaxes\u2019 reliance on either a separate property (-moz-radial-gradient) or parameter (-webkit-gradient(radial, \u2026)) to shift into circular mode.\n\nMozilla introduces another stand-alone property (-moz-radial-gradient), and accepts a starting point (50% 100%) from which the circle radiates. There\u2019s also a size constant defined (farthest-side), which determines the reach and shape of our gradient.\n\nWebKit is again the more verbose of the two syntaxes, requiring both starting and ending points (50% 100% in both cases). Each also accepts a radius in pixels, allowing you to control the skew and breadth of the circle.\n\nAgain, this is a fairly modest little radial gradient. Time and article length (and, let\u2019s be honest, your author\u2019s completely inadequate grasp of geometry) prevent me from covering radial gradients in much more detail, because they are incredibly powerful. For those interested in learning more, I can\u2019t recommend the references at Mozilla and Apple strongly enough.\n\nLeave no browser behind\n\nBut no matter the kind of gradients you\u2019re working with, there is a large swathe of browsers that simply don\u2019t support gradients. Thankfully, it\u2019s fairly easy to declare a sensible fallback\u2014it just depends on the kind of fallback you\u2019d like. Essentially, gradient-blind browsers will disregard any properties containing references to either -moz-linear-gradient, -moz-radial-gradient, or -webkit-gradient, so you simply need to keep your fallback isolated from those properties.\n\nFor example: if you\u2019d like to fall back to a flat color, simply declare a separate background-color:\n\n.nav {\n\tbackground-color: #000;\n\tbackground-image: -moz-linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0), rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.45));\n\tbackground-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0 0, 0 100%, from(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)), to(rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.45)));\n}\n\nOr perhaps just create three separate background properties.\n\n.nav {\n\tbackground: #000;\n\tbackground: #000 -moz-linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0), rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.45));\n\tbackground: #000 -webkit-gradient(linear, 0 0, 0 100%, from(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)), to(rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.45)));\n}\n\nWe can even build on this to fall back to a non-gradient image:\n\n.nav {\n\tbackground: #000 url(\"faux-gradient-lol.png\") repeat-x;\n\tbackground: #000 -moz-linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0), rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.45));\n\tbackground: #000 -webkit-gradient(linear, 0 0, 0 100%, from(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)), to(rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.45)));\n}\n\nNo matter the approach you feel most appropriate to your design, it\u2019s really just a matter of keeping your fallback design quarantined from its CSS3-ified siblings.\n\n(If you\u2019re feeling especially masochistic, there\u2019s even a way to get simple linear gradients working in IE via Microsoft\u2019s proprietary filters. Of course, those come with considerable performance penalties that even Microsoft is quick to point out, so I\u2019d recommend avoiding those.\n\nAnd don\u2019t tell Andy Clarke I told you, or he\u2019ll probably unload his Derringer at me. Or something.)\n\nGo forth and, um, gradientify!\n\nIt\u2019s entirely possible your head\u2019s spinning. Heck, mine is, but that might be the effects of the \u2019nog. But maybe you\u2019re wondering why you should care about CSS gradients. After all, images are here right now, and work just fine. \n\nWell, there are some quick benefits that spring to mind: fewer HTTP requests are needed; CSS3 gradients are easily made scalable, making them ideal for variable widths and heights; and finally, they\u2019re easily modifiable by tweaking a few CSS properties. Because, let\u2019s face it, less time spent yelling at Photoshop is a very, very good thing.\n\nOf course, CSS-generated gradients are not without their drawbacks. The syntax can be confusing, and it\u2019s still under development at the W3C. As we\u2019ve seen, browser support is still very much in flux. And it\u2019s possible that gradients themselves have some real performance drawbacks\u2014so test thoroughly, and gradient carefully.\n\nBut still, as syntaxes converge, and support improves, I think generated gradients can make a compelling tool in our collective belts. The tasteful design is, of course, entirely up to you.\n\nSo have fun, and get gradientin\u2019.", "year": "2010", "author": "Ethan Marcotte", "author_slug": "ethanmarcotte", "published": "2010-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-gradients/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 313, "title": "Centered Tabs with CSS", "contents": "Doug Bowman\u2019s Sliding Doors is pretty much the de facto way to build tabbed navigation with CSS, and rightfully so \u2013 it is, as they say, rockin\u2019 like Dokken. But since it relies heavily on floats for the positioning of its tabs, we\u2019re constrained to either left- or right-hand navigation. But what if we need a bit more flexibility? What if we need to place our navigation in the center?\n\nStyling the li as a floated block does give us a great deal of control over margin, padding, and other presentational styles. However, we should learn to love the inline box \u2013 with it, we can create a flexible, centered alternative to floated navigation lists.\n\nHumble Beginnings\n\nDo an extra shot of \u2018nog, because you know what\u2019s coming next. That\u2019s right, a simple unordered list:\n\n\n\nIf we were wedded to using floats to style our list, we could easily fix the width of our ul, and trick it out with some margin: 0 auto; love to center it accordingly. But this wouldn\u2019t net us much flexibility: if we ever changed the number of navigation items, or if the user increased her browser\u2019s font size, our design could easily break.\n\nInstead of worrying about floats, let\u2019s take the most basic approach possible: let\u2019s turn our list items into inline elements, and simply use text-align to center them within the ul:\n\n#navigation ul, #navigation ul li {\n list-style: none;\n margin: 0;\n padding: 0;\n}\n\n#navigation ul {\n text-align: center;\n}\n\n#navigation ul li {\n display: inline;\n margin-right: .75em;\n}\n\n#navigation ul li.last {\n margin-right: 0;\n}\n\nOur first step is sexy, no? Well, okay, not really \u2013 but it gives us a good starting point. We\u2019ve tamed our list by removing its default styles, set the list items to display: inline, and centered the lot. Adding a background color to the links shows us exactly how the different elements are positioned.\n\nNow the fun stuff.\n\nInline Elements, Padding, and You\n\nSo how do we give our links some dimensions? Well, as the CSS specification tells us, the height property isn\u2019t an option for inline elements such as our anchors. However, what if we add some padding to them?\n\n#navigation li a {\n padding: 5px 1em;\n}\n\nI just love leading questions. Things are looking good, but something\u2019s amiss: as you can see, the padded anchors seem to be escaping their containing list.\n\nThankfully, it\u2019s easy to get things back in line. Our anchors have 5 pixels of padding on their top and bottom edges, right? Well, by applying the same vertical padding to the list, our list will finally \u201ccontain\u201d its child elements once again.\n\n\u2019Tis the Season for Tabbing\n\nNow, we\u2019re finally able to follow the \u201cSliding Doors\u201d model, and tack on some graphics:\n\n#navigation ul li a {\n background: url(\"tab-right.gif\") no-repeat 100% 0;\n color: #06C;\n padding: 5px 0;\n text-decoration: none;\n}\n\n#navigation ul li a span {\n background: url(\"tab-left.gif\") no-repeat;\n padding: 5px 1em;\n}\n\n#navigation ul li a:hover span {\n color: #69C;\n text-decoration: underline;\n}\n\nFinally, our navigation\u2019s looking appropriately sexy. By placing an equal amount of padding on the top and bottom of the ul, our tabs are properly \u201ccontained\u201d, and we can subsequently style the links within them.\n\n\n\nBut what if we want them to bleed over the bottom-most border? Easy: we can simply decrease the bottom padding on the list by one pixel, like so.\n\nA Special Note for Special Browsers\n\nThe Mac IE5 users in the audience are likely hopping up and down by now: as they\u2019ve discovered, our centered navigation behaves rather annoyingly in their browser. As Philippe Wittenbergh has reported, Mac IE5 is known to create \u201cphantom links\u201d in a block-level element when text-align is set to any value but the default value of left. Thankfully, Philippe has documented a workaround that gets that [censored] venerable browser to behave. Simply place the following code into your CSS, and the links will be restored to their appropriate width:\n\n/**//*/\n#navigation ul li a {\n display: inline-block;\n white-space: nowrap;\n width: 1px;\n}\n/**/\n\nIE for Windows, however, displays an extra kind of crazy. The padding I\u2019ve placed on my anchors is offsetting the spans that contain the left curve of my tabs; thankfully, these shenanigans are easily straightened out:\n\n/**/\n* html #navigation ul li a {\n padding: 0;\n}\n/**/\n\nAnd with that, we\u2019re finally finished.\n\nAll set.\n\nAnd that\u2019s it. With your centered navigation in hand, you can finally enjoy those holiday toddies and uncomfortable conversations with your skeevy Uncle Eustace.", "year": "2005", "author": "Ethan Marcotte", "author_slug": "ethanmarcotte", "published": "2005-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/centered-tabs-with-css/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 226, "title": "Documentation-Driven Design for APIs", "contents": "Documentation is like gift wrapping. It seems like superfluous fluff, but your family tends to be rather disappointed when their presents arrive in supermarket carrier bags, so you have to feign some sort of attempt at making your gift look enticing. Documentation doesn\u2019t have to be all hard work and sellotaping yourself to a table \u2013 you can make it useful and relevant.\n\nDocumentation gets a pretty rough deal. It tends to get left until the end of a project, when some poor developer is assigned the \u2018document project\u2019 ticket and wades through each feature of Whizzy New API 3.0 and needs to recall exactly what each method is meant to do. That\u2019s assuming any time is left for documentation at all. The more common outcome resembles last minute homework scribbled on a post-it note, where just the bare bones of what\u2019s available are put out for your users, and you hope that you\u2019ll spot the inconsistencies and mistakes before they do.\n\nWouldn\u2019t it be nicer for everyone if you could make documentation not only outstanding for your users, but also a valuable tool for your development team \u2013 so much so that you couldn\u2019t imagine writing a line of code before you\u2019d documented it?\n\nDocumentation needs to have three main features:\n\n\n\tIt should have total coverage and document all the features of your project. Private methods should be documented for your developers, and public features need to be available to your users.\n\tIt should be consistent \u2013 a user should know what to expect from your documentation, and terminology should be accurate to your language.\n\tIt should be current \u2013 and that means staying accurate as new versions of your code base are released.\n\n\nBut you can also get these bonuses:\n\n\n\tAct as a suggested specification \u2013 a guide that will aid a developer in making something consistent and usable.\n\tIt can test your API quality.\n\tIt can enhance the communication skills within your development team.\n\n\nSo how do we get our documentation to be rich and full of features, instead of a little worn out like Boxing Day leftovers?\n\nWrite your documentation first\n\nWhen I say first, I mean first. Not after you\u2019ve started writing the code. Not even after you\u2019ve started writing your unit tests. First. You may or may not have been provided with a decent specification, but the first job should be to turn your requirements for a feature into documentation. \n\nIt works best when it takes the form of in-code comments. It works even better when your in-code comments take a standard documentation format that you can later use to generate published documentation for your users. This has the benefit of immediately making your docs as version controlled as your code-base, and it saves having to rewrite, copy or otherwise harass your docs into something legible later on. \n\nAlmost all languages have a self-documentation format these days. My choice of format for JavaScript is JSDocToolkit, and the sort of things I look for are the ability to specify private and public methods, full options object statements (opts as Opts only is a no-no), and the ability to include good examples.\n\nSo, our example for today will be a new festive feature for a JavaScript API. We\u2019ve been asked to specify a sled for Santa to get around the world to give out toys:\n\n\n\tSanta needs to be able to travel around the world in one night to deliver toys to children, and he\u2019ll need some reindeer to pull his sled.\n\n\nAs documentation, it would look like:\n\n/**\n@name Sled\n@extends Vehicle\n@constructor\n@description Create a new sled to send Santa around the world to deliver toys to good kids.\n\t@param {Object} [opts] Options\n\t@param {number} [opts.capacity='50'] Set the capacity of the sled\n\t@param {string} [opts.pilot='santa'] The pilot of the sled.\n@example\n\t// Create a sled and specify some reindeer.\n\tnew Sled().reindeer(['Dasher', 'Dancer', 'Prancer', 'Vixen', 'Comet', 'Cupid']);\n*/\n\nBy breaking it down as documentation, you can, for example, hand this over to another developer without the need to explain the feature in much depth, and they\u2019ll develop something that has to match this piece of documentation. It specifies everything that is important to this feature \u2013 its default values and types, and where it inherits other features from. \n\nWe know that we need to specify some way of setting reindeer to pull the sled and also some toys to give, and so we can quickly specify extra methods for the sled:\n\n/*\n@name vehicle.Sled#reindeer\n@function\n@description Set the reindeer that will pull Santa's sled.\n\t@param {string[]} reindeer A list of the reindeer.\n@example\n\t// specifying some reindeer\n\tSled().reindeer(['Dasher', 'Dancer', 'Rudolph', 'Vixen']);\n*/\n/*\n@name vehicle.Sled#toys\n@function\n@description Add a list of toys and recipients to the Sled.\n\t@param {Object[]} toys A list of toys and who will receive them.\n@example\n\t// Adding toys to the sled\n\tSled().toys([\n\t\t{name:'Brian', toy:'Fire Engine'},\n\t\t{name:'Drew', toy:'Roller-skates'},\n\t\t{name:'Anna', toy:'Play-doh'},\n\t\t...\n\t\t]);\n*/\n\nJob done! You\u2019ve got a specification to share with your team and something useful for your users in the form of full examples, and you didn\u2019t even have to open another text editor.\n\nUse your documentation to share knowledge\n\nDocumentation isn\u2019t just for users. It\u2019s also used by internal developers to explain what they\u2019ve written and how it works. This is especially valuable where the team is large or the code-base sprawling.\n\nSo, returning to our example, the next step would be to share with the rest of the team (or at least a selection of the team if yours is large) what the documentation looks like. This is useful for two main reasons:\n\n\n\tThey can see if they understand what the documentation says the feature will do. It\u2019s best if they haven\u2019t seen the requirement before. If your fellow developers can\u2019t work out what \u2018MagicMethodX\u2019 is going to return from the docs, neither can your users.\n\tThey can check that the feature accomplishes everything that they expect to, and that it\u2019s consistent with the rest of the functionality.\n\n\nOn previous projects, we\u2019ve taken to referring to this stage of the development process as the \u2018bun fight\u2019. It\u2019s a chance for everyone to have an honest say and throw a few pies without actually causing anyone to have to rewrite any code. If you can identify at this stage that a feature is over-complicated, lacking or just plain useless, you\u2019ll all be much happier to throw out a few lines of documentation than you may have been to throw out a partial, or even complete, piece of functionality.\n\nDocumentation has your back\n\nThe final benefit to working in this way is that your documentation not only remains accurate, it\u2019s always as accurate as your latest release. It can\u2019t fall behind. You can increase the likelihood that your docs will remain up to date by unit testing your examples.\n\nReturning to the previous example, we can add a QUnit unit test to the expected output with ease during the build process \u2013 we know exactly how the code will look and, with the @example tag, we can identify easily where to find the bits that need testing. If it\u2019s tested it\u2019ll definitely work as you expect it to when a user copy and pastes it. You\u2019re ensuring quality from idea to implementation.\n\nAs an extra bauble, the best thing about a system like JSDocToolkit is that it\u2019ll take your inline comments and turn them into beautiful sites, as good systems will allow for customised output templates. You\u2019ll be producing full-featured sites for your projects and plugins with almost no extra effort, but all the benefits.", "year": "2010", "author": "Frances Berriman", "author_slug": "francesberriman", "published": "2010-12-11T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/documentation-driven-design-for-apis/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 289, "title": "Front-End Developers Are Information Architects Too", "contents": "The theme of this year\u2019s World IA Day was \u201cInformation Everywhere, Architects Everywhere\u201d. This article isn\u2019t about what you may consider an information architect to be: someone in the user-experience field, who maybe studied library science, and who talks about taxonomies. This is about a realisation I had a couple of years ago when I started to run an increasing amount of usability-testing sessions with people who have disabilities: that the structure, labelling, and connections that can be made in front-end code is information architecture. People\u2019s ability to be successful online is unequivocally connected to the quality of the code that is written.\nPlaces made of information\nIn information architecture we talk about creating places made of information. These places are made of ones and zeros, but we talk about them as physical structures. We talk about going onto a social media platform, posting in blogs, getting locked out of an environment, and building applications. In 2002, Andrew Hinton stated:\n\nPeople live and work in these structures, just as they live and work in their homes, offices, factories and malls. These places are not virtual: they are as real as our own minds.\n25 Theses\n\nWe\u2019re creating structures which people rely on for significant parts of their lives, so it\u2019s critical that we carry out our work responsibly. This means we must use our construction materials correctly. Luckily, our most important material, HTML, has a well-documented specification which tells us how to build robust and accessible places. What is most important, I believe, is to understand the semantics of HTML.\nSemantics\nThe word \u201csemantic\u201d has its origin in Greek words meaning \u201csignificant\u201d, \u201csignify\u201d, and \u201csign\u201d. In the physical world, a structure can have semantic qualities that tell us something about it. For example, the stunning Westminster Abbey inspires awe and signifies much about the intent and purpose of the structure. The building\u2019s size; the quality of the stone work; the massive, detailed stained glass: these are all signs that this is a building meant for something the creators deemed important. Alternatively consider a set of large, clean, well-positioned, well-lit doors on the ground floor of an office block: they don\u2019t need an \u201centrance\u201d sign to communicate their use and to stop people trying to use a nearby fire exit to get into the building. The design of the doors signify their usage. Sometimes a more literal and less awe-inspiring approach to communicating a building\u2019s purpose happens, but the affect is similar: the building is signifying something about its purpose.\nHTML has over 115 elements, many of which have semantics to signify structure and affordance to people, browsers, and assistive technology. The HTML 5.1 specification mentions semantics, stating:\n\nElements, attributes, and attribute values in HTML are defined \u2026 to have certain meanings (semantics). For example, the

element to mark up headings, in some situations browsers will decide that a

is being used for layout and essentially make it invisible to assistive technology. Another example of how coding practices can affect the usability and findability of content is shown by L\u00e9onie Watson in her How ARIA landmark roles help screen reader users video. By using ARIA landmark roles, people who use screen readers are quickly able to identify and jump to common parts of a web page.\nOur definitions of information architects and information architecture mention patterns, rules, organisation, labelling, structure, and relationships. There are numerous different models for how these elements get boiled down to their fundamentals. In his Understanding Context book, Andrew Hinton calls them Labels, Relationships, and Rules; Jorge Arango calls them Links, Nodes, And Order; and Dan Klyn uses Ontology, Taxonomy, and Choreography, which is the one we\u2019re going to use. Dan defines these terms as:\nOntology\nThe definition and articulation of the rules and patterns that govern the meaning of what we intend to communicate.\nWhat we mean when we say what we say.\nTaxonomy\nThe arrangements of the parts. Developing systems and structures for what everything\u2019s called, where everything\u2019s sorted, and the relationships between labels and categories\nChoreography\nRules for interaction among the parts. The structures it creates foster specific types of movement and interaction; anticipating the way users and information want to flow and making affordance for change over time.\n\nWe now have definitions of an information architect, information architecture, and a model of the elements of information architecture. But is writing HTML really creating information or is it just wrangling data and metadata? When does data turn into information? In his book Managing For The Future Peter Drucker states:\n\n\u2026 data is not information. Information is data endowed with relevance and purpose.\nManaging For The Future\n\nIf we use the correct semantic element to mark up content then we\u2019re developing with purpose and creating relevance. For example, if we follow the advice of the HTML 5.1 specification and mark up headings using heading rank instead of the outline algorithm, we\u2019re creating a structure where the depth of one heading is relevant to the previous one. Architected correctly, an

element should be relevant to its parent, which should be the

. By following the HTML specification we can create a structured, searchable, labeled document that will hopefully be relevant to what our users need to be successful. If you\u2019ve never used a screen reader, you might be wondering how the headings on a page are searchable. Screen readers give users the ability to interact with headings in a couple of ways:\n\nby creating a list of headings so users can quickly scan the page for information\nby using a keyboard command to cycle through one heading at a time\n\nIf we had a document for Christmas Day TV we might structure it something like this:\n

Christmas Day TV schedule

BBC1

Morning

Evening

BBC2

Morning

Evening

ITV

Morning

Evening

Channel 4

Morning

Evening

\nIf I use VoiceOver to generate a list of headings, I get this:\n\nOnce I have that list I can use keyboard commands to filter the list based on the heading level. For example, I can press 2 to hear just the

s:\n\nIf we hadn\u2019t used headings, of if we\u2019d nested them incorrectly, our users would be frustrated.\nPutting this together\nLet\u2019s put this together with an example of a button that, when pressed, toggles the appearance of a panel of links. There are numerous ways we could create a button on a web page, but the best way is to just use a \n\n
\n
\n
Account
\n
Privacy
\n
Security
\n
\n
\nThere\u2019s quite a bit going on here. We\u2019re using the:\n\naria-controls attribute to architect a connection between the \n \n\nColor picker\nThis is our new color picker function. It targets the input element by its class and gets its value. \nfunction getColor() {\n return document.querySelector(\".color\").value;\n}\nUp until now, the app used a default color (black) for the paint brush/digital pen. If we want to change the color we need to use the canvas property strokeStyle. We\u2019ll update drawLine by adding strokeStyle to it and setting it to the input value by calling getColor.\nfunction drawLine() {\n //...code... \n context.strokeStyle = getColor();\n context.lineWidth = 4;\n context.lineCap = \"round\";\n\n //...code... \n}\nClear button\nThis is our new Clear function. It responds to a button click and displays a dialog asking the user if she really wants to delete the drawing.\nfunction clearCanvas() {\n if (confirm(\"Want to clear?\")) {\n context.clearRect(0, 0, w, h);\n }\n}\nThe method clearRect takes four arguments. The first two (0,0) mark the origin, which is actually the top left corner of the canvas. The other two (w,h) mark the full width and height of the canvas. This means the entire canvas will be erased, from the top left corner to the bottom right corner. \nIf we were to give clearRect a slightly different set of arguments, say (0,0,w/2,h), the result would be different. In this case, only the left side of the canvas would clear up.\nLet\u2019s add this event handler to init:\nfunction init() {\n //...code...\n canvas.onpointermove = handleMouseMove;\n canvas.onpointerdown = handleMouseDown;\n canvas.onpointerup = stopDrawing;\n canvas.onpointerout = stopDrawing;\n document.querySelector(\".clear\").onclick = clearCanvas;\n}\nSee the Pen Mandala Maker Tutorial: Part 2 by Hagar Shilo (@hagarsh) on CodePen.\n\nPart 3: Draw with 2 lines\nIt\u2019s time to make a line appear where no pointer has gone before. A ghost line! \nFor that we are going to need four new coordinates: a', b', c' and d' (marked in the code as a_, b_, c_ and d_). In order for us to be able to add the first reflection, first we must decide if it\u2019s going to go over the y-axis or the x-axis. Since this is an arbitrary decision, it doesn\u2019t matter which one we choose. Let\u2019s go with the x-axis. \nHere is a sketch to help you grasp the mathematics of reflecting a point across the x-axis. The coordinate space in my sketch is different from my explanation earlier about the way the coordinate space works in computer graphics (more about that in a bit!). \nNow, look at A. It shows a point drawn where the pointer hits, and B shows the additional point we want to appear: a reflection of the point across the x-axis. This is our goal.\nA sketch illustrating the mathematics of reflecting a point.\nWhat happens to the x coordinates?\nThe variables a/a' and c/c' correspond to prevX and currX respectively, so we can call them \u201cthe x coordinates\u201d. We are reflecting across x, so their values remain the same, and therefore a' = a and c' = c. \nWhat happens to the y coordinates?\nWhat about b' and d'? Those are the ones that have to change, but in what way? Thanks to the slightly misleading sketch I showed you just now (of A and B), you probably think that the y coordinates b' and d' should get the negative values of b and d respectively, but nope. This is computer graphics, remember? The origin is at the top left corner and not at the canvas center, and therefore we get the following values: b = h - b, d' = h - d, where h is the canvas height.\nThis is the new code for the app\u2019s variables and the two lines: the one that fills the pointer\u2019s path and the one mirroring it across the x-axis.\nfunction drawLine() {\n var a = prevX, a_ = a,\n b = prevY, b_ = h-b,\n c = currX, c_ = c,\n d = currY, d_ = h-d;\n\n //... code ...\n\n // Draw line #1, at the pointer's location\n context.moveTo(a, b);\n context.lineTo(c, d);\n\n // Draw line #2, mirroring the line #1\n context.moveTo(a_, b_);\n context.lineTo(c_, d_);\n\n //... code ...\n}\nIn case this was too abstract for you, let\u2019s look at some actual numbers to see how this works.\nLet\u2019s say we have a tiny canvas of w = h = 10. Now let a = 3, b = 2, c = 4 and d = 3.\nSo b' = 10 - 2 = 8 and d' = 10 - 3 = 7.\nWe use the top and the left as references. For the y coordinates this means we count from the top, and 8 from the top is also 2 from the bottom. Similarly, 7 from the top is 3 from the bottom of the canvas. That\u2019s it, really. This is how the single point, and a line (not necessarily a straight one, by the way) is made up of many, many small segments that are similar to point in behavior.\nIf you are still confused, I don\u2019t blame you. \nHere is the result. Draw something and see what happens.\nSee the Pen Mandala Maker Tutorial: Part 3 by Hagar Shilo (@hagarsh) on CodePen.\n\nPart 4: Draw with 8 lines\nI have made yet another confusing sketch, with points C and D, so you understand what we\u2019re trying to do. Later on we\u2019ll look at points E, F, G and H as well. The circled point is the one we\u2019re adding at each particular step. The circled point at C has the coordinates (-3,2) and the circled point at D has the coordinates (-3,-2). Once again, keep in mind that the origin in the sketches is not the same as the origin of the canvas. \nA sketch illustrating points C and D.\nThis is the part where the math gets a bit mathier, as our drawLine function evolves further. We\u2019ll keep using the four new coordinates: a', b', c' and d', and reassign their values for each new location/line. Let\u2019s add two more lines in two new locations on the canvas. Their locations relative to the first two lines are exactly what you see in the sketch above, though the calculation required is different (because of the origin points being different).\nfunction drawLine() {\n\n //... code ... \n\n // Reassign values\n a_ = w-a; b_ = b;\n c_ = w-c; d_ = d;\n\n // Draw the 3rd line\n context.moveTo(a_, b_);\n context.lineTo(c_, d_);\n\n // Reassign values\n a_ = w-a; b_ = h-b;\n c_ = w-c; d_ = h-d;\n\n // Draw the 4th line\n context.moveTo(a_, b_);\n context.lineTo(c_, d_);\n\n //... code ... \nWhat is happening?\nYou might be wondering why we use w and h as separate variables, even though we know they have the same value. Why complicate the code this way for no apparent reason? That\u2019s because we want the symmetry to hold for a rectangular canvas as well, and this way it will. \nAlso, you may have noticed that the values of a' and c' are not reassigned when the fourth line is created. Why write their value assignments twice? It\u2019s for readability, documentation and communication. Maintaining the quadruple structure in the code is meant to help you remember that all the while we are dealing with two y coordinates (current and previous) and two x coordinates (current and previous). \nWhat happens to the x coordinates?\nAs you recall, our x coordinates are a (prevX) and c (currX).\nFor the third line we are adding, a' = w - a and c' = w - c, which means\u2026\nFor the fourth line, the same thing happens to our x coordinates a and c.\nWhat happens to the y coordinates?\nAs you recall, our y coordinates are b (prevY) and d (currY).\nFor the third line we are adding, b' = b and d' = d, which means the y coordinates are the ones not changing this time, making this is a reflection across the y-axis. \nFor the fourth line, b' = h - b and d' = h - d, which we\u2019ve seen before: that\u2019s a reflection across the x-axis.\nWe have four more lines, or locations, to define. Note: the part of the code that\u2019s responsible for drawing a micro-line between the newly calculated coordinates is always the same:\n context.moveTo(a_, b_);\n context.lineTo(c_, d_);\nWe can leave it out of the next code snippets and just focus on the calculations, i.e, the reassignments. \nOnce again, we need some concrete examples to see where we\u2019re going, so here\u2019s another sketch! The circled point E has the coordinates (2,3) and the circled point F has the coordinates (2,-3). The ability to draw at A but also make the drawing appear at E and F (in addition to B, C and D that we already dealt with) is the functionality we are about to add to out code.\nA sketch illustrating points E and F.\nThis is the code for E and F:\n // Reassign for 5\n a_ = w/2+h/2-b; b_ = w/2+h/2-a;\n c_ = w/2+h/2-d; d_ = w/2+h/2-c;\n\n // Reassign for 6\n a_ = w/2+h/2-b; b_ = h/2-w/2+a;\n c_ = w/2+h/2-d; d_ = h/2-w/2+c;\nTheir x coordinates are identical and their y coordinates are reversed to one another.\nThis one will be out final sketch. The circled point G has the coordinates (-2,3) and the circled point H has the coordinates (-2,-3).\nA sketch illustrating points G and H.\nThis is the code:\n // Reassign for 7\n a_ = w/2-h/2+b; b_ = w/2+h/2-a;\n c_ = w/2-h/2+d; d_ = w/2+h/2-c;\n\n // Reassign for 8\n a_ = w/2-h/2+b; b_ = h/2-w/2+a;\n c_ = w/2-h/2+d; d_ = h/2-w/2+c;\n //...code... \n}\nOnce again, the x coordinates of these two points are the same, while the y coordinates are different. And once again I won\u2019t go into the full details, since this has been a long enough journey as it is, and I think we\u2019ve covered all the important principles. But feel free to play around with the code and change it. I really recommend commenting out the code for some of the points to see what your drawing looks like without them.\nI hope you had fun learning! This is our final app:\nSee the Pen Mandala Maker Tutorial: Part 4 by Hagar Shilo (@hagarsh) on CodePen.", "year": "2018", "author": "Hagar Shilo", "author_slug": "hagarshilo", "published": "2018-12-02T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/the-art-of-mathematics/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 236, "title": "Extreme Design", "contents": "Recently, I set out with twelve other designers and developers for a 19th century fortress on the Channel Island of Alderney. We were going to /dev/fort, a sort of band camp for geeks. Our cohort\u2019s mission: to think up, build and finish something \u2013 without readily available internet access.\n\n Alderney runway, photo by Chris Govias\n\n\n\nWait, no internet?\n\nWell, pretty much. As the creators of /dev/fort James Aylett and Mark Norman Francis put it: \u201cImagine a place with no distractions \u2013 no IM, no Twitter\u201d. But also no way to quickly look up a design pattern, code sample or source material. Like packing for camping, /dev/fort means bringing everything you\u2019ll need on your back or your hard drive: from long johns to your favourite icon set.\n\nWe got to work the first night discussing ideas for what we wanted to build. By the time breakfast was cleared up the next morning, we\u2019d settled on Russ\u2019s idea to make the Apollo 13 (PDF) transcript accessible. Days two and three were spent collaboratively planning (KJ style) what features we wanted to build, and unravelling the larger UX challenges of the project. The next five days were spent building it. Within 36 hours of touchdown at Southampton Airport, we launched our creation: spacelog.org\n\nThe weather was cold, the coal fire less than ideal, food and supplies a hike away, and the process lightning-fast. A week of designing under extreme circumstances called for an extreme process. Some of this was driven by James\u2019s and Norm\u2019s experience running these things, but a lot of it materialised while we were there \u2013 especially for our three-strong design team (myself, Gavin O\u2019 Carroll and Chris Govias) who, though we knew each other, had never worked together as a group in this kind of scenario before.\n\nThe outcome was a pretty spectacular process, with a some key takeaways useful for any small group trying to build something quickly.\n\nWhat it\u2019s like inside the fort\n\n/dev/fort has the pressure and pace of a hack day without being a hack day \u2013 primarily, no workshops or interruptions\u201a but also a different mentality. While hack days are typically developer-driven with a \u2018hack first, design later (if at all)\u2019 attitude, James was quick to tell the team to hold off from writing any code until we had a plan. This put a healthy pressure on the design and product folks to slash through the UX problems before we started building.\n\nWhile the fort had definitely more of a hack day feel, all of us were familiar with Agile methods, so we borrowed a few useful techniques such as morning stand-ups and an emphasis on teamwork. We cut some really good features to make our launch date, and chunked the work based on user goals, iterating as we went.\n\nWhat made this design process work?\n\nA golden ratio of teams\n\nMy personal experience both professionally and in free-form situations like this, is a tendency to get/hire a designer. Leaders of businesses, founders of start-ups, organisers of events: one designer is not enough! Finding one ace-blooded designer who can \u2018do everything\u2019 will always result in bottleneck and burnout. Like the nuances between different development languages, design is a multifaceted discipline, and very few can claim to be equally strong in every aspect. Overlap in skill set will result in a stronger, more robust interface.\n\nMore importantly, however, having lots of designers to go around meant that we all had the opportunity to pair with developers, polishing the details that don\u2019t usually get polished. As soon as we launched, the public reception of the design and UX was overwhelmingly positive (proof!). But also, a lot of people asked us who the designer was, attributing it to one person.\n\nWhile it\u2019s important to note that everyone in our team was multitalented (and could easily shift between roles, helping us all stay unblocked), the golden ratio James and Norm devised was two product/developer folks, three interaction designers and eight developers.\n\n photo by Ben Firshman\n\nEquality inside the fortress walls\n\nSomething magical about the fort is how everyone leaves the outside world on the drawbridge. Job titles, professional status, Twitter followers, and so on. Like scout camp, a mutual respect and trust is expected of all the participants. Like extreme programming, extreme design requires us all to be equal partners in a collaborative team. I think this is especially worth noting for designers; our past is filled with the clear hierarchy of the traditional studio system which, however important for taste and style, seems less compatible with modern web/software development methods.\n\nBeing equal doesn\u2019t mean being the same, however. We established clear roles and teams for ourselves on the second day, deferring to that person when a decision needed to be made. As the interface coalesced, the designers and developers took ownership over certain parts to ensure the details got looked after, while staying open to ideas and revisions from the rest of the cohort.\n\nCreate a space where everyone who enters is equal, but be sure to establish clear roles. Even if it\u2019s just for a short while, the environment will be beneficial.\n\n photo by Ben Firshman\n\nHang your heraldry from the rafters\n\nForts and castles are full of lore: coats of arms; paintings of battles; suits of armour. It\u2019s impossible not to be surrounded by these stories, words and ways of thinking. Like the whiteboards on the walls, putting organisational lore in your physical surroundings makes it impossible not to see.\n\nRyan Alexander brought some of those static-cling whiteboard sheets which were quickly filled with use cases; IA; team roles; and, most importantly, a glossary. As soon as we started working on the project, we realised we needed to get clear on what certain words meant: what was a logline, a range, a phase, a key moment? Were the back-end people using these words in the same way design and product was? Quickly writing up a glossary of terms meant everyone was instantly speaking the same language. There was no \u201cAh, I misunderstood because in the data structure x means y\u201d or, even worse, accidental seepage of technical language into the user interface copy.\n\nPut a glossary of your internal terminology somewhere big and fat on the wall. Stand around it and argue until you agree on what it says. Leave it up; don\u2019t underestimate the power of ambient communication and physical reference.\n\nPlan more, download less\n\nWhile internet is forbidden inside the fort, we did go on downloading expeditions: NASA photography; code documentation; and so on. The project wouldn\u2019t have been possible without a few trips to the web. We had two lists on the wall: groceries and supplies; internets \u2013 \u201cloo roll; Tom Stafford photo\u201c.\n\nThis changed our usual design process, forcing us to plan carefully and think of what we needed ahead of time. Getting to the internet was a thirty-minute hike up a snow covered cliff to the town airport, so you really had to need it, too. \n\n The path to the internet\n\nFor the visual design, especially, this resulted in more focus up front, and communication between the designers on what assets we required. It made us make decisions earlier and stick with them, creating less distraction and churn later in the process. \n\nTry it at home: unplug once you\u2019ve got the things you need. As an artist, it\u2019s easier to let your inner voice shine through if you\u2019re not looking at other people\u2019s work while creating.\n\nSocial design\n\nFinally, our design team experimented with a collaborative approach to wireframing. Once we had collectively nailed down use cases, IA, user journeys and other critical artefacts, we tried a pairing approach. One person drew in Illustrator in real time as the other two articulated what to draw. (This would work equally well with two people, but with three it meant that one of us could jump up and consult the lore on the walls or clarify a technical detail.) The result: we ended up considering more alternatives and quickly rallying around one solution, and resolved difficult problems more quickly.\n\nAt a certain stage we discovered it was more efficient for one person to take over \u2013 this happened around the time when the basic wireframes existed in Illustrator and we\u2019d collectively run through the use cases, making sure that everything was accounted for in a broad sense. At this point, take a break, go have a beer, and give yourself a pat on the back.\n\nPut the files somewhere accessible so everyone can use them as their base, and divide up the more detailed UI problems, screens or journeys. At this level of detail it\u2019s better to have your personal headspace.\n\nGavin called this \u2018social design\u2019. Chatting and drawing in real time turned what was normally a rather solitary act into a very social process, with some really promising results. I\u2019d tried something like this before with product or developer folks, and it can work \u2013 but there\u2019s something really beautiful about switching places and everyone involved being equally quick at drawing. That\u2019s not something you get with non-designers, and frequent swapping of the \u2018driver\u2019 and \u2018observer\u2019 roles is a key aspect to pairing.\n\nTackle the forest collectively and the trees individually \u2013 it will make your framework more robust and your details more polished. Win/win. \n\nThe return home\n\nGrateful to see a 3G signal on our phones again, our flight off the island was delayed, allowing for a flurry of domain name look-ups, Twitter catch-up, and e-mails to loved ones. A week in an isolated fort really made me appreciate continuous connectivity, but also just how unique some of these processes might be. \n\nYou just never know what crazy place you might be designing from next.", "year": "2010", "author": "Hannah Donovan", "author_slug": "hannahdonovan", "published": "2010-12-09T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/extreme-design/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 21, "title": "Keeping Parts of Your Codebase Private on GitHub", "contents": "Open source is brilliant, there\u2019s no denying that, and GitHub has been instrumental in open source\u2019s recent success. I\u2019m a keen open-sourcerer myself, and I have a number of projects on GitHub. However, as great as sharing code is, we often want to keep some projects to ourselves. To this end, GitHub created private repositories which act like any other Git repository, only, well, private!\n\nA slightly less common issue, and one I\u2019ve come up against myself, is the desire to only keep certain parts of a codebase private. A great example would be my site, CSS Wizardry; I want the code to be open source so that people can poke through and learn from it, but I want to keep any draft blog posts private until they are ready to go live. Thankfully, there is a very simple solution to this particular problem: using multiple remotes.\n\nBefore we begin, it\u2019s worth noting that you can actually build a GitHub Pages site from a private repo. You can keep the entire source private, but still have GitHub build and display a full Pages/Jekyll site. I do this with csswizardry.net. This post will deal with the more specific problem of keeping only certain parts of the codebase (branches) private, and expose parts of it as either an open source project, or a built GitHub Pages site.\n\nN.B. This post requires some basic Git knowledge.\n\nAdding your public remote\n\nLet\u2019s assume you\u2019re starting from scratch and you currently have no repos set up for your project. (If you do already have your public repo set up, skip to the \u201cAdding your private remote\u201d section.)\n\nSo, we have a clean slate: nothing has been set up yet, we\u2019re doing all of that now. On GitHub, create two repositories. For the sake of this article we shall call them site.com and private.site.com. Make the site.com repo public, and the private.site.com repo private (you will need a paid GitHub account).\n\nOn your machine, create the site.com directory, in which your project will live. Do your initial work in there, commit some stuff \u2014 whatever you need to do. Now we need to link this local Git repo on your machine with the public repo (remote) on GitHub. We should all be used to this:\n\n$ git remote add origin git@github.com:[user]/site.com.git\n\nHere we are simply telling Git to add a remote called origin which lives at git@github.com:[user]/site.com.git. Simple stuff. Now we need to push our current branch (which will be master, unless you\u2019ve explicitly changed it) to that remote:\n\n$ git push -u origin master\n\nHere we are telling Git to push our master branch to a corresponding master branch on the remote called origin, which we just added. The -u sets upstream tracking, which basically tells Git to always shuttle code on this branch between the local master branch and the master branch on the origin remote. Without upstream tracking, you would have to tell Git where to push code to (and pull it from) every time you ran the push or pull commands. This sets up a permanent bond, if you like.\n\nThis is really simple stuff, stuff that you will probably have done a hundred times before as a Git user. Now to set up our private remote.\n\nAdding your private remote\n\nWe\u2019ve set up our public, open source repository on GitHub, and linked that to the repository on our machine. All of this code will be publicly viewable on GitHub.com. (Remember, GitHub is just a host of regular Git repositories, which also puts a nice GUI around it all.) We want to add the ability to keep certain parts of the codebase private. What we do now is add another remote repository to the same local repository. We have two repos on GitHub (site.com and private.site.com), but only one repository (and, therefore, one directory) on our machine. Two GitHub repos, and one local one.\n\nIn your local repo, check out a new branch. For the sake of this article we shall call the branch dev. This branch might contain work in progress, or draft blog posts, or anything you don\u2019t want to be made publicly viewable on GitHub.com. The contents of this branch will, in a moment, live in our private repository.\n\n$ git checkout -b dev\n\nWe have now made a new branch called dev off the branch we were on last (master, unless you renamed it).\n\nNow we need to add our private remote (private.site.com) so that, in a second, we can send this branch to that remote:\n\n$ git remote add private git@github.com:[user]/private.site.com.git\n\nLike before, we are just telling Git to add a new remote to this repo, only this time we\u2019ve called it private and it lives at git@github.com:[user]/private.site.com.git. We now have one local repo on our machine which has two remote repositories associated with it.\n\nNow we need to tell our dev branch to push to our private remote:\n\n$ git push -u private dev\n\nHere, as before, we are pushing some code to a repo. We are saying that we want to push the dev branch to the private remote, and, once again, we\u2019ve set up upstream tracking. This means that, by default, the dev branch will only push and pull to and from the private remote (unless you ever explicitly state otherwise).\n\nNow you have two branches (master and dev respectively) that push to two remotes (origin and private respectively) which are public and private respectively.\n\nAny work we do on the master branch will push and pull to and from our publicly viewable remote, and any code on the dev branch will push and pull from our private, hidden remote.\n\nAdding more branches\n\nSo far we\u2019ve only looked at two branches pushing to two remotes, but this workflow can grow as much or as little as you\u2019d like. Of course, you\u2019d never do all your work in only two branches, so you might want to push any number of them to either your public or private remotes. Let\u2019s imagine we want to create a branch to try something out real quickly:\n\n$ git checkout -b test\n\nNow, when we come to push this branch, we can choose which remote we send it to:\n\n$ git push -u private test\n\nThis pushes the new test branch to our private remote (again, setting the persistent tracking with -u).\n\nYou can have as many or as few remotes or branches as you like.\n\nCombining the two\n\nLet\u2019s say you\u2019ve been working on a new feature in private for a few days, and you\u2019ve kept that on the private remote. You\u2019ve now finalised the addition and want to move it into your public repo. This is just a simple merge. Check out your master branch:\n\n$ git checkout master\n\nThen merge in the branch that contained the feature:\n\n$ git merge dev\n\nNow master contains the commits that were made on dev and, once you\u2019ve pushed master to its remote, those commits will be viewable publicly on GitHub:\n\n$ git push\n\nNote that we can just run $ git push on the master branch as we\u2019d previously set up our upstream tracking (-u).\n\nMultiple machines\n\nSo far this has covered working on just one machine; we had two GitHub remotes and one local repository. Let\u2019s say you\u2019ve got yourself a new Mac (yay!) and you want to clone an existing project:\n\n$ git clone git@github.com:[user]/site.com.git\n\nThis will not clone any information about the remotes you had set up on the previous machine. Here you have a fresh clone of the public project and you will need to add the private remote to it again, as above.\n\nDone!\n\nIf you\u2019d like to see me blitz through all that in one go, check the showterm recording.\n\nThe beauty of this is that we can still share our code, but we don\u2019t have to develop quite so openly all of the time. Building a framework with a killer new feature? Keep it in a private branch until it\u2019s ready for merge. Have a blog post in a Jekyll site that you\u2019re not ready to make live? Keep it in a private drafts branch. Working on a new feature for your personal site? Tuck it away until it\u2019s finished. Need a staging area for a Pages-powered site? Make a staging remote with its own custom domain.\n\nAll this boils down to, really, is the fact that you can bring multiple remotes together into one local codebase on your machine. What you do with them is entirely up to you!", "year": "2013", "author": "Harry Roberts", "author_slug": "harryroberts", "published": "2013-12-09T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2013/keeping-parts-of-your-codebase-private-on-github/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 303, "title": "We Need to Talk About Technical Debt", "contents": "In my work with clients, a lot of time is spent assessing old, legacy, sprawling systems and identifying good code, bad code, and technical debt.\nOne thing that constantly strikes me is the frequency with which bad code and technical debt are conflated, so let me start by saying this:\nNot all technical debt is bad code, and not all bad code is technical debt.\nSometimes your bad code is just that: bad code. Calling it technical debt often feels like a more forgiving and friendly way of referring to what may have just been a poor implementation or a substandard piece of work.\nIt is an oft-misunderstood phrase, and when mistaken for meaning \u2018anything legacy or old hacky or nasty or bad\u2019, technical debt is swept under the carpet along with all of the other parts of the codebase we\u2019d rather not talk about, and therein lies the problem.\nWe need to talk about technical debt.\nWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Technical Debt\nThe thing that separates technical debt from the rest of the hacky code in our project is the fact that technical debt, by definition, is something that we knowingly and strategically entered into. Debt doesn\u2019t happen by accident: debt happens when we choose to gain something otherwise-unattainable immediately in return for paying it back (with interest) later on.\nAn Example\nYou\u2019re a front-end developer working on a SaaS product, and your sales team is courting a large customer \u2013 a customer so large that you can\u2019t really afford to lose them. The customer tells you that as long as you can allow them to theme your SaaS application according to their branding, they are willing to sign on the dotted line\u2026 the problem being that your CSS architecture was never designed to incorporate theming at all, and there isn\u2019t currently a nice, clean way to incorporate a theme into the codebase.\nYou and the business make the decision that you will hack a theme into the product in two days. It\u2019s going to be messy, it\u2019s going to be ugly, but you can\u2019t afford to lose a huge customer just because your CSS isn\u2019t quite right, right now. This is technical debt.\nYou deliver the theme, the customer signs up, and everyone is happy. Except you (and the business, because you are one and the same) have a decision to make:\n\nDo we go back and build theming into the CSS architecture as a first-class citizen, porting the hacked theme back into a codified and formal framework?\nDo we carry on as we are? Things are working okay, and the customer paid up, so is there any reason to invest time and effort into things after we (and the customer) got what we wanted?\n\nOption 1 is choosing to pay off your debts; Option 2 is ignoring your repayments.\nWith Option 1, you\u2019re acknowledging that you did what you could given the constraints, but, free of constraints, you\u2019d have done something different. Now, you are choosing to implement that something different.\nWith Option 2, however, you are avoiding your responsibility to repay your debt, and you are letting interest accrue. The problem here is that\u2026\n\nyour SaaS product now offers theming to one of your customers;\nanother potential customer might also demand the ability to theme their instance of your product;\nyou can\u2019t refuse them that request, nor can you quickly fulfil it;\nyou hack in another theme, thus adding to the balance of your existing debt;\nand so on (plus interest) for every subsequent theme you need to implement.\n\nHere you have increased entropy whilst making little to no attempt to address what you already knew to be problems.\nYour second, third, fourth, fifth request for theming will be hacked on top of your hack, further accumulating debt whilst offering nothing by way of a repayment. After a long enough period, the code involved will get so unwieldy, so hard to work with, that you are forced to tear it all down and start again, and the most painful part of this is that you\u2019re actually paying off even more than your debt repayments would have been in the first place. Two days of hacking plus, say, five days of subsequent refactoring, would still have been substantially less than the weeks you will now have to spend rewriting your CSS to fix and incorporate the themes properly. You\u2019ve made a loss; your strategic debt ultimately became a loss-making exercise.\nThe important thing to note here is that you didn\u2019t necessarily write bad code. You knew there were two options: the quick way and the correct way. The decision to take the quick route was a definite choice, because you knew there was a better way. Implementing the better way is your repayment.\nGood Debt and Bad Debt\nTechnical debt is acceptable as long as you have intentions to settle; it can be a valuable solution to a business problem, provided the right approach is taken afterwards. That doesn\u2019t, however, mean that all debt is born equal. Just as in real life, there is good debt and there is bad debt.\nGood debt might be\u2026\n\na mortgage;\na student loan, or;\na business loan.\n\nThese are types of debt that will secure you the means of repaying them. These are well considered debts whose very reason for being will allow you to make the money to pay them off\u2014they have real, tangible benefit.\nA business loan to secure some equipment and premises will allow you to start an enterprise whose revenue will allow you to pay that debt back; a student loan will allow you to secure the kind of job that has the ability to pay a student loan back.\nThese kinds of debt involve a considered and well-balanced decision to acquire something in the short term in the knowledge that you will have the means, in the long term, to pay it back.\nConversely, bad debt might be\u2026\n\nborrowing $1,000 from a loan shark so you can go to Vegas, or;\ntaking out a payday loan in order to buy a new television.\n\nBoth of these kinds of debt will leave you paying for things that didn\u2019t provide you a way of earning your own capital. That is to say, the loans taken did not secure anything that would help pay off said loans. These are bad debts that will usually provide a net loss. You really are only gaining the short term in exchange for a long term financial responsibility: i.e., was it worth it?\nA good litmus test for debt is to compare the gains of its immediate benefit with the cost of its long term commitment.\nThe earlier example of theming a site is a good debt, provided we are keeping up our repayments (all debt is bad debt if you don\u2019t). A calculated decision to do something \u2018wrong\u2019 in the short term with the promise of better payoffs later on.\nBad Technical Debt\nThe majority of my work is with front-end development teams\u2014CSS is what I do. To that end, the most succinct example of technical debt for that audience is simply:\n!important\nAll front-end developers know the horrors and dangers associated with using !important, yet we continue to use it. Why?\nIt\u2019s not necessarily because we\u2019re bad developers, but because we see a shortcut. !important is usually implemented as a quick way out of a sticky specificity situation. We could spend the rest of the day refactoring our CSS to fix the issue at its source, or we can spend mere seconds typing the word !important and patch over the symptoms.\nThis is us making an explicit decision to do something less than ideal now in exchange for immediate benefit. After all, refactoring our CSS will take a lot more time, and will still only leave us with the same outcome that the vastly quicker !important solution will, so it seems to make better business sense.\nHowever, this is a bad debt. !important takes seconds to implement but weeks to refactor. The cost of refactoring this back out later will be an order of magnitude higher than it would be to have done things properly the first time. The first !important usually sets a precedent, and subsequent developers are likely to have to use it themselves in order to get around the one that you left.\nSo many CSS projects deteriorate because of this one simple word, and rewrites become more and more imminent. That makes it possibly the most costly 10 bytes a CSS developer could ever write.\nBad Code\nNow we\u2019ve got a good idea of what constitutes technical debt, let\u2019s take a look at what constitutes bad code. Something I hear time and time again in my client work goes a little like this:\n\nWe\u2019ve amassed a lot of technical debt and we\u2019d like to get a strategy in place\nto begin dealing with it.\n\nWhilst I genuinely admire their willingness to identify and desire to fix problems in their code, sometimes they\u2019re not looking at technical debt at\nall\u2014sometimes they\u2019re just looking at bad code, plain and simple.\nWhere technical debt is knowing that there\u2019s a better way, but the quicker way makes more sense right now, bad code is not caring if there\u2019s a better way at all.\nAgain, looking at a CSS-specific world, a lot of bad code is contributed by non-front-end developers with little training, appreciation, or even respect for the front-end landscape. Writing code with reckless abandon should not be described as technical debt, because to do so would imply that\u2026\n\nthe developers knew they were implementing a sub-par solution, but\u2026\nthe developers also knew that a better solution was out there, which\u2026\nimplies that it can be tidied up relatively simply.\n\nDevelopers writing bad code is a larger and more cultural problem that requires a lot more effort to fix. Hopefully\u2014and usually\u2014bad code is in the minority, but it helps to be objective in identifying and solving it. Bad code usually doesn\u2019t happen for a good enough reason, and is therefore much harder to justify.\nTechnical debt often represents ability in judgement, whereas bad code often represents a gap in skills.\nTakeaway\nTake time to familiarise yourself with the true concepts underlying technical debt and why it exists. Understand that technical debt can be good or bad. Admit that sometimes code is just of poor quality.\nUnderstanding these points will allow you to make better calls around what you might need to refactor and when, and what skills gaps you might have in your team.\n\nSometimes it\u2019s okay to cut corners if there is a tangible gain to be had in the immediate term.\nTechnical debt is okay provided it is a sensible debt and you have intentions to pay it off.\nTechnical debt is not necessarily synonymous with bad code, and bad code isn\u2019t necessarily technical debt. Technical debt is code that was implemented given limited knowledge or resource, with the understanding that you would need to repay something in future.\nTechnical debt is not inherently bad\u2014failure to make repayments is. Periodically, it is justifiable\u2014encouraged, even\u2014to enter a debt in order to fulfil a more pressing matter. However, it is imperative that we begin making repayments as soon as we are capable, be that based on newly available time or knowledge.\nBad code is worse than technical debt as it represents a lack of knowledge or quality control within a team. It needs a much more fundamental fix.", "year": "2016", "author": "Harry Roberts", "author_slug": "harryroberts", "published": "2016-12-05T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2016/we-need-to-talk-about-technical-debt/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 60, "title": "What\u2019s Ahead for Your Data in 2016?", "contents": "Who owns your data? Who decides what can you do with it? Where can you store it? What guarantee do you have over your data\u2019s privacy? Where can you publish your work? Can you adapt software to accommodate your disability? Is your tiny agency subject to corporate regulation? Does another country have rights over your intellectual property?\nIf you aren\u2019t the kind of person who is interested in international politics, I hate to break it to you: in 2016 the legal foundations which underpin our work on the web are being revisited in not one but three major international political agreements, and every single one of those questions is up for grabs. These agreements \u2013 the draft EU Data Protection Regulation (EUDPR), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the draft Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) \u2013 stand poised to have a major impact on your data, your workflows, and your digital rights. While some proposed changes could protect the open web for the future, other provisions would set the internet back several decades.\nIn this article we will review the issues you need to be aware of as a digital professional. While each of these agreements covers dozens of topics ranging from climate change to food safety, we will focus solely on the aspects which pertain to the work we do on the web.\nThe Trans-Pacific Partnership\nThe Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a free trade agreement between the US, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru \u2013 a bloc comprising 40% of the world\u2019s economy. The agreement is expected to be signed by all parties, and thereby to come into effect, in 2016. This agreement is ostensibly about the bloc and its members working together for their common interests. However, the latest draft text of the TPP, which was formulated entirely in secret, has only been made publicly available on a Medium blog published by the U.S. Trade Representative which features a patriotic banner at the top proclaiming \u201cTPP: Made in America.\u201d The message sent about who holds the balance of power in this agreement, and whose interests it will benefit, is clear.\nBy far the most controversial area of the TPP has centred around the provisions on intellectual property. These include copyright terms of up to 120 years, mandatory takedowns of allegedly infringing content in response to just one complaint regardless of that complaint\u2019s validity, heavy and disproportionate penalties for alleged violations, and \u2013 most frightening of all \u2013 government seizures of equipment allegedly used for copyright violations. All of these provisions have been raised without regard for the fact that a trade agreement is not the appropriate venue to negotiate intellectual property law.\nOther draft TPP provisions would restrict the digital rights of people with disabilities by banning the workarounds they use every day. These include no exemptions for the adaptations of copywritten works for use in accessible technology (such as text-to-speech in ebook readers), a ban on circumventing DRM or digital locks in order to convert a file to an accessible format, and requiring the takedown of adapted works, such as a video with added subtitles, even if that adaptation would normally have fallen under the definition of fair use.\nThe e-commerce provisions would prohibit data localisation, the practice of requiring data to be physically stored on servers within a country\u2019s borders. Data localisation is growing in popularity following the Snowden revelations, and some of your own personal data may have been recently \u201clocalised\u201d in response to the Safe Harbor verdict. Prohibiting data localisation through the TPP would address the symptom but not the cause.\nThe Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an excellent summary of the digital rights issues raised by the agreement along with suggested actions American readers can take to speak out.\nTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership\nTTIP stands for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a draft free trade agreement between the United States and the EU. The plan has been hugely controversial and divisive, and the internet and digital provisions of the draft form just a small part of that contention.\nThe most striking digital provision of TTIP is an attempt to circumvent and override European data protection law. As EDRI, a European digital rights organisation, noted:\n\n\u201cthe US proposal would authorise the transfer of EU citizens\u2019 personal data to any country, trumping the EU data protection framework, which ensures that this data can only be transferred in clearly defined circumstances. For years, the US has been trying to bypass the default requirement for storage of personal data in the EU. It is therefore not surprising to see such a proposal being {introduced} in the context of the trade negotiations.\u201d\n\nThis draft provision was written before the Safe Harbor data protection agreement between the EU and US was invalidated by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In other words, there is no longer any protective agreement in place, and our data is as vulnerable as this political situation. However, data protection is a matter of its own law, the acting Data Protection Directive and the draft EU Data Protection Reform. A trade agreement, be it the TTIP or the TPP, is not the appropriate place to revamp a law on data protection.\nOther digital law issues raised by TTIP include the possibility of renegotiating standards on encryption (which in practice means lowering them) and renegotiating intellectual property rights such as copyright. The spectre of net neutrality has even put in an appearance, with an attempt to introduce rules on access to the internet itself being introduced as provisions.\nTTIP is still under discussion, and this month the EU trade representative said that \u201cwe agreed to further intensify our work during 2016 to help negotiations move forward rapidly.\u201d This has been cleverly worded: this means the agreement has little chance of being passed or coming into effect in 2016, which buys civil society more precious time to speak out.\nThe EU Data Protection Regulation\nOn 15 December 2015 the European Commission announced their agreement on the text of the draft General Data Protection Regulation. This law will replace its predecessor, the EU Data Protection Regulation of 1995, which has done a remarkable job of protecting data privacy across the continent throughout two decades of constant internet evolution.\nThe goal of the reform process has been to return power over data, and its uses, to citizens. Users will have more control over what data is captured about them, how it is used, how it is retained, and how it can be deleted. Businesses and digital professionals, in turn, will have to restructure their relationships with client and customer data. Compliance obligations will increase, and difficult choices will have to be made. However, this time should be seen as an opportunity to rethink our relationship with data. After Snowden, Schrems, and Safe Harbor, it is clear that we cannot go back to the way things were before. In an era of where every one of our heartbeats is recorded on a wearable device and uploaded to a surveilled data centre in another country, the need for reform has never been more acute.\nWhile texts of the draft GDPR are available, there is not enough mulled wine in the world that will help you get through them. Instead, the law firm Fieldfisher Waterhouse has produced this helpful infographic which will give you a good idea of the changes we can expect to see (view full size):\n\nThe most surprising outcome announced on 15 December was the new regulation\u2019s teeth. Under the new law, companies that fail to heed the updated data protection rules will face fines of up to 4% of their global turnover. Additionally, the law expands the liability for data protection to both the controller (the company hosting the data) and the data processor (the company using the data). The new law will also introduce a one-stop shop for resolving concerns over data misuse. Companies will no longer be able to headquarter their European operations in countries which are perceived to have relatively light-touch data protection enforcement (that means you, Ireland) as a means of automatically rejecting any complaints filed by citizens outside that country.\nFor digital professionals, the most immediate concern is analytics. In fact, I am going to make a prediction: in 2016 we will begin to see the same misguided war on analytics that we saw on cookies. By increasing the legal liabilities for both data processors and controllers \u2013 in other words, the company providing the analytics as well as the site administrator studying them \u2013 the new regulation risks creating disproportionate burdens as well as the same \u201cguilt by association\u201d risks we saw in 2012. There have already been statements made by some within the privacy community that analytics are tracking, and tracking is surveillance, therefore analytics are evil. Yet \u201cjust don\u2019t use analytics,\u201d as was suggested by one advocate, is simply not an option. European regulators should consult with the web community to gain a clear understanding of why analytics are vital to everyday site administrators, and must find a happy medium that protects users\u2019 data without criminalising every website by default. No one wants a repeat of the crisis of consent, as well as the scaremongering, caused by the cookie law.\nAssuming the text is adopted in 2016, the new EU Data Protection Regulation would not come into effect until 2018. We have a considerable challenge ahead, but we also have plenty of time to get it right.", "year": "2015", "author": "Heather Burns", "author_slug": "heatherburns", "published": "2015-12-21T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/whats-ahead-for-your-data-in-2016/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 114, "title": "How To Create Rockband'ism", "contents": "There are mysteries happening in the world of business these days. We want something else by now. The business of business has to become more than business. We want to be able to identify ourselves with the brands we purchase and we want them to do good things. We want to feel cool because we buy stuff, and we don\u2019t just want a shopping experience \u2013 we want an engagement with a company we can relate to.\n\nLet me get back to \u201cfeeling cool\u201d \u2013 if we want to feel cool, we might get the companies we buy from to support that. That\u2019s why I am on a mission to make companies into rockbands.\n\nNow when I say rockbands \u2013 I don\u2019t mean the puke-y, drunky, nasty stuff that some people would highlight is also a part of rockbands. Therefore I have created my own word \u201crockband\u2019ism\u201d. This word is the definition of a childhood dream version of being in a rockband \u2013 the feeling of being more respected and loved and cool, than a cockroach or a suit on the floor of a company.\n\nRockband\u2019ism\n\nRockband\u2019ism is what we aspire to, to feel cool and happy.\n\nSo basically what I am arguing is that companies should look upon themselves as rockbands. Because the world has changed, so business needs to change as well.\n\nI have listed a couple of things you could do today to become a rockband, as a person or as a company.\n\n1 \u2013 Give your support to companies that make a difference to their surroundings \u2013 if you are buying electronics look up what the electronic producers are doing of good in the world (check out the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics).\n\n2 \u2013 Implement good karma in your everyday life (and do well by doing good). What you give out you get back at some point in some shape \u2013 this can also be implemented for business.\n\n3 \u2013 WWRD? \u2013 \u201cwhat would a rockband do\u201d? or if you are into Kenny Rogers \u2013 what would he do in any given situation? This will also show yourself where your business or personal integrity lies because you actually act as a person or a rockband you admire.\n\n4 \u2013 Start leading instead of managing \u2013 If we can measure stuff why should we manage it? Leadership is key here instead of management. When you lead you tell people how to reach the stars, when you manage you keep them on the ground.\n\n5 \u2013 Respect and confide in, that people are the best at what they do. If they aren\u2019t, they won\u2019t be around for long. If they are and you keep on buggin\u2019 them, they won\u2019t be around for long either.\n\n6 \u2013 Don\u2019t be arrogant \u2013 Because audiences can\u2019t stand it \u2013 talk to people as a person not as a company.\n\n7 \u2013 Focus on your return on involvement \u2013 know that you get a return on, what you involve yourself in. No matter if it\u2019s bingo, communities, talks, ornithology or un-conferences.\n\n8 \u2013 Find out where you can make a difference and do it. Don\u2019t leave it up to everybody else to save the world.\n\n9 \u2013 Find out what you can do to become an authentic, trustworthy and remarkable company. Maybe you could even think about this a lot and make these thoughts into an actionplan.\n\n10 \u2013 Last but not least \u2013 if you\u2019re not happy \u2013 do something else, become another type of rockband, maybe a soloist of a sort, or an orchestra.\n\nNo more business as usual\n\nThis really isn\u2019t time for more business as usual, our environment (digital, natural, work or any other kind of environment) is changing. You are going to have to change too.\n\nThis article actually sprang from a talk I did at the Shift08 conference in Lisbon in October. In addition to this article for 24 ways I have turned the talk into an eBook that you can get on Toothless Tiger Press for free.\n\nMay you all have a sustainable and great Christmas full of great moments with your loved ones. December is a month for gratitude, enjoyment and love.", "year": "2008", "author": "Henriette Weber", "author_slug": "henrietteweber", "published": "2008-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/how-to-create-rockbandism/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 299, "title": "What the Heck Is Inclusive Design?", "contents": "Naming things is hard. And I don\u2019t just mean CSS class names and JSON properties. Finding the right term for what we do with the time we spend awake and out of bed turns out to be really hard too.\nI\u2019ve variously gone by \u201cfront-end developer\u201d, \u201cuser experience designer\u201d, and \u201caccessibility engineer\u201d, all clumsy and incomplete terms for labeling what I do as an\u2026 erm\u2026 see, there\u2019s the problem again.\nIt\u2019s tempting to give up entirely on trying to find the right words for things, but this risks summarily dispensing with thousands of years spent trying to qualify the world around us. So here we are again.\nRecently, I\u2019ve been using the term \u201cinclusive design\u201d and calling myself an \u201cinclusive designer\u201d a lot. I\u2019m not sure where I first heard it or who came up with it, but the terminology feels like a good fit for the kind of stuff I care to do when I\u2019m not at a pub or asleep.\nThis article is about what I think \u201cinclusive design\u201d means and why I think you might like it as an idea.\nIsn\u2019t \u2018inclusive design\u2019 just \u2018accessibility\u2019 by another name?\nNo, I don\u2019t think so. But that\u2019s not to say the two concepts aren\u2019t related. Note the \u2018design\u2019 part in \u2018inclusive design\u2019 \u2014 that\u2019s not just there by accident. Inclusive design describes a design activity; a way of designing things.\nThis sets it apart from accessibility \u2014 or at least our expectations of what \u2018accessibility\u2019 entails. Despite every single accessibility expert I know (and I know a lot) recommending that accessibility should be integrated into design process, it is rarely ever done. Instead, it is relegated to an afterthought, limiting its effect.\nThe term \u2018accessibility\u2019 therefore lacks the power to connote design process. It\u2019s not that we haven\u2019t tried to salvage the term, but it\u2019s beginning to look like a lost cause. So maybe let\u2019s use a new term, because new things take new names. People get that.\nThe \u2018access\u2019 part of accessibility is also problematic. Before we get ahead of ourselves, I don\u2019t mean access is a problem \u2014 access is good, and the more accessible something is the better. I mean it\u2019s not enough by itself.\nImagine a website filled with poorly written and lackadaisically organized information, including a bunch of convoluted and confusing functionality. To make this site accessible is to ensure no barriers prevent people from accessing the content. \nBut that doesn\u2019t make the content any better. It just means more people get to suffer it. \nWhoopdidoo.\nAccess is certainly a prerequisite of inclusion, but accessibility compliance doesn\u2019t get you all the way there. It\u2019s possible to check all the boxes but still be left with an unusable interface. And unusable interfaces are necessarily inaccessible ones. Sure, you can take an unusable interface and make it accessibility compliant, but that only placates stakeholders\u2019 lawyers, not users. Users get little value from it.\nSo where have we got to? Access is important, but inclusion is bigger than access. Inclusive design means making something valuable, not just accessible, to as many people as we can.\nSo inclusive design is kind of accessibility + UX?\nCloser, but there are some problems with this definition.\nUX is, you will have already noted, a broad term encompassing activities ranging from conducting research studies to optimizing the perceived affordance of interface elements. But overall, what I take from UX is that it\u2019s the pursuit of making interfaces understandable.\nAs it happens, WCAG 2.0 already contains an \u2018Understandable\u2019 principle covering provisions such as readability, predictability and feedback. So you might say accessibility \u2014 at least as described by WCAG \u2014 already covers UX.\nUnfortunately, the criteria are limited, plus some really important stuff (like readability) is relegated to the AAA level; essentially \u201cbonus points if you get the time (you won\u2019t).\u201d\nSo better to let UX folks take care of this kind of thing. It\u2019s what they do. Except, therein lies a danger. UX professionals don\u2019t tend to be well versed in accessibility, so their \u2018solutions\u2019 don\u2019t tend to work for that many people. My friend Billy Gregory coined the term SUX, or \u201cSome UX\u201d: if it doesn\u2019t work for different users, it\u2019s only doing part of the job it should be. \nSUX won\u2019t do, but it\u2019s not just a disability issue. All sorts of user circumstances go unchecked when you\u2019re shooting straight for what people like, and bypassing what people need: device type, device settings, network quality, location, native language, and available time to name just a few.\nIn short, inclusive design means designing things for people who aren\u2019t you, in your situation. In my experience, mainstream UX isn\u2019t very good at that. By bolting accessibility onto mainstream UX we labor under the misapprehension that most people have a \u2018normal\u2019 experience, a few people are exceptions, and that all of the exceptions pertain to disability directly.\nSo inclusive design isn\u2019t really about disability?\nIt is about disability, but not in the same way as accessibility. Accessibility (as it is typically understood, anyway) aims to make sure things work for people with clinically recognized disabilities. Inclusive design aims to make sure things work for people, not forgetting those with clinically recognized disabilities. A subtle, but not so subtle, difference.\nLet\u2019s go back to discussing readability, because that\u2019s a good example. Now: everyone benefits from readable text; text with concise sentences and widely-understood words. It certainly helps people with cognitive impairments, but it doesn\u2019t hinder folks who have less trouble with comprehension. In fact, they\u2019ll more than likely be thankful for the time saved and the clarity. Readable text covers the whole gamut. It\u2019s \u2014 you\u2019ve got it \u2014 inclusive.\nLegibility is another one. A clear, well-balanced typeface makes the reading experience less uncomfortable and frustrating for all concerned, including those who have various forms of visual dyslexia. Again, everyone\u2019s happy \u2014 so why even contemplate a squiggly, sketchy typeface? Leave well alone.\nContrast too. No one benefits from low contrast; everyone benefits from high contrast. Simple. There\u2019s no more work involved, it just entails better decision making. And that\u2019s what design is really: decision making.\nHow about zoom support? If you let your users pinch zoom on their phones they can compensate for poor eyesight, but they can also increase the touch area of controls, inspect detail in images, and compose better screen shots. Unobtrusively supporting options like zoom makes interfaces much more inclusive at very little cost.\nAnd when it comes to the underlying HTML code, you\u2019re in luck: it has already been designed, from the outset, to be inclusive. HTML is a toolkit for inclusion. Using the right elements for the job doesn\u2019t just mean the few who use screen readers benefit, but keyboard accessibility comes out-of-the-box, you can defer to browser behavior rather than writing additional scripts, the code is easier to read and maintain, and editors can create content that is effortlessly presentable. \nWait\u2026 are you talking about universal design?\nHmmm. Yes, I guess some folks might think of \u201cuniversal design\u201d and \u201cinclusive design\u201d as synonymous. I just really don\u2019t like the term universal in this context. \nThe thing is, it gives the impression that you should be designing for absolutely everyone in the universe. Though few would adopt a literal interpretation of \u201cuniversal\u201d in this context, there are enough developers who would deliberately misconstrue the term and decry universal design as an impossible task. I\u2019ve actually had people push back by saying, \u201cwhat, so I\u2019ve got to make it work for people who are allergic to computers? What about people in comas?\u201d\nFor everyone\u2019s sake, I think the term \u2018inclusive\u2019 is less misleading. Of course you can\u2019t make things that everybody can use \u2014 it\u2019s okay, that\u2019s not the aim. But with everything that\u2019s possible with web technologies, there\u2019s really no need to exclude people in the vast numbers that we usually are. \nAccessibility can never be perfect, but by thinking inclusively from planning, through prototyping to production, you can cast a much wider net. That means more and happier users at very little if any more effort.\nIf you like, inclusive design is the means and accessibility is the end \u2014 it\u2019s just that you get a lot more than just accessibility along the way.\nConclusion\nThat\u2019s inclusive design. Or at least, that\u2019s a definition for a thing I think is a good idea which I identify as inclusive design. I\u2019ll leave you with a few tips.\nInvolve code early\nWeb interfaces are made of code. If you\u2019re not working with code, you\u2019re not working on the interface. That\u2019s not to say there\u2019s anything wrong with sketching or paper prototyping \u2014 in fact, I recommend paper prototyping in my book on inclusive design. Just work with code as soon as you can, and think about code even before that. Maintain a pattern library of coded solutions and omit any solutions that don\u2019t adhere to basic accessibility guidelines.\nRespect conventions\nYour content should be fresh, inventive, radical. Your interface shouldn\u2019t. Adopt accepted conventions in the appearance, placement and coding of interface elements. Users aren\u2019t there to experience interface design; they\u2019re there to use an interface. In other words: stop showing off (unless, of course, the brief is to experiment with new paradigms in interface design, for an audience of interface design researchers).\nDon\u2019t be exact\n\u201cPerfection is the enemy of good\u201d. But the pursuit of perfection isn\u2019t just to be avoided because nothing ever gets finished. Exacting design also makes things inflexible and brittle. If your design depends on elements retaining precise coordinates, they\u2019ll break easily when your users start adjusting font settings or zooming. Choose not to position elements exactly or give them fixed, \u201cmagic number\u201d dimensions. Make less decisions in the interface so your users can make more decisions for it.\nEnforce simplicity\nThe virtue of simplicity is difficult to overestimate. The simpler an interface is, the easier it is to use for all kinds of users. Simpler interfaces require less code to make too, so there\u2019s an obvious performance advantage. There are many design decisions that require user research, but keeping things simple is always the right thing to do. Not simplified or simple-seeming or simplistic, but simple. \nDo a little and do it well, for as many people as you can.", "year": "2016", "author": "Heydon Pickering", "author_slug": "heydonpickering", "published": "2016-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2016/what-the-heck-is-inclusive-design/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 136, "title": "Making XML Beautiful Again: Introducing Client-Side XSL", "contents": "Remember that first time you saw XML and got it? When you really understood what was possible and the deep meaning each element could carry? Now when you see XML, it looks ugly, especially when you navigate to a page of XML in a browser. Well, with every modern browser now supporting XSL 1.0, I\u2019m going to show you how you can turn something as simple as an ATOM feed into a customised page using a browser, Notepad and some XSL.\n\nWhat on earth is this XSL?\n\nXSL is a family of recommendations for defining XML document transformation and presentation. It consists of three parts:\n\n\n\tXSLT 1.0 \u2013 Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation, a language for transforming XML\n\tXPath 1.0 \u2013 XML Path Language, an expression language used by XSLT to access or refer to parts of an XML document. (XPath is also used by the XML Linking specification)\n\tXSL-FO 1.0 \u2013 Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects, an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics\n\n\nXSL transformations are usually a one-to-one transformation, but with newer versions (XSL 1.1 and XSL 2.0) its possible to create many-to-many transformations too. So now you have an overview of XSL, on with the show\u2026\n\nSo what do I need?\n\nSo to get going you need a browser an supports client-side XSL transformations such as Firefox, Safari, Opera or Internet Explorer. Second, you need a source XML file \u2013 for this we\u2019re going to use an ATOM feed from Flickr.com. And lastly, you need an editor of some kind. I find Notepad++ quick for short XSLs, while I tend to use XMLSpy or Oxygen for complex XSL work. \n\nBecause we\u2019re doing a client-side transformation, we need to modify the XML file to tell it where to find our yet-to-be-written XSL file. Take a look at the source XML file, which originates from my Flickr photos tagged sky, in ATOM format.\n\nThe top of the ATOM file now has an additional instruction, as can been seen on Line 2 below. This instructs the browser to use the XSL file to transform the document.\n\n\n\n\n\nYour first transformation\n\nYour first XSL will look something like this:\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\nThis is pretty much the starting point for most XSL files. You will notice the standard XML processing instruction at the top of the file (line 1). We then switch into XSL mode using the XSL namespace on all XSL elements (line 2). In this case, we have added namespaces for ATOM (line 4) and Dublin Core (line 5). This means the XSL can now read and understand those elements from the source XML. \n\nAfter we define all the namespaces, we then move onto the xsl:output element (line 6). This enables you to define the final method of output. Here we\u2019re specifying html, but you could equally use XML or Text, for example. The encoding attributes on each element do what they say on the tin. As with all XML, of course, we close every element including the root.\n\nThe next stage is to add a template, in this case an as can be seen below:\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tMaking XML beautiful again : Transforming ATOM\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\n\nThe beautiful thing about XSL is its English syntax, if you say it out loud it tends to make sense. \n\nThe / value for the match attribute on line 8 is our first example of XPath syntax. The expression / matches any element \u2013 so this will match against any element in the document. As the first element in any XML document is the root element, this will be the one matched and processed first.\n\nOnce we get past our standard start of a HTML document, the only instruction remaining in this is to look for and match all elements using the in line 14, above.\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\n\n\nThis new template (line 12, above) matches and starts to write the new HTML elements out to the output stream. The does exactly what you\u2019d expect \u2013 it finds the value of the item specifed in its select attribute. With XPath you can select any element or attribute from the source XML. \n\nThe last part is a repeat of the now familiar from before, but this time we\u2019re using it inside of a called template. Yep, XSL is full of recursion\u2026\n\n\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t()\n\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\n\t
\n\n\nThe which matches atom:entry (line 1) occurs every time there is a element in the source XML file. So in total that is 20 times, this is naturally why XSLT is full of recursion. This has been matched and therefore called higher up in the document, so we can start writing list elements directly to the output stream. The first part is simply a
with a link wrapped within it (lines 3-7). We can select attributes using XPath using @. \n\nThe second part of this template selects the date, but performs a XPath string function on it. This means that we only get the date and not the time from the string (line 9). This is achieved by getting only the part of the string that exists before the T. \n\nRegular Expressions are not part of the XPath 1.0 string functions, although XPath 2.0 does include them. Because of this, in XSL we tend to rely heavily on the available XML output. \n\nThe third part of the template (line 12) is a again, but this time we use an attribute of called disable output escaping to turn escaped characters back into XML. \n\nThe very last section is another call, taking us three templates deep. Do not worry, it is not uncommon to write XSL which go 20 or more templates deep!\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\ttag\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t \n\t\n\n\nIn our final , we see a combination of what we have done before with a couple of twists. Once we match atom:category we then count how many elements there are at that same level (line 2). The XPath . means \u2018self\u2019, so we count how many category elements are within the element. \n\nFollowing that, we start to output a link with a rel attribute of the predefined text, tag (lines 4-6). In XSL you can just type text, but results can end up with strange whitespace if you do (although there are ways to simply remove all whitespace). \n\nThe only new XPath function in this example is concat(), which simply combines what XPaths or text there might be in the brackets. We end the output for this tag with an actual tag name (line 10) and we add a space afterwards (line 12) so it won\u2019t touch the next tag. (There are better ways to do this in XSL using the last() XPath function). \n\nAfter that, we go back to the element again if there is another category element, otherwise we end the loop and end this .\n\nA touch of style\n\nBecause we\u2019re using recursion through our templates, you will find this is the end of the templates and the rest of the XML will be ignored by the parser. Finally, we can add our CSS to finish up. (I have created one for Flickr and another for News feeds)\n\n\n\nSo we end up with a nice simple to understand but also quick to write XSL which can be used on ATOM Flickr feeds and ATOM News feeds. With a little playing around with XSL, you can make XML beautiful again.\n\nAll the files can be found in the zip file (14k)", "year": "2006", "author": "Ian Forrester", "author_slug": "ianforrester", "published": "2006-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/beautiful-xml-with-xsl/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 142, "title": "Revealing Relationships Can Be Good Form", "contents": "A few days ago, a colleague of mine \u2013 someone I have known for several years, who has been doing web design for several years and harks back from the early days of ZDNet \u2013 was running through a prototype I had put together for some user testing. As with a lot of prototypes, there was an element of \u2018smoke and mirrors\u2019 to make things look like they were working. \n\nOne part of the form included a yes/no radio button, and selecting the Yes option would, in the real and final version of the form, reveal some extra content. Rather than put too much JavaScript in the prototype, I took a preverbial shortcut and created a link which I wrapped around the text next to the radio button \u2013 clicking on that link would cause the form to mimic a change event on the radio button. But it wasn\u2019t working for him. \n\nWhy was that? Because whereas I created the form using a tag for each and naturally went to click on the text rather than the form control itself, he was going straight for the control (and missing the sneaky little I\u2019d placed around the text). Bah! There goes my time-saver.\n\nSo, what did I learn? That a web professional who has used the Internet for years had neither heard of the tag, nor had he ever tried clicking on the text. It just goes to show that despite its obvious uses, the label element is not as well known as it rightfully deserves to be. So, what\u2019s a web-standards-loving guy to do? Make a bit more bleedin\u2019 obvious, that\u2019s what! \n\nThe Mouse Pointer Trick\n\nOK, this is the kind of thing that causes some people outrage. A dead simple way of indicating that the label does something is to use a snippet of CSS to change the default mouse cursor to a hand. It\u2019s derided because the hand icon is usually used for links, and some would argue that using this technique is misleading:\n\nlabel {\n\tcursor: pointer;\n}\n\nThis is not a new idea, though, and you didn\u2019t come here for this. The point is that with something very simple, you\u2019ve made the label element discoverable. But there are other ways that you can do this that are web standards friendly and won\u2019t upset the purists quite so much as the hand/pointer trick. Time to wheel in the JavaScript trolley jack \u2026\n\nOur Old Friend AddEvent\n\nFirst things, first, you\u2019ll need to use the addEvent function (or your favourite variation thereof) that Scott Andrew devised and make that available to the document containing the form:\n\nfunction addEvent(elm, evType, fn, useCapture)\n{\n\tif(elm.addEventListener)\n\t{\n\t\telm.addEventListener(evType, fn, useCapture);\n\t\treturn true;\n\t}\n\telse if (elm.attachEvent)\n\t{\n\t\tvar r = elm.attachEvent('on' + evType, fn);\n\t\treturn r;\n\t}\n\telse\n\t{\n\t\telm['on' + evType] = fn;\n\t}\n}\n\nFinding All Your Labels\n\nOnce you\u2019ve linked to the addEvent function (or embedded it on the page), you can start to get your JavaScripting fingers a-flexing. Now, what I\u2019m suggesting you do here is:\n\n\n\tIdentify all the label elements on the page by working your way through the DOM\n\tFind out the value of the for attribute for each label that you uncover\n\tAttach a behaviour or two to each of those label elements \u2013 and to the input that the label relates to (identified with the for attribute)\n\n\nHere\u2019s the technobabble version of the steps above:\n\nfunction findLabels()\n{\n\tvar el = document.getElementsByTagName(\"label\");\n\tfor (i=0;i\n\t
\n\t\tYour details\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tName\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tEmail\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tPhone\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t
\n\t
\n\t\tDelivery address\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tAddress\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tPost code\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tCountry\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t
\n\t
\n\t\tCard details\n\t\t
\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\tCard type\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVISA\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAmEx\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMastercard\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tCard number\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tSecurity code\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tName on card\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t
\n\t
\n\t\t\n\t
\n\n\nMaking things look nice\n\nFirst things first, so let\u2019s start by adding some defaults to our form by resetting the margins and paddings of the elements and adding a default font to the page:\n\nhtml, body, h1, form, fieldset, legend, ol, li {\n\tmargin: 0;\n\tpadding: 0;\n}\nbody {\n\tbackground: #ffffff;\n\tcolor: #111111;\n\tfont-family: Georgia, \"Times New Roman\", Times, serif;\n\tpadding: 20px;\n}\n\nNext we are going to style the form element that is wrapping our fields:\n\nform#payment {\n\tbackground: #9cbc2c;\n\t-moz-border-radius: 5px;\n\t-webkit-border-radius: 5px;\n\tborder-radius: 5px;\n\tpadding: 20px;\n\twidth: 400px;\n}\n\nWe will also remove the border from the fieldset and apply some bottom margin to it. Using the :last-of-type pseudo-class, we remove the bottom margin of the last fieldset \u2014 there is no need for it:\n\nform#payment fieldset {\n\tborder: none;\n\tmargin-bottom: 10px;\n}\nform#payment fieldset:last-of-type {\n\tmargin-bottom: 0;\n}\n\nNext we\u2019ll make the legends big and bold, and we will also apply a light-green text-shadow, to add that little extra special detail:\n\nform#payment legend {\n\tcolor: #384313;\n\tfont-size: 16px;\n\tfont-weight: bold;\n\tpadding-bottom: 10px;\n\ttext-shadow: 0 1px 1px #c0d576;\n}\n\nOur legends are looking great, but how about adding a clear indication of how many steps our form has? Instead of adding that manually to every legend, we can use automatically generated counters.\n\nTo add a counter to an element, we have to use either the :before or :after pseudo-elements to add content via CSS. We will follow these steps:\n\n\n\tcreate a counter using the counter-reset property on the form element\n\tcall the counter with the content property (using the same name we\u2019ve created before)\n\twith the counter-incremet property, indicate that for each element that matches our selector, that counter will be increased by 1\n\n\nform#payment > fieldset > legend:before {\n\tcontent: \"Step \" counter(fieldsets) \": \";\n\tcounter-increment: fieldsets;\n}\n\nFinally, we need to change the style of the legend that is part of the radio buttons group, to make it look like a label:\n\nform#payment fieldset fieldset legend {\n\tcolor: #111111;\n\tfont-size: 13px;\n\tfont-weight: normal;\n\tpadding-bottom: 0;\n}\n\nStyling the lists\n\nFor our list elements, we\u2019ll just add some nice rounded corners and semi-transparent border and background. Because we are using RGBa colors, we should provide a fallback for browsers that don\u2019t support them (that comes before the RBGa color). For the nested lists, we will remove these properties because they would be overlapping:\n\nform#payment ol li {\n\tbackground: #b9cf6a;\n\tbackground: rgba(255,255,255,.3);\n\tborder-color: #e3ebc3;\n\tborder-color: rgba(255,255,255,.6);\n\tborder-style: solid;\n\tborder-width: 2px;\n\t-moz-border-radius: 5px;\n\t-webkit-border-radius: 5px;\n\tborder-radius: 5px;\n\tline-height: 30px;\n\tlist-style: none;\n\tpadding: 5px 10px;\n\tmargin-bottom: 2px;\n}\nform#payment ol ol li {\n\tbackground: none;\n\tborder: none;\n\tfloat: left;\n}\n\nForm controls\n\nNow we only need to style our labels, inputs and the button element.\n\nAll our labels will look the same, with the exception of the one for the radio elements. We will float them to the left and give them a width.\n\nFor the credit card type labels, we will add an icon as the background, and override some of the properties that aren\u2019t necessary. We will be using the attribute selector to specify the background image for each label \u2014 in this case, we use the for attribute of each label.\n\nTo add an extra user-friendly detail, we\u2019ll add a cursor: pointer to the radio button labels on the :hover state, so the user knows that he can simply click them to select that option.\n\nform#payment label {\n\tfloat: left;\n\tfont-size: 13px;\n\twidth: 110px;\n}\nform#payment fieldset fieldset label {\n\tbackground:none no-repeat left 50%;\n\tline-height: 20px;\n\tpadding: 0 0 0 30px;\n\twidth: auto;\n}\nform#payment label[for=visa] {\n\tbackground-image: url(visa.gif);\n}\nform#payment label[for=amex] {\n\tbackground-image: url(amex.gif);\n}\nform#payment label[for=mastercard] {\n\tbackground-image: url(mastercard.gif);\n}\nform#payment fieldset fieldset label:hover {\n\tcursor: pointer;\n}\n\nAlmost there! Now onto the input elements. Here we want to match all inputs, except for the radio ones, and the textarea. For that we will use the negation pseudo-class (:not()). With it we can target all input elements except for the ones with type of radio.\n\nWe will also make sure to add some :focus styles and add the appropriate styling for the radio inputs:\n\nform#payment input:not([type=radio]),\nform#payment textarea {\n\tbackground: #ffffff;\n\tborder: none;\n\t-moz-border-radius: 3px;\n\t-webkit-border-radius: 3px;\n\t-khtml-border-radius: 3px;\n\tborder-radius: 3px;\n\tfont: italic 13px Georgia, \"Times New Roman\", Times, serif;\n\toutline: none;\n\tpadding: 5px;\n\twidth: 200px;\n}\nform#payment input:not([type=submit]):focus,\nform#payment textarea:focus {\n\tbackground: #eaeaea;\n}\nform#payment input[type=radio] {\n\tfloat: left;\n\tmargin-right: 5px;\n}\n\nAnd finally we come to our submit button. To it, we will just add some nice typography and text-shadow, align it to the center of the form and give it some background colors for its different states:\n\nform#payment button {\n\tbackground: #384313;\n\tborder: none;\n\t-moz-border-radius: 20px;\n\t-webkit-border-radius: 20px;\n\t-khtml-border-radius: 20px;\n\tborder-radius: 20px;\n\tcolor: #ffffff;\n\tdisplay: block;\n\tfont: 18px Georgia, \"Times New Roman\", Times, serif;\n\tletter-spacing: 1px;\n\tmargin: auto;\n\tpadding: 7px 25px;\n\ttext-shadow: 0 1px 1px #000000;\n\ttext-transform: uppercase;\n}\nform#payment button:hover {\n\tbackground: #1e2506;\n\tcursor: pointer;\n}\n\nAnd that\u2019s it! See the completed form.\n\nThis form will not look the same on every browser. Internet Explorer and Opera don\u2019t support border-radius (at least not for now); the new input types are rendered as just normal inputs on some browsers; and some of the most advanced CSS, like the counter, :last-of-type or text-shadow are not supported on some browsers. But that doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t use them right now, and simplify your development process. My gift to you!", "year": "2009", "author": "Inayaili de Le\u00f3n Persson", "author_slug": "inayailideleon", "published": "2009-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/have-a-field-day-with-html5-forms/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 240, "title": "My CSS Wish List", "contents": "I love Christmas. I love walking around the streets of London, looking at the beautifully decorated windows, seeing the shiny lights that hang above Oxford Street and listening to Christmas songs.\n\nI\u2019m not going to lie though. Not only do I like buying presents, I love receiving them too. I remember making long lists that I would send to Father Christmas with all of the Lego sets I wanted to get. I knew I could only get one a year, but I would spend days writing the perfect list.\n\nThe years have gone by, but I still enjoy making wish lists. And I\u2019ll tell you a little secret: my mum still asks me to send her my Christmas list every year.\n\nThis time I\u2019ve made my CSS wish list. As before, I\u2019d be happy with just one present.\n\nBefore I begin\u2026\n\n\u2026 this list includes:\n\n\n\tthings that don\u2019t exist in the CSS specification (if they do, please let me know in the comments \u2013 I may have missed them);\n\tothers that are in the spec, but it\u2019s incomplete or lacks use cases and examples (which usually means that properties haven\u2019t been implemented by even the most recent browsers).\n\n\nLike with any other wish list, the further down I go, the more unrealistic my expectations \u2013 but that doesn\u2019t mean I can\u2019t wish. Some of the things we wouldn\u2019t have thought possible a few years ago have been implemented and our wishes fulfilled (think multiple backgrounds, gradients and transformations, for example).\n\nThe list\n\nCross-browser implementation of font-size-adjust\n\nWhen one of the fall-back fonts from your font stack is used, rather than the preferred (first) one, you can retain the aspect ratio by using this very useful property. It is incredibly helpful when the fall-back fonts are smaller or larger than the initial one, which can make layouts look less polished.\n\nWhat font-size-adjust does is divide the original font-size of the fall-back fonts by the font-size-adjust value. This preserves the x-height of the preferred font in the fall-back fonts. Here\u2019s a simple example:\n\np {\n font-family: Calibri, \"Lucida Sans\", Verdana, sans-serif;\n font-size-adjust: 0.47;\n}\n\nIn this case, if the user doesn\u2019t have Calibri installed, both Lucida Sans and Verdana will keep Calibri\u2019s aspect ratio, based on the font\u2019s x-height. This property is a personal favourite and one I keep pointing to.\n\nFirefox supported this property from version three. So far, it\u2019s the only browser that does. Fontdeck provides the font-size-adjust value along with its fonts, and has a handy tool for calculating it.\n\nMore control over overflowing text\n\nThe text-overflow property lets you control text that overflows its container. The most common use for it is to show an ellipsis to indicate that there is more text than what is shown. To be able to use it, the container should have overflow set to something other than visible, and white-space: nowrap:\n\ndiv {\n white-space: nowrap;\n width: 100%;\n overflow: hidden;\n text-overflow: ellipsis;\n}\n\nThis, however, only works for blocks of text on a single line. In the wish list of many CSS authors (and in mine) is a way of defining text-overflow: ellipsis on a block of multiple text lines. Opera has taken the first step and added support for the -o-ellipsis-lastline property, which can be used instead of ellipsis. This property is not part of the CSS3 spec, but we could certainly make good use of it if it were\u2026\n\nWebKit has -webkit-line-clamp to specify how many lines to show before cutting with an ellipsis, but support is patchy at best and there is no control over where the ellipsis shows in the text. Many people have spent time wrangling JavaScript to do this for us, but the methods used are very processor intensive, and introduce a JavaScript dependency.\n\nIndentation and hanging punctuation properties\n\nYou might notice a trend here: almost half of the items in this list relate to typography. The lack of fine-grained control over typographical detail is a general concern among designers and CSS authors. Indentation and hanging punctuation fall into this category.\n\nThe CSS3 specification introduces two new possible values for the text-indent property: each-line; and hanging. each-line would indent the first line of the block container and each line after a forced line break; hanging would invert which lines are affected by the indentation.\n\nThe proposed hanging-punctuation property would allow us to specify whether opening and closing brackets and quotes should hang outside the edge of the first and last lines. The specification is still incomplete, though, and asks for more examples and use cases.\n\nText alignment and hyphenation properties\n\nFollowing the typographic trend of this list, I\u2019d like to add better control over text alignment and hyphenation properties. The CSS3 module on Generated Content for Paged Media already specifies five new hyphenation-related properties (namely: hyphenate-dictionary; hyphenate-before and hyphenate-after; hyphenate-lines; and hyphenate-character), but it is still being developed and lacks examples.\n\nIn the text alignment realm, the new text-align-last property allows you to define how the last line of a block (or a line just before a forced break) is aligned, if your text is set to justify. Its value can be: start; end; left; right; center; and justify. The text-justify property should also allow you to have more control over text set to text-align: justify but, for now, only Internet Explorer supports this.\n\ncalc()\n\nThis is probably my favourite item in the list: the calc() function. This function is part of the CSS3 Values and Units module, but it has only been implemented by Firefox (4.0). To take advantage of it now you need to use the Mozilla vendor code, -moz-calc().\n\nImagine you have a fluid two-column layout where the sidebar column has a fixed width of 240 pixels, and the main content area fills the rest of the width available. This is how you could create that using -moz-calc():\n\n#main {\n width: -moz-calc(100% - 240px);\n}\n\nCan you imagine how many hacks and headaches we could avoid were this function available in more browsers? Transitions and animations are really nice and lovely but, for me, it\u2019s the ability to do the things that calc() allows you to that deserves the spotlight and to be pushed for implementation.\n\nSelector grouping with -moz-any()\n\nThe -moz-any() selector grouping has been introduced by Mozilla but it\u2019s not part of any CSS specification (yet?); it\u2019s currently only available on Firefox 4.\n\nThis would be especially useful with the way HTML5 outlines documents, where we can have any number of variations of several levels of headings within numerous types of containers (think sections within articles within sections\u2026).\n\nHere is a quick example (copied from the Mozilla blog post about the article) of how -moz-any() works. Instead of writing:\n\nsection section h1, section article h1, section aside h1,\nsection nav h1, article section h1, article article h1,\narticle aside h1, article nav h1, aside section h1,\naside article h1, aside aside h1, aside nav h1, nav section h1,\nnav article h1, nav aside h1, nav nav h1, {\n font-size: 24px;\n}\n\nYou could simply write:\n\n-moz-any(section, article, aside, nav)\n-moz-any(section, article, aside, nav) h1 {\n font-size: 24px;\n}\n\nNice, huh?\n\nMore control over styling form elements\n\nSome are of the opinion that form elements shouldn\u2019t be styled at all, since a user might not recognise them as such if they don\u2019t match the operating system\u2019s controls. I partially agree: I\u2019d rather put the choice in the hands of designers and expect them to be capable of deciding whether their particular design hampers or improves usability.\n\nI would say the same idea applies to font-face: while some fear designers might go crazy and litter their web pages with dozens of different fonts, most welcome the freedom to use something other than Arial or Verdana.\n\nThere will always be someone who will take this freedom too far, but it would be useful if we could, for example, style the default Opera date picker:\n\n\n\n\n\nor Safari\u2019s slider control (think star movie ratings, for example):\n\n\n\n\n\nParent selector\n\nI don\u2019t think there is one CSS author out there who has never come across a case where he or she wished there was a parent selector. There have been many suggestions as to how this could work, but a variation of the child selector is usually the most popular:\n\narticle < h1 {\n\u2026\n}\n\nOne can dream\u2026\n\nFlexible box layout\n\nThe Flexible Box Layout Module sounds a bit like magic: it introduces a new box model to CSS, allowing you to distribute and order boxes inside other boxes, and determine how the available space is shared.\n\nTwo of my favourite features of this new box model are:\n\n\n\tthe ability to redistribute boxes in a different order from the markup\n\tthe ability to create flexible layouts, where boxes shrink (or expand) to fill the available space\n\n\nLet\u2019s take a quick look at the second case. Imagine you have a three-column layout, where the first column takes up twice as much horizontal space as the other two:\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n\n\nWith the flexible box model, you could specify it like this:\n\nbody {\n display: box;\n box-orient: horizontal;\n}\n#main {\n box-flex: 2;\n}\n#links {\n box-flex: 1;\n}\naside {\n box-flex: 1;\n}\n\nIf you decide to add a fourth column to this layout, there is no need to recalculate units or percentages, it\u2019s as easy as that.\n\nBrowser support for this property is still in its early stages (Firefox and WebKit need their vendor prefixes), but we should start to see it being gradually introduced as more attention is drawn to it (I\u2019m looking at you\u2026). You can read a more comprehensive write-up about this property on the Mozilla developer blog.\n\nIt\u2019s easy to understand why it\u2019s harder to start playing with this module than with things like animations or other more decorative properties, which don\u2019t really break your layouts when users don\u2019t see them. But it\u2019s important that we do, even if only in very experimental projects.\n\nNested selectors\n\nAnyone who has never wished they could do something like the following in CSS, cast the first stone:\n\narticle {\n h1 { font-size: 1.2em; }\n ul { margin-bottom: 1.2em; }\n}\n\nEven though it can easily turn into a specificity nightmare and promote redundancy in your style sheets (if you abuse it), it\u2019s easy to see how nested selectors could be useful. CSS compilers such as Less or Sass let you do this already, but not everyone wants or can use these compilers in their projects.\n\nEvery wish list has an item that could easily be dropped. In my case, I would say this is one that I would ditch first \u2013 it\u2019s the least useful, and also the one that could cause more maintenance problems. But it could be nice.\n\nImplementation of the ::marker pseudo-element\n\nThe CSS Lists module introduces the ::marker pseudo-element, that allows you to create custom list item markers. When an element\u2019s display property is set to list-item, this pseudo-element is created.\n\nUsing the ::marker pseudo-element you could create something like the following:\n\nFootnote 1: Both John Locke and his father, Anthony Cooper, are\nnamed after 17th- and 18th-century English philosophers; the real\nAnthony Cooper was educated as a boy by the real John Locke.\nFootnote 2: Parts of the plane were used as percussion instruments\nand can be heard in the soundtrack.\n\nwhere the footnote marker is generated by the following CSS:\n\nli::marker {\n content: \"Footnote \" counter(notes) \":\";\n text-align: left;\n width: 12em;\n}\nli {\n counter-increment: notes;\n}\n\nYou can read more about how to use counters in CSS in my article from last year.\n\nBear in mind that the CSS Lists module is still a Working Draft and is listed as \u201cLow priority\u201d. I did say this wish list would start to grow more unrealistic closer to the end\u2026\n\nVariables\n\nThe sight of the word \u2018variables\u2019 may make some web designers shy away, but when you think of them applied to things such as repeated colours in your stylesheets, it\u2019s easy to see how having variables available in CSS could be useful.\n\nThink of a website where the main brand colour is applied to elements like the main text, headings, section backgrounds, borders, and so on. In a particularly large website, where the colour is repeated countless times in the CSS and where it\u2019s important to keep the colour consistent, using variables would be ideal (some big websites are already doing this by using server-side technology).\n\nAgain, Less and Sass allow you to use variables in your CSS but, again, not everyone can (or wants to) use these.\n\nIf you are using Less, you could, for instance, set the font-family value in one variable, and simply call that variable later in the code, instead of repeating the complete font stack, like so:\n\n@fontFamily: Calibri, \"Lucida Grande\", \"Lucida Sans Unicode\", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;\nbody {\n font-family: @fontFamily;\n}\n\nOther features of these CSS compilers might also be useful, like the ability to \u2018call\u2019 a property value from another selector (accessors):\n\nheader {\n background: #000000;\n}\nfooter {\n background: header['background'];\n}\n\nor the ability to define functions (with arguments), saving you from writing large blocks of code when you need to write something like, for example, a CSS gradient:\n\n.gradient (@start:\"\", @end:\"\") {\n background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(@start), to(@end));\n background: -moz-linear-gradient(-90deg,@start,@end);\n}\nbutton {\n .gradient(#D0D0D0,#9F9F9F);\n}\n\nStandardised comments\n\nEach CSS author has his or her own style for commenting their style sheets. While this isn\u2019t a massive problem on smaller projects, where maybe only one person will edit the CSS, in larger scale projects, where dozens of hands touch the code, it would be nice to start seeing a more standardised way of commenting.\n\nOne attempt at creating a standard for CSS comments is CSSDOC, an adaptation of Javadoc (a documentation generator that extracts comments from Java source code into HTML). CSSDOC uses \u2018DocBlocks\u2019, a term borrowed from the phpDocumentor Project. A DocBlock is a human- and machine-readable block of data which has the following structure:\n\n/**\n * Short description\n \n Long description (this can have multiple lines and contain
tags\n \n @tags (optional)\n /\n\nCSSDOC includes a standard for documenting bug fixes and hacks, colours, versioning and copyright information, amongst other important bits of data.\n\nI know this isn\u2019t a CSS feature request per se; rather, it\u2019s just me pointing you at something that is usually overlooked but that could contribute towards keeping style sheets easier to maintain and to hand over to new developers.\n\nFinal notes\n\nI understand that if even some of these were implemented in browsers now, it would be a long time until all vendors were up to speed. But if we don\u2019t talk about them and experiment with what\u2019s available, then it will definitely never happen.\n\nWhy haven\u2019t I mentioned better browser support for existing CSS3 properties? Because that would be the same as adding chocolate to your Christmas wish list \u2013 you don\u2019t need to ask, everyone knows you want it.\n\nThe list could go on. There are dozens of other things I would love to see integrated in CSS or further developed. These are my personal favourites: some might be less useful than others, but I\u2019ve wished for all of them at some point.\n\nPart of the research I did while writing this article was asking some friends what they would add to their lists; other than a couple of items I already had in mine, everything else was different. I\u2019m sure your list would be different too. So tell me, what\u2019s on your CSS wish list?", "year": "2010", "author": "Inayaili de Le\u00f3n Persson", "author_slug": "inayailideleon", "published": "2010-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/my-css-wish-list/", "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": 49, "title": "Universal React", "contents": "One of the libraries to receive a huge amount of focus in 2015 has been ReactJS, a library created by Facebook for building user interfaces and web applications.\nMore generally we\u2019ve seen an even greater rise in the number of applications built primarily on the client side with most of the logic implemented in JavaScript. One of the main issues with building an app in this way is that you immediately forgo any customers who might browse with JavaScript turned off, and you can also miss out on any robots that might visit your site to crawl it (such as Google\u2019s search bots). Additionally, we gain a performance improvement by being able to render from the server rather than having to wait for all the JavaScript to be loaded and executed.\nThe good news is that this problem has been recognised and it is possible to build a fully featured client-side application that can be rendered on the server. The way in which these apps work is as follows:\n\nThe user visits www.yoursite.com and the server executes your JavaScript to generate the HTML it needs to render the page.\nIn the background, the client-side JavaScript is executed and takes over the duty of rendering the page.\nThe next time a user clicks, rather than being sent to the server, the client-side app is in control.\nIf the user doesn\u2019t have JavaScript enabled, each click on a link goes to the server and they get the server-rendered content again.\n\nThis means you can still provide a very quick and snappy experience for JavaScript users without having to abandon your non-JS users. We achieve this by writing JavaScript that can be executed on the server or on the client (you might have heard this referred to as isomorphic) and using a JavaScript framework that\u2019s clever enough handle server- or client-side execution. Currently, ReactJS is leading the way here, although Ember and Angular are both working on solutions to this problem.\nIt\u2019s worth noting that this tutorial assumes some familiarity with React in general, its syntax and concepts. If you\u2019d like a refresher, the ReactJS docs are a good place to start.\n\u00a0Getting started\nWe\u2019re going to create a tiny ReactJS application that will work on the server and the client. First we\u2019ll need to create a new project and install some dependencies. In a new, blank directory, run:\nnpm init -y\nnpm install --save ejs express react react-router react-dom\nThat will create a new project and install our dependencies:\n\nejs is a templating engine that we\u2019ll use to render our HTML on the server.\nexpress is a small web framework we\u2019ll run our server on.\nreact-router is a popular routing solution for React so our app can fully support and respect URLs.\nreact-dom is a small React library used for rendering React components.\n\nWe\u2019re also going to write all our code in ECMAScript 6, and therefore need to install BabelJS and configure that too.\nnpm install --save-dev babel-cli babel-preset-es2015 babel-preset-react\nThen, create a .babelrc file that contains the following:\n{\n \"presets\": [\"es2015\", \"react\"]\n}\nWhat we\u2019ve done here is install Babel\u2019s command line interface (CLI) tool and configured it to transform our code from ECMAScript 6 (or ES2015) to ECMAScript 5, which is more widely supported. We\u2019ll need the React transforms when we start writing JSX when working with React.\nCreating a server\nFor now, our ExpressJS server is pretty straightforward. All we\u2019ll do is render a view that says \u2018Hello World\u2019. Here\u2019s our server code:\nimport express from 'express';\nimport http from 'http';\n\nconst app = express();\n\napp.use(express.static('public'));\n\napp.set('view engine', 'ejs');\n\napp.get('', (req, res) => {\n res.render('index');\n});\n\nconst server = http.createServer(app);\n\nserver.listen(3003);\nserver.on('listening', () => {\n console.log('Listening on 3003');\n});\nHere we\u2019re using ES6 modules, which I wrote about on 24 ways last year, if you\u2019d like a reminder. We tell the app to render the index view on any GET request (that\u2019s what app.get('') means, the wildcard matches any route).\nWe now need to create the index view file, which Express expects to be defined in views/index.ejs:\n\n\n \n My App\n \n\n \n Hello World\n \n\nFinally, we\u2019re ready to run the server. Because we installed babel-cli earlier we have access to the babel-node executable, which will transform all your code before running it through node. Run this command:\n./node_modules/.bin/babel-node server.js\nAnd you should now be able to visit http://localhost:3003 and see \u2018Hello World\u2019 right there:\n\nBuilding the React app\nNow we\u2019ll build the React application entirely on the server, before adding the client-side JavaScript right at the end. Our app will have two routes, / and /about which will both show a small amount of content. This will demonstrate how to use React Router on the server side to make sure our React app plays nicely with URLs.\nFirstly, let\u2019s update views/index.ejs. Our server will figure out what HTML it needs to render, and pass that into the view. We can pass a value into our view when we render it, and then use EJS syntax to tell it to output that data. Update the template file so the body looks like so:\n\n <%- markup %>\n\nNext, we\u2019ll define the routes we want our app to have using React Router. For now we\u2019ll just define the index route, and not worry about the /about route quite yet. We could define our routes in JSX, but I think for server-side rendering it\u2019s clearer to define them as an object. Here\u2019s what we\u2019re starting with:\nconst routes = {\n path: '',\n component: AppComponent,\n childRoutes: [\n {\n path: '/',\n component: IndexComponent\n }\n ]\n}\nThese are just placed at the top of server.js, after the import statements. Later we\u2019ll move these into a separate file, but for now they are fine where they are.\nNotice how I define first that the AppComponent should be used at the '' path, which effectively means it matches every single route and becomes a container for all our other components. Then I give it a child route of /, which will match the IndexComponent. Before we hook these routes up with our server, let\u2019s quickly define components/app.js and components/index.js. app.js looks like so:\nimport React from 'react';\n\nexport default class AppComponent extends React.Component {\n render() {\n return (\n
\n
Welcome to my App
\n { this.props.children }\n
\n );\n }\n}\nWhen a React Router route has child components, they are given to us in the props under the children key, so we need to include them in the code we want to render for this component. The index.js component is pretty bland:\nimport React from 'react';\n\nexport default class IndexComponent extends React.Component {\n render() {\n return (\n
\n
This is the index page
\n
\n );\n }\n}\nServer-side routing with React Router\nHead back into server.js, and firstly we\u2019ll need to add some new imports:\nimport React from 'react';\nimport { renderToString } from 'react-dom/server';\nimport { match, RoutingContext } from 'react-router';\n\nimport AppComponent from './components/app';\nimport IndexComponent from './components/index';\nThe ReactDOM package provides react-dom/server which includes a renderToString method that takes a React component and produces the HTML string output of the component. It\u2019s this method that we\u2019ll use to render the HTML from the server, generated by React. From the React Router package we use match, a function used to find a matching route for a URL; and RoutingContext, a React component provided by React Router that we\u2019ll need to render. This wraps up our components and provides some functionality that ties React Router together with our app. Generally you don\u2019t need to concern yourself about how this component works, so don\u2019t worry too much.\nNow for the good bit: we can update our app.get('') route with the code that matches the URL against the React routes:\napp.get('', (req, res) => {\n // routes is our object of React routes defined above\n match({ routes, location: req.url }, (err, redirectLocation, props) => {\n if (err) {\n // something went badly wrong, so 500 with a message\n res.status(500).send(err.message);\n } else if (redirectLocation) {\n // we matched a ReactRouter redirect, so redirect from the server\n res.redirect(302, redirectLocation.pathname + redirectLocation.search);\n } else if (props) {\n // if we got props, that means we found a valid component to render\n // for the given route\n const markup = renderToString();\n\n // render `index.ejs`, but pass in the markup we want it to display\n res.render('index', { markup })\n\n } else {\n // no route match, so 404. In a real app you might render a custom\n // 404 view here\n res.sendStatus(404);\n }\n });\n});\nWe call match, giving it the routes object we defined earlier and req.url, which contains the URL of the request. It calls a callback function we give it, with err, redirectLocation and props as the arguments. The first two conditionals in the callback function just deal with an error occuring or a redirect (React Router has built in redirect support). The most interesting bit is the third conditional, else if (props). If we got given props and we\u2019ve made it this far it means we found a matching component to render and we can use this code to render it:\n...\n} else if (props) {\n // if we got props, that means we found a valid component to render\n // for the given route\n const markup = renderToString();\n\n // render `index.ejs`, but pass in the markup we want it to display\n res.render('index', { markup })\n} else {\n ...\n}\nThe renderToString method from ReactDOM takes that RoutingContext component we mentioned earlier and renders it with the properties required. Again, you need not concern yourself with what this specific component does or what the props are. Most of this is data that React Router provides for us on top of our components.\nNote the {...props}, which is a neat bit of JSX syntax that spreads out our object into key value properties. To see this better, note the two pieces of JSX code below, both of which are equivalent:\n\n\n// OR:\n\nconst props = { a: \"foo\", b: \"bar\" };\n\nRunning the server again\nI know that felt like a lot of work, but the good news is that once you\u2019ve set this up you are free to focus on building your React components, safe in the knowledge that your server-side rendering is working. To check, restart the server and head to http://localhost:3003 once more. You should see it all working!\n\nRefactoring and one more route\nBefore we move on to getting this code running on the client, let\u2019s add one more route and do some tidying up. First, move our routes object out into routes.js:\nimport AppComponent from './components/app';\nimport IndexComponent from './components/index';\n\nconst routes = {\n path: '',\n component: AppComponent,\n childRoutes: [\n {\n path: '/',\n component: IndexComponent\n }\n ]\n}\n\nexport { routes };\nAnd then update server.js. You can remove the two component imports and replace them with:\nimport { routes } from './routes';\nFinally, let\u2019s add one more route for ./about and links between them. Create components/about.js:\nimport React from 'react';\n\nexport default class AboutComponent extends React.Component {\n render() {\n return (\n
\n
A little bit about me.
\n
\n );\n }\n}\nAnd then you can add it to routes.js too:\nimport AppComponent from './components/app';\nimport IndexComponent from './components/index';\nimport AboutComponent from './components/about';\n\nconst routes = {\n path: '',\n component: AppComponent,\n childRoutes: [\n {\n path: '/',\n component: IndexComponent\n },\n {\n path: '/about',\n component: AboutComponent\n }\n ]\n}\n\nexport { routes };\nIf you now restart the server and head to http://localhost:3003/about` you\u2019ll see the about page!\n\nFor the finishing touch we\u2019ll use the React Router link component to add some links between the pages. Edit components/app.js to look like so:\nimport React from 'react';\nimport { Link } from 'react-router';\n\nexport default class AppComponent extends React.Component {\n render() {\n return (\n
\n
Welcome to my App
\n
\n
Home
\n
About
\n
\n { this.props.children }\n
\n );\n }\n}\nYou can now click between the pages to navigate. However, everytime we do so the requests hit the server. Now we\u2019re going to make our final change, such that after the app has been rendered on the server once, it gets rendered and managed in the client, providing that snappy client-side app experience.\nClient-side rendering\nFirst, we\u2019re going to make a small change to views/index.ejs. React doesn\u2019t like rendering directly into the body and will give a warning when you do so. To prevent this we\u2019ll wrap our app in a div:\n\n
<%- markup %>
\n \n\nI\u2019ve also added in a script tag to build.js, which is the file we\u2019ll generate containing all our client-side code.\nNext, create client-render.js. This is going to be the only bit of JavaScript that\u2019s exclusive to the client side. In it we need to pull in our routes and render them to the DOM.\nimport React from 'react';\nimport ReactDOM from 'react-dom';\nimport { Router } from 'react-router';\n\nimport { routes } from './routes';\n\nimport createBrowserHistory from 'history/lib/createBrowserHistory';\n\nReactDOM.render(\n ,\n document.getElementById('app')\n)\nThe first thing you might notice is the mention of createBrowserHistory. React Router is built on top of the history module, a module that listens to the browser\u2019s address bar and parses the new location. It has many modes of operation: it can keep track using a hashbang, such as http://localhost/#!/about (this is the default), or you can tell it to use the HTML5 history API by calling createBrowserHistory, which is what we\u2019ve done. This will keep the URLs nice and neat and make sure the client and the server are using the same URL structure. You can read more about React Router and histories in the React Router documentation.\nFinally we use ReactDOM.render and give it the Router component, telling it about all our routes, and also tell ReactDOM where to render, the #app element.\nGenerating build.js\nWe\u2019re actually almost there! The final thing we need to do is generate our client side bundle. For this we\u2019re going to use webpack, a module bundler that can take our application, follow all the imports and generate one large bundle from them. We\u2019ll install it and babel-loader, a webpack plugin for transforming code through Babel.\nnpm install --save-dev webpack babel-loader\nTo run webpack we just need to create a configuration file, called webpack.config.js. Create the file in the root of our application and add the following code:\nvar path = require('path');\nmodule.exports = {\n entry: path.join(process.cwd(), 'client-render.js'),\n output: {\n path: './public/',\n filename: 'build.js'\n },\n module: {\n loaders: [\n {\n test: /.js$/,\n loader: 'babel'\n }\n ]\n }\n}\nNote first that this file can\u2019t be written in ES6 as it doesn\u2019t get transformed. The first thing we do is tell webpack the main entry point for our application, which is client-render.js. We use process.cwd() because webpack expects an exact location \u2013 if we just gave it the string \u2018client-render.js\u2019, webpack wouldn\u2019t be able to find it.\nNext, we tell webpack where to output our file, and here I\u2019m telling it to place the file in public/build.js. Finally we tell webpack that every time it hits a file that ends in .js, it should use the babel-loader plugin to transform the code first.\nNow we\u2019re ready to generate the bundle!\n./node_modules/.bin/webpack\nThis will take a fair few seconds to run (on my machine it\u2019s about seven or eight), but once it has it will have created public/build.js, a client-side bundle of our application. If you restart your server once more you\u2019ll see that we can now navigate around our application without hitting the server, because React on the client takes over. Perfect!\nThe first bundle that webpack generates is pretty slow, but if you run webpack -w it will go into watch mode, where it watches files for changes and regenerates the bundle. The key thing is that it only regenerates the small pieces of the bundle it needs, so while the first bundle is very slow, the rest are lightning fast. I recommend leaving webpack constantly running in watch mode when you\u2019re developing.\nConclusions\nFirst, if you\u2019d like to look through this code yourself you can find it all on GitHub. Feel free to raise an issue there or tweet me if you have any problems or would like to ask further questions.\nNext, I want to stress that you shouldn\u2019t use this as an excuse to build all your apps in this way. Some of you might be wondering whether a static site like the one we built today is worth its complexity, and you\u2019d be right. I used it as it\u2019s an easy example to work with but in the future you should carefully consider your reasons for wanting to build a universal React application and make sure it\u2019s a suitable infrastructure for you.\nWith that, all that\u2019s left for me to do is wish you a very merry Christmas and best of luck with your React applications!", "year": "2015", "author": "Jack Franklin", "author_slug": "jackfranklin", "published": "2015-12-05T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/universal-react/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 269, "title": "Adaptive Images for Responsive Designs\u2026 Again", "contents": "When I was asked to write an article for 24 ways I jumped at the chance, as I\u2019d been wanting to write about some fun hacks for responsive images and related parsing behaviours. My heart sank a little when Matt Wilcox beat me to the subject, but it floated back up when I realized I disagreed with his method and still had something to write about.\n\nSo, Matt Wilcox, if that is your real name (and I\u2019m pretty sure it is), I disagree. I see your dirty server-based hack and raise you an even dirtier client-side hack. Evil laugh, etc., etc.\n\nYou guys can stomach yet another article about responsive design, right? Right?\n\nHalf the room gets up to leave\n\nWhoa, whoa\u2026 OK, I\u2019ll cut to the chase\u2026\n\nTL;DR\n\nIn a previous episode, we were introduced to Debbie and her responsive cat poetry page. Well, now she\u2019s added some reviews of cat videos and some images of cats. Check out her new page and have a play around with the browser window. At smaller widths, the images change and the design responds. The benefits of this method are:\n\n\n\tit\u2019s entirely client-side\n\timages are still shown to users without JavaScript\n\tyour media queries stay in your CSS file\n\tno repetition of image URLs\n\tno extra downloads per image\n\tit\u2019s fast enough to work on resize\n\tit\u2019s pure filth\n\n\nWhat\u2019s wrong with the server-side solution?\n\nResponsive design is a client-side issue; involving the server creates a boatload of problems.\n\n\n\tIt sets a cookie at the top of the page which is read in subsequent requests. However, the cookie is not guaranteed to be set in time for requests on the same page, so the server may see an old value or no value at all.\n\tServing images via server scripts is much slower than plain old static hosting.\n\tThe URL can only cache with vary: cookie, so the cache breaks when the cookie changes, even if the change is unrelated. Also, far-future caching is out for devices that can change width.\n\tIt depends on detecting screen width, which is rather messy on mobile devices.\n\tResponding to things other than screen width (such as DPI) means packing more information into the cookie, and a more complicated script at the top of each page.\n\n\nSo, why isn\u2019t this straightforward on the client?\n\nClient-side solutions to the problem involve JavaScript testing user agent properties (such as screen width), looping through some images and setting their URLs accordingly. However, by the time JavaScript has sprung into action, the original image source has already started downloading. If you change the source of an image via JavaScript, you\u2019re setting off yet another request.\n\nImages are downloaded as soon as their DOM node is created. They don\u2019t need to be visible, they don\u2019t need to be in the document.\n\nnew Image().src = url\n\nThe above will start an HTTP request for url. This is a handy trick for quick requests and preloading, but also shows the browser\u2019s eagerness to download images.\n\nHere\u2019s an example of that in action. Check out the network tab in Web Inspector (other non-WebKit development aids are available) to see the image requests.\n\nBecause of this, some client-side solutions look like this:\n\n\n\nwhere t.gif is a 1\u00d71px tiny transparent GIF.\n\nThis results in no images if JavaScript isn\u2019t available. Dealing with the absence of JavaScript is still important, even on mobile. I was recently asked to make a website work on an old Blackberry 9000. I was able to get most of the way there by preventing that OS parsing any JavaScript, and that was only possible because the site didn\u2019t depend on it.\n\nWe need to delay loading images for JavaScript users, but ensure they load for users without JavaScript. How can we conditionally parse markup depending on JavaScript support?\n\nOh yeah! \n\nWhoa! First spacer GIFs and now \n\nso JavaScript can still get at the URL via the data-src attribute. However, repeating stuff isn\u2019t great. Surely we can do better than that.\n\nA dirty, dirty hack\n\nThankfully, I managed to come up with a solution, and by me, I mean someone cleverer than me. Pornel\u2019s solution uses \n\nAnd there we have it. We can now prevent images loading for users with JavaScript, but we can still get at the markup.\n\nWe\u2019re still creating an unbalanced tree and there\u2019s a performance impact in that. However, the parser won\u2019t have got far by the time our script executes, so the impact is small. Unbalanced trees are more of a concern for external scripts; a lot of parsing can happen by the time the script has downloaded and parsed.\n\nUsing dirtiness to create responsive images\n\nNow all we need to do is give each of our dirty scripts a class name, then JavaScript can pick them up, grab the markup from the comment and decide what to do with the images.\n\nThis technique isn\u2019t exclusively useful for responsive images. It could also be used to delay images loading until they\u2019ve scrolled into view. But to do that you\u2019ll need a bulletproof way of detecting when elements are in view. This involves getting the height of the viewport, which is extremely unreliable on mobile devices.\n\nHere\u2019s a hastily thrown together example showing how it can be used for responsive images.\n\nI adjust the end of the image URLs conditionally depending on the result of media queries. This is done on page load, and on resize.\n\nI\u2019m using regular expressions to alter the URLs. Using regex to deal with HTML is usually a sign of insanity, but parsing it with the browser\u2019s DOM parser would trigger the download of images before we change the URLs. My implementation currently requires double-quoted image URLs, because I\u2019m lazy. Wanna fight about it?\n\nMedia querying via JavaScript\n\nJeremy Keith used document.documentElement.clientWidth in his example, which is great as a proof of concept, but unfortunately is rather unreliable across mobile devices.\n\nThankfully, standards are coming to the rescue with window.matchMedia, which lets us provide a media query string and get a boolean result. There\u2019s even a great polyfill for browsers that don\u2019t support it (as long as they support media queries in CSS).\n\nI didn\u2019t go with that for three reasons:\n\n\n\tI\u2019d like to keep media queries in the CSS file, if possible.\n\tI wanted something a little lighter to keep things speedy while resizing.\n\tIt\u2019s just not dirty enough yet.\n\n\nTo make things ultra-dirty, I add a test element to the page with a specific class, let\u2019s say media-test. Then, I control the width of it using media queries in my CSS file:\n\n@media all and (min-width: 640px) {\n .media-test {\n width: 1px;\n }\n}\n@media all and (min-width: 926px) {\n .media-test {\n width: 2px;\n }\n}\n\nThe JavaScript part changes the URL suffix depending on the width of media-test. I\u2019m using a min-width media query, but you can use others such as pixel-ratio to detect high DPI displays. Basically, it\u2019s a hacky way for CSS to set a value that can be picked up by JavaScript. It means the bit that signals changes to the images sits with the rest of the responsive code, without duplication.\n\nAlso, phwoar, dirty!\n\nThe API\n\nI threw a script together to demonstrate the technique. I\u2019m not particularly attached to it, I\u2019m not even sure I like it, but here\u2019s the API:\n\nresponsiveGallery({\n // Class name of dirty script element(s) to target\n scriptClass: 'dirty-gallery-script',\n // Class name for our test element\n testClass: 'dirty-gallery-test',\n // The initial suffix of URLs, the bit that changes.\n initialSuffix: '-mobile.jpg',\n // A map of suffixes, for each width of 'dirty-gallery-test'\n suffixes: {\n '1': '-desktop.jpg',\n '2': '-large-desktop.jpg',\n '3': '-mobile-retina.jpg'\n }\n});\n\nThe API can cover individual images or multiple galleries at once. In the example I gave at the start of the article I make two calls to the API, one for both galleries, and one for the single image above the video reviews. They\u2019re separate calls because they respond slightly differently.\n\nThe future\n\nHopefully, we\u2019ll get a proper solution to this soon. My favourite suggestion is the element that Bruce Lawson covers.\n\n\n \n \n \n \n $\"Angry$ \n\n\nUnfortunately, we\u2019re nowhere near that yet, and I\u2019d still rather have my media queries stay in CSS. Perhaps the source elements could be skipped if they\u2019re display:none; then they could have class names and be controlled via CSS. Sigh.\n\nWell, I\u2019m tired of writing now and I\u2019m sure you\u2019re tired of reading. I realize what I\u2019ve presented is a yet another dirty hack to the responsive image problem (perhaps the dirtiest?) and may be completely unfeasible in professional situations. But isn\u2019t that the true spirit of Christmas?\n\nNo.", "year": "2011", "author": "Jake Archibald", "author_slug": "jakearchibald", "published": "2011-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/adaptive-images-for-responsive-designs-again/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 127, "title": "Showing Good Form", "contents": "Earlier this year, I forget exactly when (it\u2019s been a good year), I was building a client site that needed widgets which look like this (designed, incidentally, by my erstwhile writing partner, Cameron Adams):\n\n\n\nBuilding this was a challenge not just in CSS, but in choosing the proper markup \u2013 how should such a widget be constructed?\n\nMmm \u2026 markup\n\nIt seemed to me there were two key issues to deal with:\n\n\n\tThe function of the interface is to input information, so semantically this is a form, therefore we have to find a way of building it using form elements: fieldset, legend, label and input\n\tWe can\u2019t use a table for layout, even though that would clearly be the easiest solution!\n\n\nAbusing tables for layout is never good \u2013 physical layout is not what table semantics mean. But even if this data can be described as a table, we shouldn\u2019t mix forms markup with non-forms markup, because of the behavioral impact this can have on a screen reader:\n\nTo take a prominent example, the screen reader JAWS has a mode specifically for interacting with forms (cunningly known as \u201cforms mode\u201d). When running in this mode its output only includes relevant elements \u2013 legends, labels and form controls themselves. Any other kind of markup \u2013 like text in a previous table cell, a paragraph or list in between \u2013 is simply ignored. The user in this situation would have to switch continually in and out of forms mode to hear all the content. (For more about this issue and some test examples, there\u2019s a thread at accessify forum which wanders in that direction.)\n\nOne further issue for screen reader users is implied by the design: the input fields are associated together in rows and columns, and a sighted user can visually scan across and down to make those associations; but a blind user can\u2019t do that. For such a user the row and column header data will need to be there at every axis; in other words, the layout should be more like this:\n\n\n\nAnd constructed with appropriate semantic markup to convey those relationships. By this point the selection of elements seems pretty clear: each row is a fieldset, the row header is a legend, and each column header is a label, associated with an input.\n\nHere\u2019s what that form looks like with no CSS:\n\n\n\nAnd here\u2019s some markup for the first row (with most of the attributes removed just to keep this example succinct):\n\n
\n\t\n\t\tMatch points\n\t\n\t\n\t\tWin\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\tDraw\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\tLose\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\tPlayed\n\t\t\n\t\n
\n\nThe span inside each legend is because legend elements are highly resistant to styling! Indeed they\u2019re one of the most stubborn elements in the browsers\u2019 vocabulary. Oh man \u2026 how I wrestled with the buggers \u2026 until this obvious alternative occurred to me! So the legend element itself is just a container, while all the styling is on the inner span.\n\nOh yeah, there was some CSS too\n\nI\u2019m not gonna dwell too much on the CSS it took to make this work \u2013 this is a short article, and it\u2019s all there in the demo [demo page, style sheet]\n\nBut I do want to touch on the most interesting bit \u2013 where we get from a layout with headers on every row, to one where only the top row has headers \u2013 or at least, so it appears to graphical browsers. For screen readers, as we noted, we need those headers on every row, so we should employ some cunning CSS to partly negate their visual presence, without removing them from the output.\n\nThe core styling for each label span is like this:\n\nlabel span\n{\n\tdisplay:block;\n\tpadding:5px;\n\tline-height:1em;\n\tbackground:#423221;\n\tcolor:#fff;\n\tfont-weight:bold;\n}\n\nBut in the rows below the header they have these additional rules:\n\nfieldset.body label span\n{\n\tpadding:0 5px;\n\tline-height:0;\n\tposition:relative;\n\ttop:-10000em;\n}\n\nThe rendered width of the element is preserved, ensuring that the surrounding label is still the same width as the one in the header row above, and hence a unified column width is preserved all the way down. But the element effectively has no height, and so it\u2019s effectively invisible. The styling is done this way, rather than just setting the height to zero and using overflow:hidden, because to do that would expose an unrelated quirk with another popular screen reader! (It would hide the output from Window Eyes, as shown in this test example at access matters.)\n\nThe finished widget\n\nIt\u2019s an intricate beast allright! But after all that we do indeed get the widget we want:\n\n\n\tDemo page\n\tStyle sheet\n\n\nIt\u2019s not perfect, most notably because the legends have to have a fixed width; this can be in em to allow for text scaling, but it still doesn\u2019t allow the content to break into multiple lines. It also doesn\u2019t look quite right in Safari; and some CSS hacking was needed to make it look right in IE6 and IE7.\n\nStill it worked well enough for the purpose, and satisfied the client completely. And most of all it re-assured me in my faith \u2013 that there\u2019s never any need to abuse tables for layout. (Unless of course you think this content is a table anyway, but that\u2019s another story!)", "year": "2006", "author": "James Edwards", "author_slug": "jamesedwards", "published": "2006-12-11T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/showing-good-form/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 97, "title": "Making Modular Layout Systems", "contents": "For all of the advantages the web has with distribution of content, I\u2019ve always lamented the handiness of the WYSIWYG design tools from the print publishing world. When I set out to redesign my personal website, I wanted to have some of the same abilities that those tools have, laying out pages how I saw fit, and that meant a flexible system for dealing with imagery. \n\nBuilding on some of the CSS that Eric Meyer employed a few years back on the A List Apart design, I created a set of classes to use together to achieve the variety I was after. Employing multiple classes isn\u2019t a new technique, but most examples aren\u2019t coming at this from strictly editorial and visual perspectives; I wanted to have options to vary my layouts depending on content.\n\nIf you want to skip ahead, you can view the example first.\n\nLaying the Foundation\n\nWe need to be able to map out our page so that we have predictable canvas, and then create a system of image sizes that work with it. For the sake of this article, let\u2019s use a simple uniform 7-column grid, consisting of seven 100px-wide columns and 10px of space between each column, though you can use any measurements you want as long as they remain constant.\n\n\nAll of our images will have a width that references the grid column widths (in our example, 100px, 210px, 320px, 430px, 540px, 650px, or 760px), but the height can be as large as needed.\n\n\nOnce we know our images will all have one of those widths, we can setup our CSS to deal with the variations in layout. In the most basic form, we\u2019re going to be dealing with three classes: one each that represent an identifier, a size, and a placement for our elements.\n\n\nThis is really a process of abstracting the important qualities of what you would do with a given image in a layout into separate classes, allowing you to quickly customize their appearance by combining the appropriate classes. Rather than trying to serve up a one-size-fits-all approach to styling, we give each class only one or two attributes and rely on the combination of classes to get us there.\n\n\nIdentifier\n\nThis specifies what kind of element we have: usually either an image (pic) or some piece of text (caption).\n\n\nSize\n\nSince we know how our grid is constructed and the potential widths of our images, we can knock out a space equal to the width of any number of columns. In our example, that value can be one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven.\n\nPlacement\n\nThis tells the element where to go. In our example we can use a class of left or right, which sets the appropriate floating rule.\n\n\nAdditions\n\nI created a few additions that be tacked on after the \u201cplacement\u201d in the class stack: solo, for a bit more space beneath images without captions, frame for images that need a border, and inset for an element that appears inside of a block of text. Outset images are my default, but you could easily switch the default concept to use inset images and create a class of outset to pull them out of the content columns.\n\n\nThe CSS\n\n/* I D E N T I F I E R /\n.pic p, .caption {\n font-size: 11px;\n line-height: 16px;\n font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;\n color: #666;\n margin: 4px 0 10px;\n}\n/ P L A C E M E N T /\n.left {float: left; margin-right: 20px;}\n.right {float: right; margin-left: 20px;}\n.right.inset {margin: 0 120px 0 20px;} / img floated right within text /\n.left.inset {margin-left: 230px;} / img floated left within text /\n/ S I Z E /\n.one {width: 100px;}\n.two {width: 210px;}\n.three {width: 320px;}\n.four {width: 430px;}\n.five {width: 540px;}\n.six {width: 650px;}\n.seven {width: 760px;}\n.eight {width: 870px;}\n/ A D D I T I O N S /\n.frame {border: 1px solid #999;}\n.solo img {margin-bottom: 20px;}\n\nIn Use\n\nYou can already see how powerful this approach can be. If you want an image and a caption on the left to stretch over half of the page, you would use:\n\n
\n\t\n\t
Caption goes here.
\n
\n\nOr, for that same image with a border and no caption:\n\n\n\nYou just tack on the classes that contain the qualities you need. And because we\u2019ve kept each class so simple, we can apply these same stylings to other elements too:\n\n
Caption goes here.
\n\nCaveats\n\nObviously there are some potential semantic hang-ups with these methods. While classes like pic and caption stem the tide a bit, others like left and right are tougher to justify. This is something that you have to decide for yourself; I\u2019m fine with the occasional four or left class because I think there\u2019s a good tradeoff. Just as a fully semantic solution to this problem would likely be imperfect, this solution is imperfect from the other side of the semantic fence. Additionally, IE6 doesn\u2019t understand the chain of classes within a CSS selector (like .right.inset). If you need to support IE6, you may have to write a few more CSS rules to accommodate any discrepancies.\n\nOpportunities\n\nThis is clearly a simple example, but starting with a modular foundation like this leaves the door open for opportunity. We\u2019ve created a highly flexible and human-readable system for layout manipulation. Obviously, this is something that would need to be tailored to the spacing and sizes of your site, but the systematic approach is very powerful, especially for editorial websites whose articles might have lots of images of varying sizes. It may not get us fully to the flexibility of WYSIWYG print layouts, but methods like this point us in a direction of designs that can adapt to the needs of the content.\n\n\nView the example: without grid and with grid.", "year": "2008", "author": "Jason Santa Maria", "author_slug": "jasonsantamaria", "published": "2008-12-15T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/making-modular-layout-systems/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 137, "title": "Cheating Color", "contents": "Have you ever been strapped to use specific colors outlined in a branding guide? Felt restricted because those colors ended up being too light or dark for the way you want to use them?\n\nHere\u2019s the solution: throw out your brand guide.\n\ngasp!\n\nOK, don\u2019t throw it out. Just put it in a drawer for a few minutes.\n\nBranding Guides be Damned\n\nWhen dealing with color on screen, it\u2019s easy to get caught up in literal values from hex colors, you can cheat colors ever so slightly to achieve the right optical value. This is especially prevalent when trying to bring a company\u2019s identity colors to a screen design. Because the most important idea behind a brand guide is to help a company maintain the visual integrity of their business, consider hex numbers to be guidelines rather than law. Once you are familiar enough with the colors your company uses, you can start to flex them a bit, and take a few liberties.\n\nThis is a quick method for cheating to get the color you really want. With a little sleight of design, we can swap a color that might be part of your identity guidelines, with one that works better optically, and no one will be the wiser!\n\nColor is a Wily Beast\n\nThis might be hard: You might have to break out of the idea that a color can only be made using one method. Color is fluid. It interacts and changes based on its surroundings. Some colors can appear lighter or darker based on what color they appear on or next to. The RGB gamut is additive color, and as such, has a tendency to push contrast in the direction that objects may already be leaning\u2014increasing the contrast of light colors on dark colors and decreasing the contrast of light on light. Obviously, because we are talking about monitors here, these aren\u2019t hard and fast rules.\n\nCheat and Feel Good About It\n\nOn a light background, when you have a large element of a light color, a small element of the same color will appear lighter.\n\nEnter our fake company: Double Dagger. They manufacture footnotes. Take a look at Fig. 1 below. The logo (Double Dagger), rule, and small text are all #6699CC. Because the logo so large, we get a good sense of the light blue color. Unfortunately, the rule and small text beneath it feel much lighter because we can\u2019t create enough contrast with such small shapes in that color.\n\nNow take a look at Fig. 2. Our logo is still #6699CC, but now the rule and smaller text have been cheated to #4477BB, effectively giving us the same optical color that we used in the logo. You will find that we get a better sense of the light blue, and the added benefit of more contrast for our text. Doesn\u2019t that feel good?\n\n\n\nConversely, when you have a large element of a dark color, a small element of the same color will appear darker.\n\nLet\u2019s look at Fig. 3 below. Double Dagger has decided to change its identity colors from blue to red. In Fig. 3, our logo, rule, and small text are all #330000, a very dark red. If you look at the rule and small text below the logo, you will notice that they seem dark enough to be confused with black. The dark red can\u2019t be sustained by the smaller shapes. Now let\u2019s look at Fig. 4. The logo is still #33000, but we\u2019ve now cheated the rule and smaller text to #550000. This gives us a better sense of a red, but preserves the dark and moody direction the company has taken.\n\n\n\nBut we\u2019ve only touched on color against a white background. For colors against a darker background, you may find lighter colors work fine, but darker colors need to be cheated a bit to the lighter side in order to reach a good optical equivalent. Take a look below at Fig. 5 and Fig. 6. Both use the same exact corresponding colors as Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 above, but now they are set against a dark background. Where the blue used in Fig. 1 above was too light for the smaller elements, we find it is just right for them in Fig. 5, and the darker blue we used in Fig. 2 has now proven too dark for a dark background, as evidenced in Fig. 6.\n\n\n\nYour mileage may vary, and this may not be applicable in all situations, but consider it to be just another tool on your utility belt for dealing with color problems.", "year": "2006", "author": "Jason Santa Maria", "author_slug": "jasonsantamaria", "published": "2006-12-23T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/cheating-color/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 48, "title": "A Holiday Wish", "contents": "A friend and I were talking the other day about why clients spend more on toilet cleaning than design, and how the industry has changed since the mid-1990s, when we got our starts. Early in his career, my friend wrote a fine CSS book, but for years he has called himself a UX designer. And our conversation got me thinking about how I reacted to that title back when I first started hearing it.\n\n\u201cJust what this business needs,\u201d I said to myself, \u201canother phony expert.\u201d\n\nOkay, so I was wrong about UX, but my touchiness was not altogether unfounded. In the beginning, our industry was divided between freelance jack-of-all-trade punks, who designed and built and coded and hosted and Photoshopped and even wrote the copy when the client couldn\u2019t come up with any, and snot-slick dot-com mega-agencies that blew up like Alice and handed out titles like impoverished nobles in the years between the world wars. \n\nI was the former kind of designer, a guy who, having failed or just coasted along at a cluster of other careers, had suddenly, out of nowhere, blossomed into a web designer\u2014an immensely curious designer slash coder slash writer with a near-insatiable lust to shave just one more byte from every image. We had modems back then, and I dreamed in sixteen colors. My source code was as pretty as my layouts (arguably prettier) and I hoovered up facts and opinions from newsgroups and bulletin boards as fast as any loudmouth geek could throw them. It was a beautiful life.\n\nBut soon, too soon, the professional digital agencies arose, buying loft buildings downtown, jacking in at T1 speeds, charging a hundred times what I did, and communicating with their clients in person, in large artfully bedecked rooms, wearing hand-tailored Barney\u2019s suits and bringing back the big city bullshit I thought I\u2019d left behind when I quit advertising to become a web designer. \n\nJust like the big bad ad agencies of my early career, the new digital agencies stocked every meeting with a totem pole worth of ranks and titles. If the client brought five upper middle managers to the meeting, the agency did likewise. If fifteen stakeholders got to ask for a bigger logo, fifteen agency personnel showed up to take notes on the percentage of enlargement required.\n\nBut my biggest gripe was with the titles.\n\nThe bigger and more expensive the agency, the lousier it ran with newly invented titles. Nobody was a designer any more. Oh, no. Designer, apparently, wasn\u2019t good enough. Designer was not what you called someone you threw that much money at.\n\nInstead of designers, there were user interaction leads and consulting middleware integrators and bilabial experience park rangers and you name it. At an AIGA Miami event where I was asked to speak in the 1990s, I once watched the executive creative director of the biggest dot-com agency of the day make a presentation where he spent half his time bragging that the agency had recently shaved down the number of titles for people who basically did design stuff from forty-six to just twenty-three\u2014he presented this as though it were an Einsteinian coup\u2014and the other half of his time showing a film about the agency\u2019s newly opened branch in Oslo. The Oslo footage was shot in December. I kept wondering which designer in the audience who lived in the constant breezy balminess of Miami they hoped to entice to move to dark, wintry Norway. But I digress.\n\nShortly after I viewed this presentation, the dot-com world imploded, brought about largely by the euphoric excess of the agencies and their clients. But people still needed websites, and my practice flourished\u2014to the point where, in 1999, I made the terrifying transition from guy in his underwear working freelance out of his apartment to head of a fledgling design studio. (Note: you never stop working on that change.)\n\nI had heard about experience design in the 1990s, but assumed it was a gig for people who only knew one font. \n\nBut sometime around 2004 or 2005, among my freelance and small-studio colleagues, like a hobbit in the Shire, I began hearing whispers in the trees of a new evil stirring. The fires of Mordor were burning. Web designers were turning in their HTML editing tools and calling themselves UXers.\n\nI wasn\u2019t sure if they pronounced it \u201cuck-sir,\u201d or \u201cyou-ex-er,\u201d but I trusted their claims to authenticity about as far as I trusted the actors in a Doctor Pepper commercial when they claimed to be Peppers. I\u2019m an UXer, you\u2019re an UXer, wouldn\u2019t you like to be an UXer too? No thanks, said I. I still make things. With my hands.\n\nSuch was my thinking. I may have earned an MFA at the end of some long-past period of soul confusion, but I have working-class roots and am profoundly suspicious of, well, everything, but especially of anything that smacks of pretense. I got exporting GIFs. I didn\u2019t get how white papers and bullet points helped anybody do anything.\n\nI was wrong. And gradually I came to know I was wrong. And before other members of my tribe embraced UX, and research, and content strategy, and the other airier consultant services, I was on board. It helped that my wife of the time was a librarian from Michigan, so I\u2019d already bought into the cult of information architecture. And if I wasn\u2019t exactly the seer who first understood how borderline academic practices related to UX could become as important to our medium and industry as our craft skills, at least I was down a lot faster than Judd Apatow got with feminism. But I digress.\n\nI love the web and all the people in it. Today I understand design as a strategic practice above all. The promise of the web, to make all knowledge accessible to all people, won\u2019t be won by HTML5, WCAG 2, and responsive web design alone. \n\nWe are all designers. You may call yourself a front-end developer, but if you spend hours shaving half-seconds off an interaction, that\u2019s user experience and you, my friend, are a designer. If the client asks, \u201cCan you migrate all my old content to the new CMS?\u201d and you answer, \u201cOf course we can, but should we?\u201d, you are a designer. Even our users are designers. Think about it. \n\nOnce again, as in the dim dumb dot-com past, we seem to be divided by our titles. But, O, my friends, our varied titles are only differing facets of the same bright gem. Sisters, brothers, we are all designers. Love on! Love on!\n\nAnd may all your web pages, cards, clusters, clumps, asides, articles, and relational databases be bright.", "year": "2014", "author": "Jeffrey Zeldman", "author_slug": "jeffreyzeldman", "published": "2014-12-18T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/a-holiday-wish/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 103, "title": "Recession Tips For Web Designers", "contents": "For web designers, there are four keys to surviving bad economic times: do good work, charge a fair price, lower your overhead, and be sure you are communicating with your client. As a reader of 24 ways, you already do good work, so let\u2019s focus on the rest.\n\nI know something about surviving bad times, having started my agency, Happy Cog, at the dawn of the dot-com bust. Of course, the recession we\u2019re in now may end up making the dot-com bust look like the years of bling and gravy. But the bust was rough enough at the time. \n\nBad times are hard on overweight companies and over-leveraged start-ups, but can be kind to freelancers and small agencies. Clients who once had money to burn and big agencies to help them burn it suddenly consider the quality of work more important than the marquee value of the business card. Fancy offices and ten people at every meeting are out. A close relationship with an individual or small team that listens is in.\n\nThin is in\n\nIf you were good in client meetings when you were an employee, print business cards and pick a name for your new agency. Once some cash rolls in, see an accountant. \n\nIf the one-person entrepreneur model isn\u2019t you, it\u2019s no problem. Form a virtual agency with colleagues who complement your creative, technical, and business skills. Athletics is a Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary \u201cart and design collective.\u201d Talk about low overhead: they don\u2019t have a president, a payroll, or a pension plan. But that hasn\u2019t stopped clients like adidas, Nike, MTV, HBO, Disney, DKNY, and Sundance Channel from knocking on their (virtual) doors.\n\nRunning a traditional business is like securing a political position in Chicago: it costs a fortune. That\u2019s why bad times crush so many companies. But you are a creature of the internets. You don\u2019t need an office to do great work. I ran Happy Cog out of my apartment for far longer than anyone realized. My clients, when they learned my secret, didn\u2019t care. \n\nKeep it lean: if you can budget your incoming freelance money, you don\u2019t have to pay yourself a traditional salary. Removing the overhead associated with payroll means more of the budget stays in your pocket, enabling you to price your projects competitively, while still within industry norms. (Underpricing is uncool, and clients who knowingly choose below-market-rate vendors tend not to treat those vendors with respect.)\n\nGetting gigs\n\nWeb design is a people business. If things are slow, email former clients. If you just lost your job, email former agency clients with whom you worked closely to inform them of your freelance business and find out how they\u2019re doing. Best practice: focus the email on wishing them a happy holiday and asking how they\u2019re doing. Let your email signature file tell them you\u2019re now the president of Your Name Design. Leading with the fact that you just lost your job may earn sympathy (or commiseration: the client may have lost her job, too) but it\u2019s not exactly a sure-fire project getter.\n\nThe qualities that help you land a web design project are the same in good times or bad. Have a story to tell about the kind of services you offer, and the business benefits they provide. (If you design with web standards, you already have one great story line. What are the others?) \n\nDon\u2019t be shy about sharing your story, but don\u2019t make it the focus of the meeting. The client is the focus. Before you meet her, learn as much as you can about her users, her business, and her competitors. At the very least, read her site\u2019s About pages, and spend some quality time with Google. \n\nMost importantly, go to the meeting knowing how much you don\u2019t know. Arrive curious, and armed with questions. Maintain eye contact and keep your ears open. If a point you raise causes two people to nod at each other, follow up on that point, don\u2019t just keep grinding through your Keynote presentation. \n\nIf you pay attention and think on your feet, it tells the potential client that they can expect you to listen and be flexible. (Clients are like unhappy spouses: they\u2019re dying for someone to finally listen.) If you stick to a prepared presentation, it might send the message that you are inflexible or nervous or both. \u201cNervous\u201d is an especially bad signal to send. It indicates that you are either dishonest or inexperienced. Neither quality invites a client to sign on. Web design is a people business for the client, too: they should feel that their interactions with you will be pleasant and illuminating. And that you\u2019ll listen. Did I mention that?\n\nGive it time\n\nSecuring clients takes longer and requires more effort in a recession. If two emails used to land you a gig, it will now take four, plus an in-person meeting, plus a couple of follow-up calls. This level of salesmanship is painful to geeks and designers, who would rather spend four hours kerning type or debugging a style sheet than five minutes talking business on the telephone. I know. I\u2019m the same way. But we must overcome our natural shyness and inwardness if we intend not to fish our next meal out of a neighbor\u2019s garbage can. \n\nAs a bonus, once the recession ends, your hard-won account management skills will help you take your business to the next level. By the time jobs are plentiful again, you may not want to work for anyone but yourself. You\u2019ll be a captain of our industry. And talented people will be emailing to ask you for a job.", "year": "2008", "author": "Jeffrey Zeldman", "author_slug": "jeffreyzeldman", "published": "2008-12-24T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/recession-tips-for-web-designers/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 173, "title": "Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room", "contents": "My friend, the content strategist Kristina Halvorson, likes to call content \u201cthe elephant in the room\u201d of web design. She means it\u2019s the huge problem that no one on the web development team or client side is willing to acknowledge, face squarely, and plan for. \n\nA typical web project will pass through many helpful phases of research, and numerous beneficial user experience design iterations, while the content\u2014which in most cases is supposed to be the site\u2019s primary focus\u2014gets handled haphazardly at the end. Hence, elephant in the room, and hence also artist Kevin Cornell\u2019s recent use of elephantine imagery to illustrate A List Apart articles on the subject. But I digress.\n\nWithout discounting the primacy of the content problem, we web design folk have now birthed ourselves a second lumbering mammoth, thanks to our interest in \u201creal fonts on the web\u201c (the unfortunate name we\u2019ve chosen for the recent practice of serving web-licensed fonts via CSS\u2019s decade-old @font-face declaration\u2014as if Georgia, Verdana, and Times were somehow unreal). \n\nFor the fact is, even bulletproof and mo\u2019 bulletproofer @font-face CSS syntax aren\u2019t really bulletproof if we care about looks and legibility across browsers and platforms.\n\nHyenas in the Breakfast Nook\n\nThe problem isn\u2019t just that foundries have yet to agree on a standard font format that protects their intellectual property. And that, even when they do, it will be a while before all browsers support that standard\u2014leaving aside the inevitable politics that impede all standardization efforts. Those are problems, but they\u2019re not the elephant. Call them the coyotes in the room, and they\u2019re slowly being tamed.\n\nNor is the problem that workable, scalable business models (of which Typekit\u2018s is the most visible and, so far, the most successful) are still being shaken out and tested. The quality and ease of use of such services, their stability on heavily visited sites (via massively backed-up server clusters), and the fairness and sustainability of their pricing will determine how licensing and serving \u201creal fonts\u201d works in the short and long term for the majority of designer/developers.\n\nNor is our primary problem that developers with no design background may serve ugly or illegible fonts that take forever to load, or fonts that take a long time to download and then display as ordinary system fonts (as happens on, say, about.validator.nu). Ugliness and poor optimization on the web are nothing new. That support for @font-face in Webkit and Mozilla browsers (and for TrueType fonts converted to Embedded OpenType in Internet Explorer) adds deadly weapons to the non-designer\u2019s toolkit is not the technology\u2019s fault. JavaScript and other essential web technologies are equally susceptible to abuse. \n\nBeauty is in the Eye of the Rendering Engine\n\nNo, the real elephant in the room\u2014the thing few web developers and no \u201cweb font\u201d enthusiasts are talking about\u2014has to do with legibility (or lack thereof) and aesthetics (or lack thereof) across browsers and platforms. Put simply, even fonts optimized for web use (which is a whole thing: ask a type designer) will not look good in every browser and OS. That\u2019s because every browser treats hinting differently, as does every OS, and every OS version. \n\nFirefox does its own thing in both Windows and Mac OS, and Microsoft is all over the place because of its need to support multiple generations of Windows and Cleartype and all kinds of hardware simultaneously. Thus \u201creal type\u201d on a single web page can look markedly different, and sometimes very bad, on different computers at the same company. If that web page is your company\u2019s, your opinion of \u201cweb fonts\u201d may suffer, and rightfully. (The advantage of Apple\u2019s closed model, which not everyone likes, is that it allows the company to guarantee the quality and consistency of user experience.) \n\nAs near as my font designer friends and I can make out, Apple\u2019s Webkit in Safari and iPhone ignores hinting and creates its own, which Apple thinks is better, and which many web designers think of as \u201cwhat real type looks like.\u201d The forked version of Webkit in Chrome, Android, and Palm Pre also creates its own hinting, which is close to iPhone\u2019s\u2014close enough that Apple, Palm, and Google could propose it as a standard for use in all browsers and platforms. Whether Firefox would embrace a theoretical Apple and Google standard is open to conjecture, and I somehow have difficulty imagining Microsoft buying in\u2014even though they know the web is more and more mobile, and that means more and more of their customers are viewing web content in some version of Webkit.\n\nThe End of Simple\n\nThere are ways around this ugly type ugliness, but they involve complicated scripting and sniffing\u2014the very nightmares from which web standards and the simplicity of @font-face were supposed to save us. I don\u2019t know that even mighty Typekit has figured out every needed variation yet (although, working with foundries, they probably will). \n\nFor type foundries, the complexity and expense of rethinking classic typefaces to survive in these hostile environments may further delay widespread adoption of web fonts and the resolution of licensing and formatting issues. The complexity may also force designers (even those who prefer to own) to rely on a hosted rental model simply to outsource and stay current with the detection and programming required.\n\nForgive my tears. I stand in a potter\u2019s field of ideas like \u201cKeep it simple,\u201d by a grave whose headstone reads \u201cWrite once, publish everywhere.\u201d", "year": "2009", "author": "Jeffrey Zeldman", "author_slug": "jeffreyzeldman", "published": "2009-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/real-fonts-and-rendering/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 305, "title": "CSS Writing Modes", "contents": "Since you may not have a lot of time, I\u2019m going to start at the end, with the dessert.\nYou can use a little-known, yet important and powerful CSS property to make text run vertically. Like this.\n\nOr instead of running text vertically, you can layout a set of icons or interface buttons in this way. Or, of course, with anything on your page. \nThe CSS I\u2019ve applied makes the browser rethink the orientation of the world, and flow the layout of this element at a 90\u00b0 angle to \u201cnormal\u201d. Check out the live demo, highlight the headline, and see how the cursor is now sideways.\nSee the Pen Writing Mode Demo \u2014 Headline by Jen Simmons (@jensimmons) on CodePen.\n\nThe code for accomplishing this is pretty simple. \nh1 { \n writing-mode: vertical-rl;\n}\nThat\u2019s all it takes to switch the writing mode from the web\u2019s default horizontal top-to-bottom mode to a vertical right-to-left mode. If you apply such code to the html element, the entire page is switched, affecting the scroll direction, too. \nIn my example above, I\u2019m telling the browser that only the h1 will be in this vertical-rl mode, while the rest of my page stays in the default of horizontal-tb.\nSo now the dessert course is over. Let me serve up this whole meal, and explain the the CSS Writing Mode Specification.\nWhy learn about writing modes?\nThere are three reasons I\u2019m teaching writing modes to everyone\u2014including western audiences\u2014and explaining the whole system, instead of quickly showing you a simple trick.\n\n\nWe live in a big, diverse world, and learning about other languages is fascinating. Many of you lay out pages in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Or you might be inspired to in the future.\n\n\nUsing writing-mode to turn bits sideways is cool. This CSS can be used in all kinds of creative ways, even if you are working only in English.\n\nMost importantly, I\u2019ve found understanding Writing Modes incredibly helpful when understanding Flexbox and CSS Grid. Before I learned Writing Mode, I felt like there was still a big hole in my knowledge, something I just didn\u2019t get about why Grid and Flexbox work the way they do. Once I wrapped my head around Writing Modes, Grid and Flexbox got a lot easier. Suddenly the Alignment properties, align- and justify-, made sense.\n\nWhether you know about it or not, the writing mode is the first building block of every layout we create. You can do what we\u2019ve been doing for 25 years \u2013 and leave your page set to the default left-to-right direction, horizontal top-to-bottom writing mode. Or you can enter a world of new possibilities where content flows in other directions.\nCSS properties\nI\u2019m going to focus on the CSS writing-mode property in this article. It has five possible options:\n writing-mode: horizontal-tb;\n writing-mode: vertical-rl;\n writing-mode: vertical-lr;\n writing-mode: sideways-rl;\n writing-mode: sideways-lr;\nThe CSS Writing Modes Specification is designed to support a wide range of written languages in all our human and linguistic complexity. Which\u2014spoiler alert\u2014is pretty insanely complex. The global evolution of written languages has been anything but simple. \nSo I\u2019ve got to start with explaining some basic concepts of web page layout and writing systems. Then I can show you what these CSS properties do. \nInline Direction, Block Direction, and Character Direction\nIn the world of the web, there\u2019s a concept of \u2018block\u2019 and \u2018inline\u2019 layout. If you\u2019ve ever written display: block or display: inline, you\u2019ve leaned on these concepts. \nIn the default writing mode, blocks stack vertically starting at the top of the page and working their way down. Think of how a bunch of block-levels elements stack\u2014like a bunch of a paragraphs\u2014that\u2019s the block direction. \n\nInline is how each line of text flows. The default on the web is from left to right, in horizontal lines. Imagine this text that you are reading right now, being typed out one character at a time on a typewriter. That\u2019s the inline direction. \n\nThe character direction is which way the characters point. If you type a capital \u201cA\u201d for instance, on which side is the top of the letter? Different languages can point in different directions. Most languages have their characters pointing towards the top of the page, but not all.\n\nPut all three together, and you start to see how they work as a system. \nThe default settings for the web work like this.\nNow that we know what block, inline, and character directions mean, let\u2019s see how they are used in different writing systems from around the world.\nThe four writing systems of CSS Writing Modes\nThe CSS Writing Modes Specification handles all the use cases for four major writing systems; Latin, Arabic, Han and Mongolian. \nLatin-based systems\nOne writing system dominates the world more than any other, reportedly covering about 70% of the world\u2019s population. \n\nThe text is horizontal, running from left to right, or LTR. The block direction runs from top to bottom. \nIt\u2019s called the Latin-based system because it includes all languages that use the Latin alphabet, including English, Spanish, German, French, and many others. But there are many non-Latin-alphabet languages that also use this system, including Greek, Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc.), and Brahmic scripts (Devanagari, Thai, Tibetan), and many more.\nYou don\u2019t need to do anything in your CSS to trigger this mode. This is the default. \nBest practices, however, dictate that you declare in your opening element which language and which direction (LTR or RTL) you are using. This website, for instance, uses to let the browser know this content is published in Great Britian\u2019s version of English, in a left to right direction. \nArabic-based systems\nArabic, Hebrew and a few other languages run the inline direction from right to left. This is commonly known as RTL. \nNote that the inline direction still runs horizontally. The block direction runs from top to bottom. And the characters are upright.\n\nIt\u2019s not just the flow of text that runs from right to left, but everything about the layout of the website. The upper right-hand corner is the starting position. Important things are on the right. The eyes travel from right to left. So, typically RTL websites use layouts that are just like LTR websites, only flipped.\nOn websites that support both LTR and RTL, like the United Nations\u2019 site at un.org, the two layouts are mirror images of each other.\nFor many web developers, our experiences with internationalization have focused solely on supporting Arabic and Hebrew script. \nCSS layout hacks for internationalization & RTL\nTo prepare an LTR project to support RTL, developers have had to create all sorts of hacks. For example, the Drupal community started a convention of marking every margin-left and -right, every padding-left and -right, every float: left and float: right with the comment / LTR /. Then later developers could search for each instance of that exact comment, and create stylesheets to override each left with right, and vice versa. It\u2019s a tedious and error prone way to work. CSS itself needed a better way to let web developers write their layout code once, and easily switch language directions with a single command.\nOur new CSS layout system does exactly that. Flexbox, Grid and Alignment use start and end instead of left and right. This lets us define everything in relationship to the writing system, and switch directions easily. By writing justify-content: flex-start, justify-items: end, and eventually margin-inline-start: 1rem we have code that doesn\u2019t need to be changed. \nThis is a much better way to work. I know it can be confusing to think through start and end as replacements for left and right. But it\u2019s better for any multiligual project, and it\u2019s better for the web as a whole.\nSadly, I\u2019ve seen CSS preprocessor tools that claim to \u201cfix\u201d the new CSS layout system by getting rid of start and end and bringing back left and right. They want you to use their tool, write justify-content: left, and feel self-righteous. It seems some folks think the new way of working is broken and should be discarded. It was created, however, to fulfill real needs. And to reflect a global internet. As Bruce Lawson says, WWW stands for the World Wide Web, not the Wealthy Western Web. Please don\u2019t try to convince the industry that there\u2019s something wrong with no longer being biased towards western culture. Instead, spread the word about why this new system is here. \nSpend a bit of time drilling the concept of inline and block into your head, and getting used to start and end. It will be second nature soon enough. \nI\u2019ve also seen CSS preprocessors that let us use this new way of thinking today, even as all the parts aren\u2019t fully supported by browsers yet. Some tools let you write text-align: start instead of text-align: left, and let the preprocessor handle things for you. That is terrific, in my opinion. A great use of the power of a preprocessor to help us switch over now. \nBut let\u2019s get back to RTL. \nHow to declare your direction\nYou don\u2019t want to use CSS to tell the browser to switch from an LTR language to RTL. You want to do this in your HTML. That way the browser has the information it needs to display the document even if the CSS doesn\u2019t load.\nThis is accomplished mainly on the html element. You should also declare your main language. As I mentioned above, the 24 ways website is using to declare the LTR direction and the use of British English. The UN Arabic website uses to declare the site as an Arabic site, using a RTL layout. \nThings get more complicated when you\u2019ve got a page with a mix of languages. But I\u2019m not going to get into all of that, since this article is focused on CSS and layouts, not explaining everything about internationalization. \nLet me just leave direction here by noting that much of the heavy work of laying out the characters which make up each word is handled by Unicode. If you are interested in learning more about LTR, RTL and bidirectional text, watch this video: Introduction to Bidirectional Text, a presentation by Elika Etemad. \nMeanwhile, let\u2019s get back to CSS.\nThe writing mode CSS for Latin-based and Arabic-based systems\nFor both of these systems\u2014Latin-based and Arabic-based, whether LTR or RTL\u2014the same CSS property applies for specifying the writing mode: writing-mode: horizontal-tb. That\u2019s because in both systems, the inline text flow is horizontal, while the block direction is top-to-bottom. This is expressed as horizontal-tb.\nhorizontal-tb is the default writing mode for the web, so you don\u2019t need to specify it unless you are overriding something else higher up in the cascade. You can just imagine that every site you\u2019ve ever built came with:\nhtml {\n writing-mode: horizontal-tb;\n}\nNow let\u2019s turn our attention to the vertical writing systems. \nHan-based systems\nThis is where things start to get interesting. \nHan-based writing systems include CJK languages, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and others. There are two options for laying out a page, and sometimes both are used at the same time.\nMuch of CJK text is laid out like Latin-based languages, with a horizontal top-to-bottom block direction, and a left-to-right inline direction. This is the more modern way to doing things, started in the 20th century in many places, and further pushed into domination by the computer and later the web. \nThe CSS to do this bit of the layouts is the same as above:\nsection {\n writing-mode: horizontal-tb;\n}\nOr, you know, do nothing, and get that result as a default. \nAlternatively Han-based languages can be laid out in a vertical writing mode, where the inline direction runs vertically, and the block direction goes from right to left. \nSee both options in this diagram:\n\nNote that the horizontal text flows from left to right, while the vertical text flows from right to left. Wild, eh? \nThis Japanese issue of Vogue magazine is using a mix of writing modes. The cover opens on the left spine, opposite of what an English magazine does. \n\nThis page mixes English and Japanese, and typesets the Japanese text in both horizontal and vertical modes. Under the title \u201cRichard Stark\u201d in red, you can see a passage that\u2019s horizontal-tb and LTR, while the longer passage of text at the bottom of the page is typeset vertical-rl. The red enlarged cap marks the beginning of that passage. The long headline above the vertical text is typeset LTR, horizontal-tb.\n\nThe details of how to set the default of the whole page will depend on your use case. But each element, each headline, each section, each article can be marked to flow the opposite of the default however you\u2019d like.\nFor example, perhaps you leave the default as horizontal-tb, and specify your vertical elements like this:\ndiv.articletext {\n writing-mode: vertical-rl;\n}\nOr alternatively you could change the default for the page to a vertical orientation, and then set specific elements to horizontal-tb, like this:\nhtml { \n writing-mode: vertical-rl;\n}\nh2, .photocaptions, section {\n writing-mode: horizontal-tb;\n}\nIf your page has a sideways scroll, then the writing mode will determine whether the page loads with upper left corner as the starting point, and scroll to the right (horizontal-tb as we are used to), or if the page loads with the upper right corner as the starting point, scrolling to the left to display overflow. Here\u2019s an example of that change in scrolling direction, in a CSS Writing Mode demo by Chen Hui Jing. Check out her demo \u2014 you can switch from horizontal to vertical writing modes with a checkbox and see the difference. \n\nMongolian-based systems\nNow, hopefully so far all of this kind of makes sense. It might be a bit more complicated than expected, but it\u2019s not so hard. Well, enter the Mongolian-based systems.\nMongolian is also a vertical script language. Text runs vertically down the page. Just like Han-based systems. There are two major differences. First, the block direction runs the other way. In Mongolian, block-level elements stack from left to right. \nHere\u2019s a drawing of how Wikipedia would look in Mongolian if it were laid out correctly.\nPerhaps the Mongolian version of Wikipedia will be redone with this layout.\nNow you might think, that doesn\u2019t look so weird. Tilt your head to the left, and it\u2019s very familiar. The block direction starts on the left side of the screen and goes to the right. The inline direction starts on the top of the page and moves to the bottom (similar to RTL text, just turned 90\u00b0 counter-clockwise). But here comes the other huge difference. The character direction is \u201cupside down\u201d. The top of the Mongolian characters are not pointing to the left, towards the start edge of the block direction. They point to the right. Like this:\n\nNow you might be tempted to ignore all this. Perhaps you don\u2019t expect to be typesetting Mongolian content anytime soon. But here\u2019s why this is important for everyone \u2014 the way Mongolian works defines the results writing-mode: vertical-lr. And it means we cannot use vertical-lr for typesetting content in other languages in the way we might otherwise expect. \nIf we took what we know about vertical-rl and guessed how vertical-lr works, we might imagine this:\n\nBut that\u2019s wrong. Here\u2019s how they actually compare:\n\nSee the unexpected situation? In both writing-mode: vertical-rl and writing-mode: vertical-lr latin text is rotated clockwise. Neither writing mode let\u2019s us rotate text counter-clockwise. \nIf you are typesetting Mongolian content, apply this CSS in the same way you would apply writing-mode to Han-based writing systems. To the whole page on the html element, or to specific pages of the page like this:\nsection {\n writing-mode: vertical-lr;\n}\nNow, if you are using writing-mode for a graphic design effect on a language that is otherwise typesets horizontally, I don\u2019t think writing-mode: vertical-lr is useful. If the text wraps onto two lines, it stacks in a very unexpected way. So I\u2019ve sort of obliterated it from my toolkit. I find myself using writing-mode: vertical-rl a lot. And never using -lr. Hm.\nWriting modes for graphic design\nSo how do we use writing-mode to turn English headlines sideways? We could rely on transform: rotate()\nHere are two examples, one for each direction. (By the way, each of these demos use CSS Grid for their overall layout, so be sure to test them in a browser that supports CSS Grid, like Firefox Nightly.)\n\nIn this demo 4A, the text is rotated clockwise using this code: \nh1 {\n writing-mode: vertical-rl;\n}\n\nIn this demo 4B, the text is rotated counter-clockwise using this code: \nh1 {\n writing-mode: vertical-rl;\n transform: rotate(180deg);\n text-align: right;\n}\nI use vertical-rl to rotate the text so that it takes up the proper amount of space in the overall flow of the layout. Then I rotate it 180\u00b0 to spin it around to the other direction. And then I use text-align: right to get it to rise up to the top of it\u2019s container. This feels like a hack, but it\u2019s a hack that works.\nNow what I would like to do instead is use another CSS value that was designed for this use case \u2014 one of the two other options for writing mode.\nIf I could, I would lay out example 4A with:\nh1 {\n writing-mode: sideways-rl;\n}\nAnd layout example 4B with: \nh1 {\n writing-mode: sideways-lr;\n}\nThe problem is that these two values are only supported in Firefox. None of the other browsers recognize sideways-. Which means we can\u2019t really use it yet. \nIn general, the writing-mode property is very well supported across browsers. So I\u2019ll use writing-mode: vertical-rl for now, with the transform: rotate(180deg); hack to fake the other direction. \nThere\u2019s much more to what we can do with the CSS designed to support multiple languages, but I\u2019m going to stop with this intermediate introduction. \nIf you do want a bit more of a taste, look at this example that adds text-orientation: upright; to the mix \u2014 turning the individual letters of the latin font to be upright instead of sideways.\n\nIt\u2019s this demo 4C, with this CSS applied: \nh1 {\n writing-mode: vertical-rl;\n text-orientation: upright;\n text-transform: uppercase;\n letter-spacing: -25px;\n}\nYou can check out all my Writing Modes demos at labs.jensimmons.com/#writing-modes. \n\nI\u2019ll leave you with this last demo. One that applies a vertical writing mode to the sub headlines of a long article. I like how small details like this can really bring a fresh feeling to the content. \nSee the Pen Writing Mode Demo \u2014 Article Subheadlines by Jen Simmons (@jensimmons) on CodePen.", "year": "2016", "author": "Jen Simmons", "author_slug": "jensimmons", "published": "2016-12-23T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2016/css-writing-modes/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 22, "title": "The Responsive Hover Paradigm", "contents": "CSS transitions and animations provide web designers with a whole slew of tools to spruce up our designs. Move over ActionScript tweens! The techniques we can now implement with CSS are reminiscent of Flash-based adventures from the pages of web history.\n\nPairing CSS enhancements with our :hover pseudo-class allows us to add interesting events to our websites. We have a ton of power at our fingertips. However, with this power, we each have to ask ourselves: just because I can do something, should I?\n\nWhy bother? \n\nWe hear a lot of mantras in the web community. Some proclaim the importance of content; some encourage methods like mobile first to support content; and others warn of the overhead and speed impact of decorative flourishes and visual images. I agree, one hundred percent. At the same time, I believe that content can reign king and still provide a beautiful design with compelling interactions and acceptable performance impacts. Maybe, just maybe, we can even have a little bit of fun when crafting these systems!\n\nYes, a site with pure HTML content and no CSS will load very fast on your mobile phone, but it leaves a lot to be desired. If you went to your local library and every book looked the same, how would you know which one to borrow? Imagine if every book was printed on the same paper stock with the same cover page in the same type size set at a legible point value\u2026 how would you know if you were going to purchase a cookbook about wild game or a young adult story about teens fighting to the death?\n\nFor certain audiences, seeing a site with hip, lively hovers sure beats a stale website concept. I\u2019ve worked on many higher education sites, and setting the interactive options is often a very important factor in engaging potential students, alumni, and donors. The same can go for e-commerce sites: enticing your audience with surprise and delight factors can be the difference between a successful and a lost sale. \n\nKnowing your content and audience can help you decide if an intriguing experience is appropriate for your site; if it is, then hover responses can be a real asset. \n\nWhy hover?\n\nWe have all these capabilities with CSS properties to create the aforementioned fun interactions, and it would be quite easy to fall back into some old patterns and animation abuse. The world of Flash intros and skip links could be recreated with CSS keyframes. However, I don\u2019t think any of us want to go the route of forcing users into unwanted exchanges and road blocking content. \n\nWhat\u2019s great about utilizing hover to pair with CSS powered actions is that it\u2019s user initiated. It\u2019s a well-established expectation that when a user mouses over an object, something changes. If we can identify that something as a link, then we will expect something to change as we move our mouse over it. By waiting to trigger a CSS-based response until a user chooses to engage with a target makes for a more polished experience (as opposed to barraging our screens with animations all willy-nilly). This makes it the perfect opportunity to add some unique spunk. \n\nWhat about mobile, touch, and responsive?\n\nSo, you\u2019re on board with this so far, but what about mobile and touch devices? Sure, some devices like the Samsung Galaxy S4 have some hovering capabilities, but certainly most do not. Beyond mobile devices, we also have to worry about desktops with touch capabilities. It\u2019s super difficult to detect if a user is currently using touch or hover. One option we have is to design strictly for touch only and send hover enhancements to the graveyard. However, being that I\u2019m all \u201cfuck yeah hovers!,\u201d I like to explore all options. So, let\u2019s examine four different types of hover patterns and see how they can translate to our touch devices.\n\n1. The essential text hover\n\nChanging text color on hover is something we\u2019ve done for a while and it has helped aid in identifying links. To maintain the best accessibility we can achieve, it helps to have a different visual indicator on the default :link state, such as an underline. By making sure all text links have an underline, we won\u2019t have to rely on visual changes during hover to make sure touch device users know that it is a link. For hover-enabled devices, we can add a basic color transition. Doing so creates a nice fade, which makes the change on hover less jarring. Kinda like smooth jazz. The code* to achieve this is quite simple: \n\na {\n\tcolor: #6dd4b1;\n\ttransition: color 0.25s linear; \n}\n\na:hover, a:focus {\n\tcolor: #357099;\n}\n\n\n\tBrowser prefixes are omitted\n\n\nYou can see in the final result that, for both touch and hover, everyone wins: \n\nSee the Pen Most Basic Link Transition by Jenn Lukas (@Jenn) on CodePen\n\n \n\n2. Visual background wizardry and animated hovers\n\nWe can take this a step further by again making changes to our aesthetic on hover, but not making any content changes. Altering image hovers for fun and personality can separate your site from others; that personality is important and can enhance our content. \n\nLet\u2019s look at a few sites that do this really well. Scroll down to the judges section of CSS Off and check out the illustrations of the judges. On hover, the illustration fades into a photo of the judge. This provides a realistic alternative to the drawing. Users without the hover can click into the detail page, where they can see the full color picture and learn more about the judges; the information is still available through a different pathway. \n\nGoing back to the higher education field, let\u2019s visit Delaware Valley College. The school had recently gone through a rebranding that included loop icons as a symbol to connect ideas. These icons are brought into the website on hover of the slideshow arrows (WebKit browsers). The hover reveals a loop animation, tying in overall themes and adding some extra pizzazz that makes me think, \u201cThis is a hip place that feels current.\u201d For visitors who can\u2019t access the hover effect, the default arrow state clearly represents a clickable link, and there is swipe functionality on mobile devices to boot. \n\nDIY.org\u2019s Frontend Dev page has a bunch of enjoyable hover actions happening, featuring scaling transforms and looping animations. Nothing new is revealed on hover, so touch devices won\u2019t miss anything, but it intrigues the user who is visiting a site about front-end dev doing cool front-end things. It backs up its claim of front-end knowledge by adding this enhancement. \n\nThe old Cowork Chicago (now redirecting) had a great example, captured here:\n\n Coop: Chicago Coworking from Jenn Lukas on Vimeo.\n\nThe code for the Join areas is quite simple: \n\n.join-buttons .daily, .join-buttons .monthly { \n height: 260px; z-index: 0; margin-top: 30px;\n\ttransition: height .2s linear,margin .2s linear;\n}\n\n.join-buttons .daily:hover, .join-buttons .monthly:hover { \n\theight: 280px; margin-top: 20px; \n}\n\nli.button:hover { \n z-index: 20; \n}\n\nThe slight rotation on the photos, and the change of color and size of the rate options on hover, add to the fun factor. The site attempts to advertise the co-working space by letting bits of their charisma show through with these transitions. They don\u2019t hit the user over the head with animations, but provide a nice addition to make sure visitors know it\u2019s a welcoming place to work. Some text is added on the hover, but the text isn\u2019t essential to determine where the link goes.\n\n3. Image block hovers\n\nThere have been more designs popping up with large image blocks acting as extensive hit area links to subsequent pages. On hover of these links, text is revealed, letting the user know where the link destination goes. \n\nSee the Pen Transitioning Max Height by Jenn Lukas (@Jenn) on CodePen\n\nThis type of link is tough for users on touch as the image might not provide enough context to reveal its target. If you weren\u2019t aware of what my illustrated avatar from 2007 looked like (or even if you did), then how would you know that this is a link to my Twitter page? Instead, if we provide enough context \u2014 such as the @jennlukas handle \u2014 you could assume the destination. Users who receive the hover can also see the Twitter bio. It won\u2019t break the experience for users that can\u2019t hover, but it will provide a nice interaction and some more information for those that can. \n\nSee the Pen Transitioning Max Height by Jenn Lukas (@Jenn) on CodePen\n\nThe Esquire site follows this same pattern, in which the title of the story is shown and the subheading is revealed on hover. Dining at Altitude took the opposite approach, where all text is shown by default and, on hover, you can see more of the image that the text sits atop. This is a nice technique to follow. For touch users, following the link will allow them to see more of the image detail that was revealed on hover. \n\n4. Drop-down navigation menu hovers\n\nMain navigation options that rely on hover have come up as a problem for touch. One way to address this is to be sure your top level items are all functional links to somewhere, and not blank anchors to trigger a submenu drop-down. This ensures that, even without the hover-triggered menu, users can still navigate to those top-level pages. From there, they should be able to access the tertiary pages shown in the drop-down. Following this arrangement, drop-down menus act as a quick shortcut and aren\u2019t necessary to the navigational structure. If the top navigation items are your most visited pages, this execution won\u2019t hinder your visitors. \n\nIf the information within the menu is vital, such as a lone account menu, another option is to show drop-down menus on click instead of hover. This pattern will allow both mouse and touch users to access the drop-downs. \n\nWhy can\u2019t we just detect hover?\n\nThis is a really tricky thing to do. Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 uses the aria-haspopup attribute to simulate hover on touch devices, but usually our audience stretches beyond that group. There\u2019s been discussion around using Modernizr, but false positives have come with that. A W3C draft for Media Queries Level 4 includes a hover feature, but it\u2019s not supported yet. Since some devices can hover and touch, should you rely on hover effects for those? Arguments have come up that users can be browsing your site with a mouse and then decide to switch to touch, or vice versa. That might be a large concern for you, or it might be an edge case that isn\u2019t vital to your site\u2019s success. \n\nFor one site, I used mousemove and touchstart JavaScript events in order to detect if a visitor starts to browse the site with a mouse. The design initiates for touch users, showing all text on load, but as soon as a mouse movement occurs, the text becomes hidden and is then revealed on hover. \n\nSee the Pen Detect Touch devices with mousemove and touchstart by Jenn Lukas (@Jenn) on CodePen\n\nOne downside to this approach is that the text is viewable until a mouse enters the document, but if the elements are further down the page it might not be noticed. A second downside is if a user on a touch- and hover-enabled device starts browsing with the mouse and then switches back to touch, the hover-centric styles will remain until a new page load. These were acceptable scenarios in the project I worked on, but might not be for every project. \n\nCan we give our visitors a choice?\n\nI\u2019ve been thinking about how we can combat the concern of not knowing if our customers are using touch or a mouse, not to mention keyboard or Wacom tablets or Minority Report screens. We can cover keyboards with our friend :focus, but that still doesn\u2019t solve our other dilemmas. \n\nRemember when we couldn\u2019t rely on browsers to zoom text and we had to use those small A, medium A, big A [AAA] buttons? On selection of one of those options, a different style sheet would load with small, medium, or large text sizes to satisfy our user\u2019s request. We could even set cookies to remember their font choices. What if we offered a similar solution, a hover/touch switcher, for our new predicament? \n\nSee the Pen cwuJf by Jenn Lukas (@Jenn) on CodePen\n\nWe could add this switcher to our design. Maybe add it to the header on smaller screens and the footer on larger screens to play the odds. Then be sure to deliver the appropriate touch- or hover-optimized adventure for our guests.\n\nHow about adding View options in the areas where we\u2019re hiding content until hover? Looking at Delta Cycle, there\u2019s logic in place to switch layouts on some mobile devices. On desktops we can see the layout shows the product and price by default, and the name of the item and an Add to cart button on hover. If you want to keep this hover, but also worry that touch users can\u2019t access it \u2014 or even if you are concerned that people might want to view it with more details up front \u2014 we could add another view switcher. \n\nSee the Pen List/Grid Views for Hover or Touch by Jenn Lukas (@Jenn) on CodePen\n\nSimilar to the list versus grid view we often see in operating systems, a choice here could cover all of our bases. \n\nConclusion\n\nThere is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to hover patterns. Design for your content. If you are providing important information about driving directions or healthcare, you might want to err on the side of designing for touch only. If you are behind an educational site and trying to entice more traffic and sign-ups, or a more immersive e-commerce site selling pies, then hover activity can help support your content and engage your visitors without being a detriment. While content can be our top priority, let\u2019s not forget that our designs and interactions, hovers included, can have a great positive impact on how visitors experience our site. Hover wisely, friends.", "year": "2013", "author": "Jenn Lukas", "author_slug": "jennlukas", "published": "2013-12-12T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2013/the-responsive-hover-paradigm/", "topic": null} {"rowid": 242, "title": "Creating My First Chrome Extension", "contents": "Writing a Chrome Extension isn\u2019t as scary at it seems!\nNot too long ago, I used a Chrome extension called 20 Cubed. I\u2019m far-sighted, and being a software engineer makes it difficult to maintain distance vision. So I used 20 Cubed to remind myself to look away from my screen and rest my eyes. I loved its simple interface and design. I loved it so much, I often forgot to turn it off in the middle of presentations, where it would take over my entire screen. Oops.\nUnfortunately, the developer stopped updating the extension and removed it from Chrome\u2019s extension library. I was so sad. None of the other eye rest extensions out there matched my design aesthetic, so I decided to create my own! Want to do the same?\nFortunately, Google has some respectable documentation on how to create an extension. And remember, Chrome extensions are just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You can add libraries and frameworks, or you can just code the \u201cold-fashioned\u201d way. Sky\u2019s the limit!\nSetup\nBut first, some things you\u2019ll need to know about before getting started:\n\nCallbacks\nTimeouts\nChrome Dev Tools\n\nDeveloping with Chrome extension methods requires a lot of callbacks. If you\u2019ve never experienced the joy of callback hell, creating a Chrome extension will introduce you to this concept. However, things can get confusing pretty quickly. I\u2019d highly recommend brushing up on that subject before getting started.\nHyperbole and a Half\nTimeouts and Intervals are another thing you might want to brush up on. While creating this extension, I didn\u2019t consider the fact that I\u2019d be juggling three timers. And I probably would\u2019ve saved time organizing those and reading up on the Chrome extension Alarms documentation beforehand. But more on that in a bit.\nOn the note of organization, abstraction is important! You might have any combination of the following:\n\nThe Chrome extension options page\nThe popup from the Chrome Menu\nThe windows or tabs you create\nThe background scripts\n\nAnd that can get unwieldy. You might also edit the existing tabs or windows in the browser, which you\u2019ll probably want as a separate script too. Note that this tutorial only covers creating your own customized window rather than editing existing windows or tabs.\nAlright, now that you know all that up front, let\u2019s get going!\nDocumentation\nTL;DR READ THE DOCS.\nA few things to get started:\n\nRead Google\u2019s primer on browser extensions\nHave a look at their Getting started tutorial\nCheck out their overview on Chrome Extensions\n\nThis overview discusses the Chrome extension files, architecture, APIs, and communication between pages. Funnily enough, I only discovered the Overview page after creating my extension.\nThe manifest.json file gives the browser information about the extension, including general information, where to find your extension files and icons, and API permissions required. Here\u2019s what my manifest.json looked like, for example:\nhttps://github.com/jennz0r/eye-rest/blob/master/manifest.json\nBecause I\u2019m a visual learner, I found the images that describe the extension\u2019s architecture most helpful.\n\nTo clarify this diagram, the background.js file is the extension\u2019s event handler. It\u2019s constantly listening for browser events, which you\u2019ll feed to it using the Chrome Extension API. Google says that an effective background script is only loaded when it is needed and unloaded when it goes idle.\nThe Popup is the little window that appears when you click on an extension\u2019s icon in the Chrome Menu. It consists of markup and scripts, and you can tell the browser where to find it in the manifest.json under page_action: { \"default_popup\": FILE_NAME_HERE }.\nThe Options page is exactly as it says. This displays customizable options only visible to the user when they either right-click on the Chrome menu and choose \u201cOptions\u201d under an extension. This also consists of markup and scripts, and you can tell the browser where to find it in the manifest.json under options_page: FILE_NAME_HERE.\nContent scripts are any scripts that will interact with any web windows or tabs that the user has open. These scripts will also interact with any tabs or windows opened by your extension.\nDebugging\nA quick note: don\u2019t forget the debugging tutorial!\nJust like any other Chrome window, every piece of an extension has an inspector and dev tools. If (read: when) you run into errors (as I did), you\u2019re likely to have several inspector windows open \u2013 one for the background script, one for the popup, one for the options, and one for the window or tab the extension is interacting with.\nFor example, I kept seeing the error \u201cThis request exceeds the MAX_WRITE_OPERATIONS_PER_HOUR quota.\u201d Well, it turns out there are limitations on how often you can sync stored information.\nAnother error I kept seeing was \u201cAlarm delay is less than minimum of 1 minutes. In released .crx, alarm \u201cALARM_NAME_HERE\u201d will fire in approximately 1 minutes\u201d. Well, it turns out there are minimum interval times for alarms.\nChrome Extension creation definitely benefits from debugging skills. Especially with callbacks and listeners, good old fashioned console.log can really help!\nMe adding a ton of `console.log`s while trying to debug my alarms.\nEye Rest Functionality\nOk, so what is the extension I created? Again, it\u2019s a way to rest your eyes every twenty minutes for twenty seconds. So, the basic functionality should look like the following:\n\nIf the extension is running AND\nIf the user has not clicked Pause in the Popup HTML AND\nIf the counter in the Popup HTML is down to 00:00 THEN\n\nOpen a new window with Timer HTML AND\nStart a 20 sec countdown in Timer HTML AND\nReset the Popup HTML counter to 20:00\n\nIf the Timer HTML is down to 0 sec THEN\n\nClose that window. Rinse. Repeat.\n\n\nSounds simple enough, but wow, these timers became convoluted! Of all the Chrome extensions I decided to create, I decided to make one that\u2019s heavily dependent on time, intervals, and having those in sync with each other. In other words, I made this unnecessarily complicated and didn\u2019t realize until I started coding.\nFor visual reference of my confusion, check out the GitHub repository for Eye Rest. (And yes, it\u2019s a pun.)\nAPI\nNow let\u2019s discuss the APIs that I used to build this extension.\nAlarms\nWhat even are alarms? I didn\u2019t know either.\nAlarms are basically Chrome\u2019s setTimeout and setInterval. They exist because, as Google says\u2026\n\nDOM-based timers, such as window.setTimeout() or window.setInterval(), are not honored in non-persistent background scripts if they trigger when the event page is dormant.\n\nFor more information, check out this background migration doc.\nOne interesting note about alarms in Chrome extensions is that they are persistent. Garbage collection with Chrome extension alarms seems unreliable at best. I didn\u2019t have much luck using the clearAll method to remove alarms I created on previous extension loads or installs. A workaround (read: hack) is to specify a unique alarm name every time your extension is loaded and clearing any other alarms without that unique name.\nBackground Scripts\nFor Eye Rest, I have two background scripts. One is my actual initializer and event listener, and the other is a helpers file.\nI wanted to share a couple of functions between my Background and Popup scripts. Specifically, the clearAndCreateAlarm function. I wanted my background script to clear any existing alarms, create a new alarm, and add remaining time until the next alarm to local storage immediately upon extension load. To make the function available to the Background script, I added helpers.js as the first item under background > scripts in my manifest.json.\nI also wanted my Popup script to do the same things when the user has unpaused the extension\u2019s functionality. To make the function available to the Popup script, I just include the helpers script in the Popup HTML file.\nOther APIs\nWindows\nI use the Windows API to create the Timer window when the time of my alarm is up. The window creation is initiated by my Background script.\nOne day, while coding late into the evening, I found it very confusing that the window.create method included url as an option. I assumed it was meant to be an external web address. A friend pondered that there must be an option to specify the window\u2019s HTML. Until then, it hadn\u2019t dawned on me that the url could be relative. Duh. I was tired!\nI pass the timer.html as the url option, as well as type, size, position, and other visual options.\nStorage\nMaybe you want to pass information back and forth between the Background script and your Popup script? You can do that using Chrome or local storage. One benefit of using local storage over Chrome\u2019s storage is avoiding quotas and write operation maximums.\nI wanted to pass the time at which the latest alarm was set, the time to the next alarm, and whether or not the timer is paused between the Background and Popup scripts. Because the countdown should change every second, it\u2019s quite complicated and requires lots of writes. That\u2019s why I went with the user\u2019s local storage. You can see me getting and setting those variables in my Background, Helper, and Popup scripts. Just search for date, nextAlarmTime, and isPaused.\nDeclarative Content\nThe Declarative Content API allows you to show your extension\u2019s page action based on several type of matches, without needing to take a host permission or inject a content script. So you\u2019ll need this to get your extension to work in the browser!\nYou can see me set this in my Background script. Because I want my extension\u2019s popup to appear on every page one is browsing, I leave the page matchers empty.\nThere are many more APIs for Chrome apps and extensions, so make sure to surf around and see what features are available!\nThe Extension\nHere\u2019s what my original Popup looked like before I added styles.\nAnd here\u2019s what it looks like with new styles. I guess I\u2019m going for a Nickelodeon feel.\nAnd here\u2019s the Timer window and Popup together! \nPublishing\nPublishing is a cinch. You just zip up your files, create a new or use an existing Google Developer account, upload the files, add some details, and pay a one time $5 fee. That\u2019s all! Then your extension will be available on the Chrome extension store! Neato :D\nMy extension is now available for you to install.\nConclusion\nI thought creating a time based Chrome Extension would be quick and easy. I was wrong. It was more complicated than I thought! But it\u2019s definitely achievable with some time, persistence, and good ole Google searches.\nEventually, I\u2019d like to add more interactive elements to Eye Rest. For example, hitting the YouTube API to grab a silly or cute video as a reward for looking away during the 20 sec countdown and not closing the timer window. This harkens back to one of my first web projects, Toothtimer, from 2012. Or maybe a way to change the background colors of the Timer and Popup!\nEither way, with Eye Rest\u2019s framework built out, I\u2019m feeling fearless about future feature adds! Building this Chrome extension took some broken nails, achy shoulders, and tired eyes, but now Eye Rest can tell me to give my eyes a break every 20 minutes.", "year": "2018", "author": "Jennifer Wong", "author_slug": "jenniferwong", "published": "2018-12-05T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/my-first-chrome-extension/", "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 Dismiss\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": 116, "title": "The IE6 Equation", "contents": "It is the destiny of one browser to serve as the nemesis of web developers everywhere. At the birth of the Web Standards movement, that role was played by Netscape Navigator 4; an outdated browser that refused to die. Its tenacious existence hampered the adoption of modern standards. Today that role is played by Internet Explorer 6.\n\nThere\u2019s a sensation that I\u2019m sure you\u2019re familiar with. It\u2019s a horrible mixture of dread and nervousness. It\u2019s the feeling you get when\u2014after working on a design for a while in a standards-compliant browser like Firefox, Safari or Opera\u2014you decide that you can no longer put off the inevitable moment when you must check the site in IE6. Fingers are crossed, prayers are muttered, but alas, to no avail. The nemesis browser invariably screws something up.\n\nWhat do you do next? If the differences in IE6 are minor, you could just leave it be. After all, websites don\u2019t need to look exactly the same in all browsers. But if there are major layout issues and a significant portion of your audience is still using IE6, you\u2019ll probably need to roll up your sleeves and start fixing the problems.\n\nA common approach is to quarantine IE6-specific CSS in a separate stylesheet. This stylesheet can then be referenced from the HTML document using conditional comments like this:\n\n\n\nThat stylesheet will only be served up to Internet Explorer where the version number is less than 7.\n\nYou can put anything inside a conditional comment. You could put a script element in there. So as well as serving up browser-specific CSS, it\u2019s possible to serve up browser-specific JavaScript.\n\nA few years back, before Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, JavaScript genius Dean Edwards wrote a script called IE7. This amazing piece of code uses JavaScript to make Internet Explorer 5 and 6 behave like a standards-compliant browser. Dean used JavaScript to bootstrap IE\u2019s CSS support.\n\nBecause the script is specifically targeted at Internet Explorer, there\u2019s no point in serving it up to other browsers. Conditional comments to the rescue:\n\n\n\nStandards-compliant browsers won\u2019t fetch the script. Users of IE6, on the hand, will pay a kind of bad browser tax by having to download the JavaScript file.\n\nSo when should you develop an IE6-specific stylesheet and when should you just use Dean\u2019s JavaScript code? This is the question that myself and my co-worker Natalie Downe set out to answer one morning at Clearleft. We realised that in order to answer that question you need to first answer two other questions, how much time does it take to develop for IE6? and how much of your audience is using IE6?\n\nLet\u2019s say that t represents the total development time. Let t6 represent the portion of that time you spend developing for IE6. If your total audience is a, then a6 is the portion of your audience using IE6. With some algebraic help from our mathematically minded co-worker Cennydd Bowles, Natalie and I came up with the following equation to calculate the percentage likelihood that you should be using Dean\u2019s IE7 script:\n\n\n\np = 50 [ log ( at6 / ta6 ) + 1 ]\n\nTry plugging in your own numbers. If you spend a lot of time developing for IE6 and only a small portion of your audience is using that browser, you\u2019ll get a very high number out of the equation; you should probably use the IE7 script. But if you only spend a little time developing for IE6 and a significant portion of you audience are still using that browser, you\u2019ll get a very small value for p; you might as well write an IE6-specific stylesheet.\n\nOf course this equation is somewhat disingenuous. While it\u2019s entirely possible to research the percentage of your audience still using IE6, it\u2019s not so easy to figure out how much of your development time will be spent developing for that one browser. You can\u2019t really know until you\u2019ve already done the development, by which time the equation is irrelevant.\n\nInstead of using the equation, you could try imposing a limit on how long you will spend developing for IE6. Get your site working in standards-compliant browsers first, then give yourself a time limit to get it working in IE6. If you can\u2019t solve all the issues in that time limit, switch over to using Dean\u2019s script. You could even make the time limit directly proportional to the percentage of your audience using IE6. If 20% of your audience is still using IE6 and you\u2019ve just spent five days getting the site working in standards-compliant browsers, give yourself one day to get it working in IE6. But if 50% of your audience is still using IE6, be prepared to spend 2.5 days wrestling with your nemesis.\n\nAll of these different methods for dealing with IE6 demonstrate that there\u2019s no one single answer that works for everyone. They also highlight a problem with the current debate around dealing with IE6. There\u2019s no shortage of blog posts, articles and even entire websites discussing when to drop support for IE6. But very few of them take the time to define what they mean by \u201csupport.\u201d This isn\u2019t a binary issue. There is no Boolean answer. Instead, there\u2019s a sliding scale of support:\n\n\n\tBlock IE6 users from your site.\n\tDevelop with web standards and don\u2019t spend any development time testing in IE6.\n\tUse the Dean Edwards IE7 script to bootstrap CSS support in IE6.\n\tWrite an IE6 stylesheet to address layout issues.\n\tMake your site look exactly the same in IE6 as in any other browser.\n\n\nEach end of that scale is extreme. I don\u2019t think that anybody should be actively blocking any browser but neither do I think that users of an outdated browser should get exactly the same experience as users of a more modern browser. The real meanings of \u201csupporting\u201d or \u201cnot supporting\u201d IE6 lie somewhere in-between those extremes.\n\nJust as I think that semantics are important in markup, they are equally important in our discussion of web development. So let\u2019s try to come up with some better terms than using the catch-all verb \u201csupport.\u201d If you say in your client contract that you \u201csupport\u201d IE6, define exactly what that means. If you find yourself in a discussion about \u201cdropping support\u201d for IE6, take the time to explain what you think that entails.\n\nThe web developers at Yahoo! are on the right track with their concept of graded browser support. I\u2019m interested in hearing more ideas of how to frame this discussion. If we can all agree to use clear and precise language, we stand a better chance of defeating our nemesis.", "year": "2008", "author": "Jeremy Keith", "author_slug": "jeremykeith", "published": "2008-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/the-ie6-equation/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 128, "title": "Boost Your Hyperlink Power", "contents": "There are HTML elements and attributes that we use every day. Headings, paragraphs, lists and images are the mainstay of every Web developer\u2019s toolbox. Perhaps the most common tool of all is the anchor. The humble a element is what joins documents together to create the gloriously chaotic collection we call the World Wide Web.\n\nAnatomy of an Anchor\n\nThe power of the anchor element lies in the href attribute, short for hypertext reference. This creates a one-way link to another resource, usually another page on the Web:\n\n\n\nThe href attribute sits in the opening a tag and some descriptive text sits between the opening and closing tags:\n\n Drew McLellan\n\n\u201cWhoop-dee-freakin\u2019-doo,\u201d I hear you say, \u201cthis is pretty basic stuff\u201d \u2013 and you\u2019re quite right. But there\u2019s more to the anchor element than just the href attribute.\n\nThe Theory of relativity\n\nYou might be familiar with the rel attribute from the link element. I bet you\u2019ve got something like this in the head of your documents:\n\n\n\nThe rel attribute describes the relationship between the linked document and the current document. In this case, the value of rel is \u201cstylesheet\u201d. This means that the linked document is the stylesheet for the current document: that\u2019s its relationship.\n\nHere\u2019s another common use of rel:\n\n\n\nThis describes the relationship of the linked file \u2013 an RSS feed \u2013 as \u201calternate\u201d: an alternate view of the current document.\n\nBoth of those examples use the link element but you are free to use the rel attribute in regular hyperlinks. Suppose you\u2019re linking to your RSS feed in the body of your page:\n\nSubscribe to my RSS feed.\n\nYou can add extra information to this anchor using the rel attribute:\n\nSubscribe to my RSS feed.\n\nThere\u2019s no prescribed list of values for the rel attribute so you can use whatever you decide is semantically meaningful. Let\u2019s say you\u2019ve got a complex e-commerce application that includes a link to a help file. You can explicitly declare the relationship of the linked file as being \u201chelp\u201d:\n\nneed help?\n\nElemental Microformats\n\nAlthough it\u2019s completely up to you what values you use for the rel attribute, some consensus is emerging in the form of microformats. Some of the simplest microformats make good use of rel. For example, if you are linking to a license that covers the current document, use the rel-license microformat:\n\nLicensed under a Creative Commons attribution license\n\nThat describes the relationship of the linked document as \u201clicense.\u201d\n\nThe rel-tag microformat goes a little further. It uses rel to describe the final part of the URL of the linked file as a \u201ctag\u201d for the current document:\n\nLearn more about semantic markup\n\nThis states that the current document is being tagged with the value \u201cMicroformats.\u201d\n\nXFN, which stands for XHTML Friends Network, is a way of describing relationships between people:\n\nDrew McLellan\n\nThis microformat makes use of a very powerful property of the rel attribute. Like the class attribute, rel can take multiple values, separated by spaces:\n\nDrew McLellan\n\nHere I\u2019m describing Drew as being a friend, someone I\u2019ve met, and a colleague (because we\u2019re both Web monkies).\n\nYou Say You Want a revolution\n\nWhile rel describes the relationship of the linked resource to the current document, the rev attribute describes the reverse relationship: it describes the relationship of the current document to the linked resource. Here\u2019s an example of a link that might appear on help.html:\n\ncontinue shopping\n\nThe rev attribute declares that the current document is \u201chelp\u201d for the linked file.\n\nThe vote-links microformat makes use of the rev attribute to allow you to qualify your links. By using the value \u201cvote-for\u201d you can describe your document as being an endorsement of the linked resource:\n\nI agree with Richard Dawkins.\n\nThere\u2019s a corresponding vote-against value. This means that you can link to a document but explicitly state that you don\u2019t agree with it.\n\nI agree with Richard Dawkins\nabout those creationists. \n\nOf course there\u2019s nothing to stop you using both rel and rev on the same hyperlink:\n\nRichard Dawkins\n\nThe Wisdom of Crowds\n\nThe simplicity of rel and rev belies their power. They allow you to easily add extra semantic richness to your hyperlinks. This creates a bounty that can be harvested by search engines, aggregators and browsers. Make it your New Year\u2019s resolution to make friends with these attributes and extend the power of hypertext.", "year": "2006", "author": "Jeremy Keith", "author_slug": "jeremykeith", "published": "2006-12-18T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/boost-your-hyperlink-power/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 169, "title": "Incite A Riot", "contents": "Given its relatively limited scope, HTML can be remarkably expressive. With a bit of lateral thinking, we can mark up content such as tag clouds and progress meters, even when we don\u2019t have explicit HTML elements for those patterns.\n\nSuppose we want to mark up a short conversation:\n\n \n Alice: I think Eve is watching. \n\n Bob: This isn\u2019t a cryptography tutorial \u2026we\u2019re in the wrong example!\n \n\n\nA note in the the HTML 4.01 spec says it\u2019s okay to use a definition list:\n\n\n\tAnother application of DL, for example, is for marking up dialogues, with each DT naming a speaker, and each DD containing his or her words.\n\n\nThat would give us:\n\n
\n\t
Alice
:
I think Eve is watching.
\n\t
Bob
:
This isn't a cryptography tutorial ...we're in the wrong example!
\n
\n\nThis usage of a definition list is proof that writing W3C specifications and smoking crack are not mutually exclusive activities. \u201cI think Eve is watching\u201d is not a definition of \u201cAlice.\u201d If you (ab)use a definition list in this way, Norm will hunt you down.\n\nThe conversation problem was revisited in HTML5. What if dt and dd didn\u2019t always mean \u201cdefinition title\u201d and \u201cdefinition description\u201d? A new element was forged: dialog. Now the the \u201cd\u201d in dt and dd doesn\u2019t stand for \u201cdefinition\u201d, it stands for \u201cdialog\u201d (or \u201cdialogue\u201d if you can spell):\n\n\n\t
Alice
:
I think Eve is watching.
\n\t
Bob
:
This isn't a cryptography tutorial ...we're in the wrong example!
\n\n\nProblem solved \u2026except that dialog is no longer in the HTML5 spec. Hixie further expanded the meaning of dt and dd so that they could be used inside details (which makes sense\u2014it starts with a \u201cd\u201d) and figure (\u2026um). At the same time as the content model of details and figure were being updated, the completely-unrelated dialog element was dropped.\n\nBack to the drawing board, or in this case, the HTML 4.01 specification. The spec defines the cite element thusly:\n\n\n\tContains a citation or a reference to other sources.\n\n\nPerfect! There\u2019s even an example showing how this can applied when attributing quotes to people:\n\nAs Harry S. Truman said,\nThe buck stops here.\n\nFor longer quotes, the blockquote element might be more appropriate. In a conversation, where the order matters, I think an ordered list would make a good containing element for this pattern:\n\n
\n\t
Alice: I think Eve is watching.
\n\t
Bob: This isn't a cryptography tutorial ...we're in the wrong example!
\n
\n\nProblem solved \u2026except that the cite element has been redefined in the HTML5 spec:\n\n\n\tThe cite element represents the title of a work \u2026 A person\u2019s name is not the title of a work \u2026 and the element must therefore not be used to mark up people\u2019s names.\n\n\nHTML5 is supposed to be backwards compatible with previous versions of HTML, yet here we have a semantic pattern already defined in HTML 4.01 that is now non-conforming in HTML5. The entire justification for the change boils down to this line of reasoning:\n\n\n\tGiven that: titles of works are often italicised and\n\tgiven that: people\u2019s names are not often italicised and\n\tgiven that: most browsers italicise the contents of the cite element,\n\ttherefore: the cite element should not be used to mark up people\u2019s names.\n\n\nIn other words, the default browser styling is now dictating semantic meaning. The tail is wagging the dog.\n\nNot to worry, the HTML5 spec tells us how we can mark up names in conversations without using the cite element:\n\n\n\tIn some cases, the b element might be appropriate for names\n\n\nI believe the colloquial response to this is a combination of the letters W, T and F, followed by a question mark.\n\nThe non-normative note continues:\n\n\n\tIn other cases, if an element is really needed, the span element can be used.\n\n\nThis is not a joke. We are seriously being told to use semantically meaningless elements to mark up content that is semantically meaningful.\n\nWe don\u2019t have to take it.\n\nFirstly, any conformance checker\u2014that\u2019s the new politically correct term for \u201cvalidator\u201d\u2014cannot possibly check every instance of the cite element to see if it\u2019s really the title of a work and not the name of a person. So we can disobey the specification without fear of invalidating our documents.\n\nSecondly, Hixie has repeatedly stated that browser makers have a powerful voice in deciding what goes into the HTML5 spec; if a browser maker refuses to implement a feature, then that feature should come out of the spec because otherwise, the spec is fiction. Well, one of the design principles of HTML5 is the Priority of Constituencies:\n\n\n\tIn case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity.\n\n\nThat places us\u2014authors\u2014above browser makers. If we resolutely refuse to implement part of the HTML5 spec, then the spec becomes fiction.\n\nJoin me in a campaign of civil disobedience against the unnecessarily restrictive, backwards-incompatible change to the cite element. Start using HTML5 but start using it sensibly. Let\u2019s ensure that bad advice remains fictitious.\n\nTantek has set up a page on the WHATWG wiki to document usage of the cite element for conversations. Please contribute to it.", "year": "2009", "author": "Jeremy Keith", "author_slug": "jeremykeith", "published": "2009-12-11T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/incite-a-riot/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 258, "title": "Mistletoe Offline", "contents": "It\u2019s that time of year, when we gather together as families to celebrate the life of the greatest person in history. This man walked the Earth long before us, but he left behind words of wisdom. Those words can guide us every single day, but they are at the forefront of our minds during this special season.\nI am, of course, talking about Murphy, and the golden rule he gave unto us:\n\nAnything that can go wrong will go wrong.\n\nSo true! I mean, that\u2019s why we make sure we\u2019ve got nice 404 pages. It\u2019s not that we want people to ever get served a File Not Found message, but we acknowledge that, despite our best efforts, it\u2019s bound to happen sometime. Murphy\u2019s Law, innit?\nBut there are some Murphyesque situations where even your lovingly crafted 404 page won\u2019t help. What if your web server is down? What if someone is trying to reach your site but they lose their internet connection? These are all things than can\u2014and will\u2014go wrong.\nI guess there\u2019s nothing we can do about those particular situations, right?\nWrong!\nA service worker is a Murphy-battling technology that you can inject into a visitor\u2019s device from your website. Once it\u2019s installed, it can intercept any requests made to your domain. If anything goes wrong with a request\u2014as is inevitable\u2014you can provide instructions for the browser. That\u2019s your opportunity to turn those server outage frowns upside down. Take those network connection lemons and make network connection lemonade.\nIf you\u2019ve got a custom 404 page, why not make a custom offline page too?\nGet your server in order\nStep one is to make \u2026actually, wait. There\u2019s a step before that. Step zero. Get your site running on HTTPS, if it isn\u2019t already. You won\u2019t be able to use a service worker unless everything\u2019s being served over HTTPS, which makes sense when you consider the awesome power that a service worker wields.\nIf you\u2019re developing locally, service workers will work fine for localhost, even without HTTPS. But for a live site, HTTPS is a must.\nMake an offline page\nAlright, assuming your site is being served over HTTPS, then step one is to create an offline page. Make it as serious or as quirky as is appropriate for your particular brand. If the website is for a restaurant, maybe you could put the telephone number and address of the restaurant on the custom offline page (unsolicited advice: you could also put this on the home page, you know). Here\u2019s an example of the custom offline page for this year\u2019s Ampersand conference.\nWhen you\u2019re done, publish the offline page at suitably imaginative URL, like, say /offline.html.\nPre-cache your offline page\nNow create a JavaScript file called serviceworker.js. This is the script that the browser will look to when certain events are triggered. The first event to handle is what to do when the service worker is installed on the user\u2019s device. When that happens, an event called install is fired. You can listen out for this event using addEventListener:\naddEventListener('install', installEvent => {\n// put your instructions here.\n}); // end addEventListener\nIn this case, you want to make sure that your lovingly crafted custom offline page is put into a nice safe cache. You can use the Cache API to do this. You get to create as many caches as you like, and you can call them whatever you want. Here, I\u2019m going to call the cache Johnny just so I can refer to it as JohnnyCache in the code:\naddEventListener('install', installEvent => {\n installEvent.waitUntil(\n caches.open('Johnny')\n .then( JohnnyCache => {\n JohnnyCache.addAll([\n '/offline.html'\n ]); // end addAll\n }) // end open.then\n ); // end waitUntil\n}); // end addEventListener\nI\u2019m betting that your lovely offline page is linking to a CSS file, maybe an image or two, and perhaps some JavaScript. You can cache all of those at this point:\naddEventListener('install', installEvent => {\n installEvent.waitUntil(\n caches.open('Johnny')\n .then( JohnnyCache => {\n JohnnyCache.addAll([\n '/offline.html',\n '/path/to/stylesheet.css',\n '/path/to/javascript.js',\n '/path/to/image.jpg'\n ]); // end addAll\n }) // end open.then\n ); // end waitUntil\n}); // end addEventListener\nMake sure that the URLs are correct. If just one of the URLs in the list fails to resolve, none of the items in the list will be cached.\nIntercept requests\nThe next event you want to listen for is the fetch event. This is probably the most powerful\u2014and, let\u2019s be honest, the creepiest\u2014feature of a service worker. Once it has been installed, the service worker lurks on the user\u2019s device, waiting for any requests made to your site. Every time the user requests a web page from your site, a fetch event will fire. Every time that page requests a style sheet or an image, a fetch event will fire. You can provide instructions for what should happen each time:\naddEventListener('fetch', fetchEvent => {\n// What happens next is up to you!\n}); // end addEventListener\nLet\u2019s write a fairly conservative script with the following logic:\n\nWhenever a file is requested,\nFirst, try to fetch it from the network,\nBut if that doesn\u2019t work, try to find it in the cache,\nBut if that doesn\u2019t work, and it\u2019s a request for a web page, show the custom offline page instead.\n\nHere\u2019s how that translates into JavaScript:\n// Whenever a file is requested\naddEventListener('fetch', fetchEvent => {\n const request = fetchEvent.request;\n fetchEvent.respondWith(\n // First, try to fetch it from the network\n fetch(request)\n .then( responseFromFetch => {\n return responseFromFetch;\n }) // end fetch.then\n // But if that doesn't work\n .catch( fetchError => {\n // try to find it in the cache\n caches.match(request)\n .then( responseFromCache => {\n if (responseFromCache) {\n return responseFromCache;\n // But if that doesn't work\n } else {\n // and it's a request for a web page\n if (request.headers.get('Accept').includes('text/html')) {\n // show the custom offline page instead\n return caches.match('/offline.html');\n } // end if\n } // end if/else\n }) // end match.then\n }) // end fetch.catch\n ); // end respondWith\n}); // end addEventListener\nI am fully aware that I may have done some owl-drawing there. If you need a more detailed breakdown of what\u2019s happening at each point in the code, I\u2019ve written a whole book for you. It\u2019s the perfect present for Murphymas.\nHook up your service worker script\nYou can publish your service worker script at /serviceworker.js but you still need to tell the browser where to look for it. You can do that using JavaScript. Put this in an existing JavaScript file that you\u2019re calling in to every page on your site, or add this in a script element at the end of every page\u2019s HTML:\nif (navigator.serviceWorker) {\n navigator.serviceWorker.register('/serviceworker.js');\n}\nThat tells the browser to start installing the service worker, but not without first checking that the browser understands what a service worker is. When it comes to JavaScript, feature detection is your friend.\nYou might already have some JavaScript files in a folder like /assets/js/ and you might be tempted to put your service worker script in there too. Don\u2019t do that. If you do, the service worker will only be able to handle requests made to for files within /assets/js/. By putting the service worker script in the root directory, you\u2019re making sure that every request can be intercepted.\nGo further!\nNicely done! You\u2019ve made sure that if\u2014no, when\u2014a visitor can\u2019t reach your website, they\u2019ll get your hand-tailored offline page. You have temporarily defeated the forces of chaos! You have briefly fought the tide of entropy! You have made a small but ultimately futile gesture against the inevitable heat-death of the universe!\nThis is just the beginning. You can do more with service workers.\nWhat if, every time you fetched a page from the network, you stored a copy of that page in a cache? Then if that person tries to reach that page later, but they\u2019re offline, you could show them the cached version.\nOr, what if instead of reaching out the network first, you checked to see if a file is in the cache first? You could serve up that cached version\u2014which would be blazingly fast\u2014and still fetch a fresh version from the network in the background to pop in the cache for next time. That might be a good strategy for images.\nSo many options! The hard part isn\u2019t writing the code, it\u2019s figuring out the steps you want to take. Once you\u2019ve got those steps written out, then it\u2019s a matter of translating them into JavaScript.\nInevitably there will be some obstacles along the way\u2014usually it\u2019s a misplaced curly brace or a missing parenthesis. Don\u2019t be too hard on yourself if your code doesn\u2019t work at first. That\u2019s just Murphy\u2019s Law in action.", "year": "2018", "author": "Jeremy Keith", "author_slug": "jeremykeith", "published": "2018-12-04T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/mistletoe-offline/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 280, "title": "Conditional Loading for Responsive Designs", "contents": "On the eighteenth day of last year\u2019s 24 ways, Paul Hammond wrote a great article called Speed Up Your Site with Delayed Content. He outlined a technique for loading some content \u2014 like profile avatars \u2014 after the initial page load. This gives you a nice performance boost.\n\nThere\u2019s another situation where this kind of delayed loading could be really handy: mobile-first responsive design.\n\nResponsive design combines three techniques:\n\n\n\ta fluid grid\n\tflexible images\n\tmedia queries\n\n\nAt first, responsive design was applied to existing desktop-centric websites to allow the layout to adapt to smaller screen sizes. But more recently it has been combined with another innovative approach called mobile first.\n\nRather then starting with the big, bloated desktop site and then scaling down for smaller devices, it makes more sense to start with the constraints of the small screen and then scale up for larger viewports. Using this approach, your layout grid, your large images and your media queries are applied on top of the pre-existing small-screen design. It\u2019s taking progressive enhancement to the next level.\n\nOne of the great advantages of the mobile-first approach is that it forces you to really focus on the core content of your page. It might be more accurate to think of this as a content-first approach. You don\u2019t have the luxury of sidebars or multiple columns to fill up with content that\u2019s just nice to have rather than essential.\n\nBut what happens when you apply your media queries for larger viewports and you do have sidebars and multiple columns? Well, you can load in that nice-to-have content using the same kind of Ajax functionality that Paul described in his article last year. The difference is that you first run a quick test to see if the viewport is wide enough to accommodate the subsidiary content. This is conditional delayed loading.\n\nConsider this situation: I\u2019ve published an article about cats and I\u2019d like to include relevant cat-related news items in the sidebar \u2026but only if there\u2019s enough room on the screen for a sidebar.\n\nI\u2019m going to use Google\u2019s News API to return the search results. This is the ideal time to use delayed loading: I don\u2019t want a third-party service slowing down the rendering of my page so I\u2019m going to fire off the request after my document has loaded.\n\nHere\u2019s an example of the kind of Ajax function that I would write:\n\nvar searchNews = function(searchterm) {\n\tvar elem = document.createElement('script');\n\telem.src = 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/news?v=1.0&q='+searchterm+'&callback=displayNews';\n\tdocument.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(elem);\n};\n\nI\u2019ve provided a callback function called displayNews that takes the JSON result of that Ajax request and adds it an element on the page with the ID newsresults:\n\nvar displayNews = function(news) {\n\tvar html = '',\n\titems = news.responseData.results,\n\ttotal = items.length;\n\tif (total>0) {\n\t\tfor (var i=0; i';\n\t\t\thtml+= '';\n\t\t\thtml+= '
'+item.titleNoFormatting+'
';\n\t\t\thtml+= '';\n\t\t\thtml+= '
';\n\t\t\thtml+= item.content;\n\t\t\thtml+= '
';\n\t\t\thtml+= '';\n\t\t}\n\t\tdocument.getElementById('newsresults').innerHTML = html;\n\t}\n};\n\nNow, I can call that function at the bottom of my document:\n\n\n\nIf I only want to run that search when there\u2019s room for a sidebar, I can wrap it in an if statement:\n\n\n\nIf the browser is wider than 640 pixels, that will fire off a search for news stories about cats and put the results into the newsresults element in my markup:\n\n
\n \n
\n\nThis works pretty well but I\u2019m making an assumption that people with small-screen devices wouldn\u2019t be interested in seeing that nice-to-have content. You know what they say about assumptions: they make an ass out of you and umptions. I should really try to give everyone at least the option to get to that extra content:\n\n
\n Search Google News\n
\n\nSee the result\n\nVisitors with small-screen devices will see that link to the search results; visitors with larger screens will get the search results directly.\n\nI\u2019ve been concentrating on HTML and JavaScript, but this technique has consequences for content strategy and information architecture. Instead of thinking about possible page content in a binary way as either \u2018on the page\u2019 or \u2018not on the page\u2019, conditional loading introduces a third \u2018it\u2019s complicated\u2019 option.\n\nThis was just a simple example but I hope it illustrates that conditional loading could become an important part of the content-first responsive design approach.", "year": "2011", "author": "Jeremy Keith", "author_slug": "jeremykeith", "published": "2011-12-02T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/conditional-loading-for-responsive-designs/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 320, "title": "DOM Scripting Your Way to Better Blockquotes", "contents": "Block quotes are great. I don\u2019t mean they\u2019re great for indenting content \u2013 that would be an abuse of the browser\u2019s default styling. I mean they\u2019re great for semantically marking up a chunk of text that is being quoted verbatim. They\u2019re especially useful in blog posts. \n\n
\n
Progressive Enhancement, as a label for a strategy for Web design, \n was coined by Steven Champeon in a series of articles and presentations \n for Webmonkey and the SxSW Interactive conference.
\n
\n\nNotice that you can\u2019t just put the quoted text directly between the
tags. In order for your markup to be valid, block quotes may only contain block-level elements such as paragraphs.\n\nThere is an optional cite attribute that you can place in the opening
tag. This should contain a URL containing the original text you are quoting:\n\n
\n
Progressive Enhancement, as a label for a strategy for Web design, \n was coined by Steven Champeon in a series of articles and presentations \n for Webmonkey and the SxSW Interactive conference.
\n
\n\nGreat! Except\u2026 the default behavior in most browsers is to completely ignore the cite attribute. Even though it contains important and useful information, the URL in the cite attribute is hidden.\n\nYou could simply duplicate the information with a hyperlink at the end of the quoted text:\n\n
\n
Progressive Enhancement, as a label for a strategy for Web design, \n was coined by Steven Champeon in a series of articles and presentations \n for Webmonkey and the SxSW Interactive conference.
\n
\n source\n
\n
\n\nBut somehow it feels wrong to have to write out the same URL twice every time you want to quote something. It could also get very tedious if you have a lot of quotes.\n\nWell, \u201ctedious\u201d is no problem to a programming language, so why not use a sprinkling of DOM Scripting? Here\u2019s a plan for generating an attribution link for every block quote with a cite attribute:\n\n\n\tWrite a function called prepareBlockquotes.\n\tBegin by making sure the browser understands the methods you will be using.\n\tGet all the blockquote elements in the document.\n\tStart looping through each one.\n\tGet the value of the cite attribute.\n\tIf the value is empty, continue on to the next iteration of the loop.\n\tCreate a paragraph.\n\tCreate a link.\n\tGive the paragraph a class of \u201cattribution\u201d.\n\tGive the link an href attribute with the value from the cite attribute.\n\tPlace the text \u201csource\u201d inside the link.\n\tPlace the link inside the paragraph.\n\tPlace the paragraph inside the block quote.\n\tClose the for loop.\n\tClose the function.\n\n\nHere\u2019s how that translates to JavaScript:\n\nfunction prepareBlockquotes() {\n if (!document.getElementsByTagName || !document.createElement || !document.appendChild) return;\n var quotes = document.getElementsByTagName(\"blockquote\");\n for (var i=0; i tags.\n\nYou can style the attribution link using CSS. It might look good aligned to the right with a smaller font size.\n\nIf you\u2019re looking for something to do to keep you busy this Christmas, I\u2019m sure that this function could be greatly improved. Here are a few ideas to get you started:\n\n\n\tShould the text inside the generated link be the URL itself?\n\tIf the block quote has a title attribute, how would you take its value and use it as the text inside the generated link?\n\tShould the attribution paragraph be placed outside the block quote? If so, how would you that (remember, there is an insertBefore method but no insertAfter)?\n\tCan you think of other instances of useful information that\u2019s locked away inside attributes? Access keys? Abbreviations?", "year": "2005", "author": "Jeremy Keith", "author_slug": "jeremykeith", "published": "2005-12-05T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/dom-scripting-your-way-to-better-blockquotes/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 200, "title": "Care and Feeding of Burnout", "contents": "You\u2019ve been doing too much for too long. And it\u2019s broken you. You\u2019re burned out. You\u2019re done.\nIllustration by Kate Holden\nOccupational burnout is a long-documented effect of stretching yourself further than the limits of your mental and physical health can carry you. And when it finally catches up with you, it can feel like the end of the world. But things can get better. With focused self care, reworking your priorities and lots of time, you can slog through burnout.\nWhat is burnout? The Tl;dr linkdump tour\nIn this article, we\u2019ll be looking at what you can do when you\u2019re burned out. We\u2019ll be skipping past a lot of information on what burnout is, what causes it and how it impacts the tech industry. We\u2019re able to skip past this because many technologists have already created valuable content targeted to our industry. The videos and writing below may be helpful for readers who are less familiar with burnout.\nA Wikipedia article may be a great starting point for learning about occupational burnout.\n\n \n\nUnderstanding burnout: Brandon West\nThis conference talk by Brandon West covers a lot of burnout 101, from the perspective of a developer relations/community professional.\nApril Wensel writes about the need for the tech industry to move from the Valley\u2019s burnout culture to a more sustainable model.\nCatching Burnout [as] early [as possible]\nOne of the most challenging things about burnout is that it develops slowly and gradually. Many impacted don\u2019t notice the water warming around them until it\u2019s been brought to a boil, causing a crisis that can\u2019t be overlooked. Catching burnout and taking steps to deal with it as early as possible can help limit the length and severity of your burnout.\nGetting in the habit of checking in with yourself regularly about your stress and energy levels can be an effective habit for assessing burnout and for general wellness. The Mayo Clinic recommends asking yourself the following questions to determine if you might be suffering from burnout.\n\nHave you become cynical or critical at work?\nDo you drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started once you arrive?\nHave you become irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers or clients?\nDo you lack the energy to be consistently productive?\nDo you lack satisfaction from your achievements?\nDo you feel disillusioned about your job?\nAre you using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to simply not feel?\nHave your sleep habits or appetite changed?\nAre you troubled by unexplained headaches, backaches or other physical complaints?\n\nAccording to the Mayo Clinic, answering yes to more than one of these questions can be a sign that you need to take corrective action. We\u2019ll look in more detail about the corrective actions you can take in the rest of this article. \nDo less. Now.\nTo start getting things back on track, you\u2019ll need to start doing less. Less work, less stress, less everything. Many technologists impacted by burnout have written or spoken on taking months or even years off work to give themselves time to recover. This can be a fantastic route back to wellness for those fortunate enough to have the professional and financial security to allow them to take large stretches of time off work. For the much larger group of burned out workers that need to balance earning a paycheck with their wellness, this can be more challenging.\nFor those of us who need to stay in the cycle of work to fund our daily needs, finding ways to do less can feel like adding another daunting task to the pile. To properly assess where and how you can cut back on your commitments, you\u2019ll need to find a short stretch of time clear of stressors and responsibilities to take stock of what can be scaled back. A long weekend, weekend or even a few hours of time dedicated to looking only at how you can cut back on work and stress can be an effective way to take stock of your responsibilities.\nMake a list of stressors and activities to begin to triage. Anything that would damage or seriously disrupt your life if not attended to (doing your taxes, showing up at work, paying rent) should be marked as essential. Grade other activities in your life, marking the ones that aren\u2019t essential and working to temporarily reduce these or remove them from your life. It can feel difficult to let go of things while recovering from burnout. This process can benefit from a second opinion, if you\u2019re working with a coach, therapist or trusted friend to manage your burnout.\nReducing your workload and stressors can let you begin to recover from burnout. You can reintroduce things back into your schedule and life. Reintroduce stressors and activities back into your life slowly, to minimize risk of relapse. Keeping a journal will let you keep tabs on how different activities are impacting your energy levels and state of mind.\nRemove toxicity\nToxic people or settings can drain you faster than overwork alone can. While you work to reduce your workload and stress, coworkers, friends, family or bosses who are toxic influences can act as a multiplier for the stressors that remain. Identifying these people and limiting your interactions with them during your recovery can help you get back on track faster and happier. A journal can be an important tool in tracking how interactions with different people impact your wellness and state of mind. If the toxic presence in your life is someone you can avoid or cut out without penalty, burnout is a great reason to finally replace them with healthier relationships.\nIf you can\u2019t remove them from your life, minimizing the impact toxic people have on your wellness is vital. Work to identify what aspect of the relationship is draining or damaging and create interventions around damaging interactions. While a chronically complaining coworker\u2019s negativity can be stopped short with setting firm conversational boundaries and redirection, a combative boss can be a harder challenge. Seeking allies and advice can make you feel less alone in your battles and provide healthy emotional support. \nAsk for help\nTrying to find your way back to health and wellness after burning out can be a daunting task. Seeking help from health care professionals, trusted peers or both can give you backup on your journey back to feeling better. With symptoms that can mirror those of depression, burnout can be the precursor to a number of mental and physical ailments. Talk to your doctor immediately if you\u2019re experiencing symptoms of depression or any other health concerns.\nBeing open with your trusted friends about burnout can let you access valuable support and help explain why you may need extra care and consideration while you recover. Many suffering from burnout report finding maintaining relationships a challenge. Letting your loved ones know what you\u2019re going through and why you may be less available invites them to be more understanding of cancelled plans or other issues while you\u2019re recovering. Burnout can impact memory and cognitive function. Letting your support network assist in decision making during burnout can help add perspective to counterbalance these deficits.\nTalking to your friends and peers about your health and needs can offer valuable support. But those who are pushed to a mental or physical health crisis by burnout should work with healthcare professionals to plan their recovery. Sufferers of mild to moderate burnout can also benefit from planning their return to wellness with an experienced practitioner. Medical or counseling professionals may prescribe medicines, talk therapy, group sessions or other therapeutic intervention. \nGo easy on yourself\nRecovering from burnout is a process that takes energy, time and compassion for yourself. In the same way that toxic people or workplaces can set you back, negative repetitive thoughts will harm your recovery. Recognizing that burnout\u2019s impact on you is a temporary state that isn\u2019t your fault can help you begin to manage your feelings and expectations for yourself. Sufferers often report feeling stupid, lazy or that they lack the skills to do their job. This is natural, as burnout can severely limit your cognitive function, your energy levels and resilience while dramatically increasing your cognitive load. Working with a counselor may help if you\u2019re finding it difficult to be patient with your progress back to health or are troubled by persistent intrusive thoughts.\nBurnout can seriously limit the amount of energy you have. Spend as little of the energy you have left beating yourself up as possible. You\u2019re going to be ok. It\u2019s all going to be ok.\nThis article doesn\u2019t offer one-size-fits all fixes for burnout or overwork, but aims to provide a framework with points to consider that may help shape your wellness. No article can act as a substitute for professionally administered healthcare or robust self care.", "year": "2017", "author": "Jessica Rose", "author_slug": "jessicarose", "published": "2017-12-16T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2017/care-and-feeding-of-burnout/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 28, "title": "Why You Should Design for Open Source", "contents": "Let\u2019s be honest. Most designers don\u2019t like working for nothing. We rally against spec work and make a stand for contracts and getting paid. That\u2019s totally what you should do as a professional designer in the industry. It\u2019s your job. It\u2019s your hard-working skill. It\u2019s your bread and butter. Get paid.\n\nHowever, I\u2019m going to make a case for why you could also consider designing for open source. First, I should mention that not all open source work is free work. Some companies hire open source contributors to work on their projects full-time, usually because that project is used by said company. There are other companies that encourage open source contribution and even offer 20%-time for these projects (where you can spend one day a week contributing to open source). These are super rad situations to be in. However, whether you\u2019re able to land a gig doing this type of work, or you\u2019ve decided to volunteer your time and energy, designing for open source can be rewarding in many other ways.\n\nPortfolio building\n\nNew designers often find themselves in a catch-22 situation: they don\u2019t have enough work experience showcased in their portfolio, which leads to them not getting much work because their portfolio is bare. These new designers often turn to unsolicited redesigns to fill their portfolio. An unsolicited redesign is a proof of concept in which a designer attempts to redesign a popular website. You can see many of these concepts on sites like Dribbble and Behance and there are even websites dedicated to showcasing these designs, such as Uninvited Designs. There\u2019s even a subreddit for them.\n\nThere are quite a few negative opinions on unsolicited redesigns, though some people see things from both sides. If you feel like doing one or two of these to fill your portfolio, that\u2019s of course up to you. But here\u2019s a better suggestion. Why not contribute design for an open source project instead?\n\nYou can easily find many projects in great need of design work, from branding to information design, documentation, and website or application design. The benefits to doing this are far better than an unsolicited redesign. You get a great portfolio piece that actually has greater potential to get used (especially if the core team is on board with it). It\u2019s a win-win situation.\n\nNot all designers are in need of portfolio filler, but there are other benefits to contributing design.\n\nGiving back to the community\n\nMy first experience with voluntary work was when I collaborated with my friend, Vineet Thapar, on a pro bono project for the W3C\u2019s Web Accessibility Initiative redesign project back in 2004. I was very excited to contribute CSS to a website that would get used by the W3C! Unfortunately, it decided to go a different direction and my work did not get used. However, it was still pretty exciting to have the opportunity, and I don\u2019t regret a moment of that work. I learned a lot about accessibility from this experience and it helped me land some of the jobs I\u2019ve had since.\n\nAlmost a decade later, I got super into Sass. One of the core maintainers, Chris Eppstein, lamented on Twitter one day that the Sass website and brand was in dire need of design help. That led to the creation of an open source task force, Team Sass Design, and we revived the brand and the website, which launched at SassConf in 2013.\n\nIt helped me in my current job. I showed it during my portfolio review when I interviewed for the role. Then I was able to use inspiration from a technique I\u2019d tried on the Sass website to help create the more feature-rich design system that my team at work is building. But most importantly, I soon learned that it is exhilarating to be a part of the Sass community. This is the biggest benefit of all. It feels really good to give back to the technology I love and use for getting my work done.\n\nBen Werdmuller writes about the need for design in open source. It\u2019s great to see designers contributing to open source in awesome ways. When A List Apart\u2019s website went open source, Anna Debenham contributed by helping build its pattern library. Bevan Stephens worked with FontForge on the design of its website. There are also designers who have created their own open source projects. There\u2019s Dan Cederholm\u2019s Pears, which shares common patterns in markup and style. There\u2019s also Brad Frost\u2019s Pattern Lab, which shares his famous method of atomic design and applies it to a design system. These systems and patterns have been used in real-world projects, such as RetailMeNot, so designers have contributed to the web in an even larger way simply by putting their work out there for others to use. That\u2019s kind of fun to think about.\n\nHow to get started\n\nSo are you stoked about getting into the open source community? That\u2019s great!\n\nInitially, you might get worried or uncomfortable in getting involved. That\u2019s okay. But first consider that the project is open source for a reason. Your contribution (no matter how large or small) can help in a big way.\n\nIf you find a project you\u2019re interested in helping, make sure you do your research. Sometimes project team members will be attached to their current design. Is there already a designer on the core team? Reach out to that designer first. Don\u2019t be too aggressive with why you think your design is better than theirs. Rather, offer some constructive feedback and a proposal of what would make the design better. Chances are, if the designer cares about the project, and you make a strong case, they\u2019ll be up for it.\n\nAre there contribution guidelines? It\u2019s proper etiquette to read these and follow the community\u2019s rules. You\u2019ll have a better chance of getting your work accepted, and it shows that you take the time to care and add to the overall quality of the project. Does the project lack guidelines? Consider starting a draft for that before getting started in the design.\n\nWhen contributing to open source, use your initiative to solve problems in a manageable way. Huge pull requests are hard to review and will often either get neglected or rejected. Work in small, modular, and iterative contributions.\n\nSo this is my personal take on what I\u2019ve learned from my experience and why I love open source. I\u2019d love to hear from you if you have your own experience in doing this and what you\u2019ve learned along the way as well. Please share in the comments!\n\nThanks Drew McLellan, Eric Suzanne, Kyle Neath for sharing their thoughts with me on this!", "year": "2014", "author": "Jina Anne", "author_slug": "jina", "published": "2014-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/why-you-should-design-for-open-source/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 178, "title": "Make Out Like a Bandit", "contents": "If you are anything like me, you are a professional juggler. No, we don\u2019t juggle bowling pins or anything like that (or do you? Hey, that\u2019s pretty rad!). I\u2019m talking about the work that we juggle daily. In my case, I\u2019m a full-time designer, a half-time graduate student, a sometimes author and conference speaker, and an all-the-time social networker. Only two of these \u201cpositions\u201d have actually put any money in my pocket (and, well, the second one takes a lot of money out). Still, this is all part of the work that I do. Your work situation is probably similar. We are workaholics.\n\nSo if we work so much in our daily lives, shouldn\u2019t we be making out like bandits? Umm, honestly, I\u2019m not hitting on you, silly. I\u2019m talking about our success. We work and work and work. Shouldn\u2019t we be filthy, stinking rich? Well\u2026 okay, that\u2019s not quite what I mean either. I\u2019m not necessarily talking about money (though that could potentially be a part of it). I\u2019m talking about success \u2014 as in feeling a true sense of accomplishment and feeling happy about what we do and why we do it.\n\nIt\u2019s important to feel accomplished and a general happiness in our work. To make out like a bandit (or have an incredible amount of success), you can either get lucky or work hard for it. And if you\u2019re going to work hard for it, you might as well make it all meaningful and worthwhile. This is what I strive for in my own work and my life, and the following points I\u2019m sharing with you are the steps I am taking to work toward this.\n\n\n\tI know the price of success: dedication, hard work & an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. \u2014 Frank Lloyd Wright\n\n\nLearn. Participate. Do.\n\nThe best way to get good at something is to keep doing whatever it is you\u2019re doing that you want to be good at. For example, a sushi-enthusiast might take a sushi-making class because she wants to learn to make sushi for herself. It totally makes sense while the teacher demonstrates all the procedures, materials, and methods needed to make good, beautiful sushi. Later, the student goes home and tries to make sushi on her own, she gets totally confused and lost. Okay, I\u2019m not even going to hide it, I\u2019m talking about myself (this happened to me). As much as I love sushi, I couldn\u2019t even begin to make good sushi because I\u2019ve never really practiced.\n\nTake advantage of learning opportunities where possible. Whether you\u2019re learning CSS, Actionscript, or visual design, the best way to grasp how to do things is to participate, practice, do. Apply what you learn in your work. Participation is so vital to your success. If you have problems, let people know, and ask. But definitely practice on your own. And as clich\u00e9 as it may sound, believe in yourself because if you don\u2019t think you can do it, no one else will think you can either.\n\nMaintain momentum\n\nWith whatever it is you\u2019re doing, if you find yourself \u201con a roll\u201d, you should take advantage of that momentum and keep moving. Sure, you\u2019ll definitely want to take breaks here or there, but remember that momentum can be very difficult to obtain again once you\u2019ve lost it. Get it done!\n\nDeal with people\n\nWhether you love or hate people, the fact is, you gotta deal with them \u2014 even the difficult ones. If you\u2019re in a management position, then you know pretty well that most people don\u2019t like being told what to do (even if that\u2019s their job). Find ways to get people excited about what they\u2019re doing. Make people feel that they (and what they do) are needed \u2014 people respond better if they\u2019re valued, not commanded. Even if you\u2019re not in a management position, this still applies to the way you work with your coworkers, clients, vendors, etc.\n\nResolve any conflicts right away. Conflicts will inevitably happen. Move on to how you can improve the situation, and do it as quickly as possible. Don\u2019t spend too much time focusing on whose screw up it is \u2014 nobody feels good in this situation. Also, try to keep people informed on whatever it is you need or what it is you\u2019re doing. If you\u2019re waiting on something from someone, and it\u2019s been a while, don\u2019t be afraid to say something (tactfully). Sometimes people are forgetful \u2014 or just slacking. Hey, it happens!\n\nHelp yourself by helping others\n\nWhat are some of the small, simple things you can do when you\u2019re working that will help the people you work with (and in most cases, will end up helping yourself)? For example: if you\u2019re a designer, perhaps taking a couple minutes now to organize and name your Photoshop layers will end up saving time later (since it will be easier to find things). This is going to help both you and your team. Or, developers: taking some time to write some documentation (even if it\u2019s as simple as a comment in the code, or a well-written commit message) could potentially save valuable time for both you and your team later. Maybe you have to take a little time to sit down with a coworker and explain why something works the way it does. This helps them out tremendously \u2014 and will most likely lead to them respecting you a little more. This is a benefit.\n\nIf you make little things like this a habit, people will notice. People will enjoy working with you. People will trust you and rely on you. Sure, it might seem beneficial at any given moment to be \u201cin it for yourself\u201d (and therefore only helping yourself), but that won\u2019t last very long. Helping others (whether it be a small or large feat) will cause a positive impact in the long run \u2014 and that is what will be more valuable to you and your career.\n\nDo work that is meaningful\n\nOne of the best ways to feel successful about what you do is to feel good and happy about it. And a great way to feel good and happy about what you\u2019re doing is to actually do good. This could be purpose-driven work that focuses on sustainability and environmentalism, or work that helps support causes and charity. Perhaps the work simply inspires people. Or maybe the work is just something you are very passionate about. Whatever the work may be, try working on projects that are meaningful to you. You\u2019ll do well simply by being more motivated and interested. And it\u2019s a double-win if the project is meaningful to others as well.\n\nI feel very fortunate to work at a place like Crush + Lovely, where we have found quite frequently that the projects that inspire people, focus on global and social good, and create some sort of positive impact are the very projects that bring us more paid projects. But more importantly, we are happy and excited to do it. You might not work at a company that takes on those types of projects. But perhaps you have your own personal endeavors that create this excitement for you. Elliot Jay Stocks wrote about having pet projects. Do you take on side projects? What are those projects?\n\nOver the last couple years, I\u2019ve seen some really fantastic side projects come out that are great examples of meaningful work. These projects reflect the passions and goals of the respective designers and developers involved, and therefore become quite successful (because the people involved simply love what they are doing while they\u2019re doing it). Some of these projects include:\n\n\n\tTypedia is a shared encyclopedia of typefaces which serves as a resource to classify, categorize, and connect typefaces. It was founded by Jason Santa Maria, a graphic designer with a love and passion for typography. He created it as a solution to a problem he faced as a designer: finding the right typeface.\n\tHuffduffer was created by Jeremy Keith, a web developer who wanted to create a podcast of inspirational talks \u2014 but after he found that this could be tedious, he decided to create a tool to automate this.\n\tLevel & Tap was created by passionate photographer and web developer, Tom Watson. It began as a photography print store for Tom\u2019s best personal photography. Over time, more photographers were added to the site and the site has grown to become quite a great collection of beautiful photography.\n\tHeat Eat Review is a review blog created by information architect and user experience designer, Abi Jones. As a foodie, she is able to use this passion for this blog, as it focuses on reviewing TV Dinners, Frozen Meals, and Microwavable Foods.\n\tArt in My Coffee, a favorite personal project of my own, is a photo blog of coffee art I created, after I found that my friends and I were frequently posting coffee art photos to Flickr, Twitter, and other websites. After the blog became more popular, I teamed up with Meagan Fisher on the project, who has just as much a passion for coffee art, if not more.\n\n\nSo, what\u2019s important to you?\n\nThis is the very, very important question here. What really matters to you most? Beyond just working on meaningful projects you are passionate about, is the work you\u2019re doing the right work for you, so that you can live a good lifestyle? Scott Boms wrote an excellent article, Burnout, in which he shares his own experience in battling stress and exhaustion, and what he learned from it. You should definitely read the article in its entirety, but a couple of his points that are particularly excellent are:\n\n\n\tMake time for numero uno, in which you make time for the things in life that make you happy\n\tExamine your values, goals, and measures of success, in which you work toward the things you are passionate about, your own personal development, and focusing on the things that matter.\n\n\nA solid work-life balance can be a challenging struggle to obtain. Of course, you can cheat this by finding ways to combine the things you love with the things you do (so then it doesn\u2019t even feel like you\u2019re working \u2014 oh, you sneaky little bandit!). However, there are other factors to consider beyond your general love for the work you\u2019re doing. Take proper care of yourself physically, mentally, and socially.\n\nSo, are you making out like a bandit?\n\nDo you feel accomplished and generally happy with your work? If not, perhaps that is something to focus on for the next year. Consider your work (both in your job as well as any side projects you may take on) and how it benefits you \u2014 present and future. Take any steps necessary to get you to where you need to be. If you are miserable, fix it!\n\nFinally, it\u2019s important to be thankful for the things that matter to you and make you happy. Pass it along everyday. Thank people. It\u2019s a simple thing, really. Saying \u201cthank you\u201d can and will have enormous impact on the people around you. Oh. And, I apologize if the title of this article led you to thinking it would teach you how to be an amazing kisser. That\u2019s a different article entirely for 24 ways to impress your friends!", "year": "2009", "author": "Jina Anne", "author_slug": "jina", "published": "2009-12-21T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/make-out-like-a-bandit/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 194, "title": "Design Systems and Hybrids", "contents": "The other day on Twitter, I saw a thread started by Dorian Taylor about why design systems are so hot right now. In the thread, he made the case that they\u2019ve been around for ages and some folks were just slow to catch up. It was an interesting thread, and not the first time I\u2019ve seen folks discuss this. \u201cDesign systems are so hot right now\u201d was even used recently\u00a0in this very publication.\nAnd yes it\u2019s true that they\u2019ve been around for ages. Design artefact collectors\u2019 obsession with reprints of old graphic standards manuals of the past\u00a0are a reminder. Sometimes old things become new again, either through a rediscovery or awakening (wow, that sounds really deep). But I think that\u2019s definitely what happened here.\nSome very opinionated answers that come to mind for me are:\n\nThe need for them has increased with the needs of software development. With the increasing number of devices (phones, tablets, watches, etc.), scaling design has required the need to double down on systems thinking and processes.\nInvestments with huge cost-saving returns. The time investment it takes to onboard new people as you staff up large teams (and the time it takes to fix bugs and inconsistencies) could be better spent building up a system that lets you ship at a faster pace. It also gives you more time to focus on the bigger picture instead of what color a button border is.\nIf you do\u00a0have to onboard new designers, the design system is a great educational resource to get up to speed quickly on your organization\u2019s design principles, materials/tools, and methods.\n\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s the simple truth: you can\u2019t innovate on products without first innovating the way you build them.\u201d\n\u2014 Alex Schleifer, The Way We Build\n\nThese are just some of the reasons. But there is another answer, and a personal conclusion that I\u2019ve reached. It relates to the way I work and what I love working on, but I don\u2019t see it talked about much.\nHybrids Have a Home\nI\u2019m a hybrid designer. I code in HTML & CSS (with a preference for Sass). But I don\u2019t call myself a frontend developer. I used to back in the day (I was a UI frontend developer at Apple over a decade ago, but all I wrote was HTML & CSS). I identify with designer because that\u2019s my training and interest, but the ideas of what a frontend developer can do has changed quite a ton over the years. Setting things up in build tools and processes are not my skill. And I know a lot of designers who share this experience with me.\nThere are also hybrid developers who identify as developers, but have excellent design skills. Buddies like my pal Brandon Ferrua\u00a0who was on my team at Salesforce is a great example of this. And we worked fantastically together.\nSometimes, companies don\u2019t know how to deal with hybrids. I\u2019ve been told to choose a side, and have even been made to join a development team simply because I could code my designs (and then when I couldn\u2019t deliver the same type of code my teammates could, and I felt like I wasn\u2019t able to use my talents in the most effective way).\nThere are a lot more folks out there I know of who identify as a hybrid, and many have found ourselves working on design systems. Una Kravets recently had a thread discussing this as well. At Clarity, this came up a lot in hallway conversations, breaks, and the after parties. I think that this job is a haven for folks who often find themselves in the middle.\nFor companies that get it, these people find joy in getting to use a wider variety of skills and being bridges; advocates that can speak to designers and developers, helping bring \u2028unity to an organization. They can wireframe, throw together a prototype, create color systems, architect naming conventions for design tokens. Design systems are their perfect home. I think this has contributed to the uptick in discussions and interest on this subject (in addition to the team- and company-focused reasons).\nKeep Design Systems Teams Cross-Functional\nSpeaking of teams, something some larger companies fall prey to is creating walls and silos where they need not be. If you place all your visual designers in one place, all your coders in another, and so on, you\u2019re not doing yourselves any favors. Meanwhile, your hybrids are caught in the middle not knowing exactly where they belong. Design systems teams should have representatives (whether on a core team, or a virtual/federated team) that bring different skillsets. Design, code, writing, accessibility, product management, and so on. You\u2019ll have a stronger vision on where to take your design system and to make it succeed. Siloing defeats the whole purpose of what design systems are meant for.\nHappy holidays, and may the force be with you.\nFurther Reading\n\nWhy Design Systems Fail\nDesign Systems are for People\nDesign Systems Handbook", "year": "2017", "author": "Jina Anne", "author_slug": "jina", "published": "2017-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2017/design-systems-and-hybrids/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 69, "title": "How to Do a UX Review", "contents": "A UX review is where an expert goes through a website looking for usability and experience problems and makes recommendations on how to fix them. \nI\u2019ve completed a number of UX reviews over my twelve years working as a user experience consultant and I thought I\u2019d share my approach. \nI\u2019ll be talking about reviewing websites here; you can adapt the approach for web apps, or mobile or desktop apps. \nWhy conduct a review\nTypically, a client asks for a review to be undertaken by a trusted and, ideally, detached third party who either works for an agency or is a freelancer. Often they may ask a new member of the UX team to complete one, or even set it as a task for a job interview. This indicates the client is looking for an objective view, seen from the outside as a user would see the website. \nI always suggest conducting some user research rather than a review. Users know their goals and watching them make (what you might think of as) mistakes on the website is invaluable. Conducting research with six users can give you six hours\u2019 worth of review material from six viewpoints. In short, user research can identify more problems and show how common those problems might be. \nThere are three reasons, though, why a review might better suit client needs than user research: \n\nQuick results: user research and analysis takes at least three weeks.\nLimited budget: the \u00a36\u201310,000 cost to run user research is about twice the cost of a UX review. \nUsers are hard to reach: in the business-to-business world, reaching users is difficult, especially if your users hold senior positions in their organisations. Working with consumers is much easier as there are often more of them. \n\nThere is some debate about the benefits of user research over UX review. In my experience you learn far more from research, but opinions differ. \nBe objective\nThe number one mistake many UX reviewers make is reporting back the issues they identify as their opinion. This can cause credibility problems because you have to keep justifying why your opinion is correct. \nI\u2019ve had the most success when giving bad news in a UX review and then finally getting things fixed when I have been as objective as possible, offering evidence for why something may be a problem. \nTo be objective we need two sources of data: numbers from analytics to appeal to reason; and stories from users in the form of personas to speak to emotions. Highlighting issues with dispassionate numerical data helps show the extent of the problem. Making the problems more human using personas can make the problem feel more real. \nNumbers from analytics\nThe majority of clients I work with use Google Analytics, but if you use a different analytics package the same concepts apply. I use analytics to find two sets of things.\n1. Landing pages and search terms\nLanding pages are the pages users see first when they visit a website \u2013 more often than not via a Google search. Landing pages reveal user goals. If a user landed on a page called \u2018Yellow shoes\u2019 their goal may well be to find out about or buy some yellow shoes. \nIt would be great to see all the search terms bringing people to the website but in 2011 Google stopped providing search term data to (rightly!) protect users\u2019 privacy. You can get some search term data from Google Webmaster tools, but we must rely on landing pages as a clue to our users\u2019 goals. \nThe thing to look for is high-traffic landing pages with a high bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate (over 50%) isn\u2019t good; above 70% is bad.\nTo get a list of high-traffic landing pages with a high bounce rate install this bespoke report.\nGoogle Analytics showing landing pages ordered by popularity and the bounce rate for each.\nThis is the list of pages with high demand and that have real problems as the bounce rate is high. This is the main focus of the UX review. \n2. User flows\nWe have the beginnings of the user journey: search terms and initial landing pages. Now we can tap into the really useful bit of Google Analytics. Called behaviour flows, they show the most common order of pages visited. \nBehaviour flows from Google Analytics, showing the routes users took through the website.\nHere we can see the second and third (and so on) pages users visited. Importantly, we can also see the drop-outs at each step. \nIf your client has it set up, you can also set goal pages (for example, a post-checkout contact us and thank you page). You can then see a similar view that tracks back from the goal pages. If your client doesn\u2019t have this, suggest they set up goal tracking. It\u2019s easy to do. \nWe now have the remainder of the user journey. \nA user journey\nExpect the work in analytics to take up to a day. \nWe may well identify more than one user journey, starting from different landing pages and going to different second- and third-level pages. That\u2019s a good thing and shows we have different user types. Talking of user types, we need to define who our users are. \nPersonas\nWe have some user journeys and now we need to understand more about our users\u2019 motivations and goals. \nI have a love-hate relationship with personas, but used properly these portraits of users can help bring a human touch to our UX review. \nI suggest using a very cut-down view of a persona. My old friends Steve Cable and Richard Caddick at cxpartners have a great free template for personas from their book Communicating the User Experience.\nThe first thing to do is find a picture that represents that persona. Don\u2019t use crappy stock photography \u2013 it\u2019s sometimes hard to relate to perfect-looking people) \u2013 use authentic-looking people. Here\u2019s a good collection of persona photos. \nAn example persona.\nThe personas have three basic attributes:\n\nGoals: we can complete these drawing on the analytics data we have (see example).\nMusts: things we have to do to meet the persona\u2019s needs.\nMust nots: a list of things we really shouldn\u2019t do. \n\nCompleting points 2 and 3 can often be done during the writing of the report. \nLet\u2019s take an example. We know that the search term \u2018yellow shoes\u2019 takes the user to the landing page for yellow shoes. We also know this page has a high bounce rate, meaning it doesn\u2019t provide a good experience. \nWith our expert hat on we can review the page. We will find two types of problem: \n\nUsability issues: ineffective button placement or incorrect wording, links not looking like links, and so on. \nExperience issues: for example, if a product is out of stock we have to contact the business to ask them to restock. \n\nThat link is very small and hard to see.\nWe could identify that the contact button isn\u2019t easy to find (a usability issue) but that\u2019s not the real problem here. That the user has to ask the business to restock the item is a bad user experience. We add this to our personas\u2019 must nots. The big experience problems with the site form the musts and must nots for our personas. \nWe now have a story around our user journey that highlights what is going wrong. \nIf we\u2019ve identified a number of user journeys, multiple landing pages and differing second and third pages visited, we can create more personas to match. A good rule of thumb is no more than three personas. Any more and they lose impact, watering down your results. \nExpect persona creation to take up to a day to complete. \nLet\u2019s start the review\nWe take the user journeys and we follow them step by step, working through the website looking for the reasons why users drop out at each step. Using Keynote or PowerPoint, I structure the final report around the user journey with separate sections for each step.\nFor each step we\u2019ll find both usability and experience problems. Split the results into those two groups. \nUsability problems are fairly easy to fix as they\u2019re often quick design changes. As you go along, note the usability problems in one place: we\u2019ll call this \u2018quick wins\u2019. Simple quick fixes are a reassuring thing for a client to see and mean they can get started on stuff right away. You can mark the severity of usability issues. Use a scale from 1 to 3 (if you use 1 to 5 everything ends up being a 3!) where 1 is minor and 3 is serious. \nReview the website on the device you\u2019d expect your persona to use. Are they using the site on a smartphone? Review it on a smartphone. \nI allow one page or slide per problem, which allows me to explain what is going wrong. For a usability problem I\u2019ll often make a quick wireframe or sketch to explain how to address it. \nA UX review slide displaying all the elements to be addressed. These slides may be viewed from across the room on a screen so zoom into areas of discussion.\n(Quick tip: if you use Google Chrome, try Awesome Screenshot to capture screens.)\nWhen it comes to the more severe experience problems \u2013 things like an online shop not offering next day delivery, or a business that needs to promise to get back to new customers within a few hours \u2013 these will take more than a tweak to the UI to fix. \nCall these something different. I use the terms like business challenges and customer experience issues as they show that it will take changes to the organisation and its processes to address them. It\u2019s often beyond the remit of a humble UX consultant to recommend how to fix organisational issues, so don\u2019t try. \nAgain, create a page within your document to collect all of the business challenges together. \nExpect the review to take between one and three days to complete. \nThe final report should follow this structure:\n\nThe approach\nOverview of usability quick wins\nOverview of experience issues\nOverview of Google Analytics findings\nThe user journeys \nThe personas\nDetailed page-by-page review (broken down by steps on the user journey)\n\nThere are two academic theories to help with the review. \nHeuristic evaluation is a set of criteria to organise the issues you find. They\u2019re great for categorising the usability issues you identify but in practice they can be quite cumbersome to apply. \nI prefer the more scientific and much simpler cognitive walkthrough that is focused on goals and actions.\nA workshop to go through the findings\nThe most important part of the UX review process is to talk through the issues with your client and their team. \nA document can only communicate a certain amount. Conversations about the findings will help the team understand the severity of the issues you\u2019ve uncovered and give them a chance to discuss what to do about them. \nExpect the workshop to last around three hours.\nWhen presenting the report, explain the method you used to conduct the review, the data sources, personas and the reasoning behind the issues you found. Start by going through the usability issues. Often these won\u2019t be contentious and you can build trust and improve your credibility by making simple, easy to implement changes. \nThe most valuable part of the workshop is conversation around each issue, especially the experience problems. The workshop should include time to talk through each experience issue and how the team will address it. \nI collect actions on index cards throughout the workshop and make a note of who will take what action with each problem. \nIndex cards showing the problem and who is responsible.\nWhen talking through the issues, the person who designed the site is probably in the room \u2013 they may well feel threatened. So be nice.\nWhen I talk through the report I try to have strong ideas, weakly held.\nAt the end of the workshop you\u2019ll have talked through each of the issues and identified who is responsible for addressing them. To close the workshop I hand out the cards to the relevant people, giving them a physical reminder of the next steps they have to take. \nThat\u2019s my process for conducting a review. I\u2019d love to hear any tips you have in the comments.", "year": "2015", "author": "Joe Leech", "author_slug": "joeleech", "published": "2015-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/how-to-do-a-ux-review/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 110, "title": "Shiny Happy Buttons", "contents": "Since Mac OS X burst onto our screens, glossy, glassy, shiny buttons have been almost de rigeur, and have essentially, along with reflections and rounded corners, become a clich\u00e9 of Web 2.0 \u201cdesign\u201d. But if you can\u2019t beat \u2018em you\u2019d better join \u2018em. So, in this little contribution to our advent calendar, we\u2019re going to take a plain old boring HTML button, and 2.0 it up the wazoo. \n\nBut, here\u2019s the catch. We\u2019ll use no images, either in our HTML or our CSS. No sliding doors, no image replacement techniques. Just straight up, CSS, CSS3 and a bit of experimental CSS. And, it will be compatible with pretty much any browser (though with some progressive enhancement for those who keep up with the latest browsers).\n\nThe HTML\n\nWe\u2019ll start with our HTML.\n\n\n\nOK, so it\u2019s not shiny yet \u2013 but boy will it ever be.\n\nBefore styling, that\u2019s going to look like this.\n\nIronically, depending on the operating system and browser you are using, it may well be a shiny button already, but that\u2019s not the point. We want to make it shiny 2.0. Our mission is to make it look something like this\n\n\n\nIf you want to follow along at home keep in mind that depending on which browser you are using you may see fewer of the CSS effects we\u2019ve added to create the button. As of writing, only in Safari are all the effects we\u2019ll apply supported.\n\nTaking a look at our finished product, here\u2019s what we\u2019ve done to it:\n\n\n\tWe\u2019ve given the button some padding and a width.\n\tWe\u2019ve changed the text color, and given the text a drop shadow.\n\tWe\u2019ve given the button a border.\n\tWe\u2019ve given the button some rounded corners.\n\tWe\u2019ve given the button a drop shadow.\n\tWe\u2019ve given the button a gradient background.\n\n\nand remember, all without using any images.\n\nStyling the button\n\nSo, let\u2019s get to work.\n\nFirst, we\u2019ll add given the element some padding and a width:\n\nbutton {\n\tpadding: .5em;\n\twidth: 15em;\n}\n\nNext, we\u2019ll add the text color, and the drop shadow:\n\ncolor: #ffffff;\ntext-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #000;\n\nA note on text-shadow\n\nIf you\u2019ve not seen text-shadows before well, here\u2019s the quick back-story. Text shadow was introduced in CSS2, but only supported in Safari (version 1!) some years later. It was removed from CSS2.1, but returned in CSS3 (in the text module). It\u2019s now supported in Safari, Opera and Firefox (3.1). Internet Explorer has a shadow filter, but the syntax is completely different.\n\nSo, how do text-shadows work? The three length values specify respectively a horizontal offset, a vertical offset and a blur (the greater the number the more blurred the shadow will be), and finally a color value for the shadow.\n\nRounding the corners\n\nNow we\u2019ll add a border, and round the corners of the element:\n\nborder: solid thin #882d13;\n-webkit-border-radius: .7em;\n-moz-border-radius: .7em;\nborder-radius: .7em;\n\nHere, we\u2019ve used the same property in three slightly different forms. We add the browser specific prefix for Webkit and Mozilla browsers, because right now, both of these browsers only support border radius as an experimental property. We also add the standard property name, for browsers that do support the property fully in the future. \n\nThe benefit of the browser specific prefix is that if a browser only partly supports a given property, we can easily avoid using the property with that browser simply by not adding the browser specific prefix. At present, as you might guess, border-radius is supported in Safari and Firefox, but in each the relevant prefix is required.\n\nborder-radius takes a length value, such as pixels. (It can also take two length values, but that\u2019s for another Christmas.) In this case, as with padding, I\u2019ve used ems, which means that as the user scales the size of text up and down, the radius will scale as well. You can test the difference by making the radius have a value of say 5px, and then zooming up and down the text size. \n\nWe\u2019re well and truly on the way now. All we need to do is add a shadow to the button, and then a gradient background.\n\nIn CSS3 there\u2019s the box-shadow property, currently only supported in Safari 3. It\u2019s very similar to text-shadow \u2013 you specify a horizontal and vertical offset, a blur value and a color.\n\n-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 3px #999; \nbox-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #bbb;\n\nOnce more, we require the \u201cexperimental\u201d -webkit- prefix, as Safari\u2019s support for this property is still considered by its developers to be less than perfect.\n\nGradient Background\n\nSo, all we have left now is to add our shiny gradient effect. Now of course, people have been doing this kind of thing with images for a long time. But if we can avoid them all the better. Smaller pages, faster downloads, and more scalable designs that adapt better to the user\u2019s font size preference. But how can we add a gradient background without an image?\n\nHere we\u2019ll look at the only property that is not as yet part of the CSS standard \u2013 Apple\u2019s gradient function for use anywhere you can use images with CSS (in this case backgrounds). In essence, this takes SVG gradients, and makes them available via CSS syntax.\n\nHere\u2019s what the property and its value looks like:\n\nbackground-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#e9ede8), to(#ce401c),color-stop(0.4, #8c1b0b));\n\nZooming in on the gradient function, it has this basic form:\n\n-webkit-gradient(type, point, point, from(color), to(color),color-stop(where, color));\n\nWhich might look complicated, but is less so than at first glance.\n\nThe name of the function is gradient (and in this case, because it is an experimental property, we use the -webkit- prefix).\n\nYou might not have seen CSS functions before, but there are others, including the attr() function, used with generated content. A function returns a value that can be used as a property value \u2013 here we are using it as a background image.\n\nNext we specify the type of the gradient. Here we have a linear gradient, and there are also radial gradients. \n\nAfter that, we specify the start and end points of the gradient \u2013 in our case the top and bottom of the element, in a vertical line. \n\nWe then specify the start and end colors \u2013 and finally one stop color, located at 40% of the way down the element. Together, this creates a gradient that smoothly transitions from the start color in the top, vertically to the stop color, then smoothly transitions to the end color.\n\nThere\u2019s one last thing. What color will the background of our button be if the browser doesn\u2019t support gradients? It will be white (or possibly some default color for buttons). Which may make the text difficult or impossible to read. So, we\u2019ll add a background color as well (see why the validator is always warning you when a color but not a background color is specified for an element?).\n\nIf we put it all together, here\u2019s what we have:\n\nbutton {\n\twidth: 15em;\n\tpadding: .5em;\n\tcolor: #ffffff;\n\ttext-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #000;\n\tborder: solid thin #882d13;\n\t-webkit-border-radius: .7em;\n\t-moz-border-radius: .7em;\n\tborder-radius: .7em;\n\t-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 3px #999; \n\tbox-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #bbb;\n\tbackground-color: #ce401c;\n\tbackground-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#e9ede8), to(#ce401c),color-stop(0.4, #8c1b0b));\n}\n\nWhich looks like this in various browsers:\n\nIn Safari (3)\n\n\n\nIn Firefox 3.1 (3.0 supports border-radius but not text-shadow)\n\n\n\nIn Opera 10\n\n\n\nand of course in Internet Explorer (version 8 shown here)\n\n\n\nBut it looks different in different browsers\n\nYes, it does look different in different browsers, but we all know the answer to the question \u201cdo web sites need to look the same in every browser?\u201c.\n\nEven if you really think sites should look the same in every browser, hopefully this little tutorial has whet your appetite for what CSS3 and experimental CSS that\u2019s already supported in widely used browsers (and we haven\u2019t even touched on animations and similar effects!).\n\nI hope you\u2019ve enjoyed out little CSSMas present, and look forward to seeing your shiny buttons everywhere on the web.\n\nOh, and there\u2019s just a bit of homework \u2013 your job is to use the :hover selector, and make a gradient in the hover state.", "year": "2008", "author": "John Allsopp", "author_slug": "johnallsopp", "published": "2008-12-18T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/shiny-happy-buttons/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 140, "title": "Styling hCards with CSS", "contents": "There are plenty of places online where you can learn about using the hCard microformat to mark up contact details at your site (there are some resources at the end of the article). But there\u2019s not yet been a lot of focus on using microformats with CSS. So in this installment of 24 ways, we\u2019re going to look at just that \u2013 how microformats help make CSS based styling simpler and more logical.\n\nBeing rich, quite complex structures, hCards provide designers with a sophisticated scaffolding for styling them. A recent example of styling hCards I saw, playing on the business card metaphor, was by Andy Hume, at http://thedredge.org/2005/06/using-hcards-in-your-blog/. While his approach uses fixed width cards, let\u2019s take a look at how we might style a variable width business card style for our hCards.\n\nLet\u2019s take a common hCard, which includes address, telephone and email details\n\n
\n\t
Web Directions North\n\t\t\n\t\t\t $\"download$ \n\t
\n\n\t\n\t\t 1485 Laperri\u00e8re Avenue \n\t\t Ottawa ON K1Z 7S8 \n\t\tCanada\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\tPhone/Fax: Work: 61 2 9365 5007\n\t\tEmail: info@webdirections.org\n\t\n\n\nWe\u2019ll be using a variation on the now well established \u201csliding doors\u201d technique (if you create a CSS technique, remember it\u2019s very important to give it a memorable name or acronym, and bonus points if you get your name in there!) by Douglas Bowman, enhanced by Scott Schiller (see http://www.schillmania.com/projects/dialog/,) which will give us a design which looks like this\n\n\n\nThe technique, in a nutshell, uses background images on four elements, two at the top, and two at the bottom, to add each rounded corner.\n\nWe are going to make this design \u201cfluid\u201d in the sense that it grows and shrinks in proportion with the size of the font that the text of the element is displayed with. This is sometimes referred to as an \u201cem driven design\u201d (we\u2019ll see why in a moment).\n\nTo see how this works in practice, here\u2019s the same design with the text \u201czoomed\u201d up in size\n\n\n\nand the same design again, when we zoom the text size down\n\n\n\nBy the way, the hCard image comes from Chris Messina, and you can download it and other microformat icons from the microformats wiki.\n\nNow, with CSS3, this whole task would be considerably easier, because we can add multiple background images to an element, and border images for each edge of an element. Safari, version 1.3 up, actually supports multiple background images, but sadly, it\u2019s not supported in Firefox 1.5, or even Firefox 2.0 (let\u2019s not mention IE7 eh?). So it\u2019s probably too little supported to use now. So instead we\u2019ll use a technique that only involves CSS2, and works in pretty much any browser.\n\nVery often, developers add div or span elements as containers for these background images, and in fact, if you visit Scott Shiller\u2019s site, that\u2019s what he has done there. But if at all possible we shouldn\u2019t be adding any HTML simply for presentational purposes, even if the presentation is done via CSS. What we can do is to use the HTML we have already, as much as is possible, to add the style we want. This can take some creative thinking, but once you get the hang of this approach it becomes a more natural way of using HTML compared with simply adding divs and spans at will as hooks for style. Of course, this technique isn\u2019t always simple, and in fact sometimes simply not possible, requiring us to add just a little HTML to provide the \u201chooks\u201d for CSS.\n\nLet\u2019s go to work\n\nThe first step is to add a background image to the whole vCard element.\n\n\n\nWe make this wide enough (for example 1000 or more pixels) and tall enough that no matter how large the content of the vCard grows, it will never overflow this area. We can\u2019t simply repeat the image, because the top left corner will show when the image repeats.\n\nWe add this as the background image of the vCard element using CSS.\n\nWhile we are at it, let\u2019s give the text a sans-serif font, some color so that it will be visible, and stop the image repeating.\n\n.vcard {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/vcardfill.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tcolor: #666;\n\tfont-family: \"Lucida Grande\", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;\n}\n\nWhich in a browser, will look something like this.\n\n\n\nNext step we need to add the top right hand corner of the hCard. In keeping with our aim of not adding HTML simply for styling purposes, we want to use the existing structure of the page where possible. Here, we\u2019ll use the paragraph of class fn and org, which is the first child element of the vcard element.\n\n
Web Directions Conference Pty Ltd $\"download$
\n\nHere\u2019s our CSS for this element\n\n.fn {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/topright.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tbackground-position: top right;\n\tpadding-top: 2em;\n\tfont-weight: bold;\n\tfont-size: 1.1em;\n}\n\nAgain, we don\u2019t want it to repeat, but this time, we\u2019ve specified a background position for the image. This will make the background image start from the top, but its right edge will be located at the right edge of the element. I also made the font size a little bigger, and the weight bold, to differentiate it from the rest of the text in the hCard.\n\nHere\u2019s the image we are adding as the background to this element.\n\n\n\nSo, putting these two CSS statements together we get\n\n\n\nWe specified a padding-top of 2em to give some space between the content of the fn element and the edge of the fn element. Otherwise the top of the hCard image would be hard against the border. To see this in action, just remove the padding-top: 2em; declaration and preview in a browser.\n\nSo, with just two statements, we are well under way. We\u2019ve not even had to add any HTML so far. Let\u2019s turn to the bottom of the element, and add the bottom border (well, the background image which will serve as that border).\n\nNow, which element are we going to use to add this background image to?\n\nOK, here I have to admit to a little, teensie bit of cheating. If you look at the HTML of the hCard, I\u2019ve grouped the email and telephone properties into a div, with a class of telecommunications. This grouping is not strictly requred for our hCard.\n\n
\n\t
Phone/Fax: Work:\n\t\t61 2 9365 5007
\n\t
Email: info@webdirections.org
\n
\n\nNow, I chose that class name because that is what the vCard specification calls this group of properties. And typically, I do tend to group together related elements using divs when I mark up content. I find it makes the page structure more logical and readable. But strictly speaking, this isn\u2019t necessary, so you may consider it cheating. But my lesson in this would be, if you are going to add markup, try to make it as meaningful as possible.\n\nAs you have probably guessed by now, we are going to add one part of the bottom border image to this element. We\u2019re going to add this image as the background-image.\n\n\n\nAgain, it will be a very wide image, like the top left one, so that no matter how wide the element might get, the background image will still be wide enough. Now, we\u2019ll need to make this image sit in the bottom left of the element we attach it to, so we use a backgound position of left bottom (we put the horizontal position before the vertical). Here\u2019s our CSS statement for this\n\n.telecommunications {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/bottom-left.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tbackground-position: left bottom;\n\tmargin-bottom: 2em;\n}\n\nAnd that will look like this\n\n\n\nNot quite there, but well on the way. Time for the final piece in the puzzle.\n\nOK, I admit, I might have cheated just a little bit more in this step. But like the previous step, all valid, and (hopefully) quite justifiable markup. If we look at the HTML again, you\u2019ll find that our email address is marked up like this\n\n
Email: info@webdirections.org
\n\nTypically, in hCard, the value part of this property isn\u2019t required, and we could get away with\n\ninfo@webdirections.org\n\nThe form I\u2019ve used, with the span of class value is however, perfectly valid hCard markup (hard allows for multiple email addresses of different types, which is where this typically comes in handy). Why have I gone to all this trouble? Well, when it came to styling the hCard, I realized I needed a block element to attach the background image for the bottom right hand corner to. Typically the last block element in the containing element is the ideal choice (and sometimes it\u2019s possible to take an inline element, for example the link here, and use CSS to make it a block element, and attach it to that, but that really doesn\u2019t work with this design).\n\nSo, if we are going to use the paragraph which contains the email link, we need a way to select it exclusively, which means that with CSS2 at least, we need a class or id as a hook for our CSS selector (in CSS3 we could use the last-child selector, which selects the last child element of a specified element, but again, as last child is not widely supported, we won\u2019t rely on it here.)\n\nSo, the least worst thing we could do is take an existing element, and add some reasonably meaningful markup to it. That\u2019s why we gave the paragraph a class of email, and the email address a class of value. Which reminds me a little of a moment in Hamlet\n\n\n\tThe lady doth protest too much, methinks\n\n\nOK, let\u2019s get back to the CSS.\n\nWe add the bottom right corner image, positioning it in the bottom right of the element, and making sure it doesn\u2019t repeat. We also add some padding to the bottom, to balance out the padding we added to the top of the hCard.\n\np.email {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/bottom-right.png);\n\tbackground-position: right bottom;\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tpadding-bottom: 2em;\n}\n\nWhich all goes to make our hCard look like this\n\n\n\nIt just remains for us to clean up a little.\n\nLet\u2019s start from the top. We\u2019ll float the download image to the right like this\n\n.vcard img {\n\tfloat: right;\n\tpadding-right: 1em;\n\tmargin-top: -1em\n}\n\nSee how we didn\u2019t have to add a class to style the image, we used the fact that the image is a descendent of the vcard element, and a descendent selector. In my experience, the very widely supported, powerful descendent selector is one of the most underused aspects of CSS. So if you don\u2019t use it frequently, look into it in more detail.\n\nWe added some space to the right of the image, and pulled it up a bit closer to the top of the hCard, like this\n\n\n\nWe also want to add some whitespace between the edge of the hCard and the text. We would typically add padding to the left of the containing element, (in this case the vcard element) but this would break our bottom left hand corner, like this\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s because the div element we added this bottom left background image to would be moved in by the padding on its containing element.\n\nSo instead, we add left margin to all the paragraphs in the hCard\n\n.vcard p {\n\tmargin-left: 1em;\n}\n\n(there is the descendent selector again \u2013 it is the swiss army knife of CSS)\n\nNow, we\u2019ve not yet made the width of the hCard a function of the size of the text inside it (or \u201cem driven\u201d as we described it earlier). We do this by giving the hCard a width that is specified in em units. Here we\u2019ll set a width of say 28em, which makes the hCard always roughly as wide as 28 characters (strictly speaking 28 times the width of the letter capital M). \n\nSo the statement for our containing vcard element becomes\n\n.vcard {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/vcardfill.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tcolor: #666;\n\tfont-family: \"Lucida Grande\", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;\n\twidth: 28em;\n}\n\nand now our element will look like this\n\n\n\nWe\u2019ve used almost entirely the existing HTML from our original hCard (adding just a little, and trying as much as possible to keep that additional markup meaningful), and just 6 CSS statements.\n\nHoliday Bonus \u2013 a downloadable vCard\n\nDid you notice this part of the HTML\n\n\n $\"download$ \n\nWhat\u2019s with the odd looking url\n\n for Multimap.com. The other options allow you to only create a style for a particular part of a website or URL, but we want this to apply to the whole of Multimap:\n\n\n\nThe \u2018Add Style\u2019 window then pops up, with the @-moz-document query at the top:\n\n@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);\n@-moz-document domain(\"multimap.com\") {\n}\n\nAll you need to do is add the CSS to hide the header, in between the curly brackets.\n\n@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);\n@-moz-document domain(\"multimap.com\") {\n #header {display: none;} \n}\n\n\n\nA click of the preview button shows us that it\u2019s worked! Now the map appears further up the page. The ethics of hiding adverts is a discussion for another time, but let\u2019s face it, when did you last whoop at the sight of a banner?\n\nMake Something Better\n\nIf we\u2019re happy with our modifications, all we need to do is give it a name and save. Whenever you visit Multimap.com, the style will be available. Stylish also allows you to toggle a style on/off via the status bar menu. If you feel you want to share this style with the world, then userstyles.org is the place to do it. It\u2019s a grand repository of customisations that Stylish connects with. Whenever you visit a site, you can see if anyone else has written a style for it, again, via the status bar menu \u201cFind Styles for this Page\u201d. Selecting this with \u201cBBC News\u201d shows that there are plenty of options, ranging from small layout tweaks to redesigns:\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s more, whenever a style is updated, Stylish will notify you, and offer a one-click process to update it. This does only work in Firefox and Flock, so I\u2019ll cover ways of applying site styles to other browsers later.\n\nSpecific Techniques\n\nImportant!\n\nIn the Multimap example there wasn\u2019t a display specified on that element, but it isn\u2019t always going to be that easy. You may have spent most of your CSS life being a good designer and not resorting to adding !important to give your rule priority. There\u2019s no way to avoid this in user styling \u2013 if you\u2019re overriding an existing rule it\u2019s a necessity! Be prepared to be typing !important a lot.\n\nStar Selector\n\nThe Universal Selector is a particularly useful way to start a style. For example, if we want to make Flickr use Helvetica before Arial (as they should\u2019ve done!), we can cover all occurrences with just one rule:\n\n* {font-family: \"Helvetica Neue\", Helvetica, sans-serif !important;}\n\nYou can also use it to select \u2018everything within an element\u2019, by placing it after the element name:\n\n#content * {font-family: \"Helvetica Neue\", Helvetica, sans-serif !important;}\n\nSwapping Images\n\nIf you\u2019re changing something a little more complex, such as Google Reader, then at some point you\u2019ll probably want to change an . The technique for replacing an image involves:\n\n\n\tmaking your replacement image the background of the tag\n\tadding padding top and left to the size of you image to push the \u2018top\u2019 image away\n\tmaking the height and width zero.\n\n\n\n\nThe old image is then pushed out of the way and hidden from view, allowing the replacement in the background to be revealed. Targeting the image may require using an attribute selector:\n\nimg[src=\"/reader/ui/3544433079-tree-view-folder-open.gif\"] {\n\tpadding: 16px 0 0 16px;\n\twidth: 0 !important;\n\theight: 0 !important;\n\tbackground-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAYA\nAAAf8/9hAAAABHNCSVQICAgIfAhkiAAAAAlwSFlzAAALEgAACxIB0t1+/AAAA\nBx0RVh0U29mdHdhcmUAQWRvYmUgRmlyZXdvcmtzIENTM5jWRgMAAAAVdE\nVYdENyZWF0aW9uIFRpbWUAMjkvNi8wOJJ/BVgAAAG3SURBVDiNpZIhb5RBEIaf\n2W+vpIagIITSBIHBgsGjEYQaFLYShcITDL+ABIPnh4BFN0GQNFA4Cnf3fbszL2L3\njiuEVLDJbCazu8+8Mzsmif9ZBvDy7bvXlni0HRe8eXL/zuPzABng62J5kFKaAQS\nQgJAOgHMB9vDZq+d71689Hcyw9LfAZAYdioE10VSJo6OPL/KNvSuHD+7dhU\n0vHEsDUUWJChIlYJIjFx5BuMB2mJY/DnMoOJl/R147oBUR0QAm8LAGCOEh3IO\nULiAl8jSOy/nPetGsbGRKjktEiBCEHMlQj4loCuu4zCXCi4lUHTNDtGqEiACTqAFSI\nOgAUAKv4bkWVy2g6tAbJtGy0TNugM3HADmlurKH27dVZSecxjboXggiAsMItR\nh99wTILdewYRpXVJWtY85k7fPW8e1GpJFJacgesXs6VYYomz9G2yDhwPB7NEB\nBDAMK7WYJlisYVBCpfaJBeB+eocFyVyAgCaoMCTJSTOOCWSyILrAnaXpSexRsx\nGGAZ0AR+XT+5fjzyfwSpnUB/1w64xizVI/t6q3b+58+vJ96mWtLf9haxNoc8M\nv7N3d+AT4XPcFIxghoAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) no-repeat !important;\n}\n\nWoah boy! What was all that gubbins in the background-image? It was a Data URI, and you can create these easily with Hixie\u2019s online tool. It\u2019s simply the image translated into text so that it can be embedded in the CSS, cutting down on the number of http requests. It\u2019s also a necessity with Mozilla browsers, as they don\u2019t allow user CSS to reference images stored locally. Converting images to URI\u2019s avoids this, as well as making a style easily portable \u2013 no images folder to pass around. \n\nDon\u2019t forget all your other CSS techniques at your disposal: inserting your own content with :before and :after pseudo classes, make elements semi-transparent with opacity and round box corners without hacking . You can have fun, and for once, enjoy the freedom of not worrying about IE!\n\nUser styling without Stylish\n\nInstead of using the Stylish extension, you can add rules to the userContent.css file, or use @import in that file to load a separate stylesheet. You can find this is in /Library/Application Support/Camino/chrome/ on OS X, or C/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/Chrome on Windows. This is only way to apply user styles in Camino, but what about other browsers?\n\nOpera & Omniweb: \n\nBoth allow you to specify a custom CSS file as part of the site\u2019s preferences. Opera also allows custom javascript, using the same syntax as Greasemonkey scripts (more on that below)\n\nSafari\n\nThere are a few options here: the PithHelmet and SafariStand haxies both allow custom stylesheets, or alternatively, a Greasemonkey style user script can employed via GreaseKit. The latter is my favoured solution on my Helvetireader theme, as it can allow for more prescriptive domain rules, just like the Mozilla @-moz-document method. User scripts are also the solution supported by the widest range of browsers.\n\nWhat now?\n\nHopefully I\u2019ve given you enough information for you to be able start making your own styles. If you want to go straight in and tackle the \u2018Holy Grail\u2019, then off with you to GMail \u2013 I get more requests to theme that than anything else!\n\nIf you\u2019re a site author and want to encourage this sort of tom foolery, a good way is to provide a unique class or ID name with the body tag:\n\n\n\nThis makes it very easy to write rules that only apply to that particular site. If you wanted to use Safari without any of the haxies mentioned above, this method means you can include rules in a general CSS file (chosen via Preferences > Advanced > Stylesheet) without affecting other sites. \n\nOne final revelation on user styling \u2013 it\u2019s not just for web sites. You can tweak the UI of Firefox itself with the userChrome.css. You\u2019ll need to use the in-built DOM Inspector instead of Firebug to inspect the window chrome, instead of a page. Great if you want to make small tweaks (changing the size of tab text for example) without creating a full blown theme.", "year": "2008", "author": "Jon Hicks", "author_slug": "jonhicks", "published": "2008-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/user-styling/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 288, "title": "Displaying Icons with Fonts and Data- Attributes", "contents": "Traditionally, bitmap formats such as PNG have been the standard way of delivering iconography on websites. They\u2019re quick and easy, and it also ensures they\u2019re as pixel crisp as possible. Bitmaps have two drawbacks, however: multiple HTTP requests, affecting the page\u2019s loading performance; and a lack of scalability, noticeable when the page is zoomed or viewed on a screen with a high pixel density, such as the iPhone 4 and 4S.\n\nThe requests problem is normally solved by using CSS sprites, combining the icon set into one (physically) large image file and showing the relevant portion via background-position. While this works well, it can get a bit fiddly to specify all the positions. In particular, scalability is still an issue. A vector-based format such as SVG sounds ideal to solve this, but browser support is still patchy.\n\n\n\nThe rise and adoption of web fonts have given us another alternative. By their very nature, they\u2019re not only scalable, but resolution-independent too. No need to specify higher resolution graphics for high resolution screens! \n\nThat\u2019s not all though:\n\n\n\tBrowser support: Unlike a lot of new shiny techniques, they have been supported by Internet Explorer since version 4, and, of course, by all modern browsers. We do need several different formats, however!\n\tDesign on the fly: The font contains the basic graphic, which can then be coloured easily with CSS \u2013 changing colours for themes or :hover and :focus styles is done with one line of CSS, rather than requiring a new graphic. You can also use CSS3 properties such as text-shadow to add further effects. Using -webkit-background-clip: text;, it\u2019s possible to use gradient and inset shadow effects, although this creates a bitmap mask which spoils the scalability.\n\tSmall file size: specially designed icon fonts, such as Drew Wilson\u2019s Pictos font, can be as little as 12Kb for the .woff font. This is because they contain fewer characters than a fully fledged font. You can see Pictos being used in the wild on sites like Garrett Murray\u2019s Maniacal Rage.\n\n\nAs with all formats though, it\u2019s not without its disadvantages: \n\n\n\tIcons can only be rendered in monochrome or with a gradient fill in browsers that are capable of rendering CSS3 gradients. Specific parts of the icon can\u2019t be a different colour.\n\tIt\u2019s only appropriate when there is an accompanying text to provide meaning. This can be alleviated by wrapping the text label in a tag (I like to use rather than , due to the fact that it\u2019s smaller and isn\u2019 t being used elsewhere) and then hiding it from view with text-indent:-999em.\n\tCreating an icon font can be a complex and time-consuming process. While font editors can carry out hinting automatically, the best results are achieved manually.\n\tUnless you\u2019re adept at creating your own fonts, you\u2019re restricted to what is available in the font. However, fonts like Pictos will cover the most common needs, and icons are most effective when they\u2019re using familiar conventions.\n\n\nThe main complaint about using fonts for icons is that it can mean adding a meaningless character to our markup. The good news is that we can overcome this by using one of two methods \u2013 CSS generated content or the data-icon attribute \u2013 in combination with the :before and :after pseudo-selectors, to keep our markup minimal and meaningful. \n\nOur simple markup looks like this:\n\nView Basket\n\nNote the multiple class attributes. Next, we\u2019ll import the Pictos font using the @font-face web fonts property in CSS:\n\n@font-face {\n font-family: 'Pictos';\n src: url('pictos-web.eot');\n src: local('\u263a'), \n url('pictos-web.woff') format('woff'), \n url('pictos-web.ttf') format('truetype'),\n url('pictos-web.svg#webfontIyfZbseF') format('svg');\n}\n\nThis rather complicated looking set of rules is (at the time of writing) the most bulletproof way of ensuring as many browsers as possible load the font we want. We\u2019ll now use the content property applied to the :before pseudo-class selector to generate our icon. Once again, we\u2019ll use those multiple class attribute values to set common icon styles, then specific styles for .basket. This helps us avoid repeating styles:\n\n.icon {\n font-family: 'Pictos';\n font-size: 22px:\n}\n\n.basket:before {\n content: \"$\";\n}\n\nWhat does the :before pseudo-class do? It generates the dollar character in a browser, even when it\u2019s not present in the markup. Using the generated content approach means our markup stays simple, but we\u2019ll need a new line of CSS, defining what letter to apply to each class attribute for every icon we add.\n\ndata-icon is a new alternative approach that uses the HTML5 data- attribute in combination with CSS attribute selectors. This new attribute lets us add our own metadata to elements, as long as its prefixed by data- and doesn\u2019t contain any uppercase letters. In this case, we want to use it to provide the letter value for the icon. Look closely at this markup and you\u2019ll see the data-icon attribute.\n\nView Basket\n\n\n\nWe could add others, in fact as many as we like.\n\nFavourites\nHistory\nLocation\n\n\n\nThen, we need just one CSS attribute selector to style all our icons in one go:\n\n.icon:before {\n content: attr(data-icon);\n /* Insert your fancy colours here /\n }\n\nBy placing our custom attribute data-icon in the selector in this way, we can enable CSS to read the value of that attribute and display it before the element (in this case, the anchor tag). It saves writing a lot of CSS rules. I can imagine that some may not like the extra attribute, but it does keep it out of the actual content \u2013 generated or not.\n\n\n\n\n\nThis could be used for all manner of tasks, including a media player and large simple illustrations. See the demo for live examples. Go ahead and zoom the page, and the icons will be crisp, with the exception of the examples that use -webkit-background-clip: text as mentioned earlier.\n\nFinally, it\u2019s worth pointing out that with both generated content and the data-icon method, the letter will be announced to people using screen readers. For example, with the shopping basket icon above, the reader will say \u201cdollar sign view basket\u201d. As accessibility issues go, it\u2019s not exactly the worst, but could be confusing. You would need to decide whether this method is appropriate for the audience. Despite the disadvantages, icon fonts have huge potential.", "year": "2011", "author": "Jon Hicks", "author_slug": "jonhicks", "published": "2011-12-12T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/displaying-icons-with-fonts-and-data-attributes/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 324, "title": "Debugging CSS with the DOM Inspector", "contents": "An Inspector Calls\n\nThe larger your site and your CSS becomes, the more likely that you will run into bizarre, inexplicable problems. Why does that heading have all that extra padding? Why is my text the wrong colour? Why does my navigation have a large moose dressed as Noel Coward on top of all the links? \n\nPerhaps you work in a collaborative environment, where developers and other designers are adding code? In which case, the likelihood of CSS strangeness is higher.\n\nYou need to debug. You need Firefox\u2019s wise-guy know-it-all, the DOM Inspector. \n\nThe DOM Inspector knows where everything is in your layout, and more importantly, what causes it to look the way it does. So without further ado, load up any css based site in your copy of Firefox (or Flock for that matter), and launch the DOM Inspector from the Tools menu.\n\nThe inspector uses two main panels \u2013 the left to show the DOM tree of the page, and the right to show you detail:\n\n\n\nThe Inspector will look at whatever site is in the front-most window or tab, but you can also use it without another window. Type in a URL at the top (A), press \u2018Inspect\u2019 (B) and a third panel appears at the bottom, with the browser view. I find this layout handier than looking at a window behind the DOM Inspector.\n\nStep 1 \u2013 find your node!\n\nEach element on your page \u2013 be it a HTML tag or a piece of text, is called a \u2018node\u2019 of the DOM tree. These nodes are all listed in the left hand panel, with any ID or CLASS attribute values next to them. When you first look at a page, you won\u2019t see all those yet. Nested HTML elements (such as a link inside a paragraph) have a reveal triangle next to their name, clicking this takes you one level further down. \n\nThis can be fine for finding the node you want to look at, but there are easier ways. Say you have a complex rounded box technique that involves 6 nested DIVs? You\u2019d soon get tired of clicking all those triangles to find the element you want to inspect. Click the top left icon \u00a9 \u2013 \u201cFind a node to inspect by clicking on it\u201d and then select the area you want to inspect. Boom! All that drilling down the DOM tree has been done for you! Huzzah!\n\nIf you\u2019re looking for an element that you know has an ID (such as
), or a specific HTML tag or attribute, click the binoculars icon (D) for \u201cFinds a node to inspect by ID, tag or attribute\u201d (You can also use Ctrl-F or Apple-F to do this if the DOM Inspector is the frontmost window) :\n\n\n\nType in the name and Bam! You\u2019re there! Pressing F3 will take you to any other instances. Notice also, that when you click on a node in the inspector, it highlights where it is in the browser view with a flashing red border!\n\nNow that we\u2019ve found the troublesome node on the page, we can find out what\u2019s up with it\u2026\n\nStep 2 \u2013 Debug that node!\n\nOnce the node is selected, we move over to the right hand panel. Choose \u2018CSS Style Rules\u2019 from the document menu (E), and all the CSS rules that apply to that node are revealed, in the order that they load:\n\n\n\nYou\u2019ll notice that right at the top, there is a CSS file you might not recognise, with a file path beginning with \u201cresource://\u201d. This is the browsers default CSS, that creates the basic rendering. You can mostly ignore this, especially if use the star selector method of resetting default browser styles. \n\nYour style sheets come next. See how helpful it is? It even tells you the line number where to find the related CSS rules! If you use CSS shorthand, you\u2019ll notice that the values are split up (e.g margin-left, margin-right etc.). \n\nNow that you can see all the style rules affecting that node, the rest is up to you! Happy debugging!", "year": "2005", "author": "Jon Hicks", "author_slug": "jonhicks", "published": "2005-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/debugging-css-with-the-dom-inspector/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 81, "title": "Science!", "contents": "Sometimes we want to capture people\u2019s attention at a glance to communicate something fast. At other times we want to have the interface fade away into the background, letting people paint pictures in their minds with our words (if you\u2019ll forgive a little flowery festive flourish).\n\nI tend to distinguish between these two broad objectives as designing for impact on the one hand, and designing for immersion on the other. What defines them is interruption. Impact needs an attention-grabbing interruption. Immersion requires us to remove interruption from the interface. Careful design deliberately interrupts but doesn\u2019t accidentally disrupt. If that seems to make sense to you, then you\u2019ll find the following snippets of science as useful as I did.\n\nSaccades and fixations\n\nAs you\u2019re reading this your eyes are skipping along the lines in tiny jumps. During each jump everything is blurred. Each jump ends in a small pause so your brain can take a snapshot of the letters. It arranges them into words, and then parses out the meaning \u2014 fast \u2014 in around a quarter of a second.\n\nThe jumps are called saccades. The pauses are called fixations. Sometimes we take regressive saccades, skipping back to reread. There\u2019s a simple example in the excellent little book, Detail in Typography, by Jost Hochuli.\n\n\n\nIf you want to explore the science of reading in much more depth, I recommend the excellent paper, \u201cThe Science of Word Recognition\u201d, by Dr Kevin Larson of Microsoft.\n\nTo design for legibility and readability is to design for saccades and fixations. It\u2019s the craft of making it easy for people\u2019s brains to extract meaning, using techniques like good contrast, font size, spacing and structure, and only interrupting the reading experience deliberately.\n\nScan paths\n\nAt some point when visiting 24 ways you probably scanned the screen to get orientated. The journey your eyes took is known as a scan path. Scan paths are made up of saccades and fixations. Right now you\u2019re following a scan path as you read, along one line, and down to the next. This is a map of the scan paths found by Olivier Le Meur from observing people looking at Rembrandt\u2019s Le\u00e7on d\u2019anatomie:\n\n\n\nFor websites, the scan path is a little different. This is an aggregate scan path of Google from LC Technologies:\n\n\n\nThe average shape of a website scan path becomes clearer in this average scan path taken by forty-six people during research by the Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools:\n\n\n\nJust like when we read text arranged left to right in a vertical column, scan paths follow a roughly Z-shaped pattern from the top left to bottom right. Sometimes we skip back to reread a word or sentence, or glance again at a specific element, but the Z-shaped scan path persists.\n\nDesigning for scan paths is to organise content to help people move through an interface to get orientated, and to read.\n\nThe elements that are important enough to need impact must interrupt the scan path and clearly call attention to themselves. However, they don\u2019t always need to clip people round the ear from multiple directions at once to get attention. It helps to list elements by importance. That gives us an interruption hierarchy to work with. Elements can then interrupt the design with degrees of contrast to the rest of the content using either positioning, treatment, or both. Ta-da! Impact achieved, but gently. No clips round the ear required.\n\nSwinging mood\n\nHuman beings are resilient. Among the immersion and occasional interruptions, we even like a little disruption, especially if it\u2019s absurd and funny. The Ling\u2019s Cars website proves it. In fact, we\u2019re so resilient that we can work around all kinds of mayhem to get a seemingly simple task done.\n\nIn one study, \u201cThe Aesthetics of Reading\u201d (PDF, 480Kb), Dr Kevin Larson of Microsoft and Dr Rosalind Picard of MIT explored the effect of good typography on mood. Two versions of the New Yorker ePeriodical were created. One was typeset well and the other poorly.\n\n\n\nThey engaged twenty volunteers \u2014 half male, half female \u2014 and showed the good version to half of the participants. The other half saw the poor version.\n\nThe good doctors found that, \u201cthere are important differences between good and poor typography that appear to have little effect on common performance measures such as reading speed and comprehension.\u201d In short, good typography didn\u2019t help people read faster or comprehend better.\n\nOh. On the face of it that seems to invalidate what we designers do. Hold your horses, though! They also found that \u201cthe participants who received the good typography performed better on relative subjective duration and on certain cognitive tasks\u201d, and that \u201cgood typography induces a good mood.\u201d\n\nThis means that even though there were no actual differences in reading speed and comprehension, the people who read the version with good typography thought that it took less time to read, and were induced into a good mood by doing so. Not only that, but by being in a good mood, people were more capable of completing creative tasks faster.\n\nThat was a revelation to me. It means that the study showed there is a positive, measurable, emotional and perceptual benefit to good typography and design. To paraphrase: time and tasks fly when you\u2019re having fun!\n\n\n\nSource: Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands: Cheering man after the first goal, Netherlands vs. Belgium, Amsterdam, 1931.\n\nSo, among all my talk of saccades, fixations, scan paths and typesetting, there is science, and the science helps us qualify our design decisions when we need to, and do our jobs better. The science helps us understand how people will interact with our work, and what the actual benefits are for them, and the products or organisations we serve. Good design equals a subjectively quicker experience, a good mood, objectively faster completion of tasks, and happiness for everyone. Thank you, science!", "year": "2012", "author": "Jon Tan", "author_slug": "jontan", "published": "2012-12-24T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/science/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 108, "title": "A Festive Type Folly", "contents": "\u2018Tis the season to be jolly, so the carol singers tell us. At 24 ways, we\u2019re keeping alive another British tradition that includes the odd faux-Greco-Roman building dotted around the British countryside, Tower Bridge built in 1894, and your Dad\u2019s Christmas jumper with the dancing reindeer motif. \u2018Tis the season of the folly!\n\n \n 24 Ways to impress your friends\n \n\nThe example is not an image, just text. You may wish to see a screenshot in Safari to compare with your own operating system and browser rendering.\n\nLike all follies this is an embellishment\u200a\u2014\u200aa bit of web typography fun. It\u2019s similar to the masthead text at my place, but it\u2019s also a hyperlink. Unlike the architectural follies of the past, no child labour was used to fund or build it, just some HTML flavoured with CSS, and a heavy dose of Times New Roman. Why Times New Roman, you ask? Well, after a few wasted hours experimenting with heaps of typefaces, seeking an elusive consistency of positioning and rendering across platforms, it proved to be the most consistent. Who\u2019d\u2018a thought? To make things more interesting, I wanted to use a traditional scale and make the whole thing elastic by using relative lengths that would react to a person\u2019s font size. So, to the meat of this festive frippery:\n\nThere are three things we rely on to create this indulgence:\n\n\n\tDescendant selectors\n\tAbsolute positioning\n\tInheritance\n\n\nHTML & Descendant Selectors\n\nThe markup for the folly might seem complex at first glance. To semantics pedants and purists it may seem outrageous. If that\u2019s you, read on at your peril! Here it is with lots of whitespace:\n\n
\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a04 \n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0w\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0a\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0y\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0s\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0to \n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0i\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0m\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0pre\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0s\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0s \n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0your \n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0friends\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\t\n\u00a0\u00a0\n
\n
\n\nWhy so much markup? Well, we want to individually style many of the glyphs. By nesting the elements, we can pick out the bits we need as descendant selectors.\n\nTo retain a smidgen of semantics, the text is wrapped in
and elements. The two phrases, \u201c24 ways\u201d and \u201cto impress your friends\u201d are wrapped in and tags, respectively. Within those loving arms, their descendant s cascade invisibly, making a right mess of our source, but ready to be picked out in our CSS rules.\n\nSo, to select the \u201c2\u201d from the example we can simply write, #type h1 em{ }. Of course, that selects everything within the tags, but as we drill down the document tree, selecting other glyphs, any property / value styles can be reset or changed as required.\n\nPixels Versus Ems\n\nBefore we get stuck into the CSS, I should say that the goal here is to have everything expressed in relative \u201cem\u201d lengths. However, when I\u2019m starting out, I use pixels for all values, and only convert them to ems after I\u2019ve finished. It saves re-calculating the em length for every change I make as the folly evolves, but still makes the final result elastic, without relying on browser zoom.\n\nTo skip ahead, see the complete CSS.\n\nAbsolutely Positioned Glyphs\n\nIf a parent element has position: relative, or position: absolute applied to it, all children of that parent can be positioned absolutely relative to it. (See Dave Shea\u2019s excellent introduction to this.) That\u2019s exactly how the folly is achieved. As the parent, #type also has a font-size of 16px set, a width and height, and some basic style with a background and border:\n\n#type{\n\tfont-size: 16px;\n\ttext-align: left;\n\tbackground: #e8e9de;\n\tborder: 0.375em solid #fff;\n\twidth: 22.5em;\n\theight: 13.125em;\n\tposition: relative;\n}\n\nThe h1 is also given a default style with a font-size of 132px in ems relative to the parent font-size of 16px:\n\n#type h1{\n\tfont-family: \"Times New Roman\", serif;\n\tfont-size: 8.25em; / 132px /\n\tline-height: 1em;\n\tfont-weight: 400;\n\tmargin: 0;\n\tpadding: 0;\n}\n\nTo get the em value, we divide the required size in pixels by the actual parent font-size in pixels\n\n132 \u00f7 16 = 8.25\n\nWe also give the descendants of the h1 some default properties. The line height, style and weight are normalised, they are positioned absolutely relative to #type, and a border and padding is applied:\n\n#type h1 em,\n#type h1 strong,\n#type h1 span{\n\tline-height: 1em;\n\tfont-style: normal;\n\tfont-weight: 400;\n\tposition: absolute;\n\tpadding: 0.1em;\n\tborder: 1px solid transparent;\n}\n\nThe padding ensures that some browsers don\u2019t forget about parts of a glyph that are drawn outside of their invisible container. When this happens, IE will trim the glyph, cutting off parts of descenders, for example. The border is there to make sure the glyphs have layout. Without this, positioning can be problematic. IE6 will not respect the transparent border colour\u200a\u2014\u200ait uses the actual text colour\u200a\u2014\u200abut in all other respects renders the example. You can hack around it, but it seemed unnecessary for this example.\n\nOnce these defaults are established, the rest is trial and error. As a quick example, the numeral \u201c2\u201d is first to be positioned:\n\n#type h1 a em{\n\tfont-size: 0.727em; / (2) 96px /\n\tleft: 0.667em;\n\ttop: 0;\n}\n\nEvery element of the folly is positioned in exactly the same way as you can see in the complete CSS. When converting pixels to ems, the font-size is set first. Then, because we know what that is, we calculate the equivalent x- and y-position accordingly.\n\nInheritance\n\nCSS inheritance gave me a headache a long time ago when I first encountered it. After the penny dropped I came to experience something disturbingly close to affection for this characteristic. What it basically means is that children inherit the characteristics of their parents. For example:\n\n\n\tWe gave #type a font-size of 16px.\n\tFor #type h1 we changed it by setting font-size: 8.25em;. Than means that #type h1 now has a computed font-size of 8.25 \u00d7 16px = 132px.\n\tNow, all children of #type h1 in the document tree will inherit a font-size of 132px unless we explicitly change it as we did for #type h1 a em.\n\n\nThe \u201c2\u201d in the example\u200a\u2014\u200aselected with #type h1 a em\u200a\u2014\u200ais set at 96px with left and top positioning calculated relatively to that. So, the left position of 0.667em is 0.667 \u00d7 96 = 64px, approximately (three decimal points in em lengths don\u2019t always give exact pixel equivalents).\n\nOne way to look at inheritance is as a cascade of dependancy: In our example, the computed font size of any given element depends on that of the parent, and the absolute x- and y-position depends on the computed font size of the element itself.\n\nLink Colours\n\nThe same descendant selectors we use to set and position the type are also used to apply the colour by combining them with pseudo-selectors like :focus and :hover. Because the descendant selectors are available to us, we can pretty much pick out any glyph we like. First, we need to disable the underline:\n\n#type h1 a:link,\n#type h1 a:visited{\n\ttext-decoration: none;\n}\n\nIn our example, the \u201c24\u201d has a unique default state (colour):\n\n#type h1 a:link em,\n#type h1 a:visited em{\n\tcolor: #624;\n}\n\nThe rest of the \u201cWays\u201d text has a different colour, which it shares with the large \u201cs\u201d in \u201cimpress\u201d:\n\n#type h1 a:link em span span,\n#type h1 a:visited em span span,\n#type h1 a:link strong span span span span,\n#type h1 a:visited strong span span span span{\n\tcolor: #b32720;\n}\n\n\u201c24\u201d changes on :focus, :hover and :active. Critically though, the whole of the \u201c24 Ways\u201d text, and the large \u201cs\u201d in \u201cimpress\u201d all have the same style in this instance:\n\n#type h1 a:focus em,\n#type h1 a:hover em,\n#type h1 a:active em,\n#type h1 a:focus em span span,\n#type h1 a:hover em span span,\n#type h1 a:active em span span,\n#type h1 a:focus strong span span span span,\n#type h1 a:hover strong span span span span,\n#type h1 a:active strong span span span span{\n\tcolor: #804;\n}\n\nIf a descendant selector has a :link and :visited state set as a pseudo element, it needs to also have the corresponding :focus, :hover and :active states set.\n\nA Final Note About Web Typography\n\nFrom grids to basic leading to web fonts, and even absolute positioning, there\u2019s a wealth of things we can do to treat type on the Web with love and respect. However, experiments like this can highlight the vagaries of rasterisation and rendering that limit our ability to achieve truly subtle and refined results. At the operating system level, the differences in type rendering are extreme, and even between sequential iterations in Windows\u200a\u2014\u200afrom Standard to ClearType\u200a\u2014\u200athey can be daunting. Add to that huge variations in screen quality, and even the paper we print our type onto has many potential variations. Compare our example in Safari 3.2.1 / OS X 10.5.5 (left) and IE7 / Win XP (right). Both rendered on a 23\u201d Apple Cinema HD (LCD):\n\n\n\nBrowser developers continue to make great strides. However, those of us who set type on the Web need more consistency and quality if we want to avoid technologies like Flash and evolve web typography. Although web typography is inevitably\u200a\u2014\u200aand mistakenly\u200a\u2014\u200acompared unfavourably to print, it has the potential to achieve the same refinement in a different way. Perhaps one day, the glyphs of our favourite faces, so carefully crafted, kerned and hinted for the screen, will be rendered with the same precision with which they were drawn by type designers and styled by web designers. That would be my wish for the new year. Happy holidays!", "year": "2008", "author": "Jon Tan", "author_slug": "jontan", "published": "2008-12-17T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/a-festive-type-folly/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 9, "title": "How to Write a Book", "contents": "Were you recently inspired to write a book after reading Owen Gregory\u2019s compendium of author insights? Maybe so inspired to strike out on your own and self-publish? \n\nBased on personal experience, writing a book is hard. It requires a great deal of research, experience, and patience. To be able to consolidate your thoughts and what you\u2019ve learned into a sensible and readable tome is an admirable feat. To decide to self-publish and take on yourself all of the design, printing, distribution, and so much more is tantamount to insanity. Again, based on personal experience.\n\nSo, why might you want to self-publish?\n\nIf you\u2019ve spent many a late night doing cross-browser testing just to know that your site works flawlessly in twenty-four different browsers \u2014 including Mosaic, of course \u2014 then maybe you\u2019ll understand the fun that comes from doing it all.\n\nWorking with a publisher, you\u2019re left to focus on one core thing: writing. That\u2019s a good thing. A good publisher has the right resources to help you get your idea polished and the distribution network to get your book on store shelves around the world. It\u2019s a very proud moment to be able to walk into a book store and see your book sitting there on the shelf.\n\nSelf-publishing can also be a wonderful process as you get to own it from beginning to end. Every decision is yours and if you\u2019re a control freak like me, this can be a very rewarding experience. \n\nWhile there are many aspects to self-publishing, I\u2019m going to speak to just one of them: creating an ebook.\n\nFormats \n\nIn creating an ebook, you first need to decide what formats you wish to support. There are three main formats, each with their own pros and cons:\n\n\n\tPDF\n\tEPUB\n\tMOBI\n\n\nPDFs are supported on almost every device (Windows, Mac, Kindle, iPad, Android, etc.) and can even be a stepping stone to creating a print version of your book. PDFs allow for full typographic and design control, but at the cost of needing to fit things into a predefined page layout. Is it US Letter or A4? Or is it a format that isn\u2019t easily printed by readers on their home printers?\n\nEPUB is a more fluid format that is supported by the Apple iPad, iPhone, and now on the desktop with OS X Mavericks. It\u2019s also supported by Google Play for Android devices. While EPUB is supported on other devices, you\u2019re likely to choose EPUB because you\u2019re targeting your book at the Apple audience. The EPUB format is HTML-based with support for some CSS and even video and interactive elements. You can create very rich and exciting experiences using the EPUB format that just aren\u2019t possible with PDF or MOBI. However, if you decide to support multiple file formats, you\u2019ll likely find \u2014 as I did \u2014 that a consistent experience between all formats is easier to build and maintain, and therefore the extra benefits of interactivity go out the window.\n\nMOBI is a format originally developed for the Mobipocket Reader but more popularly supported by the Amazon Kindle. If you\u2019re looking to attract the Kindle audience or publish to Amazon via the Kindle Direct Publishing platform then the HTML-based MOBI format is the format you\u2019ll want to go with. \n\nDistribution will probably factor in heavily with what format you decide to go with. Many people I know who self-publish go with PDF only due to its ubiquity. \n\nIf you want to garner a wider audience by distributing via Amazon or the iBookstore then you\u2019ll need to think about supporting all three formats (as I did).\n\nWhat tools should I use?\n\nI spent a lot of time figuring out the right toolset and finally got something that suits me just right.\n\nIn the past, when working with a publisher, I was given a Microsoft Word template that was passed back and forth between myself, the editor, and tech reviewer. This template has been the bane of any book writer that I\u2019ve spoken to. Not every publisher is like that, though. Some publishers, like O\u2019Reilly, use DocBook, an XML-based format that can be converted into PDF, EPUB, and MOBI.\n\nPublishers already have a style guide and whether it\u2019s DocBook or a Word template, they have the tools already in place to easily convert your work into multiple formats.\n\nSelf-publishing means that you\u2019ll likely have to do a lot of tweaking to get things looking and working the way you want them to. I tried DocBook and the open source export tools didn\u2019t create HTML to my liking. Fixing even the most mundane things required fiddling with XSL transformations for hours on end. Not the way I like to spend my time. I can only imagine the hoops I would\u2019ve had to go through to get a PDF to look half-decent.\n\nTools like Pages or Scrivener offer up the ability to publish to multiple formats, too, but none offered me the control over the output that I truly desired. Have a mentioned that I\u2019m a control freak?\n\nI ended up writing my book using a technology that I already knew quite well: HTML. By writing in HTML, I already had something that I could post on my website, use for the EPUB and use for the MOBI format. All without having to change a thing. (That\u2019s right: the same HTML that is used on SMACSS.com is used in the EPUB and is used in the MOBI.)\n\nWhat about PDF? I could open up the HTML in a web browser, choose Save as PDF and be done with it but let\u2019s face it: the filename and date attached to every single page doesn\u2019t exactly scream professional. Web browsers actually do a surprisingly poor job with supporting the CSS paged media spec.\n\nI had resorted to copying and pasting the content into Pages and saving as PDF from there. It wasn\u2019t elegant but it worked. However, any changes to my HTML source required redoing those changes in Pages, as well. \n\nThen I met my Prince Charming: Prince XML. It\u2019s pricey but it works incredibly well. It takes HTML and CSS (that very format I\u2019ve been using for all of my other file formats) and will generate a PDF via a command line interface. Prince supports CSS paged media including headers, footers, page counts, and alternating page styles. \n\nFrom one format, HTML, I can now easily publish to PDF, MOBI, and EPUB, and even my website. I use the PDF version to send to the printer along with cover art to be bound and ready to ship around the world. It\u2019s amazing how versatile HTML (and CSS) is.\n\nTo learn more about writing books with HTML and CSS, I recommend reading Building Books with CSS3 over at A List Apart.\n\nCreating an EPUB\n\nLet\u2019s take a step back. Prince gets us from HTML to PDF but how do we make an EPUB out of the HTML? \n\nAn EPUB file is essentially a ZIP file with a renamed extension. There are some core files that you need to start with:\n\nRoot\n META-INF\n container.xml\n mimetype\n content.opf\n toc.ncx\n\nAfter that, you can start adding your content to the project. Be sure to update the toc.ncx (Table of Contents) and content.opf (the ebook manifest) with any changes you make to your project.\n\nYou can learn more about the file formats with the EPUB Format Construction Guide.\n\nOnce all your files are in place, you\u2019ll need to create the EPUB file by running two commands (on OS X, at least):\n\nzip -X0 your-ebook.epub mimetype\nzip -Xur9D your-ebook.epub \n\nThe mimetype needs to be the first file inside the ZIP file and therefore gets added first. Then, the rest of the files are added. \n\nI\u2019ve added a function to my .bash_profile to make this even easier:\n\nfunction epub()\n{\n zip -q0X $@ mimetype; zip -qXr9D $@ \n}\n\nThen, within the folder from which I want to create an ebook, I just run epub your-ebook.epub from the Terminal command line and the EPUB file should be ready to go.\n\nCreating the MOBI\n\nWe have our EPUB and we have our PDF. The last step is the MOBI file. For this, I call upon Calibre. Calibre can be used as a reader and as a library but I use it exclusively to export my EPUB files to MOBI. \n\nCalibre includes a command line utility to convert from EPUB to MOBI. (To install the command line tools, go to Preferences > Advanced > Miscellaneous and click Install Command Line Tools.)\n\nebook-convert your-ebook.epub your-ebook.mobi \n\nSpread the joy\n\nNow that you have all of your different file formats, you need to get them into the hands of people who want to (ho-ho-hopefully) buy your book!\n\nThere are a number of marketplaces such as Amazon\u2019s Kindle Direct Publishing, iBookstore, Google Play, and NOOK Press.\n\nSome publishers, like PragProg and O\u2019Reilly will also add self-published books to their roster if they feel it\u2019s a good fit for their audience.\n\nWith any distribution, you\u2019ll have to give up a percentage of your sales\u2014from 30% to 70% of each sale, so consider your options wisely.\n\nOf course, you can always open your own online store and reap as much of the revenue as possible, assuming you can get the traffic to your site. Handling your own distribution allows you to create a deeper one-on-one connection with your customers, something that is impossible with other distribution channels since you don\u2019t get customer information through other services\u2014even though you are giving them a huge chunk of your sales!\n\nGo forth and prosper\n\nThere\u2019s a lot of thought and time that goes into writing a book and just as much thought and time can go into creating, publishing, and marketing your book once you\u2019re done. \n\nIn the end, self-publishing can be a very rewarding process and well worth the time that goes into it.", "year": "2013", "author": "Jonathan Snook", "author_slug": "jonathansnook", "published": "2013-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2013/how-to-write-a-book/", "topic": "content"} {"rowid": 64, "title": "Being Responsive to the Small Things", "contents": "It\u2019s that time of the year again to trim the tree with decorations. Or maybe a DOM tree?\nAny web page is made of HTML elements that lay themselves out in a tree structure. We start at the top and then have multiple branches with branches that branch out from there. \n\nTo decorate our tree, we use CSS to specify which branches should receive the tinsel we wish to adorn upon it. It\u2019s all so lovely.\nIn years past, this was rather straightforward. But these days, our trees need to be versatile. They need to be responsive!\nResponsive web design is pretty wonderful, isn\u2019t it? Based on our viewport, we can decide how elements on the page should change their appearance to accommodate various constraints using media queries.\nClearleft have a delightfully clean and responsive site\nAlas, it\u2019s not all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. \nWith complex layouts, we may have design chunks \u2014 let\u2019s call them components \u2014 that appear in different contexts. Each context may end up providing its own constraints on the design, both in its default state and in its possibly various responsive states.\n\nMedia queries, however, limit us to the context of the entire viewport, not individual containers on the page. For every container our component lives in, we need to specify how to rearrange things in that context. The more complex the system, the more contexts we need to write code for.\n@media (min-width: 800px) {\n .features > .component { }\n .sidebar > .component {}\n .grid > .component {}\n}\nEach new component and each new breakpoint just makes the entire system that much more difficult to maintain. \n@media (min-width: 600px) {\n .features > .component { }\n .grid > .component {}\n}\n\n@media (min-width: 800px) {\n .features > .component { }\n .sidebar > .component {}\n .grid > .component {}\n}\n\n@media (min-width: 1024px) {\n .features > .component { }\n}\nEnter container queries\nContainer queries, also known as element queries, allow you to specify conditional CSS based on the width (or maybe height) of the container that an element lives in. In doing so, you no longer have to consider the entire page and the interplay of all the elements within. \nWith container queries, you\u2019ll be able to consider the breakpoints of just the component you\u2019re designing. As a result, you end up specifying less code and the components you develop have fewer dependencies on the things around them. (I guess that makes your components more independent.)\nAwesome, right?\nThere\u2019s only one catch.\nBrowsers can\u2019t do container queries. There\u2019s not even an official specification for them yet. The Responsive Issues (n\u00e9e Images) Community Group is looking into solving how such a thing would actually work. \nSee, container queries are tricky from an implementation perspective. The contents of a container can affect the size of the container. Because of this, you end up with troublesome circular references. \nFor example, if the width of the container is under 500px then the width of the child element should be 600px, and if the width of the container is over 500px then the width of the child element should be 400px. \nCan you see the dilemma? When the container is under 500px, the child element resizes to 600px and suddenly the container is 600px. If the container is 600px, then the child element is 400px! And so on, forever. This is bad.\nI guess we should all just go home and sulk about how we just got a pile of socks when we really wanted the Millennium Falcon. \nOur saviour this Christmas: JavaScript\nThe three wise men \u2014 Tim Berners-Lee, H\u00e5kon Wium Lie, and Brendan Eich \u2014 brought us the gifts of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. \nTo date, there are a handful of open source solutions to fill the gap until a browser implementation sees the light of day.\n\nElementary by Scott Jehl\nElementQuery by Tyson Matanich\nEQ.js by Sam Richards\nCSS Element Queries from Marcj\n\nUsing any of these can sometimes feel like your toy broke within ten minutes of unwrapping it.\nEach take their own approach on how to specify the query conditions. For example, Elementary, the smallest of the group, only supports min-width declarations made in a :before selector.\n.mod-foo:before {\n content: \u201c300 410 500\u201d;\n}\nThe script loops through all the elements that you specify, reading the content property and then setting an attribute value on the HTML element, allowing you to use CSS to style that condition. \n.mod-foo[data-minwidth~=\"300\"] {\n background: blue;\n}\nTo get the script to run, you\u2019ll need to set up event handlers for when the page loads and for when it resizes. \nwindow.addEventListener( \"load\", window.elementary, false );\nwindow.addEventListener( \"resize\", window.elementary, false );\nThis works okay for static sites but breaks down on pages where elements can expand or contract, or where new content is dynamically inserted.\nIn the case of EQ.js, the implementation requires the creation of the breakpoints in the HTML. That means that you have implementation details in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. (Although, with the JavaScript, once it\u2019s in the build system, it shouldn\u2019t ever be much of a concern unless you\u2019re tracking down a bug.)\nAnother problem you may run into is the use of content delivery networks (CDNs) or cross-origin security issues. The ElementQuery and CSS Element Queries libraries need to be able to read the CSS file. If you are unable to set up proper cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) headers, these libraries won\u2019t help.\nAt Shopify, for example, we had all of these problems. The admin that store owners use is very dynamic and the CSS and JavaScript were being loaded from a CDN that prevented the JavaScript from reading the CSS. \nTo go responsive, the team built their own solution \u2014 one similar to the other scripts above, in that it loops through elements and adds or removes classes (instead of data attributes) based on minimum or maximum width.\nThe caveat to this particular approach is that the declaration of breakpoints had to be done in JavaScript. \n elements = [\n { \u2018module\u2019: \u201c.carousel\u201d, \u201cclassName\u201d:\u2019alpha\u2019, minWidth: 768, maxWidth: 1024 },\n { \u2018module\u2019: \u201c.button\u201d, \u201cclassName\u201d:\u2019beta\u2019, minWidth: 768, maxWidth: 1024 } ,\n { \u2018module\u2019: \u201c.grid\u201d, \u201cclassName\u201d:\u2019cappa\u2019, minWidth: 768, maxWidth: 1024 }\n ]\nWith that done, the script then had to be set to run during various events such as inserting new content via Ajax calls. This sometimes reveals itself in flashes of unstyled breakpoints (FOUB). An unfortunate side effect but one largely imperceptible.\nUsing this approach, however, allowed the Shopify team to make the admin responsive really quickly. Each member of the team was able to tackle the responsive story for a particular component without much concern for how all the other components would react. \n\nEach element responds to its own breakpoint that would amount to dozens of breakpoints using traditional breakpoints. This approach allows for a truly fluid and adaptive interface for all screens.\nChristmas is over\nI wish I were the bearer of greater tidings and cheer. It\u2019s not all bad, though. We may one day see browsers implement container queries natively. At which point, we shall all rejoice!", "year": "2015", "author": "Jonathan Snook", "author_slug": "jonathansnook", "published": "2015-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/being-responsive-to-the-small-things/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 147, "title": "Christmas Is In The AIR", "contents": "That\u2019s right, Christmas is coming up fast and there\u2019s plenty of things to do. Get the tree and lights up, get the turkey, buy presents and who know what else. And what about Santa? He\u2019s got a list. I\u2019m pretty sure he\u2019s checking it twice.\n\nSure, we could use an existing list making web site or even a desktop widget. But we\u2019re geeks! What\u2019s the fun in that? Let\u2019s build our own to-do list application and do it with Adobe AIR!\n\nWhat\u2019s Adobe AIR?\n\nAdobe AIR, formerly codenamed Apollo, is a runtime environment that runs on both Windows and OSX (with Linux support to follow). This runtime environment lets you build desktop applications using Adobe technologies like Flash and Flex. Oh, and HTML. That\u2019s right, you web standards lovin\u2019 maniac. You can build desktop applications that can run cross-platform using the trio of technologies, HTML, CSS and JavaScript.\n\nIf you\u2019ve tried developing with AIR before, you\u2019ll need to get re-familiarized with the latest beta release as many things have changed since the last one (such as the API and restrictions within the sandbox.)\n\nTo get started\n\nTo get started in building an AIR application, you\u2019ll need two basic things:\n\n\n\tThe AIR runtime. The runtime is needed to run any AIR-based application.\n\tThe SDK. The software development kit gives you all the pieces to test your application. Unzip the SDK into any folder you wish.\n\n\nYou\u2019ll also want to get your hands on the JavaScript API documentation which you\u2019ll no doubt find yourself getting into before too long. (You can download it, too.)\n\nAlso of interest, some development environments have support for AIR built right in. Aptana doesn\u2019t have support for beta 3 yet but I suspect it\u2019ll be available shortly.\n\nWithin the SDK, there are two main tools that we\u2019ll use: one to test the application (ADL) and another to build a distributable package of our application (ADT). I\u2019ll get into this some more when we get to that stage of development.\n\nBuilding our To-do list application\n\nThe first step to building an application within AIR is to create an XML file that defines our default application settings. I call mine application.xml, mostly because Aptana does that by default when creating a new AIR project. It makes sense though and I\u2019ve stuck with it. Included in the templates folder of the SDK is an example XML file that you can use.\n\nThe first key part to this after specifying things like the application ID, version, and filename, is to specify what the default content should be within the content tags. Enter in the name of the HTML file you wish to load. Within this HTML file will be our application.\n\nui.html\n\nCreate a new HTML document and name it ui.html and place it in the same directory as the application.xml file. The first thing you\u2019ll want to do is copy over the AIRAliases.js file from the frameworks folder of the SDK and add a link to it within your HTML document.\n\n\n\nThe aliases create shorthand links to all of the Flash-based APIs.\n\nNow is probably a good time to explain how to debug your application.\n\nDebugging our application\n\nSo, with our XML file created and HTML file started, let\u2019s try testing our \u2018application\u2019. We\u2019ll need the ADL application located in BIN folder of the SDK and tell it to run the application.xml file.\n\n/path/to/adl /path/to/application.xml\n\nYou can also just drag the XML file onto ADL and it\u2019ll accomplish the same thing. If you just did that and noticed that your blank application didn\u2019t load, you\u2019d be correct. It\u2019s running but isn\u2019t visible. Which at this point means you\u2019ll have to shut down the ADL process. Sorry about that!\n\nChanging the visibility\n\nYou have two ways to make your application visible. You can do it automatically by setting the placing true in the visible tag within the application.xml file.\n\ntrue\n\nThe other way is to do it programmatically from within your application. You\u2019d want to do it this way if you had other startup tasks to perform before showing the interface. To turn the UI on programmatically, simple set the visible property of nativeWindow to true.\n\n\n\nSandbox Security\n\nNow that we have an application that we can see when we start it, it\u2019s time to build the to-do list application. In doing so, you\u2019d probably think that using a JavaScript library is a really good idea \u2014 and it can be but there are some limitations within AIR that have to be considered.\n\nAn HTML document, by default, runs within the application sandbox. You have full access to the AIR APIs but once the onload event of the window has fired, you\u2019ll have a limited ability to make use of eval and other dynamic script injection approaches. This limits the ability of external sources from gaining access to everything the AIR API offers, such as database and local file system access. You\u2019ll still be able to make use of eval for evaluating JSON responses, which is probably the most important if you wish to consume JSON-based services.\n\nIf you wish to create a greater wall of security between AIR and your HTML document loading in external resources, you can create a child sandbox. We won\u2019t need to worry about it for our application so I won\u2019t go any further into it but definitely keep this in mind.\n\nFinally, our application\n\nGetting tired of all this preamble? Let\u2019s actually build our to-do list application. I\u2019ll use jQuery because it\u2019s small and should suit our needs nicely. Let\u2019s begin with some structure:\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t
\n\n\nNow we need to wire up that button to actually add a new item to our to-do list.\n\n\n\nAnd just like that, we\u2019ve got a to-do list! That\u2019s it! Just never close your application and you\u2019ll remember everything. Okay, that\u2019s not very practical. You need to have some way of storing your to-do items until the next time you open up the application.\n\nStoring Data\n\nYou\u2019ve essentially got 4 different ways that you can store data:\n\n\n\tUsing the local database. AIR comes with SQLLite built in. That means you can create tables and insert, update and select data from that database just like on a web server.\n\tUsing the file system. You can also create files on the local machine. You have access to a few folders on the local system such as the documents folder and the desktop.\n\tUsing EcryptedLocalStore. I like using the EcryptedLocalStore because it allows you to easily save key/value pairs and have that information encrypted. All this within just a couple lines of code.\n\tSending the data to a remote API. Our to-do list could sync up with Remember the Milk, for example.\n\n\nTo demonstrate some persistence, we\u2019ll use the file system to store our files. In addition, we\u2019ll let the user specify where the file should be saved. This way, we can create multiple to-do lists, keeping them separate and organized.\n\nThe application is now broken down into 4 basic tasks:\n\n\n\tLoad data from the file system.\n\tPerform any interface bindings.\n\tManage creating and deleting items from the list.\n\tSave any changes to the list back to the file system.\n\n\nLoading in data from the file system\n\nWhen the application starts up, we\u2019ll prompt the user to select a file or specify a new to-do list. Within AIR, there are 3 main file objects: File, FileMode, and FileStream. File handles file and path names, FileMode is used as a parameter for the FileStream to specify whether the file should be read-only or for write access. The FileStream object handles all the read/write activity.\n\nThe File object has a number of shortcuts to default paths like the documents folder, the desktop, or even the application store. In this case, we\u2019ll specify the documents folder as the default location and then use the browseForSave method to prompt the user to specify a new or existing file. If the user specifies an existing file, they\u2019ll be asked whether they want to overwrite it.\n\nvar store = air.File.documentsDirectory;\nvar fileStream = new air.FileStream();\nstore.browseForSave(\"Choose To-do List\");\n\nThen we add an event listener for when the user has selected a file. When the file is selected, we check to see if the file exists and if it does, read in the contents, splitting the file on new lines and creating our list items within the interface.\n\nstore.addEventListener(air.Event.SELECT, fileSelected);\nfunction fileSelected()\n{\n\tair.trace(store.nativePath);\n\t// load in any stored data\n\tvar byteData = new air.ByteArray();\n\tif(store.exists)\n\t{\n\t\tfileStream.open(store, air.FileMode.READ);\n\t\tfileStream.readBytes(byteData, 0, store.size);\n\t\tfileStream.close();\n\n\t\tif(byteData.length > 0)\n\t\t{\n\t\t\tvar s = byteData.readUTFBytes(byteData.length);\n\t\t\toldlist = s.split(\u201c\\r\\n\u201d);\n\n\t\t\t// create todolist items\n\t\t\tfor(var i=0; i < oldlist.length; i++)\n\t\t\t{\n\t\t\t\tcreateItem(oldlist[i], (new Date()).getTime() + i );\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t}\n\t}\n}\n\nPerform Interface Bindings\n\nThis is similar to before where we set the click event on the Add button but we\u2019ve moved the code to save the list into a separate function.\n\n$('#add').click(function(){\n\t\tvar t = $('#text').val();\n\t\tif(t){\n\t\t\t// create an ID using the time\n\t\t\tcreateItem(t, (new Date()).getTime() );\n\t\t}\n})\n\nManage creating and deleting items from the list\n\nThe list management is now in its own function, similar to before but with some extra information to identify list items and with calls to save our list after each change.\n\nfunction createItem(t, id)\n{\n\tif(t.length == 0) return;\n\t// add it to the todo list\n\ttodolist[id] = t;\n\t// use DOM methods to create the new list item\n\tvar li = document.createElement('li');\n\t// the extra space at the end creates a buffer between the text\n\t// and the delete link we're about to add\n\tli.appendChild(document.createTextNode(t + ' '));\n\t// create the delete link\n\tvar del = document.createElement('a');\n\t// this makes it a true link. I feel dirty doing this.\n\tdel.setAttribute('href', '#');\n\tdel.addEventListener('click', function(evt){\n\t\tvar id = this.id.substr(1);\n\t\tdelete todolist[id]; // remove the item from the list\n\t\tthis.parentNode.parentNode.removeChild(this.parentNode);\n\t\tsaveList();\n\t});\n\tdel.appendChild(document.createTextNode('[del]'));\n\tdel.id = 'd' + id;\n\tli.appendChild(del);\n\t// append everything to the list\n\t$('#list').append(li);\n\t//reset the text box\n\t$('#text').val('');\n\tsaveList();\n}\n\nSave changes to the file system\n\nAny time a change is made to the list, we update the file. The file will always reflect the current state of the list and we\u2019ll never have to click a save button. It just iterates through the list, adding a new line to each one.\n\nfunction saveList(){\n\tif(store.isDirectory) return;\n\tvar packet = '';\n\tfor(var i in todolist)\n\t{\n\t\tpacket += todolist[i] + '\\r\\n';\n\t}\n\tvar bytes = new air.ByteArray();\n\tbytes.writeUTFBytes(packet);\n\tfileStream.open(store, air.FileMode.WRITE);\n\tfileStream.writeBytes(bytes, 0, bytes.length);\n\tfileStream.close();\n}\n\nOne important thing to mention here is that we check if the store is a directory first. The reason we do this goes back to our browseForSave call. If the user cancels the dialog without selecting a file first, then the store points to the documentsDirectory that we set it to initially. Since we haven\u2019t specified a file, there\u2019s no place to save the list.\n\nHopefully by this point, you\u2019ve been thinking of some cool ways to pimp out your list. Now we need to package this up so that we can let other people use it, too.\n\nCreating a Package\n\nNow that we\u2019ve created our application, we need to package it up so that we can distribute it. This is a two step process. The first step is to create a code signing certificate (or you can pay for one from Thawte which will help authenticate you as an AIR application developer).\n\nTo create a self-signed certificate, run the following command. This will create a PFX file that you\u2019ll use to sign your application.\n\nadt -certificate -cn todo24ways 1024-RSA todo24ways.pfx mypassword\n\nAfter you\u2019ve done that, you\u2019ll need to create the package with the certificate\n\nadt -package -storetype pkcs12 -keystore todo24ways.pfx todo24ways.air application.xml .\n\nThe important part to mention here is the period at the end of the command. We\u2019re telling it to package up all files in the current directory.\n\nAfter that, just run the AIR file, which will install your application and run it.\n\nImportant things to remember about AIR\n\nWhen developing an HTML application, the rendering engine is Webkit. You\u2019ll thank your lucky stars that you aren\u2019t struggling with cross-browser issues. (My personal favourites are multiple backgrounds and border radius!)\n\nBe mindful of memory leaks. Things like Ajax calls and event binding can cause applications to slowly leak memory over time. Web pages are normally short lived but desktop applications are often open for hours, if not days, and you may find your little desktop application taking up more memory than anything else on your machine!\n\nThe WebKit runtime itself can also be a memory hog, usually taking about 15MB just for itself. If you create multiple HTML windows, it\u2019ll add another 15MB to your memory footprint. Our little to-do list application shouldn\u2019t be much of a concern, though.\n\nThe other important thing to remember is that you\u2019re still essentially running within a Flash environment. While you probably won\u2019t notice this working in small applications, the moment you need to move to multiple windows or need to accomplish stuff beyond what HTML and JavaScript can give you, the need to understand some of the Flash-based elements will become more important.\n\nLastly, the other thing to remember is that HTML links will load within the AIR application. If you want a link to open in the users web browser, you\u2019ll need to capture that event and handle it on your own. The following code takes the HREF from a clicked link and opens it in the default web browser.\n\nair.navigateToURL(new air.URLRequest(this.href));\n\nOnly the beginning\n\nOf course, this is only the beginning of what you can do with Adobe AIR. You don\u2019t have the same level of control as building a native desktop application, such as being able to launch other applications, but you do have more control than what you could have within a web application. Check out the Adobe AIR Developer Center for HTML and Ajax for tutorials and other resources.\n\nNow, go forth and create your desktop applications and hopefully you finish all your shopping before Christmas!\n\nDownload the example files.", "year": "2007", "author": "Jonathan Snook", "author_slug": "jonathansnook", "published": "2007-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/christmas-is-in-the-air/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 184, "title": "Spruce It Up", "contents": "The landscape of web typography is changing quickly these days. We\u2019ve gone from the wild west days of sIFR to Cuf\u00f3n to finally seeing font embedding seeing wide spread adoption by browser developers (and soon web designers) with @font-face. For those who\u2019ve felt limited by the typographic possibilities before, this has been a good year.\n\nAs Mark Boulton has so eloquently elucidated, @font-face embedding doesn\u2019t come without its drawbacks. Font files can be quite large and FOUT\u2014that nasty flash of unstyled text\u2014can be a distraction for users.\n\nData URIs\n\nWe can battle FOUT by using Data URIs. A Data URI allows the font to be encoded right into the CSS file. When the font comes with the CSS, the flash of unstyled text is mitigated. No extra HTTP requests are required. \n\nDon\u2019t be a grinch, though. Sending hundreds of kilobytes down the pipe still isn\u2019t great. Sometimes, all we want to do is spruce up our site with a little typographic sugar. \n\nBe Selective\n\nDan Cederholm\u2019s SimpleBits is an attractive site. \n\n\n\nTake a look at the ampersand within the header of his site. It\u2019s the lovely (and free) Goudy Bookletter 1911 available from The League of Movable Type. The Opentype format is a respectable 28KB. Nothing too crazy but hold on here. Mr. Cederholm is only using the ampersand! Ouch. That\u2019s a lot of bandwidth just for one character.\n\nCan we optimize a font like we can an image? Yes. Image optimization essentially works by removing unnecessary image data such as colour data, hidden comments or using compression algorithms. How do you remove unnecessary information from a font? Subsetting. \n\nIf you\u2019re the adventurous type, grab a copy of FontForge, which is an open source font editing tool. You can open the font, view and edit any of the glyphs and then re-generate the font. The interface is a little clunky but you\u2019ll be able to select any character you don\u2019t want and then cut the glyphs. Re-generate your font and you\u2019ve now got a smaller file. \n\n\n\nThere are certainly more optimizations that can also be made such as removing hinting and kerning information. Keep in mind that removing this information may affect how well the type renders.\n\nAt this time of year, though, I\u2019m sure you\u2019re quite busy. Save yourself some time and head on over to the Font Squirrel Font Generator.\n\n\n\nThe Font Generator is extremely handy and allows for a number of optimizations and cross-platform options to be generated instantly. Select the font from your local system\u2014make sure that you are only using properly licensed fonts! \n\nIn this particular case, we only want the ampersand. Click on Subset Fonts which will open up a new menu. Unselect any preselected sets and enter the ampersand into the Single Characters text box. \n\nGenerate your font and what are you left with? 3KB. \n\n\n\nThe Font Generator even generates a base64 encoded data URI stylesheet to be imported easily into your project.\n\nCheck out the Demo page. (This demo won\u2019t work in Internet Explorer as we\u2019re only demonstrating the Data URI font embedding and not using the EOT file format that IE requires.) \n\nNo Unnecessary Additives\n\nIf you peeked under the hood of that demo, did you notice something interesting? There\u2019s no around the ampersand. The great thing about this is that we can take advantage of the font stack\u2019s natural ability to switch to a fallback font when a character isn\u2019t available.\n\nJust like that, we\u2019ve managed to spruce up our page with a little typographic sugar without having to put on too much weight.", "year": "2009", "author": "Jonathan Snook", "author_slug": "jonathansnook", "published": "2009-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/spruce-it-up/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 278, "title": "Going Both Ways", "contents": "It\u2019s that time of the year again: Santa is getting ready to travel the world. Up until now, girls and boys from all over have sent in letters asking for what they want. I hope that Santa and his elves have\u2014unlike me\u2014learned more than just English.\n\nOn the Internet, those girls and boys want to participate in sharing their stories and videos of opening presents and of being with friends and family. Ah, yes, the wonders of user generated content. But more than that, people also want to be able to use sites in the language they know.\n\nWhile you and I might expect the text to read from left to right, not all languages do. Some go from right to left, such as Arabic and Hebrew. (Some also go from top to bottom, but for now, let\u2019s just worry about those first two directions!)\n\nIf we were building a site for girls and boys to send their letters to Santa, we need to consider having the interface in the language and direction that they prefer. On the elves\u2019 side, they may be viewing the site in one direction but reading the user generated content in the other direction. We need to build a site that supports bidirectional (or bidi) text.\n\nLet\u2019s take a look at some things to be aware of when it comes to building bidi interfaces.\n\nSetting the direction of the interface\n\nRight off the bat, we need to tell the browser what direction the text should be going in. To do this, we add the dir attribute to an HTML element and set it to either LTR (for left to right) or RTL (for right to left).\n\n\n\nYou can add the dir attribute to any element and it will set or change the direction for the content within that element. \n\n\n Here is English Content.\n
\u0627\u0644\u0645\u0648\u0636\u0648\u0639
\n\n\nYou can also set the direction via CSS.\n\n.rtl {\n direction: rtl;\n }\n\nIt\u2019s generally recommended that you don\u2019t use CSS to set the direction of the text. Text direction is an important part of the content that should be retained even in environments where the CSS may not be available or fails to load.\n\nHow things change with the direction attribute\n\nJust adding the dir attribute tells the browser to render the content within it differently. \n\n\n\nThe text aligns to the right of the page and, interestingly, punctuation appears at the left of the sentence. (We\u2019ll get to that in a little bit.) \n\nScrollbars in most browsers will appear on the left instead of the right. Webkit is the notable exception here which always shows the scrollbar on the right, no matter what the text direction is. Avoid having a design that has an expectation that the scrollbar will be in a specific place (and a specific size).\n\nChanging the order of text mid-way\n\nAs we saw in that previous example, the punctuation appeared at the beginning of the sentence instead of the end, even though the text was English. At Yahoo!, we have an interesting dilemma where the company name has punctuation in it. Therefore, when the name appears in the middle of (for example) Arabic text, the exclamation mark appears at the beginning of the word instead of the end.\n\n\n\nThere are two ways in which this problem can be solved:\n\n1. Use HTML around the left-to-right content, or\n\nTo solve the problem of the Yahoo! name in the midst of Arabic text, we can wrap a span around it and change the direction on that element.\n\n\n\n2. Use a text direction mark in the content.\n\nUnicode has two marks, U+200E and U+200F, that tell the browser that the text is in a particular direction. Placing this right after the punctuation will correct the placement.\n\nUsing the HTML entity:\nYahoo!\u200e\n\nTables\n\nThankfully, the cells of a data table also get reordered from right to left. Equally as nice, if you\u2019re using display:table, the content will still get reordered.\n\n\n\nCSS\n\nSo far, we\u2019ve seen that the dir attribute does a pretty decent job of getting content flowing in the direction that we need it. Unfortunately, there are huge swaths of design that is handled by CSS that the handy dir attribute has zero effect over.\n\nMany properties, like float or absolute positioning with left and right values, are unaffected and must be handled manually. Elements that were floated left must now by floated right. Left margins and paddings must now move to the right and the right margins and paddings must now move to the left.\n\nSince the browser won\u2019t handle this for us, we have a couple approaches that we can use:\n\nCSS Only\n\nWe can take advantage of the attribute selector to target CSS to apply in one direction or another.\n\n[dir=ltr] .module {\n\tfloat: left;\n\tmargin: 0 0 0 20px;\n}\n\n[dir=rtl] .module {\n\tfloat: right;\n\tmargin: 0 20px 0 0;\n}\n\nAs you can see from this example, both of the properties have been modified for the flipped interface. If your interface is rather complicated, you will have to create a lot of duplicate rules to have the site looking good in both directions while serving up a single stylesheet.\n\nCSSJanus\n\nGoogle has a tool called CSSJanus. It\u2019s a Python script that runs over the LTR versions of your CSS files and generates RTL versions. For the RTL version of the site, just serve up those CSS files instead of the LTR versions.\n\nThe script looks for keywords and value combinations and automatically swaps them so you don\u2019t have to. \n\nAt Yahoo!, CSSJanus was a huge help in speeding up our development of a bidi interface. We\u2019ve also made a number of improvements to the script to better handle border radius, background positioning, and gradients. We will be pushing those changes back into the CSSJanus project. \n\n\n\nBackground Images\n\nBackground images, especially for things like CSS sprites, also raise an interesting dilemma. Background images are positioned relative to the left of the element. In a flipped interface, however, we need to position it relative to the right. An icon that would be to the left of some text will now need to appear on the right.\n\n\n\nIf the x position of the background is percentage-based, then it\u2019s fairly easy to swap the values. 0 becomes 100%, 10% becomes 90% and so on. If the x position is pixel-based, then we\u2019re in a bit of a pickle. There\u2019s no way to say that the image should be a certain number of pixels from the right.\n\nTherefore, you\u2019ll need to ensure that any background image that needs to be swapped should be percentage-based. (99.9% of the the time, the background position will need to be 0 so that it can be changed to 100% for RTL.)\n\nIf you\u2019re taking an existing implementation, background positioning will likely be the biggest hurdle you\u2019ll have to overcome in swapping your interface around. If you make sure your x position is always percentage-based from the beginning, you\u2019ll have a much smoother process ahead of you!\n\nFlipping Images\n\nThis is a more subtle point and one where you\u2019ll really want an expert with the region to weigh in on. In RTL interfaces, users may expect certain icons to also be flipped. Pencil icons that skew to the right in LTR interfaces might need to be swapped to skew to the left, instead. Chat bubbles that come from the left will need to come from the right.\n\nThe easiest way to handle this is to create new images. Name the LTR versions with -ltr in the name and name the RTL versions with -rtl in the name. CSSJanus will automatically rename all file references from -ltr to -rtl.\n\nThe Future\n\nThankfully, those within the W3C recognize that CSS should be more agnostic. As a result, they\u2019ve begun introducing new properties that allow the browser to manage the swapping from left to right for us.\n\nThe CSS3 specification for backgrounds allows for the background-position to be relative to other corners other than the top left by specifying keywords before each position.\n\nThis will position the background 5px from the bottom right of the element.\n\nbackground-position: right 5px bottom 5px;\n\nOpera 11.60 is currently the only browser that supports this syntax.\n\nFor margin and padding, we have margin-start and margin-end. In LTR interfaces, margin-start would be the same as margin-left and in RTL interfaces, margin-start would be the same as margin-right. \n\nFirefox and Webkit support these but with vendor prefixes right now:\n\n-webkit-margin-start: 20px;\n-moz-margin-start: 20px;\n\nIn the CSS3 Images working draft specification, there\u2019s an image() property that allows us to specify image fallbacks and whether those fallbacks are for LTR or RTL interfaces.\n\nbackground: image('sprite.png' ltr, 'sprite-rtl.png' rtl);\n\nUnfortunately, no browser supports this yet but it\u2019s nice to be able to dream of how much easier this will be in the future!\n\nHo Ho Ho\n\nHopefully, after all of this, you\u2019re full of cheer knowing that you\u2019re well on your way to creating interfaces that can go both ways!", "year": "2011", "author": "Jonathan Snook", "author_slug": "jonathansnook", "published": "2011-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/going-both-ways/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 321, "title": "Tables with Style", "contents": "It might not seem like it but styling tabular data can be a lot of fun. From a semantic point of view, there are plenty of elements to tie some style into. You have cells, rows, row groups and, of course, the table element itself. Adding CSS to a paragraph just isn\u2019t as exciting.\n\nWhere do I start?\n\nFirst, if you have some tabular data (you know, like a spreadsheet with rows and columns) that you\u2019d like to spiffy up, pop it into a table \u2014 it\u2019s rightful place!\n\nTo add more semantics to your table \u2014 and coincidentally to add more hooks for CSS \u2014 break up your table into row groups. There are three types of row groups: the header (thead), the body (tbody) and the footer (tfoot). You can only have one header and one footer but you can have as many table bodies as is appropriate.\n\nSample table example\n\nInspiration\n\nTable Striping\n\nTo improve scanning information within a table, a common technique is to style alternating rows. Also known as zebra tables. Whether you apply it using a class on every other row or turn to JavaScript to accomplish the task, a handy-dandy trick is to use a semi-transparent PNG as your background image. This is especially useful over patterned backgrounds. \n\ntbody tr.odd td {\n background:transparent url(background.png) repeat top left;\n }\n\n html tbody tr.odd td {\n background:#C00;\n filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(\n src='background.png', sizingMethod='scale');\n }\n\nWe turn off the default background and apply our PNG hack to have this work in Internet Explorer. \n\nStyling Columns\n\nDid you know you could style a column? That\u2019s right. You can add special column (col) or column group (colgroup) elements. With that you can add border or background styles to the column.\n\n

\n \n \n \n ...\n\nCheck out the example.\n\nFun with Backgrounds\n\nPop in a tiled background to give your table some character! Internet Explorer\u2019s PNG hack unfortunately only works well when applied to a cell.\n\nTo figure out which background will appear over another, just remember the hierarchy:\n\n (bottom) Table \u2192 Column \u2192 Row Group \u2192 Row \u2192 Cell (top)\n\nThe Future is Bright\n\nOnce browser-makers start implementing CSS3, we\u2019ll have more power at our disposal. Just with :first-child and :last-child, you can pull off a scalable version of our previous table with rounded corners and all \u2014 unfortunately, only Firefox manages to pull this one off successfully. And the selector the masses are clamouring for, nth-child, will make zebra tables easy as eggnog.", "year": "2005", "author": "Jonathan Snook", "author_slug": "jonathansnook", "published": "2005-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/tables-with-style/", "topic": "code"} {"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": 263, "title": "Securing Your Site like It\u2019s 1999", "contents": "Running a website in the early years of the web was a scary business. The web was an evolving medium, and people were finding new uses for it almost every day. From book stores to online auctions, the web was an expanding universe of new possibilities.\nAs the web evolved, so too did the knowledge of its inherent security vulnerabilities. Clever tricks that were played on one site could be copied on literally hundreds of other sites. It was a normal sight to log in to a website to find nothing working because someone had breached its defences and deleted its database. Lessons in web security in those days were hard-earned.\nWhat follows are examples of critical mistakes that brought down several early websites, and how you can help protect yourself and your team from the same fate.\nBad input validation: Trusting anything the user sends you\nOur story begins in the most unlikely place: Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing was a 2001 video game set in a quaint town, filled with happy-go-lucky inhabitants that co-exist peacefully. Like most video games, Animal Crossing was the subject of many fan communities on the early web.\nOne such unofficial web forum was dedicated to players discussing their adventures in Animal Crossing. Players could trade secrets, ask for help, and share pictures of their virtual homes. This might sound like a model community to you, but you would be wrong.\nOne day, a player discovered a hidden field in the forum\u2019s user profile form. Normally, this page allows users to change their name, their password, or their profile photo. This person discovered that the hidden field contained their unique user ID, which identifies them when the forum\u2019s backend saves profile changes to its database. They discovered that by modifying the form to change the user ID, they could make changes to any other player\u2019s profile.\nNeedless to say, this idyllic online community descended into chaos. Users changed each other\u2019s passwords, deleted each other\u2019s messages, and attacked each-other under the cover of complete anonymity. What happened?\nThere aren\u2019t any official rules for developing software on the web. But if there were, my golden rule would be:\nNever trust user input. Ever.\nAlways ask yourself how users will send you data that isn\u2019t what it seems to be. If the nicest community of gamers playing the happiest game on earth can turn on each other, nowhere on the web is safe.\nMake sure you validate user input to make sure it\u2019s of the correct type (e.g. string, number, JSON string) and that it\u2019s the length that you were expecting. Don\u2019t forget that user input doesn\u2019t become safe once it is stored in your database; any data that originates from outside your network can still be dangerous and must be escaped before it is inserted into HTML.\nMake sure to check a user\u2019s actions against what they are allowed to do. Create a clear access control policy that defines what actions a user may take, and to whose data they are allowed access to. For example, a newly-registered user should not be allowed to change the user profile of a web forum\u2019s owner.\nFinally, never rely on client-side validation. Validating user input in the browser is a convenience to the user, not a security measure. Always assume the user has full control over any data sent from the browser and make sure you validate any data sent to your backend from the outside world.\nSQL injection: Allowing the user to run their own database queries\nA long time ago, my favourite website was a web forum dedicated to the Final Fantasy video game series. Like the users of the Animal Crossing forum, I\u2019d while away many hours arguing with other people on the internet about my favourite characters, my favourite stories, and the greatest controversies of the day.\nOne day, I noticed people were acting strangely. Users were being uncharacteristically nasty and posting in private areas of the forum they wouldn\u2019t normally have access to. Then messages started disappearing, and user accounts for well-respected people were banned.\nIt turns out someone had discovered a way of logging in to any other user account, using a secret password that allowed them to do literally anything they wanted. What was this password that granted untold power to those who wielded it?\n' OR '1'='1\nSQL is a computer language that is used to query databases. When you fill out a login form, just like the one above, your username and your password are usually inserted into an SQL query like this:\n\nSELECT COUNT(*)\nFROM USERS\nWHERE USERNAME='Alice'\nAND PASSWORD='hunter2'\nThis query selects users from the database that match the username Alice and the password hunter2. If there is at least one user matching record, the user will be granted access. Let\u2019s see what happens when we use our magic password instead!\n\nSELECT COUNT(*)\nFROM USERS\nWHERE USERNAME='Admin'\nAND PASSWORD='' OR '1'='1'\nDoes the password look like part of the query to you? That\u2019s because it is! This password is a deliberate attempt to inject our own SQL into the query, hence the term SQL injection. The query is now looking for users matching the username Admin, with a password that is blank, or 1=1. In an SQL query, 1=1 is always true, which makes this query select every single record in the database. As long as the forum software is checking for at least one matching user, it will grant the person logging in access. This password will work for any user registered on the forum!\nSo how can you protect yourself from SQL injection?\nNever build SQL queries by concatenating strings. Instead, use parameterised query tools. PHP offers prepared statements, and Node.JS has the knex package. Alternatively, you can use an ORM tool, such as Propel or sequelize.\nExpert help in the form of language features or software tools is a key ally for securing your code. Get all the help you can!\nCross site request forgery: Getting other users to do your dirty work for you\nDo you remember Netflix? Not the Netflix we have now, the Netflix that used to rent you DVDs by mailing them to you. My next story is about how someone managed to convince Netflix users to send him their DVDs - free of charge.\nHave you ever clicked on a hyperlink, only to find something that you weren\u2019t expecting? If you were lucky, you might have just gotten Rickrolled. If you were unlucky\u2026\nLet\u2019s just say there are older and fouler things than Rick Astley in the dark places of the web.\nWhat if you could convince people to visit a page you controlled? And what if those people were Netflix users, and they were logged in? In 2006, Dave Ferguson did just that. He created a harmless-looking page with an image on it:\n<img src=\"http://www.netflix.com/JSON/AddToQueue?movieid=70110672\" />\nDid you notice the source URL of the image? It\u2019s deliberately crafted to add a particular DVD to your queue. Sprinkle in a few more requests to change the user\u2019s name and shipping address, and you could ship yourself DVDs completely free of charge!\nThis attack is possible when websites unconditionally trust a user\u2019s session cookies without checking where HTTP requests come from.\nThe first check you can make is to verify that a request\u2019s origin and referer headers match the location of the website. These headers can\u2019t be programmatically set.\nAnother check you can use is to add CSRF tokens to your web forms, to verify requests have come from an actual form on your website. Tokens are long, unpredictable, unique strings that are generated by your server and inserted into web forms. When users complete a form, the form data sent to the server can be checked for a recently generated token. This is an effective deterrent of CSRF attacks because CSRF tokens aren\u2019t stored in cookies.\nYou can also set SameSite=Strict when setting cookies with the Set-Cookie HTTP header. This communicates to browsers that cookies are not to be sent with cross-site requests. This is a relatively new feature, though it is well supported in evergreen browsers.\nCross site scripting: Someone else\u2019s code running on your website\nIn 2005, Samy Kamkar became famous for having lots of friends. Lots and lots of friends.\nSamy enjoyed using MySpace which, at the time, was the world\u2019s largest social network. Social networks at that time were more limited than today. For instance, MySpace let you upload photos to your photo gallery, but capped the limit at twelve. Twelve photos. At least you didn\u2019t have to wade through photos of avocado toast back then\u2026\nSamy discovered that MySpace also locked down the kinds of content that you could post on your MySpace page. He discovered he could inject <img /> and <div /> tags into his headline, but <script /> was filtered. MySpace wasn\u2019t about to let someone else run their own code on MySpace.\nIntrigued, Samy set about finding out exactly what he could do with <img /> and <div /> tags. He found that you could add style properties to <div /> tags to style them with CSS.\n<div style=\"background:url('javascript:alert(1)')\">\nThis code only worked in Internet Explorer and in some versions of Safari, but that was plenty of people to befriend. However, MySpace was prepared for this: they also filtered the word javascript from <div />.\n<div style=\"background:url('java\nscript:alert(1)')\">\nSamy discovered that by inserting a line break into his code, MySpace would not filter out the word javascript. The browser would continue to run the code just fine! Samy had now broken past MySpace\u2019s first line of defence and was able to start running code on his profile page. Now he started looking at what he could do with that code.\nalert(document.body.innerHTML)\nSamy wondered if he could inspect the page\u2019s source to find the details of other MySpace users to befriend. To do this, you would normally use document.body.innerHTML, but MySpace had filtered this too.\nalert(eval('document.body.inne' + 'rHTML'))\nThis isn\u2019t a problem if you build up JavaScript code inside a string and execute it using the eval() function. This trick also worked with XMLHttpRequest.onReadyStateChange, which allowed Samy to send friend requests to the MySpace API and install the JavaScript code on his new friends\u2019 pages.\nOne final obstacle stood in his way. The same origin policy is a security mechanism that prevents scripts hosted on one domain interacting with sites hosted on another domain.\nif (location.hostname == 'profile.myspace.com') {\n document.location = 'http://www.myspace.com'\n + location.pathname + location.search\n}\nSamy discovered that only the http://www.myspace.com domain would accept his API requests, and requests from http://profile.myspace.com were being blocked by the browser\u2019s same-origin policy. By redirecting the browser to http://www.myspace.com, he discovered that he could load profile pages and successfully make requests to MySpace\u2019s API. Samy installed this code on his profile page, and he waited.\n\nOver the course of the next day, over a million people unwittingly installed Samy\u2019s code into their MySpace profile pages and invited their friends. The load of friend requests on MySpace was so large that the site buckled and shut down. It took them two hours to remove Samy\u2019s code and patch the security holes he exploited. Samy was raided by the United States secret service and sentenced to do 90 days of community service.\nThis is the power of installing a little bit of JavaScript on someone else\u2019s website. It is called cross site scripting, and its effects can be devastating. It is suspected that cross-site scripting was to blame for the 2018 British Airways breach that leaked the credit card details of 380,000 people.\nSo how can you help protect yourself from cross-site scripting?\nAlways sanitise user input when it comes in, using a library such as sanitize-html. Open source tools like this benefit from hundreds of hours of work from dozens of experienced contributors. Don\u2019t be tempted to roll your own protection. MySpace was prepared, but they were not prepared enough. It makes no sense to turn this kind of help down.\nYou can also use an auto-escaping templating language to make sure nobody else\u2019s HTML can get into your pages. Both Angular and React will do this for you, and they are extremely convenient to use.\nYou should also implement a content security policy to restrict the domains that content like scripts and stylesheets can be loaded from. Loading content from sites not under your control is a significant security risk, and you should use a CSP to lock this down to only the sources you trust. CSP can also block the use of the eval() function.\nFor content not under your control, consider setting up sub-resource integrity protection. This allows you to add hashes to stylesheets and scripts you include on your website. Hashes are like fingerprints for digital files; if the content changes, so does the fingerprint. Adding hashes will allow your browser to keep your site safe if the content changes without you knowing.\nnpm audit: Protecting yourself from code you don\u2019t own\nJavaScript and npm run the modern web. Together, they make it easy to take advantage of the world\u2019s largest public registry of open source software. How do you protect yourself from code written by someone you\u2019ve never met? Enter npm audit.\nnpm audit reviews the security of your website\u2019s dependency tree. You can start using it by upgrading to the latest version of npm:\nnpm install npm -g\nnpm audit\nWhen you run npm audit, npm submits a description of your dependencies to the Registry, which returns a report of known vulnerabilities for the packages you have installed.\n\nIf your website has a known cross-site scripting vulnerability, npm audit will tell you about it. What\u2019s more, if the vulnerability has been patched, running npm audit fix will automatically install the patched package for you!\nSecuring your site like it\u2019s 2019\nThe truth is that since the early days of the web, the stakes of a security breach have become much, much higher. The web is so much more than fandom and mailing DVDs - online banking is now mainstream, social media and dating websites store intimate information about our personal lives, and we are even inviting the internet into our homes.\nHowever, we have powerful new allies helping us stay safe. There are more resources than ever before to teach us how to write secure code. Tools like Angular and React are designed with security features baked-in from the start. We have a new generation of security tools like npm audit to watch over our dependencies.\nAs we roll over into 2019, let\u2019s take the opportunity to reflect on the security of the code we write and be grateful for the everything we\u2019ve learned in the last twenty years.", "year": "2018", "author": "Katie Fenn", "author_slug": "katiefenn", "published": "2018-12-01T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/securing-your-site-like-its-1999/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 117, "title": "The First Tool You Reach For", "contents": "Microsoft recently announced that Internet Explorer 8 will be released in the first half of 2009. Compared to the standards support of other major browsers, IE8 will not be especially great, but it will finally catch up with the state of the art in one specific area: support for CSS tables. This milestone has the potential to trigger an important change in the way you approach web design.\n\nTo show you just how big a difference CSS tables can make, think about how you might code a fluid, three-column layout from scratch. Just to make your life more difficult, give it one fixed-width column, with a background colour that differs from the rest of the page. Ready? Go!\n\nOkay, since you\u2019re the sort of discerning web designer who reads 24ways, I\u2019m going to assume you at least considered doing this without using HTML tables for the layout. If you\u2019re especially hardcore, I imagine you began thinking of CSS floats, negative margins, and faux columns. If you did, colour me impressed!\n\nNow admit it: you probably also gave an inward sigh about the time it would take to figure out the math on the negative margin overlaps, check for dropped floats in Internet Explorer and generally wrestle each of the major browsers into giving you what you want. If after all that you simply gave up and used HTML tables, I can\u2019t say I blame you.\n\nThere are plenty of professional web designers out there who still choose to use HTML tables as their main layout tool. Sure, they may know that users with screen readers get confused by inappropriate use of tables, but they have a job to do, and they want tools that will make that job easy, not difficult.\n\nNow let me show you how to do it with CSS tables. First, we have a div element for each of our columns, and we wrap them all in another two divs:\n\n<div class=\"container\">\n\t<div>\n\t\t<div id=\"menu\">\n\t\t\u22ee\n\t\t</div>\n\t\t<div id=\"content\">\n\t\t\u22ee\n\t\t</div>\n\t\t<div id=\"sidebar\">\n\t\t\u22ee\n\t\t</div>\n\t</div>\n</div>\n\nDon\u2019t sweat the \u201cdiv clutter\u201d in this code. Unlike tables, divs have no semantic meaning, and can therefore be used liberally (within reason) to provide hooks for the styles you want to apply to your page.\n\nUsing CSS, we can set the outer div to display as a table with collapsed borders (i.e. adjacent cells share a border) and a fixed layout (i.e. cell widths unaffected by their contents):\n\n.container {\n\tdisplay: table;\n\tborder-collapse: collapse;\n\ttable-layout: fixed;\n}\n\nWith another two rules, we set the middle div to display as a table row, and each of the inner divs to display as table cells:\n\n.container > div {\n\tdisplay: table-row;\n}\n.container > div > div {\n\tdisplay: table-cell;\n}\n\nFinally, we can set the widths of the cells (and of the table itself) directly:\n\n.container {\n\twidth: 100%;\n}\n#menu {\n\twidth: 200px;\n}\n#content {\n\twidth: auto;\n}\n#sidebar {\n\twidth: 25%;\n}\n\nAnd, just like that, we have a rock solid three-column layout, ready to be styled to your own taste, like in this example:\n\n\n\nThis example will render perfectly in reasonably up-to-date versions of Firefox, Safari and Opera, as well as the current beta release of Internet Explorer 8.\n\nCSS tables aren\u2019t only useful for multi-column page layout; they can come in handy in most any situation that calls for elements to be displayed side-by-side on the page. Consider this simple login form layout:\n\n\n\nThe incantation required to achieve this layout using CSS floats may be old hat to you by now, but try to teach it to a beginner, and watch his eyes widen in horror at the hoops you have to jump through (not to mention the assumptions you have to build into your design about the length of the form labels).\n\nHere\u2019s how to do it with CSS tables:\n\n<form action=\"/login\" method=\"post\">\n\t<div>\n\t\t<div>\n\t\t\t<label for=\"username\">Username:</label>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"input\"><input type=\"text\" name=\"username\" id=\"username\"/></span>\n\t\t</div>\n\t\t<div>\n\t\t\t<label for=\"userpass\">Password:</label>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"input\"><input type=\"password\" name=\"userpass\" id=\"userpass\"/></span>\n\t\t</div>\n\t\t<div class=\"submit\">\n\t\t\t<label for=\"login\"></label>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"input\"><input type=\"submit\" name=\"login\" id=\"login\" value=\"Login\"/></span>\n\t\t</div>\n\t</div>\n</form>\n\nThis time, we\u2019re using a mixture of divs and spans as semantically transparent styling hooks. Let\u2019s look at the CSS code.\n\nFirst, we set up the outer div to display as a table, the inner divs to display as table rows, and the labels and spans as table cells (with right-aligned text):\n\nform > div {\n\tdisplay: table;\n}\nform > div > div {\n\tdisplay: table-row;\n}\nform label,\nform span {\n\tdisplay: table-cell;\n\ttext-align: right;\n}\n\nWe want the first column of the table to be wide enough to accommodate our labels, but no wider. With CSS float techniques, we had to guess at what that width was likely to be, and adjust it whenever we changed our form labels. With CSS tables, we can simply set the width of the first column to something very small (1em), and then use the white-space property to force the column to the required width:\n\nform label {\n\twhite-space: nowrap;\n\twidth: 1em;\n}\n\nTo polish off the layout, we\u2019ll make our text and password fields occupy the full width of the table cells that contain them:\n\ninput[type=text],\ninput[type=password] {\n\twidth: 100%;\n}\n\nThe rest is margins, padding and borders to get the desired look. Check out the finished example.\n\nAs the first tool you reach for when approaching any layout task, CSS tables make a lot more sense to your average designer than the cryptic incantations called for by CSS floats. When IE8 is released and all major browsers support CSS tables, we can begin to gradually deploy CSS table-based layouts on sites that are more and more mainstream.\n\nIn our new book, Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong!, Rachel Andrew and I explore in much greater detail how CSS tables work as a page layout tool in the real world. CSS tables have their quirks just like floats do, but they don\u2019t tend to affect common layout tasks, and the workarounds tend to be less fiddly too. Check it out, and get ready for the next big step forward in web design with CSS.", "year": "2008", "author": "Kevin Yank", "author_slug": "kevinyank", "published": "2008-12-13T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/the-first-tool-you-reach-for/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 106, "title": "Checking Out: Progress Meters", "contents": "It\u2019s the holiday season, so you know what that means: online shopping! When I started developing Web sites back in the 90s, many of my first clients were small local shops wanting to sell their goods online, so I developed many a checkout system. And because of slow dial-up speeds back then, informing the user about where they were in the checkout process was pretty important.\n\nEven though we\u2019re (mostly) beyond the dial-up days, informing users about where they are in a flow is still important. In usability tests at the companies I\u2019ve worked at, I\u2019ve seen time and time again how not adequately informing the user about their state can cause real frustration. This is especially true for two sets of users: mobile users and users of assistive devices, in particular, screen readers.\n\nThe progress meter is a very common design solution used to indicate to the user\u2019s state within a flow. On the design side, much effort may go in to crafting a solution that is as visually informative as possible. On the development side, however, solutions range widely. I\u2019ve checked out the checkouts at a number of sites and here\u2019s what I\u2019ve found when it comes to progress meters: they\u2019re sometimes inaccessible and often confusing or unhelpful \u2014 all because of the way in which they\u2019re coded. For those who use assistive devices or text-only browsers, there must be a better way to code the progress meter \u2014 and there is.\n\n(Note: All code samples are from live sites but have been tweaked to hide the culprits\u2019 identities.)\n\nHow not to make progress\n\nA number of sites assemble their progress meters using non- or semi-semantic markup and images with no alternate text. On text-only browsers (like my mobile phone) and to screen readers, this looks and reads like chunks of content with no context given.\n\n<div id=\"progress\">\n\t<img src=\"icon_progress_1a.gif\" alt=\"\">\n\t<em>Shipping information</em>\n\t<img src=\"icon_progress_arrow.gif\" alt=\"\">\n\t<img src=\"icon_progress_2a.gif\" alt=\"\">\n\t<em>Payment information</em>\n\t<img src=\"icon_progress_arrow.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"progarrow\">\n\t<img src=\"icon_progress_3b.gif\" alt=\"\">\n\t<strong>Place your order</strong>\n</div>\n\nIn the above example, the third state, \u201cPlace your order\u201d, is the current state. But a screen reader may not know that, and my cell phone only displays \"Shipping informationPayment informationPlace your order\". Not good.\n\nIs this progress?\n\nOther sites present the entire progress meter as a graphic, like the following:\n\n\n\nNow, I have no problem with using a graphic to render a very stylish progress meter (my sample above is probably not the most stylish example, of course, but you understand my point). What becomes important in this case is the use of appropriate alternate text to describe the image. Disappointingly, sites today have a wide range of solutions, including using no alternate text. Check out these code samples which call progress meter images.\n\n<img src=\"checkout_step2.gif\" alt=\"\">\n\nI think we can all agree that the above is bad, unless you really don\u2019t care whether or not users know where they are in a flow.\n\n<img src=\"checkout_step2.gif\" alt=\"Shipping information - Payment information - Place your order\">\n\nThe alt text in the example above just copies all of the text found in the graphic, but it doesn\u2019t represent the status at all. So for every page in the checkout, the user sees or hears the same text. Sure, by the second or third page in the flow, the user has figured out what\u2019s going on, but she or he had to think about it. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s good.\n\n<img src=\"checkout_step2.gif\" alt=\"Checkout: Payment information\">\n\nThe above probably has the best alternate text out of these examples, because the user at least understands that they\u2019re in the Checkout process, on the Place your order page. But going through the flow with alt text like this, the user doesn\u2019t know how many steps are in the flow.\n\nSemantic progress\n\nOf course, there are some sites that use an ordered list when marking up the progress meter. Hooray! Unfortunately, no text-only browser or screen reader would be able to describe the user\u2019s current state given this markup.\n\n<ol class=\"progressmeter\">\n\t<li class=\"one current\">shipping information</li>\n\t<li class=\"two\">payment information</li>\n\t<li class=\"three\">place your order</li>\n</ol>\n\nWithout CSS enabled, the above is rendered as follows:\n\n\n\nProgress at last\n\nWe all know that semantic markup makes for the best foundation, so we\u2019ll start with the markup found above. In order to make the state information accessible, let\u2019s add some additional text in paragraph and span elements.\n\n<div class=\"progressmeter\">\n\t<p>There are three steps in this checkout process.</p>\n\t<ol>\n\t\t<li class=\"one\"><span>Enter your</span> shipping information</li>\n\t\t<li class=\"two\"><span>Enter your</span> payment information</li>\n\t\t<li class=\"three\"><span>Review details and</span> place your order</li>\n\t</ol>\n</div>\n\nAdd on some simple CSS to hide the paragraph and spans, and arrange the list items on a single line with a background image to represent the large number, and this is what you\u2019ll get:\n\n \n\tThere are three steps in this checkout process.\n\t\n\t\tEnter your shipping information\n\t\tEnter your payment information\n\t\tReview details and place your order\n\t\n \n\nTo display and describe a state as active, add the class \u201ccurrent\u201d to one of the list items. Then change the hidden content such that it better describes the state to the user.\n\n<div class=\"progressmeter\">\n\t<p>There are three steps in this checkout process.</p>\n\t<ol>\n\t\t<li class=\"one current\"><span>You are currently entering your</span> shipping information</li>\n\t\t<li class=\"two\"><span>In the next step, you will enter your</span> payment information</li>\n\t\t<li class=\"three\"><span>In the last step, you will review the details and</span> place your order</li>\n\t</ol>\n</div>\n\nThe end result is an attractive progress meter that gives much greater semantic and contextual information.\n\n \n\tThere are three steps in this checkout process.\n\t\n\t\tYou are currently entering your shipping information\n\t\tIn the next step, you will enter your payment information\n\t\tIn the last step, you will review the details and place your order\n\t\n \n\nFor example, the above example renders in a text-only browser as follows:\n\n \n\tThere are three steps in this checkout process.\n\t\n\t\tYou are currently entering your shipping information\n\t\tIn the next step, you will enter your payment information\n\t\tIn the last step, you will review the details and place your order\n\t\n \n\nAnd the screen reader I use for testing announces the following:\n\n \n\tThere are three steps in this checkout process. List of three items. You are currently entering your shipping information. In the next step, you will enter your payment information. In the last step, you will review the details and place your order. List end.\n \n\nHere\u2019s a sample code page that summarises this approach.\n\nHappy frustration-free online shopping with this improved progress meter!", "year": "2008", "author": "Kimberly Blessing", "author_slug": "kimberlyblessing", "published": "2008-12-12T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2008/checking-out-progress-meters/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 319, "title": "Avoiding CSS Hacks for Internet Explorer", "contents": "Back in October, IEBlog issued a call to action, asking developers to clean up their CSS hacks for IE7 testing. Needless to say, a lot of hubbub ensued\u2026 both on IEBlog and elsewhere. My contribution to all of the noise was to suggest that developers review their code and use good CSS hacks. But what makes a good hack?\n\nTantek \u00c7elik, the Godfather of CSS hacks, gave us the answer by explaining how CSS hacks should be designed. In short, they should (1) be valid, (2) target only old/frozen/abandoned user-agents/browsers, and (3) be ugly. Tantek also went on to explain that using a feature of CSS is not a hack.\n\nNow, I\u2019m not a frequent user of CSS hacks, but Tantek\u2019s post made sense to me. In particular, I felt it gave developers direction on how we should be coding to accommodate that sometimes troublesome browser, Internet Explorer. But what I\u2019ve found, through my work with other developers, is that there is still much confusion over the use of CSS hacks and IE. Using examples from the code I\u2019ve seen recently, allow me to demonstrate how to clean up some IE-specific CSS hacks.\n\nThe two hacks that I\u2019ve found most often in the code I\u2019ve seen and worked with are the star html bug and the underscore hack. We know these are both IE-specific by checking Kevin Smith\u2019s CSS Filters chart. Let\u2019s look at each of these hacks and see how we can replace them with the same CSS feature-based solution.\n\nThe star html bug\n\nThis hack violates Tantek\u2019s second rule as it targets current (and future) UAs. I\u2019ve seen this both as a stand alone rule, as well as an override to some other rule in a style sheet. Here are some code samples:\n\n* html div#header {margin-top:-3px;}\n.promo h3 {min-height:21px;}\n* html .promo h3 {height:21px;}\n\nThe underscore hack\n\nThis hack violates Tantek\u2019s first two rules: it\u2019s invalid (according to the W3C CSS Validator) and it targets current UAs. Here\u2019s an example:\n\nol {padding:0; _padding-left:5px;}\n\nUsing child selectors\n\nWe can use the child selector to replace both the star html bug and underscore hack. Here\u2019s how:\n\n Write rules with selectors that would be successfully applied to all browsers. This may mean starting with no declarations in your rule!\n\ndiv#header {}\n.promo h3 {}\nol {padding:0;}\n\n \nTo these rules, add the IE-specific declarations.\n\ndiv#header {margin-top:-3px;}\n.promo h3 {height:21px;}\nol {padding:0 0 0 5px;}\n\n \nAfter each rule, add a second rule. The selector of the second rule must use a child selector. In this new rule, correct any IE-specific declarations previously made.\n\ndiv#header {margin-top:-3px;}\nbody > div#header {margin-top:0;}\n\n.promo h3 {height:21px;}\n.promo > h3 {height:auto; min-height:21px;}\n\nol {padding:0 0 0 5px;}\nhtml > body ol {padding:0;}\n\n \n\nVoil\u00e0 \u2013 no more hacks! There are a few caveats to this that I won\u2019t go into\u2026 but assuming you\u2019re operating in strict mode and barring any really complicated stuff you\u2019re doing in your code, your CSS will still render perfectly across browsers. And while this may make your CSS slightly heftier in size, it should future-proof it for IE7 (or so I hope). Happy holidays!", "year": "2005", "author": "Kimberly Blessing", "author_slug": "kimberlyblessing", "published": "2005-12-17T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/avoiding-css-hacks-for-internet-explorer/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 56, "title": "Helping VIPs Care About Performance", "contents": "Making a site feel super fast is the easy part of performance work. Getting people around you to care about site speed is a much bigger challenge. How do we keep the site fast beyond the initial performance work? Keeping very important people like your upper management or clients invested in performance work is critical to keeping a site fast and empowering other designers and developers to contribute.\nThe work to get others to care is so meaty that I dedicated a whole chapter to the topic in my book Designing for Performance. When I speak at conferences, the majority of questions during Q&A are on this topic. When I speak to developers and designers who care about performance, getting other people at one\u2019s organization or agency to care becomes the most pressing question.\nMy primary response to folks who raise this issue is the question: \u201cWhat metric(s) do your VIPs care about?\u201d This is often met with blank stares and raised eyebrows. But it\u2019s also our biggest clue to what we need to do to help empower others to care about performance and work on it. Every organization and executive is different. This means that three major things vary: the primary metrics VIPs care about; the language they use about measuring success; and how change is enacted. By clueing in to these nuances within your organization, you can get a huge leg up on crafting a successful pitch about performance work.\nLet\u2019s start with the metric that we should measure. Sure, (most) everybody cares about money - but is that really the metric that your VIPs are looking at each day to measure the success or efficacy of your site? More likely, dollars are the end game, but the metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) people focus on might be:\n\nrate of new accounts created/signups\ncost of acquiring or retaining a customer\nvisitor return rate\nvisitor bounce rate\nfavoriting or another interaction rate\n\nThese are just a few examples, but they illustrate how wide-ranging the options are that people care about. I find that developers and designers haven\u2019t necessarily investigated this when trying to get others to care about performance. We often reach for the obvious \u2013 money! \u2013 but if we don\u2019t use the same kind of language our VIPs are using, we might not get too far. You need to know this before you can make the case for performance work.\nTo find out these metrics or KPIs, start reading through the emails your VIPs are sending within your company. What does it say on company wikis? Are there major dashboards internally that people are looking at where you could find some good metrics? Listen intently in team meetings or thoroughly read annual reports to see what these metrics could be.\nThe second key here is to pick up on language you can effectively copy and paste as you make the case for performance work. You need to be able to reflect back the metrics that people already find important in a way they\u2019ll be able to hear. Once you know your key metrics, it\u2019s time to figure out how to communicate with your VIPs about performance using language that will resonate with them.\nLet\u2019s start with visit traffic as an example metric that a very important person cares about. Start to dig up research that other people and companies have done that correlates performance and your KPI. For example, cite studies:\n\n\u201cWhen the home page of Google Maps was reduced from 100KB to 70\u201380KB, traffic went up 10% in the first week, and an additional 25% in the following three weeks.\u201d (source).\n\nRead through websites like WPOStats, which collects the spectrum of studies on the impact of performance optimization on user experience and business metrics. Tweet and see if others have done similar research that correlates performance and your site\u2019s main KPI.\nOnce you have collected some research that touches on the same kind of language your VIPs use about the success of your site, it\u2019s time to present it. You can start with something simple, like a qualitative description of the work you\u2019re actively doing to improve the site that translates to improved metrics that your VIPs care about. It can be helpful to append a performance budget to any proposal so you can compare the budget to your site\u2019s reality and how it might positively impact those KPIs folks care about.\nWords and graphs are often only half the battle when it comes to getting others to care about performance. Often, videos appeal to folks\u2019 emotions in a way that is missed when glancing through charts and graphs. On A List Apart I recently detailed how to create videos of how fast your site loads. Let\u2019s say that your VIPs care about how your site loads on mobile devices; it\u2019s time to show them how your site loads on mobile networks.\nOpen video\n\nYou can use these videos to make a number of different statements to your VIPs, depending on what they care about:\n\nLook at how slow our site loads versus our competitor!\nLook at how slow our site loads for users in another country!\nLook at how slow our site loads on mobile networks!\n\nAgain, you really need to know which metrics your VIPs care about and tune into the language they\u2019re using. If they don\u2019t care about the overall user experience of your site on mobile devices, then showing them how slow your site loads on 3G isn\u2019t going to work. This will be your sales pitch; you need to practice and iterate on the language and highlights that will land best with your audience. \nTo make your sales pitch as solid as possible, gut-check your ideas on how to present it with other co-workers to get their feedback. Read up on how to construct effective arguments and deliver them; do some research and see what others have done at your company when pitching to VIPs. Are slides effective? Memos or emails? Hallway conversations? Sometimes the best way to change people\u2019s minds is by mentioning it in informal chats over coffee. Emulate the other leaders in your organization who are successful at this work. \nEvery organization and very important person is different. Learn what metrics folks truly care about, study the language that they use, and apply what you\u2019ve learned in a way that\u2019ll land with those individuals. It may take time to craft your pitch for performance work over time, but it\u2019s important work to do. If you\u2019re able to figure out how to mirror back the language and metrics VIPs care about, and connect the dots to performance for them, you will have a huge leg up on keeping your site fast in the long run.", "year": "2015", "author": "Lara Hogan", "author_slug": "larahogan", "published": "2015-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/helping-vips-care-about-performance/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 297, "title": "Public Speaking with a Buddy", "contents": "My book Demystifying Public Speaking focuses on the variety of fears we each have about giving a talk. From presenting to a client, to leading a team standup, to standing on a conference stage, there are lots of things we can do to prepare ourselves for the spotlight and reduce those fears.\nThough it didn\u2019t make it into the final draft, I wanted to highlight how helpful it can be to share that public speaking spotlight with another person, or a few more people. If you have fears about not knowing the answer to a question, fumbling your words, or making a mistake in the spotlight, then buddying up may be for you!\n\nTo some, adding more people to a presentation sounds like a recipe for on-stage disaster. To others, having a friendly face nearby\u2014a partner who can step in if you fumble\u2014is incredibly reassuring. As design director Yesenia Perez-Cruz writes, \u201cWhile public speaking is a deeply personal activity, you don\u2019t have to go it alone. Nothing has helped my speaking career more than turning it into a group effort.\u201d\nCo-presenting can level up a talk in two ways: an additional brain and presentation skill set can improve the content of the talk itself, and you may feel safer with the on-stage safety net of your buddy. \nFor example, when I started giving lengthy workshops about building mobile device labs with my co-worker Destiny Montague, we brought different experience to the table. I was able to talk about the user experience of our lab, and the importance of testing across different screen sizes. Destiny spoke about the hardware aspects of the lab, like power consumption and networking. Our audience benefitted from the spectrum of insight we included in the talk.\nMoreover, Destiny and I kept each other energized and engaging while teaching our audience, having way more fun onstage. Partnering up alleviated the risk (and fear!) of fumbling; where one person makes a mistake, the other person is right there to help. Buddy presentations can be helpful if you fear saying \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d to a question, as there are other people around you who will be able to help answer it from the stage. By partnering with someone whom I trust and respect, and whose work and knowledge augments my own, it made the experience\u2014and the presentation!\u2014significantly better.\nCo-presenting won\u2019t work if you don\u2019t trust the person you\u2019re onstage with, or if you don\u2019t have good chemistry working together. It might also not work if there\u2019s an imbalance of responsibilities, both in preparing the talk and giving it. Read on for how to make partner talks work to your advantage!\nTrustworthiness\nIf you want to explore co-presenting, make sure that your presentation partner is trustworthy and can carry their weight; it can be stressful if you find yourself trying to meet deadlines and prepare well and your partner isn\u2019t being helpful. We\u2019re all about reducing the fears and stress levels surrounding being in that spotlight onstage; make sure that the person you\u2019re relying on isn\u2019t making the process harder.\nBefore you start working together, sketch out the breakdown of work and timeline you\u2019re each committing to. Have a conversation about your preferred work style so you each have a concrete understanding of the best ways to communicate (in what medium, and how often) and how to check in on each other\u2019s progress without micromanaging or worrying about radio silence. Ask your buddy how they prefer to receive feedback, and give them your own feedback preferences, so neither of you are surprised or offended when someone\u2019s work style or deliverable needs to be tweaked.\nThis should be a partnership in which you both feel supported; it\u2019s healthy to set all these expectations up front, and create a space in which you can each tweak things as the work progresses.\nTalk flow and responsibilities\nThere are a few different ways to organize the structure of your talk with multiple presenters. Start by thinking about the breakdown of the talk content\u2014are there discrete parts you and the other presenters can own or deliver? Or does it feel more appropriate to deliver the entirety of the content together?\nIf you\u2019re finding that you can break down the content into discrete chunks, figure out who should own which pieces, and what ownership means. Will you develop the content together but have only one person present the information? Or will one person research and prepare each content section in addition to delivering it solo onstage?\nRehearse how handoffs will go between sections so it feels natural, rather than stilted. I like breaking a presentation into \u201cchapters\u201d when I\u2019m passionate about particular aspects of a topic and can speak on those, but know that there are other aspects to be shared and there\u2019s someone else who can handle (and enjoy!) talking about them. When Destiny and I rehearsed our \u201cchapter\u201d handoffs, we developed little jingles that we\u2019d both sing together onstage; it indicated to the audience that it was a planned transition in the content, and tied our independent work together into a partnership.\n.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }\n\n\n\nAlternatively, you can give the presentation in a way that\u2019s close to having a rehearsed conversation, rather than independently presenting discrete parts of the talk. In this case, you\u2019ll both be sharing the spotlight at the same time, throughout the duration of the talk. Preparation is key, here, to make sure that you each understand what needs to be communicated, and you have a sense of who will be taking responsibility for communicating those different pieces of information. A poorly-prepared talk like this will look like the co-presenters are talking over each other, or hesitating awkwardly to give the other person more room to speak; the audience will feel how uncomfortable this is, and will probably be distracted from the talk content. Practice the talk the whole way through multiple times so you know what each person is planning on covering and how you want to interact with each other while you\u2019re both holding microphones; also figure out how you\u2019ll be standing in relation to each other. More on that next!\nSharing the stage\nIf you choose to give a talk with a partner, determine ahead of time how you\u2019ll stand (or sit). For example, if you each take \u201cchapters\u201d or major sections of the presentation, ensure that it\u2019s clear who the audience should focus their attention on. You could sit in a chair off to the side (or stand). I recommend placing yourself far enough away that you\u2019re not distracting to the audience; you don\u2019t want them watching you while your partner is speaking. If the audience can still see you, but their focus should be on your buddy, be sure to not look distracted; keep your eyes on your buddy, and don\u2019t just open your laptop and ignore what\u2019s happening! Feel free to smile, laugh, or react how the audience should be reacting as your partner is speaking.\nIf you\u2019re both sharing the spotlight at the same time and having a rehearsed conversation, make sure that your body language engages the audience and you\u2019re not just speaking to each other, ignoring the folks watching. Watch this talk with Guy Podjarny and Assaf Hefetz who have partnered up to talk about security; they have clearly identified roles onstage, and remain engaged with the audience.\n\nConsider whether or not you will share a microphone, or if you will both be mic\u2019d. (Be sure that the event organizer, or the A/V team, has a heads-up well in advance to ensure they have the equipment handy!) Also talk through how you\u2019d like to handle Q&A time during or after the talk, especially if you have clear \u201cchapters\u201d where Q&A might happen naturally during a handoff. The more clarity you and your partner have about who is responsible for which pieces of information sharing, the more you can feel and appear prepared.\nCo-presenting does take a lot of preparation and requires a ton of communication between you and your partner. But the rewards can be awesome: double the brains onstage to help answer questions and communicate information, and a friendly face to help comfort you if you feel nervous.", "year": "2016", "author": "Lara Hogan", "author_slug": "larahogan", "published": "2016-12-06T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2016/public-speaking-with-a-buddy/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 1, "title": "Why Bother with Accessibility?", "contents": "Web accessibility (known in other fields as inclusive design or universal design) is the degree to which a website is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility is most often used to describe how people with disabilities can access the web.\n\nHow we approach accessibility\n\nIn the web community, there\u2019s a surprisingly inconsistent approach to accessibility. There are some who are endlessly dedicated to accessible web design, and there are some who believe it so intrinsic to the web that it shouldn\u2019t be considered a separate topic. Still, of those who are familiar with accessibility, there\u2019s an overwhelming number of designers, developers, clients and bosses who just aren\u2019t that bothered.\n\nOver the last few months I\u2019ve spoken to a lot of people about accessibility, and I\u2019ve heard the same reasons to ignore it over and over again. Let\u2019s take a look at the most common excuses.\n\nExcuse 1: \u201cPeople with disabilities don\u2019t really use the web\u201d\n\nAccessibility will make your site available to more people \u2014 the inclusion case\n\nIn the same way that the accessibility of a building isn\u2019t just about access for wheelchair users, web accessibility isn\u2019t just about blind users and screen readers. We can affect positively the lives of many people by making their access to the web easier.\n\nThere are four main types of disability that affect use of the web:\n\n\n\tVisual\n\tBlindness, low vision and colour-blindness\n\tAuditory\n\tProfoundly deaf and hard of hearing\n\tMotor\n\tThe inability to use a mouse, slow response time, limited fine motor control\n\tCognitive\n\tLearning difficulties, distractibility, the inability to focus on large amounts of information\n\n\nNone of these disabilities are completely black and white\n\nExamining deafness, it\u2019s clear from the medical scale that there are many grey areas between full hearing and total deafness:\n\n\n\tmild\n\tmoderate\n\tmoderately severe\n\tsevere\n\tprofound\n\ttotally deaf\n\n\nFor eyesight, and brain conditions that affect what users see, there is a huge range of conditions and challenges:\n\n\n\tastigmatism\n\tcolour blindness\n\takinetopsia (motion blindness)\n\tscotopic visual sensitivity (visual stress related to light)\n\tvisual agnosia (impaired recognition or identification of objects)\n\n\nWhile we might have medical and government-recognised definitions that tell us what makes a disability, day-to-day life is not so straightforward. People experience varying degrees of different conditions, and often one or more conditions at a time, creating a false divide when you view disability in terms of us and them.\n\nImpairments aren\u2019t always permanent\n\nAs we age, we\u2019re more likely to experience different levels of visual, auditory, motor and cognitive impairments. We might have an accident or illness that affects us temporarily. We might struggle more earlier or later in the day. There are so many little physiological factors that affect the way people interact with the web that we can\u2019t afford to make any assumptions based on our own limited experiences.\n\nImpairments might be somewhere between the user and the website\n\nThere are also impairments that aren\u2019t directly related to the user. Environmental factors have a huge effect on the way people interact with the web. These could be:\n\n\n\tLow bandwidth, or intermittent internet connection\n\tBright light, rain, or other weather-based conditions\n\tNoisy environments, or a location where the user doesn\u2019t want to disturb their neighbours with sound\n\tBrowsing with mobile devices, games consoles and other non-desktop devices\n\tBrowsing with legacy browsers or operating systems\n\n\nSuch environmental factors show that it\u2019s not just those with physical impairments who benefit from more accessible websites. We started designing responsive websites so we could be more future-friendly, and with a shared goal of better optimised experiences, accessibility should be at the core of responsive web design.\n\nExcuse 2: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to affect the experience for the majority of our users\u201d\n\nAccessibility will improve your site for all your users \u2014 the usability case\n\nOn a basic level, the different disability groups, as shown in the inclusion case, equate to simple usability goals:\n\n\n\tVisual \u2013 make it easy to read\n\tAuditory \u2013 make it easy to hear\n\tMotor \u2013 make it easy to interact\n\tCognitive \u2013 make it easy to understand and focus\n\n\nTaking care to ensure good usability in these areas will also have an impact on accessibility. Unless your site is catering specifically to a particular disability, where extreme optimisation is most beneficial, taking care to design with accessibility in mind will rarely negatively affect the experience of your wider audience.\n\nExcuse 3: \u201cWe don\u2019t have the budget for accessibility\u201d\n\nAccessibility will make you money \u2014 the business case\n\nBy reducing your audience through ignoring accessibility, you\u2019re potentially excluding the income from those users. Designing with accessibility in mind from the beginning of a project makes it easier to make small inexpensive optimisations as part of the design and development process, rather than bolting on costly updates to increase your potential audience later on.\n\nThe following are excerpts from a white paper about companies that increased the accessibility of their websites to comply with government regulation.\n\n\n\tImprovements in accessibility doubled Legal and General\u2019s life insurance sales online.\n\n\n\n\tImprovements in accessibility increased Tesco\u2019s grocery home delivery sales by \u00a313 million in 2005\u2026 To their surprise they found that many normal visitors preferred the ease of navigation and improved simplicity of the [parallel] accessible site and switched to use it. Tesco have replaced their \u2018normal\u2019 site with their accessible version and expect a further increase in revenues.\n\n\n\n\tImprovements in accessibility increased Virgin.net sales by 68%.\n\n\nStatistics all from WSI white paper: Improve your website\u2019s usability and accessibility to increase sales (PDF).\n\nExcuse 4: \u201cAccessible websites are ugly\u201d\n\nAccessibility won\u2019t stop your site from being beautiful \u2014 the beauty case\n\nMany people use ugly accessible websites as proof that all accessible websites are ugly. This just isn\u2019t the case. I\u2019ve compiled some examples of beautiful and accessible websites with screenshots of how they look through the Color Oracle simulator and how they perform when run through Webaim\u2019s Wave accessibility checker tool.\n\nWhile automated tools are no substitute for real users, they can help you learn more about good practices, and give you guidance on where your site needs improvements to make it more accessible.\n\nAmazon.co.uk\n\nIt may not be a decorated beauty, but Amazon is often first in functional design. It\u2019s a huge website with a lot of interactive content, but it generates just five errors on the Wave test, and is easy to read under a Color Oracle filter.\n\n Screenshot of Amazon website\n Screenshot of Amazon\u2019s Wave results \u2013 five errors\n Screenshot of Amazon through a Color Oracle filter\n\n24 ways\n\nWhen Tim Van Damme redesigned 24 ways back in 2007, it was a striking and unusual design that showed what could be achieved with CSS and some imagination. Despite the complexity of the design, it gets an outstanding zero errors on the Wave test, and is still readable under a Color Oracle filter.\n\n Screenshot of pre-2013 24 ways website design\n Screenshot of 24 ways Wave results \u2013 zero errors\n Screenshot of 24ways through a Color Oracle filter\n\nOpera\u2019s Shiny Demos\n\nDemos and prototypes are notorious for ignoring accessibility, but Opera\u2019s Shiny Demos site shows how exploring new technologies doesn\u2019t have to exclude anyone. It only gets one error on the Wave test, and looks fine under a Color Oracle filter.\n\n Screenshot of Opera\u2019s Shiny Demos website\n Screenshot of Opera\u2019s Shiny Demos Wave results \u2013 1 error\n Screenshot of Opera\u2019s Shiny Demos through a Color Oracle filter\n\nSoundCloud\n\nWhen a site is more app-like, relying on more interaction from the user, accessibility can be more challenging. However, SoundCloud only gets one error on the Wave test, and the colour contrast holds up well under a Color Oracle filter.\n\n Screenshot of SoundCloud website\n Screenshot of SoundCloud\u2019s Wave results \u2013 one error\n Screenshot of SoundCloud through a Color Oracle filter\n\nEducation and balance\n\nAs with most web design, doing accessibility well is about combining your knowledge of accessibility with your project\u2019s context to create a balance that serves your users\u2019 needs. Your types of content and interactions will dictate one set of constraints. Your users\u2019 needs and goals will dictate another. In broad terms, web design as a practice is finding the equilibrium between these constraints.\n\nAnd then there\u2019s just caring. The web as a platform is open, affordable and available to many. Accessibility is our way to ensure that nobody gets shut out.", "year": "2013", "author": "Laura Kalbag", "author_slug": "laurakalbag", "published": "2013-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2013/why-bother-with-accessibility/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 93, "title": "Design Systems", "contents": "The most important part of responsive web design is that, no matter what the viewport width, the content is accessible in an optimum display. The best responsive designs are those that allow you to go from one optimised display to another, but with the feeling that these experiences are part of a greater product whole.\n\nResponsive design: where we\u2019ve been going wrong\n\nResponsive web design was a shock to my web designer system. Those of us who had already been designing sites for mobile probably had the biggest leap to make. We might have been detecting user agents in order to deliver a mobile-specific site, or using the slightly more familiar Bushido technique to deliver sites optimised for device type and viewport size, but either way our focus was on devices. A site was optimised for either a mobile phone or a desktop.\n\nResponsive web design brought us back to pre-table layout fluid sites that expanded or contracted to fit the viewport. This was a big difference to get our heads around when we were so used to designing for fixed-width layouts. Suddenly, an element could be any width or, at least, we needed to consider its maximum and minimum widths. Pixel perfection, while pretty, became wholly unrealistic, and a whole load of designers who prided themselves in detailed and precise designs got a bit scared.\n\nHanging on to our previous processes and typical deliverables led us to continue to optimise our sites for particular devices and provide pixel-perfect mockups for those device widths.\n\nWith all this we were concentrating on devices, not content, deliverables and not process, and making assumptions about users and their devices based on nothing but the width of the viewport.\n\nI don\u2019t think this is a crime, I think it was inevitable.\n\nWe can be up to date with our principles and ideals, but it\u2019s never as easy in practice. That\u2019s why it\u2019s more important than ever to share our successful techniques and processes. Let\u2019s drag each other into modern web design.\n\nDesign systems: the principles\n\nWhat are design systems?\n\nA visual design system is built out of the core components of typography, layout, shape or form, and colour. When considering the design of a whole product, a design system should also include patterns in user flow, content strategy, copy, and tone of voice. These concepts, design decisions or rules, created around the core components are used consistently across your product to create a cohesive feel, whether it\u2019s from one element to another, page to page, or viewport width to viewport width.\n\nResponsive design is one of the most important considerations in the components of a design system. For each component, you must decide what will unite the design across the viewports to maintain that consistent feel, and what parts of the design will differentiate in order to provide a flexible and optimal experience for different viewport sizes.\n\nComponents you might keep the same across viewports\n\n\n\ttypeface\n\tbase unit\n\tcolour\n\tshape/form\n\n\nComponents you might differentiate across viewports\n\n\n\tgrids\n\tlayout\n\tfont size\n\tmeasure (line length)\n\tleading (line height)\n\n\nContent: it must always be the same\n\nThe focus of a design system is the optimum display of content. As Mark Boulton put it, designing \u201ccontent out, not canvas in.\u201d Chris Armstrong puts the emphasis on not designing for viewports but for content \u2013 \u201cwe need to build on what we do know: content.\u201d In order to do this, we must share the same content across all devices and focus on how best to display and represent content through design system components.\n\nThe practical: core visual components\n\nTypography first\n\nWhen you work with a lot of text content, typography is the easiest way to set the visual tone of the design across all viewport widths. It\u2019s likely that you\u2019ll choose one or two typefaces to use across the whole system, but you might change the most legible font size, balanced with the most comfortable measure, as the viewport width changes.\n\nWhere typography meets layout\n\nThe unit on which you choose to base the grid and layout design, font sizes and leading could be based on the typeface, an optimal reading size, or something more arbitrary. Sometimes I\u2019ll choose a unit based on multiples of ten because it makes the maths in the CSS easier. Tim Brown suggests trying a modular scale. Chris Armstrong suggests basing it on your ideal measure, or the width of a fixed item of content such as an ad unit.\n\nGrids and layouts\n\nSensible grid design can be a flexible yet solid foundation for your design system layout component. But you must be wary in responsive design that a grid might not work across all widths: even four columns could make for very cramped content and one-word measures on smaller screens.\n\nMaybe the grid columns are something you differentiate across widths, but you can keep the concept of the grid consistent. If the content has blocks in groups of three, you might decide on a three-column grid which folds down to one column for narrow viewports. If the grid focuses on the idea of symmetry and has a four-column grid on larger viewports, it might fold down to two columns for narrower viewports. These consistencies may seem subtle, not at all obvious to many except the designer, but it\u2019s all these little constants and patterns across the whole of the design system that makes design decisions easier to make (as they adhere to the guiding concepts of your system), and give the product a uniform feel no matter what the device.\n\nShape or form\n\nThe shape or form components are concepts you already use in fixed-width web design for a strong, consistent look and feel. \n\nSince CSS border-radius became widely supported by browsers, a lot of designs feature circle themes. These are very distinctive and can be used across viewport widths giving them the same united feel, even if they\u2019re not used in the same way. This could also apply to border styles, consistent shadows and any number of decorative details and textures. These are the elements that make up the shape or form of a design system.\n\nColour\n\nColour is the most basic way to reinforce a brand and unite experiences across viewports. The same hex colour used system-wide is instantly recognisable, no matter what the viewport width.\n\nThe process\n\nWhile using a design system isn\u2019t necessarily attached to any particular process, it does lend itself to some process ideals.\n\nDetaching design considerations from viewport widths\n\nA design system allows you to focus separately on the components that make up the system, disconnecting the look and feel from the layout. This helps prevent us getting stuck in the rut of the Apple breakpoints (brilliantly coined by Simon Foster) of mobile, tablet and desktop. It also forces us to design for variation in viewport experiences side by side, not one after the other.\n\nDesign in the browser\n\nI can\u2019t start off designing in the browser \u2013 it just doesn\u2019t seem to bring out my creative side (and I\u2019m incredibly envious of you if you can; I just have to start on paper) \u2013 but static mock-ups aren\u2019t the only alternative. Style guides and style tiles are perfect for expressing the concepts of your design system. Pattern libraries could also work well.\n\nMock-ups and breakpoints\n\nAt some point, whether it\u2019s to test your system ideas, or because a client needs help visualising how your system might work, you may end up producing some static mock-ups. It\u2019s not the end of the world, but you must ensure that these consider all the viewports, not just those of the iDevices, or even the devices currently on the market. You need to decide the breakpoints where the states of your design change. The blocks within your content will always have optimum points for their display (based on their hierarchy, density, width, or type of interaction) and so your breakpoints should be based around these points.\n\nThese are probably the ideal points at which to produce static mockups; treat them as snapshots. They\u2019re not necessarily mock-ups, so much as a way of capturing how your design system would be interpreted when frozen at that particular viewport width.\n\nThe future\n\nCreating design systems will give us the flexibility we need for working with the unknown devices of the future. It may be a change in process, but it shouldn\u2019t be too much of a difference in thinking. The pioneers in responsive design have a hard job. Some of these problems may have already been solved in other technologies or industries, but it\u2019s up to the pioneers to find those connections and help us formulate solutions and standards that will make responsive design the best it can possibly be. We need to keep experimenting and communicating, particularly in the area of design, as good user experiences are the true sign of whether our products are a success.", "year": "2012", "author": "Laura Kalbag", "author_slug": "laurakalbag", "published": "2012-12-12T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/design-systems/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 213, "title": "Accessibility Through Semantic HTML", "contents": "Working on Better, a tracker blocker, I spend an awful lot of my time with my nose in other people\u2019s page sources. I\u2019m mostly there looking for harmful tracking scripts, but often notice the HTML on some of the world\u2019s most popular sites is in a sad state of neglect.\nWhat does neglected HTML look like? Here\u2019s an example of the markup I found on a news site just yesterday. There\u2019s a bit of text, a few links, and a few images. But mostly it\u2019s div elements.\n<div class=\"block_wrapper\">\n <div class=\"block_content\">\n <div class=\"box\">\n <div id=\"block1242235\">\n <div class=\"column\">\n <div class=\"column_content\">\n <a class=\"close\" href=\"#\"><i class=\"fa\"></i></a>\n </div>\n <div class=\"btn account_login\"></div>\n Some text <span>more text</span>\n </div>\n </div>\n </div>\n </div>\n</div>\ndivs and spans, why do we use them so much?\nWhile I find tracking scripts completely inexcusable, I do understand why people write HTML like the above. As developers, we like to use divs and spans as they\u2019re generic elements. They come with no associated default browser styles or behaviour except that div displays as a block, and span displays inline. If we make our page up out of divs and spans, we know we\u2019ll have absolute control over styles and behaviour cross-browser, and we won\u2019t need a CSS reset.\nAbsolute control may seem like an advantage, but there\u2019s a greater benefit to less generic, more semantic elements. Browsers render semantic elements with their own distinct styles and behaviours. For example, button looks and behaves differently from a. And ul is different from ol. These defaults are shortcuts to a more usable and accessible web. They provide consistent and well-tested components for common interactions.\nSemantic elements aid usability\nA good example of how browser defaults can benefit the usability of an element is in the <select> option menu. In Safari on the desktop, the browser renders <select> as a popover-style menu. On a touchscreen, Safari overlays the same menu over the lower half of the screen as a \u201cpicker view.\u201d\nOption menu in Safari on macOS.\nOption menu picker in Safari on iOS.\nThe iOS picker is a much better experience than struggling to pick from a complicated interface inside the page. The menu is shown more clearly than in the confined space on the page, which makes the options easier to read. The required swipe and tap gestures are consistent with the rest of the operating system, making the expected interaction easier to understand. The whole menu is scaled up, meaning the gestures don\u2019t need such fine motor control. Good usability is good accessibility.\nWhen we choose to use a div or span over a more semantic HTML element, we\u2019re also doing hard work the browser could be doing for us. We don\u2019t need to tie ourselves in knots making a custom div into a keyboard navigable option menu. Using select passes the bulk of the responsibility over to the browser.\u00a0\nLetting the browser do most of the work is also more future-friendly. More devices, with different expected interactions, will be released in the future. When that happens, the devices\u2019 browsers can adapt our sites according to those interactions. Then we can spend our time doing something more fun than rewriting cross-browser JavaScript for each new device.\nHTML\u2019s impact on accessibility\nAssistive technology also uses semantic HTML to understand how best to convey each element to its user.\nFor screen readers\nSemantic HTML gives context to screen readers. Screen readers are a type of assistive technology that reads the content of the screen to the person using it. All sites have a linear page source. Sighted visitors can use visual cues on the page to navigate to their desired content in a non-linear fashion. As screen readers output audio (and sometimes braille), those visual cues aren\u2019t usable in the same way.\nScreen readers provide alternative means of navigation, enabling people to jump between different types of content, such as links, forms, headings, lists, and paragraphs. If all our content is marked up using divs and spans, we\u2019re not giving screen readers a chance to index the valuable content.\nFor keyboard navigation\nKeyboard-only navigation is also aided by semantic HTML. Forms, option menus, navigation, video, and audio are particularly hard for people relying on a keyboard to access. For instance, option menus and navigation can be very fiddly if you need to use a mouse to hover a menu open and move to select the desired item at the same time.\u00a0\nAgain, we can leave much of the interaction to the browser through semantic HTML. Semantic form elements can convey if a check box has been checked, or which label is associated with which input field. These default behaviours can make the difference between a person being able to use a form or leaving the site out of frustration.\nDid I convince you yet? I hope so. Let\u2019s finish with some easy guidelines to follow.\n1. Use the most semantic HTML element for the job\nWhen you reach for a div, first check if there\u2019s a better element to do the job. What is the role of that element? How should a person be interacting with the element?\nAre you using class names like nav, header, or main? There are HTML5 elements for those sections! Using specific elements can also make writing CSS simpler, and ensure a consistent design with minimal effort.\n2. Separate structure and style\nDon\u2019t choose HTML elements based on how they\u2019re styled in your CSS. Nowadays, common practice is to use class names rather than elements for CSS selectors. You\u2019re unlikely to wrap all your page content in an <h1> element because you want all the text to be big and bold. Still, it can be easy to choose an HTML element because it will be the easiest to style. Focusing on content without style will help us choose the most semantic HTML element without that temptation. For example, you could add a class of .btn to a div to make it look like a button. But we all know that only a button will really behave like a button.\n3. Use progressive enhancement for enhanced functionality\nAirbnb and Groupon recently proved we\u2019re not past the laziness of \u201cthis site only works in X browser.\u201d Baffling disregard for the open web aside, making complex interactive experiences work cross-browser and cross-device is not easy. We can use progressive enhancement to layer fancy or unsupported features on top of a baseline \u201cit works\u201d experience.\u00a0\nWe should build the baseline experience on a foundation of accessible, semantic HTML. Then, if you really want to add a specific feature for a proprietary browser, you can layer that on top, without breaking the underlying experience.\n4. Test your work\nValidators are always valuable for checking the browser will be able to correctly interpret your markup. Document outline checkers can be valuable for testing your structure, but be aware that the HTML5 document outline is not actually implemented in browsers.\nOnce you\u2019ve got something resembling a web page, test the experience! Ensure that semantic HTML element you chose looks and behaves in a predictable manner consistent with its use across the web. Test cross-browser, test cross-device, and test with assistive technology. Testing with assistive technology is not as expensive as it used to be, you can even use your smartphone for testing on iOS and Android. Your visitors will thank you!\nFurther reading\n\nAccessibility For Everyone by Laura Kalbag\nHTML5 Doctor\nHTML5 Accessibility\nAn overview of HTML5 Semantics\nHTML reference on MDN\u00a0\nHeydon Pickering\u2019s Inclusive Design Checklist\nThe Paciello Group\u2019s Inclusive Design Principles", "year": "2017", "author": "Laura Kalbag", "author_slug": "laurakalbag", "published": "2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2017/accessibility-through-semantic-html/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 283, "title": "CSS3 Patterns, Explained", "contents": "Many of you have probably seen my CSS3 patterns gallery. It became very popular throughout the year and it showed many web developers how powerful CSS3 gradients really are. But how many really understand how these patterns are created? The biggest benefit of CSS-generated backgrounds is that they can be modified directly within the style sheet. This benefit is void if we are just copying and pasting CSS code we don\u2019t understand. We may as well use a data URI instead.\n\nImportant note\n\nIn all the examples that follow, I\u2019ll be using gradients without a vendor prefix, for readability and brevity. However, you should keep in mind that in reality you need to use all the vendor prefixes (-moz-, -ms-, -o-, -webkit-) as no browser currently implements them without a prefix. Alternatively, you could use -prefix-free and have the current vendor prefix prepended at runtime, only when needed.\n\nThe syntax described here is the one that browsers currently implement. The specification has since changed, but no browser implements the changes yet. If you are interested in what is coming, I suggest you take a look at the dev version of the spec.\n\nIf you are not yet familiar with CSS gradients, you can read these excellent tutorials by John Allsopp and return here later, as in the rest of the article I assume you already know the CSS gradient basics:\n\n\n\tCSS3 Linear Gradients\n\tCSS3 Radial Gradients\n\n\nThe main idea\n\nI\u2019m sure most of you can imagine the background this code generates:\n\nbackground: linear-gradient(left, white 20%, #8b0 80%);\n\nIt\u2019s a simple gradient from one color to another that looks like this:\n\n See this example live\n\nAs you probably know, in this case the first 20% of the container\u2019s width is solid white and the last 20% is solid green. The other 60% is a smooth gradient between these colors. Let\u2019s try moving these color stops closer to each other:\n\nbackground: linear-gradient(left, white 30%, #8b0 70%);\n\n See this example live\n\nbackground: linear-gradient(left, white 40%, #8b0 60%);\n\n See this example live\n\nbackground: linear-gradient(left, white 50%, #8b0 50%);\n\n See this example live\n\nNotice how the gradient keeps shrinking and the solid color areas expanding, until there is no gradient any more in the last example. We can even adjust the position of these two color stops to control where each color abruptly changes into another:\n\nbackground: linear-gradient(left, white 30%, #8b0 30%);\n\n See this example live\n\nbackground: linear-gradient(left, white 90%, #8b0 90%);\n\n See this example live\n\nWhat you need to take away from these examples is that when two color stops are at the same position, there is no gradient, only solid colors. Even without going any further, this trick is useful for a number of different use cases like faux columns or the effect I wanted to achieve in my homepage or the -prefix-free page where the background is only shown on one side and hidden on the other:\n\n\n\nCombining with background-size\n\nWe can do wonders, however, if we combine this with the CSS3 background-size property:\n\nbackground: linear-gradient(left, white 50%, #8b0 50%);\nbackground-size: 100px 100px;\n\n See this example live\n\nAnd there it is. We just created the simplest of patterns: (vertical) stripes. We can remove the first parameter (left) or replace it with top and we\u2019ll get horizontal stripes. However, let\u2019s face it: Horizontal and vertical stripes are kinda boring. Most stripey backgrounds we see on the web are diagonal. So, let\u2019s try doing that.\n\nOur first attempt would be to change the angle of the gradient to something like 45deg. However, this results in an ugly pattern like this: \n\n See this example live\n\nBefore reading on, think for a second: why didn\u2019t this produce the desired result? Can you figure it out?\n\nThe reason is that the gradient angle rotates the gradient inside each tile, not the tiled background as a whole. However, didn\u2019t we have the same problem the first time we tried to create diagonal stripes with an image? And then we learned that every stripe has to be included twice, like so:\n\n\n\nSo, let\u2019s try to create that effect with CSS gradients. It\u2019s essentially what we tried before, but with more color stops:\n\nbackground: linear-gradient(45deg, white 25%,\n #8b0 25%, #8b0 50%, \n white 50%, white 75%, \n #8b0 75%);\nbackground-size:100px 100px;\n\n See this example live\n\nAnd there we have our stripes! An easy way to remember the order of the percentages and colors it is that you always have two of the same in succession, except the first and last color.\n\nNote: Firefox for Mac also needs an additional 100% color stop at the end of any pattern with more than two stops, like so: ..., white 75%, #8b0 75%, #8b0). The bug was reported in February 2011 and you can vote for it and track its progress at Bugzilla.\n\nUnfortunately, this is essentially a hack and we will realize that if we try to change the gradient angle to 60deg:\n\n See this example live\n\nNot that maintainable after all, eh? Luckily, CSS3 offers us another way of declaring such backgrounds, which not only helps this case but also results in much more concise code:\n\nbackground: repeating-linear-gradient(60deg, white, white 35px, #8b0 35px, #8b0 70px);\n\n See this example live\n\nIn this case, however, the size has to be declared in the color stop positions and not through background-size, since the gradient is supposed to cover the entire container. You might notice that the declared size is different from the one specified the previous way. This is because the size of the stripes is measured differently: in the first example we specify the dimensions of the tile itself; in the second, the width of the stripes (35px), which is measured diagonally.\n\nMultiple backgrounds\n\nUsing only one gradient you can create stripes and that\u2019s about it. There are a few more patterns you can create with just one gradient (linear or radial) but they are more or less boring and ugly. Almost every pattern in my gallery contains a number of different backgrounds. For example, let\u2019s create a polka dot pattern:\n\nbackground: radial-gradient(circle, white 10%, transparent 10%),\nradial-gradient(circle, white 10%, black 10%) 50px 50px;\nbackground-size:100px 100px;\n\n See this example live\n\nNotice that the two gradients are almost the same image, but positioned differently to create the polka dot effect. The only difference between them is that the first (topmost) gradient has transparent instead of black. If it didn\u2019t have transparent regions, it would effectively be the same as having a single gradient, as the topmost gradient would obscure everything beneath it.\n\nThere is an issue with this background. Can you spot it?\n\nThis background will be fine for browsers that support CSS gradients but, for browsers that don\u2019t, it will be transparent as the whole declaration is ignored. We have two ways to provide a fallback, each for different use cases. We have to either declare another background before the gradient, like so:\n\nbackground: black;\nbackground: radial-gradient(circle, white 10%, transparent 10%),\nradial-gradient(circle, white 10%, black 10%) 50px 50px;\nbackground-size:100px 100px;\n\nor declare each background property separately:\n\nbackground-color: black;\nbackground-image: radial-gradient(circle, white 10%, transparent 10%),\nradial-gradient(circle, white 10%, transparent 10%);\nbackground-size:100px 100px;\nbackground-position: 0 0, 50px 50px;\n\nThe vigilant among you will have noticed another change we made to our code in the last example: we altered the second gradient to have transparent regions as well. This way background-color serves a dual purpose: it sets both the fallback color and the background color of the polka dot pattern, so that we can change it with just one edit. Always strive to make code that can be modified with the least number of edits. You might think that it will never be changed in that way but, almost always, given enough time, you\u2019ll be proved wrong.\n\nWe can apply the exact same technique with linear gradients, in order to create checkerboard patterns out of right triangles:\n\nbackground-color: white;\nbackground-image: linear-gradient(45deg, black 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, black 75%), \nlinear-gradient(45deg, black 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, black 75%);\nbackground-size:100px 100px;\nbackground-position: 0 0, 50px 50px;\n\n See this example live\n\nUsing the right units\n\nDon\u2019t use pixels for the sizes without any thought. In some cases, ems make much more sense. For example, when you want to make a lined paper background, you want the lines to actually follow the text. If you use pixels, you have to change the size every time you change font-size. If you set the background-size in ems, it will naturally follow the text and you will only have to update it if you change line-height.\n\nIs it possible?\n\nThe shapes that can be achieved with only one gradient are:\n\n\n\tstripes\n\tright triangles\n\tcircles and ellipses\n\tsemicircles and other shapes formed from slicing ellipses horizontally or vertically\n\n\nYou can combine several of them to create squares and rectangles (two right triangles put together), rhombi and other parallelograms (four right triangles), curves formed from parts of ellipses, and other shapes.\n\nJust because you can doesn\u2019t mean you should\n\nTechnically, anything can be crafted with these techniques. However, not every pattern is suitable for it. The main advantages of this technique are:\n\n\n\tno extra HTTP requests\n\tshort code\n\thuman-readable code (unlike data URIs) that can be changed without even leaving the CSS file.\n\n\nComplex patterns that require a large number of gradients are probably better left to SVG or bitmap images, since they negate almost every advantage of this technique:\n\n\n\tthey are not shorter\n\tthey are not really comprehensible \u2013 changing them requires much more effort than using an image editor\n\n\nThey still save an HTTP request, but so does a data URI.\n\nI have included some very complex patterns in my gallery, because even though I think they shouldn\u2019t be used in production (except under very exceptional conditions), understanding how they work and coding them helps somebody understand the technology in much more depth.\n\nAnother rule of thumb is that if your pattern needs shapes to obscure parts of other shapes, like in the star pattern or the yin yang pattern, then you probably shouldn\u2019t use it. In these patterns, changing the background color requires you to also change the color of these shapes, making edits very tedious.\n\nIf a certain pattern is not practicable with a reasonable amount of CSS, that doesn\u2019t mean you should resort to bitmap images. SVG is a very good alternative and is supported by all modern browsers.\n\nBrowser support\n\nCSS gradients are supported by Firefox 3.6+, Chrome 10+, Safari 5.1+ and Opera 11.60+ (linear gradients since Opera 11.10). Support is also coming in Internet Explorer when IE10 is released. You can get gradients in older WebKit versions (including most mobile browsers) by using the proprietary -webkit-gradient(), if you really need them.\n\nEpilogue\n\nI hope you find these techniques useful for your own designs. If you come up with a pattern that\u2019s very different from the ones already included, especially if it demonstrates a cool new technique, feel free to send a pull request to the github repo of the patterns gallery. Also, I\u2019m always fascinated to see my techniques put in practice, so if you made something cool and used CSS patterns, I\u2019d love to know about it!\n\nHappy holidays!", "year": "2011", "author": "Lea Verou", "author_slug": "leaverou", "published": "2011-12-16T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/css3-patterns-explained/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 92, "title": "Redesigning the Media Query", "contents": "Responsive web design is showing us that designing content is more important than designing containers. But if you\u2019ve given RWD a serious try, you know that shifting your focus from the container is surprisingly hard to do. There are many factors and\ninstincts working against you, and one culprit is a perpetrator you\u2019d least suspect.\n\nThe media query is the ringmaster of responsive design. It lets us establish the rules of the game and gives us what we need most: control. However, like some kind of evil double agent, the media query is actually working against you.\n\nIts very nature diverts your attention away from content and forces you to focus on the container.\n\nThe very act of choosing a media query value means choosing a screen size.\n\nLook at the history of the media query\u2014it\u2019s always been about the container. Values like screen, print, handheld and tv don\u2019t have anything to do with content. The modern media query lets us choose screen dimensions, which is great because it makes RWD possible. But it\u2019s still the act of choosing something that is completely unpredictable.\n\nContent should dictate our breakpoints, not the container. In order to get our focus back to the only thing that matters, we need a reengineered media query\u2014one that frees us from thinking about screen dimensions. A media query that works for your content, not the window. Fortunately, Sass 3.2 is ready and willing to take on this challenge.\n\nThinking in Columns\n\nFluid grids never clicked for me. I feel so disoriented and confused by their squishiness. Responsive design demands their use though, right?\n\nI was ready to surrender until I found a grid that turned my world upright again. The Frameless Grid by Joni Korpi demonstrates that column and gutter sizes can stay fixed. As the screen size changes, you simply add or remove columns to accommodate. This made sense to me and armed with this concept I was able to give Sass the first component it needs to rewrite the media query: fixed column and gutter size variables.\n\n$grid-column: 60px;\n$grid-gutter: 20px;\n\nWe\u2019re going to want some resolution independence too, so let\u2019s create a function that converts those nasty pixel values into ems.\n\n@function em($px, $base: $base-font-size) {\n\t@return ($px / $base) * 1em;\n}\n\nWe now have the components needed to figure out the width of multiple columns in ems. Let\u2019s put them together in a function that will take any number of columns and return the fixed width value of their size.\n\n@function fixed($col) {\n\t@return $col * em($grid-column + $grid-gutter)\n}\n\nWith the math in place we can now write a mixin that takes a column count as a parameter, then generates the perfect media query necessary to fit that number of columns on the screen. We can also build in some left and right margin for our layout by adding an additional gutter value (remembering that we already have one gutter built into our fixed function).\n\n@mixin breakpoint($min) {\n\t@media (min-width: fixed($min) + em($grid-gutter)) {\n\t\t@content\n\t}\n}\n\nAnd, just like that, we\u2019ve rewritten the media query. Instead of picking a minimum screen size for our layout, we can simply determine the number of columns needed. Let\u2019s add a wrapper class so that we can center our content on the screen.\n\n@mixin breakpoint($min) {\n @media (min-width: fixed($min) + em($grid-gutter)) {\n\t.wrapper {\n\t\twidth: fixed($min) - em($grid-gutter);\n\t\tmargin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\n\t}\n\t@content\n }\n}\n\nDesigning content with a column count gives us nice, easy, whole numbers to work with. Sizing content, sidebars or widgets is now as simple as specifying a single-digit number.\n\n@include breakpoint(8) {\n\t.main { width: fixed(5); }\n\t.sidebar { width: fixed(3); }\n}\n\nThose four lines of Sass just created a responsive layout for us. When the screen is big enough to fit eight columns, it will trigger a fixed width layout. And give widths to our main content and sidebar. The following is the outputted CSS\u2026\n\n@media (min-width: 41.25em) {\n .wrapper {\n width: 38.75em;\n margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\n }\n .main { width: 25em; }\n .sidebar { width: 15em; }\n}\n\nDemo\n\nI\u2019ve created a Codepen demo that demonstrates what we\u2019ve covered so far. I\u2019ve added to the demo some grid classes based on Griddle by Nicolas Gallagher to create a floatless layout. I\u2019ve also added a CSS gradient overlay to help you visualize columns. Try changing the column variable sizes or the breakpoint includes to see how the layout reacts to different screen sizes.\n\nResponsive Images\n\nResponsive images are a serious problem, but I\u2019m excited to see the community talk so passionately about a solution. Now, there are some excellent stopgaps while we wait for something official, but these solutions require you to mirror your breakpoints in JavaScript or HTML. This poses a serious problem for my Sass-generated media queries, because I have no idea what the real values of my breakpoints are anymore. For responsive images to work, JavaScript needs to recognize which media query is active so that proper images can be loaded for that layout.\n\nWhat I need is a way to label my breakpoints. Fortunately, people much smarter than I have figured this out. Jeremy Keith devised a labeling method by using CSS-generated content as the storage method for breakpoint labels. We can use this technique in our breakpoint mixin by passing a label as another argument.\n\n@include breakpoint(8, 'desktop') { /* styles */ }\n\nSass can take that label and use it when writing the corresponding media query. We just need to slightly modify our breakpoint mixin.\n\n@mixin breakpoint($min, $label) {\n @media (min-width: fixed($min) + em($grid-gutter)) {\n\n // label our mq with CSS generated content\n\tbody::before { content: $label; display: none; }\n\n\t.wrapper {\n\t\twidth: fixed($min) - em($grid-gutter);\n\t\tmargin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\n\t}\n\t@content\n }\n}\n\nThis allows us to label our breakpoints with a user-friendly string. Now that our media queries are defined and labeled, we just need JavaScript to step in and read which label is active.\n\n// get css generated label for active media query\nvar label = getComputedStyle(document.body, '::before')['content'];\n\nJavaScript now knows which layout is active by reading the label in the current media query\u2014we just need to match that label to an image. I prefer to store references to different image sizes as data attributes on my image tag.\n\n<img class=\"responsive-image\" data-mobile=\"mobile.jpg\" data-desktop=\"desktop.jpg\" />\n<noscript><img src=\"desktop.jpg\" /></noscript>\n\nThese data attributes have names that match the labels set in my CSS. So while there is some duplication going on, setting a keyword like \u2018tablet\u2019 in two places is much easier than hardcoding media query values. With matching labels in CSS and HTML our script can marry the two and load the right sized image for our layout.\n\n// get css generated label for active media query\nvar label = getComputedStyle(document.body, '::before')['content'];\n\n// select image\nvar $image = $('.responsive-image');\n\n// create source from data attribute\n$image.attr('src', $image.data(label));\n\nDemo\n\nWith some slight additions to our previous Codepen demo you can see this responsive image technique in action. While the above JavaScript will work it is not nearly robust enough for production so the demo uses a jQuery plugin that can accomodate multiple images, reloading on screen resize and fallbacks if something doesn\u2019t match up.\n\nCreating a Framework\n\nThis media query mixin and responsive image JavaScript are the center piece of a front end framework I use to develop websites. It\u2019s a fluid, mobile first foundation that uses the breakpoint mixin to structure fixed width layouts for tablet and desktop. Significant effort was focused on making this framework completely cross-browser. For example, one of the problems with using media queries is that essential desktop structure code ends up being hidden from legacy Internet Explorer. Respond.js is an excellent polyfill, but if you\u2019re comfortable serving a single desktop layout to older IE, we don\u2019t need JavaScript. We simply need to capture layout code outside of a media query and sandbox it under an IE only class name.\n\n// set IE fallback layout to 8 columns\n$ie-support = 8;\n\n// inside of our breakpoint mixin (but outside the media query)\n@if ($ie-support and $min <= $ie-support) {\n\t.lt-ie9 { @content; }\n}\n\nPerspective Regained\n\nThinking in columns means you are thinking about content layout. How big of a screen do you need for 12 columns? Who cares? Having Sass write media queries means you can use intuitive numbers for content layout. A fixed grid means more layout control and less edge cases to test than a fluid grid. Using CSS labels for activating responsive images means you don\u2019t have to duplicate breakpoints across separations of concern. \n\nIt\u2019s a harmonious blend of approaches that gives us something we need\u2014responsive design that feels intuitive. And design that, from the very outset, focuses on what matters most. Just like our kindergarten teachers taught us: It\u2019s what\u2019s inside that counts.", "year": "2012", "author": "Les James", "author_slug": "lesjames", "published": "2012-12-13T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/redesigning-the-media-query/", "topic": "code"} {"rowid": 39, "title": "Meet for Learning", "contents": "\u201cI\u2019ve never worked in a place like this,\u201d said one of my direct reports during our daily stand-up meeting.\n\nAnd with that statement, my mind raced to the most important thing about lawyering that I\u2019ve learned from decades of watching lawyers lawyer on TV: don\u2019t ask a question you don\u2019t know the answer to.\n\nBut I couldn\u2019t stop myself. I wanted to learn more. The thought developed in my mind. The words formed in my mouth. And the vocalization occurred: \u201cA place like this?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve never worked where people are so honest and transparent about things.\u201d\n\nDesigning a learning-centered culture\n\nBefore we started Center Centre, Jared Spool and I discussed both the larger goals and the smaller details of this new UX design school. We talked about things like user experience, curriculum, and structure.\n\nWe discussed the pattern we saw in our research. Hiring managers told us time and again that great designers have excellent technical and interpersonal skills. But, more importantly, the best designers are lifelong learners\u2014they are willing and able to learn how to do new things. Learning this led us to ask a critical question: how would we intentionally design a learning-centered experience?\n\nTo craft the experience we were aiming for, we knew we had to create a learning-centered culture for our students and our employees. We knew that our staff would need to model the behaviors our students needed to learn. We knew the best way to shape the culture was to work with our direct reports\u2014our directs\u2014to develop the behaviors we wanted them to exemplify.\n\nTo craft the experience we were aiming for, we knew we had to create a learning-centered culture for our students and our employees. We knew that our staff would need to model the behaviors our students needed to learn.\n\nBuilding a learning team\n\nOur learning-centered culture starts with our staff. We believe in transparency. Transparency builds trust. Effective organizations have effective teams who trust each other as individuals.\n\nOne huge way we build that trust and provide opportunities for transparency is in our meetings. (I know, I know\u2014meetings! Yuck!) But seriously, running and participating in effective meetings is a great opportunity to build a learning-centered culture.\n\nMeetings\u2014when done well\u2014allow individuals time to come together, to share, and to listen. These behaviors, executed on a consistent and regular basis, build honest and trusting relationships.\n\nAn effective meeting is one that achieves the desired outcomes of that meeting. While different meetings aim for different results, at Center Centre all meetings have a secondary goal: meet for learning.\n\nA framework for learning-centered meetings\n\nWe\u2019ve developed a framework for our meetings. We use it for all our meetings, which means attendees know what to expect. It also saves us from reinventing the wheel in each meeting.\n\nThese basic steps help our meetings focus on the valuable face-to-face interaction we\u2019re having, and help us truly begin to learn from one another.\n\n An agenda for a staff meeting.\n\nUse effective meeting basics\n\n\n\tPrepare for the meeting before the meeting.\n\tIf you\u2019re running the meeting, prepare a typed agenda and share it before the meeting. Agendas have start times for each item.\n\tStart the meeting on time. Don\u2019t wait for stragglers.\n\tDefine ground rules. Get input from attendees. Recurring meetings don\u2019t have to do this every time.\n\tKeep to the meeting agenda. Put off-topic questions and ideas in a parking lot, a visual document that everyone can see, so you can address the questions and ideas later.\n\tFinish on time. And if you\u2019ve reached the meeting\u2019s goals, finish early.\n\n\n Parking lots where ideas on sticky notes can be posted for later consideration.\n\nFocus to learn\n\n\n\tHave tech-free meetings: no laptops, no phones, no things with notifications.\n\tBring a notebook and a pen.\n\tTake notes by hand. You\u2019re not taking minutes, you\u2019re writing to learn.\n\n\nCome with a learning mindset\n\n\n\tAsk: what are our goals for this meeting? (Hopefully answered by the meeting agenda.)\n\tAsk: what can I learn overall?\n\tAsk: what can I learn from each of my colleagues?\n\tAsk: what can I share that will help the team learn overall?\n\tAsk: what can I share that will help each of my colleagues learn?\n\n\nInvesting in regularly scheduled learning-centered meetings\n\nAt Center Centre, we have two types of recurring all-staff meetings: daily stand-ups and weekly staff meetings. (We are a small organization, so it makes sense to meet as an entire group.)\n\nYes, that means we spend thirty minutes each day in stand-up, for a total of two and a half hours of stand-up meeting time each week. And, yes, we also have a weekly ninety-minute sit-down staff meeting on top of that. This investment in time is an investment in learning.\n\nWe use these meetings to build our transparency, and, therefore, our trust. The regularity of these meetings helps us maintain ongoing, open sharing about our responsibilities, our successes, and our learning.\n\nFor instance, we answer five questions in our stand-up:\n\n\n\tWhat did I get done since the last stand-up (I reported at)?\n\tWhat is my goal to accomplish before the next stand-up?\n\tWhat\u2019s preventing me from getting these things done, if anything?\n\tWhat\u2019s the highest risk or most unknown thing right now about what I\u2019m trying to get done?\n\tWhat is the most important thing I learned since the last time we met and how will what I learned change the way I approach things in the future?\n\n\nEach person writes out their answers to these questions before the meeting. Each person brings their answers printed on paper to the meeting. And each person brings a pen to jot down notes.\n\n Notes compiled for a stand-up meeting.\n\nDuring the stand-up, each person shares their answers to the five questions. To sustain a learning-centered culture, the fifth question is the most important question to answer. It allows individual reflection focused on learning. Sometimes this isn\u2019t an easy question to answer. It makes us stretch. It makes us think.\n\nBy sharing our individual answers to the fifth question, we open ourselves up to the group. When we honestly share what we\u2019ve learned, we openly admit that we didn\u2019t know something. Sharing like this would be scary (and even risky) if we didn\u2019t have a learning-centered culture.\n\nWe often share the actual process of how we learned something. By listening, each of us is invited to learn more about the topic at hand, consider what more there is to learn about that topic, and even gain insights into other methods of learning\u2014which can be applied to other topics.\n\nSharing the answers to the fifth question also allows opportunities for further conversations. We often take what someone has individually learned and find ways to apply it for our entire team in support of our organization. We are, after all, learning together.\n\nBuilding individual learners\n\nWe strive to grow together as a team at Center Centre, but we don\u2019t lose sight of the importance of the individuals who form our team. As individuals, we bring our goals, dreams, abilities, and prior knowledge to the team.\n\nTo build learning teams, we must build individual learners. A team made up of lifelong learners, who share their learning and learn from each other, is a team that will continually produce better results.\n\nAs a manager, I need to meet each direct where they are with their current abilities and knowledge. Then, I can help them take their skills and knowledge base to the next levels. This process requires each individual direct to engage in professional development.\n\nWe believe effective managers help their directs engage in behaviors that support growth and development. Effective managers encourage and support learning.\n\n\n\nOur weekly one-on-ones\n\nOne way we encourage learning is through weekly one-on-ones. Each of my directs meets with me, individually, for thirty minutes each week. The meeting is their meeting. It is not my meeting.\n\nMy direct sets the agenda. They talk about what they want to talk about. They can talk about work. They can talk about things outside of work. They can talk about their health, their kids, and even their cat. Whatever is important to them is important to me. I listen. I take notes.\n\nAlthough the direct sets the specific agenda, the meeting has three main parts. Approximately ten minutes for them (the direct), ten minutes for me (the manager), and ten minutes for us to talk about their future within\u2014and beyond\u2014our organization.\n\nCoaching for future performance\n\nThe final third of our one-on-one is when I coach my directs. Coaching looks to the direct\u2019s future performance. It focuses on developing the direct\u2019s skills.\n\nCoaching isn\u2019t hard. It doesn\u2019t take much time. For me, it usually takes less than five minutes a week during a one-on-one.\n\nThe first time I coach one of my directs, I ask them to brainstorm about the skills they want to improve. They usually already have an idea about this. It\u2019s often something they\u2019ve wanted to work on for some time, but didn\u2019t think they had the time or the knowhow to improve.\n\nIf a direct doesn\u2019t know what they want to improve, we discuss their job responsibilities\u2014specifically the aspects of the job that concern them.\n\nCoaching provides an opportunity for me to ask, \u201cIn your job, what are the required skills that you feel like you don\u2019t have (or know well enough, or perform effectively, or use with ease)?\u201d\n\nSometimes I have to remind a direct that it\u2019s okay not to know how to do something (even if it\u2019s a required part of their job). After all, our organization is a learning organization. In a learning organization, no one knows everything but everyone is willing to learn anything.\n\nAfter we review the job responsibilities together, I ask my direct what skill they\u2019d like to work to improve. Whatever they choose, we focus on that skill for coaching\u2014I\u2019ve found my directs work better when they\u2019re internally motivated.\n\nSometimes the first time I talk with a direct about coaching, they get a bit anxious. If this happens, I share a personal story about my professional learning journey. I say something like:\n\n\n\tI didn\u2019t know how to make a school before we started to make Center Centre.\n\n\tI didn\u2019t know how to manage an entire team of people\u2014day in and day out\u2014until I started managing a team of people every day.\n\n\tWhen I realized that I was the boss\u2014and that the success of the school would hinge, at least in part, on my skills as a manager\u2014I was a bit terrified. I was missing an important skill set that I needed to know (and I needed to know well).\n\n\tWhen I first understood this, I felt bad\u2014like I should have already known how to be a great manager. But then I realized, I\u2019d never faced this situation. I\u2019d never needed to know how to use this skill set in this way.\n\n\tI worked through my anxiety about feeling inadequate. I decided I\u2019d better learn how to be an effective manager because the school needed me to be one. You needed me to be one.\n\n\tEvery day, I work to improve my management skills. You\u2019ve probably noticed that some days I\u2019m better at it than others. I try not to beat myself up about this, although it\u2019s hard\u2014I\u2019d like to be perfect at it. But I\u2019m not.\n\n\tI know that if I make a conscious, daily effort to learn how to be a better manager, I\u2019ll continue to improve. So that\u2019s what I do.\n\n\tEvery day I learn. I learn by doing. I learn how to be better than I was the day before. That\u2019s what I ask of you.\n\n\nOnce we determine the skill the direct wants to learn, we figure out how they can go about learning it. I ask: \u201cHow could you learn this skill?\u201d\n\nWe brainstorm for two or three minutes about this. We write down every idea that comes to mind, and we write it so both of us can easily see the options (both whiteboards and sticky notes on the wall work well for this exercise).\n\n\n\tRead a book. Research online. Watch a virtual seminar. Listen to a podcast. Talk to a mentor. Reach out to an expert. Attend a conference. Shadow someone else while they do the skill. Join a professional organization.\n\n\nThe goal is to get the direct on a path of self-development. I\u2019m coaching their development, but I\u2019m not the main way my direct will learn this new skill.\n\nI ask my direct which path seems like the best place to start. I let them choose whatever option they want (as long as it works with our budget). They are more likely to follow through if they are in control of this process.\n\nNext, we work to break down the selected path into tasks. We only plan one week\u2019s worth of tasks. The tasks are small, and the deadlines are short. My direct reports when each task is completed.\n\nAt our next one-on-one, I ask my direct about their experience learning this new skill.\n\nRinse. Repeat.\n\nThat\u2019s it. I spend five minutes a week talking with each direct about their individual learning. They develop their professional skills, and together we\u2019re creating a learning-centered culture.\n\nAsking questions I don\u2019t know the answer to\n\nWhen my direct said, \u201cI\u2019ve never worked where people are so honest and transparent about things,\u201d it led me to believe that all this is working. We are building a learning-centered culture.\n\nThis week I was reminded that creating a learning-centered culture starts not just with the staff, but with me. When I challenge myself to learn and then share what I\u2019m currently learning, my directs want to learn more about what I\u2019m learning about.\n\nFor example, I decided I needed to improve my writing skills. A few weeks ago, I realized that I was sorely out of practice and I felt like I had lost my voice. So I started to write. I put words on paper. I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I didn\u2019t know how to write anymore (at least not well or effectively).\n\nI bought some books on writing (mostly Peter Elbow\u2019s books like Writing with Power, Writing Without Teachers, and Vernacular Eloquence), and I read them. I read them all. Reading these books was part of my personal coaching. I used the same steps to coach myself as I use with my directs when I coach them.\n\nIn stand-ups, I started sharing what I accomplished (like I completed one of the books) and what I learned by doing\u2014specific things, like engaging in freewriting and an open-ended writing process.\n\nThis week, I went to lunch with one of my directs. She said, \u201cYou\u2019ve been talking about freewriting a lot. You\u2019re really excited about it. Freewriting seems like it\u2019s helping your writing process. Would you tell me more about it?\u201d\n\nSo I shared the details with her. I shared the reasons why I think freewriting is helping. I\u2019m not focused on perfection. Instead, each day I\u2019m focused on spending ten, uninterrupted minutes writing down whatever comes to my mind. It\u2019s opening my writing mind. It\u2019s allowing my words to flow more freely. And it\u2019s helping me feel less self-conscious about my writing.\n\nShe said, \u201cLeslie, when you say you\u2019re self-conscious about your writing, I laugh. Not because it\u2019s funny. But because when I read what you write, I think, \u2018What is there to improve?\u2019 I think you\u2019re a great writer. It\u2019s interesting to know that you think you can be a better writer. I like learning about your learning process. I think I could do freewriting. I\u2019m going to give it a try.\u201d\n\nThere\u2019s something magical about all of this. I\u2019m not even sure I can eloquently put it into words. I just know that our working environment is something very different. I\u2019ve never experienced anything quite like it. Somehow, by sharing that I don\u2019t know everything and that I\u2019m always working to learn more, I invite my directs to be really open about what they don\u2019t know. And they see it\u2019s possible always to learn and grow.\n\nI\u2019m glad I ignore all the lawyering I\u2019ve learned from watching TV. I\u2019m glad I ask the questions I don\u2019t know the answers to. And I\u2019m glad my directs do the same. When we meet for learning, we accelerate and amplify the learning process\u2014building individual learners and learning teams. Embracing the unknown and working toward understanding is what makes our culture a learning-centered culture.\n\nPhotos by Summer Kohlhorst.", "year": "2014", "author": "Leslie Jensen-Inman", "author_slug": "lesliejenseninman", "published": "2014-12-20T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/meet-for-learning/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 224, "title": "Go Forth and Make Awesomeness", "contents": "We\u2019ve all dreamed of being a superhero: maybe that\u2019s why we\u2019ve ended up on the web\u2014a place where we can do good deeds and celebrate them on a daily basis. \n\nWear your dreams\n\nAt age four, I wore my Wonder Woman Underoos around my house, my grandparents\u2019 house, our neighbor\u2019s house, and even around the yard. I wanted to be a superhero when I grew up. I was crushed to learn that there is no school for superheroes\u2014no place to earn a degree in how to save the world from looming evil. Instead, I\u2014like everyone else\u2014was destined to go to ordinary school to focus on ABCs and 123s. Even still, I want to save the world.\n\nIntend your goodness\n\nRandom acts of kindness make a difference. Books, films, and advertising campaigns tout random acts of kindness and the positive influence they can have on the world. But why do acts of kindness have to be so random? Why can\u2019t we intend to be kind? A true superhero wakes each morning intending to perform selfless acts for the community. Why can\u2019t we do the same thing?\n\nAs a child, my mother taught me to plan to do at least three good deeds each day. And even now, years later, I put on my invisible cape looking for ways to do good.\n\nHere are some examples:\n\n\tslowing down to allow another driver in before me from the highway on-ramp\n\tbringing a co-worker their favorite kind of coffee or tea\n\tsharing my umbrella on a rainy day\n\tholding a door open for someone with full hands\n\tlistening intently when someone shares a story\n\tcomplimenting someone on a job well done\n\tthanking someone for a job well done\n\tleaving a constructive, or even supportive comment on someone\u2019s blog\n\n\nAs you can see, these acts are simple. Doing good and being kind is partially about being aware\u2014aware of the words we speak and the actions we take. Like superheroes, we create our own code of conduct to live by. Hopefully, we choose to put the community before ourselves (within reason) and to do our best not to damage it as we move through our lives.\n\nTake a bite out of the Apple\n\nWith some thought, we can weave this type of thinking and action into our business choices. We can take the simple acts of kindness concept and amplify it a bit. With this amplification, we can be a new kind of superhero.\n\nIn 1997, during a presentation, Steve Jobs stated Apple\u2019s core value in a simple, yet powerful, sentence:\n\n\n\tWe believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.\n\n\nApple fan or not, those are powerful words.\n\nDefine your core\n\nEvery organization must define its core values. Core values help us to frame, recognize, and understand the principles our organization embodies and practices. It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re starting a new organization or you want to define values within an existing organization. Even if you\u2019re a freelancer, defining core values will help guide your decisions and actions.\n\nIf you can, work as a team to define core values. Gather the people who are your support system\u2014your business partners, your colleagues, and maybe even a trusted client\u2014this is now your core value creation team. Have a brainstorming session with your team. Let ideas flow. Give equal weight to the things people say. You may not hear everything you thought you might hear\u2014that\u2019s OK. You want the session to be free-flowing and honest. Ask yourself and your team questions like:\n\n\n\tWhat do you think my/our/your core values are?\n\tWhat do you think my/our/your priorities are?\n\tWhat do you think my/our/your core values should be?\n\tWhat do you think my/our/your priorities should be?\n\tHow do you think I/we should treat customers, clients, and each other?\n\tHow do we want others to treat us?\n\tWhat are my/our/your success stories?\n\tWhat has defined these experiences as successful?\n\n\nFrom this brainstorming session, you will craft your superhero code of conduct. You will decide what you will and will not do. You will determine how you will and will not act. You\u2019re setting the standards that you will live and work by\u2014so don\u2019t take this exercise lightly. Take your time. Use the exercise as a way to open a discussion about values. Find out what you and your team believe in. Set these values and keep them in place. Write them down and share these with your team and with the world. By sharing your core values, you hold yourself more accountable to them. You also send a strong message to the rest of the world about what type of organization you are and what you believe in. Other organizations and people may decide to align or not to align themselves with you because of your core values. This is good. Chances are, you\u2019ll be happier and more profitable if you work with other organizations and people who share similar core values.\n\n Photo: Laura Winn\n\nDuring your brainstorming session, list keywords. Don\u2019t edit. Allow things to take their course. Some examples of keywords might be:\n\nAbility \u00b7 Achievement \u00b7 Adventure \u00b7 Ambition \u00b7 Altruism \u00b7 Awareness \u00b7 Balance \u00b7 Caring \u00b7 Charity \u00b7 Citizenship \u00b7 Collaboration \u00b7 Commitment \u00b7 Community \u00b7 Compassion \u00b7 Consideration \u00b7 Cooperation \u00b7 Courage \u00b7 Courtesy \u00b7 Creativity \u00b7 Democracy \u00b7 Dignity \u00b7 Diplomacy \u00b7 Discipline \u00b7 Diversity \u00b7 Education \u00b7 Efficiency \u00b7 Energy \u00b7 Equality \u00b7 Excellence \u00b7 Excitement \u00b7 Fairness \u00b7 Family \u00b7 Freedom \u00b7 Fun \u00b7 Goodness \u00b7 Gratefulness \u00b7 Growth \u00b7 Happiness \u00b7 Harmony \u00b7 Helping \u00b7 Honor \u00b7 Hope \u00b7 Humility \u00b7 Humor \u00b7 Imagination \u00b7 Individuality \u00b7 Innovation \u00b7 Integrity \u00b7 Intelligence \u00b7 Joy \u00b7 Justice \u00b7 Kindness \u00b7 Knowledge \u00b7 Leadership \u00b7 Learning \u00b7 Loyalty \u00b7 Meaning \u00b7 Mindfulness \u00b7 Moderation \u00b7 Modesty \u00b7 Nurture \u00b7 Openness \u00b7 Organization \u00b7 Passion \u00b7 Patience \u00b7 Peace \u00b7 Planning \u00b7 Principles \u00b7 Productivity \u00b7 Purpose \u00b7 Quality \u00b7 Reliability \u00b7 Respectfulness \u00b7 Responsibility \u00b7 Security \u00b7 Sensitivity \u00b7 Service \u00b7 Sharing \u00b7 Simplicity \u00b7 Stability \u00b7 Tolerance \u00b7 Transparency \u00b7 Trust \u00b7 Truthfulness \u00b7 Understanding \u00b7 Unity \u00b7 Variety \u00b7 Vision \u00b7 Wisdom\n\nAfter you have a list of keywords, create your core values statement using the themes from your brainstorming session. There are no rules: while above, Steve Jobs summed up Apple\u2019s core values in one sentence, Zappos has ten core values:\n\n\n\tDeliver WOW Through Service\n\tEmbrace and Drive Change\n\tCreate Fun and A Little Weirdness\n\tBe Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded\n\tPursue Growth and Learning\n\tBuild Open and Honest Relationships With Communication\n\tBuild a Positive Team and Family Spirit\n\tDo More With Less\n\tBe Passionate and Determined\n\tBe Humble\n\n\nTo see how Zappos\u2019 employees embrace these core values, watch the video they created and posted on their website.\n\nDog food is yummy\n\nAlthough I find merit in every keyword listed, I\u2019ve distilled my core values to their simplest form:\n\nMake awesomeness. Do good.\n\nHow do you make awesomeness and do good? You need ambition, balance, collaboration, commitment, fun, and you need every keyword listed to support these actions. Again, there are no rules: your core values can be one sentence or a bulleted list. What matters is being true to yourself and creating core values that others can understand. Before I start any project I ask myself: is there a way to make awesomeness and to do good? If the answer is \u201cyes,\u201d I embrace the endeavor because it aligns with my core values. If the answer is \u201cno,\u201d I move on to a project that supports my core values.\n\nUnleash your powers\n\nAlthough every organization will craft different core values, I imagine that you want to be a superhero and that you will define \u201cdoing good\u201d (or something similar) as one of your core values. Whether you work by yourself or with a team, you can use the web as a tool to help do good. It can be as simple as giving a free hug, or something a little more complex to help others and help your organization meet the bottom line. Some interesting initiatives that use the web to do good are:\n\n\n\tYahoo!: How Good Grows\n\tDesigual: Happy Hunters\n\tEdge Shave Gel: Anti-irritation campaign\n\n\n\n\nKnowing your underlying desire to return to your Underoos-and-cape-sporting childhood and knowing that you don\u2019t always have the opportunity to develop an entire initiative to \u201cdo good,\u201d remember that as writers, designers, and developers, we can perform superhero acts on a daily basis by making content, design, and development accessible to the greatest number of people. By considering other people\u2019s needs, we are intentionally performing acts of kindness\u2014we\u2019re doing good. There are many ways to write, design, and develop websites\u2014many of which will be discussed in other 24ways.org articles. As we make content, design, and development decisions\u2014as we develop campaigns and initiatives\u2014we need to keep our core values in mind. It\u2019s easy to make a positive difference in the world. Just be the superhero you\u2019ve always wanted to be. Go forth and make awesomeness.\n\nIf you would like to do good today, support The United Nations Children\u2019s Fund, an organization that works for children\u2019s rights, their survival, development and protection, by purchasing this year\u2019s 24 ways Annual 2010 created by Five Simple Steps. All proceeds go to UNICEF.", "year": "2010", "author": "Leslie Jensen-Inman", "author_slug": "lesliejenseninman", "published": "2010-12-04T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/go-forth-and-make-awesomeness/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 308, "title": "How to Make a Chrome Extension to Delight (or Troll) Your Friends", "contents": "If you\u2019re like me, you grew up drawing mustaches on celebrities. Every photograph was subject to your doodling wrath, and your brilliance was taken to a whole new level with computer programs like Microsoft Paint. The advent of digital cameras meant that no one was safe from your handiwork, especially not your friends. And when you finally got your hands on Photoshop, you spent hours maniacally giggling at your artistic genius. \nBut today is different. You\u2019re a serious adult with important things to do and a reputation to uphold. You keep up with modern web techniques and trends, and have little time for fun other than a random Giphy on Slack\u2026 right? \nNope. \nIf there\u2019s one thing 2016 has taught me, it\u2019s that we\u2014the self-serious, world-changing tech movers and shakers of the universe\u2014haven\u2019t changed one bit from our younger, more delightable selves.\nHow do I know? This year I created a Chrome extension called Tabby Cat and watched hundreds of thousands of people ditch productivity for randomly generated cats. Tabby Cat replaces your new tab page with an SVG cat featuring a silly name like \u201cStinky Dinosaur\u201d or \u201cTiny Potato\u201d. Over time, the cats collect goodies that vary in absurdity from fishbones to lawn flamingos to Raybans. Kids and adults alike use this extension, and analytics show the majority of use happens Monday through Friday from 9-5. The popularity of Tabby Cat has convinced me there\u2019s still plenty of room in our big, grown-up hearts for fun.\n\n\nToday, we\u2019re going to combine the formula behind Tabby Cat with your intrinsic desire to delight (or troll) your friends, and create a web app that generates your friends with random objects and environments of your choosing. You can publish it as a Chrome extension to replace your new tab, or simply host it as a website and point to it with the New Tab Redirect extension. \nHere\u2019s a sneak peek at my final result featuring my partner, my cat, and I in cheerfully weird accessories. Your result will look however you want it to.\n\nAlong the way, we\u2019ll cover how to build a Chrome extension that replaces the new tab page, and explore ways to program randomness into your work to create something truly delightful. \nWhat you\u2019ll need\n\nAdobe Illustrator (or a similar illustration program to export PNG)\nSome images of your friends\nA text editor\n\nNote: This can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Most of the application is pre-built so you can focus on kicking back and getting in touch with your creative side. If you want to dive in deeper, you\u2019ll find ways to do it.\nGetting started\n\nDownload a local copy of the boilerplate for today\u2019s tutorial here, and open it in a text editor. Inside, you\u2019ll find a simple web app that you can run in Chrome. \nOpen index.html in Chrome. You should see a grey page that says \u201cNoname\u201d.\nOpen template.pdf in Adobe Illustrator or a similar program that can export PNG. The file contains an artboard measuring 800px x 800px, with a dotted blue outline of a face. This is your template.\n\nNote: We\u2019re using Google Chrome to build and preview this application because the end-result is a Chrome extension. This means that the application isn\u2019t totally cross-browser compatible, but that\u2019s okay.\nStep 1: Gather your friends\nThe first thing to do is choose who your muses are. Since the holidays are upon us, I\u2019d suggest finding inspiration in your family.\nCreate your artwork\nFor each person, find an image where their face is pointed as forward as possible. Place the image onto the Artwork layer of the Illustrator file, and line up their face with the template. Then, rename the artboard something descriptive like face_bob. Here\u2019s my crew:\nAs you can see, my use of the word \u201cfamily\u201d extends to cats. There\u2019s no judgement here.\nNotice that some of my photos don\u2019t completely fill the artboard\u2013that\u2019s fine. The images will be clipped into ovals when they\u2019re rendered in the application.\nNow, export your images by following these steps:\n\nTurn the Template layer off and export the images as PNGs. \nIn the Export dialog, tick the \u201cUse Artboards\u201d checkbox and enter the range with your faces. \nExport at 72ppi to keep things running fast. \nSave your images into the images/ folder in your project.\n\nAdd your images to config.js\nOpen scripts/config.js. This is where you configure your extension. \nAdd key value pairs to the faces object. The key should be the person\u2019s name, and the value should be the filepath to the image.\nfaces: {\n leslie: 'images/face_leslie.png',\n kyle: 'images/face_kyle.png',\n beep: 'images/face_beep.png'\n}\nThe application will choose one of these options at random each time you open a new tab. This pattern is used for everything in the config file. You give the application groups of choices, and it chooses one at random each time it loads. The only thing that\u2019s special about the faces object is that person\u2019s name will also be displayed when their face is chosen.\nNow, when you refresh the project in Chrome, you should see one of your friends along with their name, like this:\n\nCongrats, you\u2019re off and running!\nStep 2: Add adjectives\nNow that you\u2019ve loaded your friends into the application, it\u2019s time to call them names. This step definitely yields the most laughs for the least amount of effort.\nAdd a list of adjectives into the prefixes array in config.js. To get the words flowing, I took inspiration from ways I might describe some of my relatives during a holiday gathering\u2026\nprefixes: [\n 'Loving',\n 'Drunk',\n 'Chatty',\n 'Merry',\n 'Creepy',\n 'Introspective',\n 'Cheerful',\n 'Awkward',\n 'Unrelatable',\n 'Hungry',\n ...\n]\nWhen you refresh Chrome, you should see one of these words prefixed before your friend\u2019s name. Voila!\n\nStep 3: Choose your color palette\nReal talk: I\u2019m bad at choosing color palettes, so I have a trick up my sleeve that I want to share with you. If you\u2019ve been blessed with the gift of color aptitude, skip ahead.\nHow to choose colors\nTo create a color palette, I start by going to a Coolors.co, and I hit the spacebar until I find a palette that I like. We need a wide gamut of hues for our palette, so lock down colors you like and keep hitting the spacebar until you find a nice, full range. You can use as many or as few colors as you like.\nCopy these colors into your swatches in Adobe Illustrator. They\u2019ll be the base for any illustrations you create later.\nNow you need a set of background colors. Here\u2019s my trick to making these consistent with your illustration palette without completely blending in. Use the \u201cAdjust Palette\u201d tool in Coolors to dial up the brightness a few notches, and the saturation down just a tad to remove any neon effect. These will be your background colors.\n\nAdd your background colors to config.js\nCopy your hex codes into the bgColors array in config.js.\nbgColors: [\n '#FFDD77',\n '#FF8E72',\n '#ED5E84',\n '#4CE0B3',\n '#9893DA',\n ...\n]\nNow when you go back to Chrome and refresh the page, you\u2019ll see your new palette!\n\nStep 4: Accessorize\nThis is the fun part. We\u2019re going to illustrate objects, accessories, lizards\u2014whatever you want\u2014and layer them on top of your friends.\nYour objects will be categorized into groups, and one option from each group will be randomly chosen each time you load the page. Think of a group like \u201chats\u201d or \u201cglasses\u201d. This will allow combinations of accessories to show at once, without showing two of the same type on the same person.\nCreate a group of accessories\nTo get started, open up Illustrator and create a new artboard out of the template. Think of a group of objects that you can riff on. I found hats to be a good place to start. If you don\u2019t feel like illustrating, you can use cut-out images instead.\n\nNext, follow the same steps as you did when you exported the faces. Here they are again:\n\nTurn the Template layer off and export the images as PNGs. \nIn the Export dialog, tick the \u201cUse Artboards\u201d checkbox and enter the range with your hats. \nExport at 72ppi to keep things running fast. \nSave your images into the images/ folder in your project.\n\nAdd your accessories to config.js\nIn config.js, add a new key to the customProps object that describes the group of accessories that you just created. Its value should be an array of the filepaths to your images. This is my hats array:\ncustomProps: {\n hats: [ \n 'images/hat_crown.png',\n 'images/hat_santa.png',\n 'images/hat_tophat.png',\n 'images/hat_antlers.png'\n ]\n}\nRefresh Chrome and behold, accessories!\n\nCreate as many more accessories as you want\nRepeat the steps above to create as many groups of accessories as you want. I went on to make glasses and hairstyles, so my final illustrator file looks like this:\n\nThe last step is adding your new groups to the config object. List your groups in the order that you want them to be stacked in the DOM. My final output will be hair, then hats, then glasses:\ncustomProps: {\n hair: [ \n 'images/hair_bowl.png',\n 'images/hair_bob.png'\n ], \n hats: [ \n 'images/hat_crown.png',\n 'images/hat_santa.png',\n 'images/hat_tophat.png',\n 'images/hat_antlers.png'\n ],\n glasses: [\n 'images/glasses_aviators.png',\n 'images/glasses_monacle.png'\n ]\n}\nAnd, there you have it! Randomly generated friends with random accessories. \n\nFeel free to go much crazier than I did. I considered adding a whole group of animals in celebration of the new season of Planet Earth, or even adding Sir David Attenborough himself, or doing a bit of role reversal and featuring the animals with little safari hats! But I digress\u2026\nStep 5: Publish it\nIt\u2019s time to put this in your new tabs! You have two options:\n\nPublish it as a Chrome extension in the Chrome Web Store.\nHost it as a website and point to it with the New Tab Redirect extension.\n\nToday, we\u2019re going to cover Option #1 because I want to show you how to make the simplest Chrome extension possible. However, I recommend Option #2 if you want to keep your project private. Every Chrome extension that you publish is made publicly available, so unless your friends want their faces published to an extension that anyone can use, I\u2019d suggest sticking to Option #2.\nHow to make a simple Chrome extension to replace the new tab page\nAll you need to do to make your project into a Chrome extension is add a manifest.json file to the root of your project with the following contents. There are plenty of other properties that you can add to your manifest file, but these are the only ones that are required for a new tab replacement:\n{\n \"manifest_version\": 2,\n \"name\": \"Your extension name\",\n \"version\": \"1.0\",\n \"chrome_url_overrides\" : {\n \"newtab\": \"index.html\"\n }\n}\nTo test your extension, you\u2019ll need to run it in Developer Mode. Here\u2019s how to do that:\n\nGo to the Extensions page in Chrome by navigating to chrome://extensions/.\nTick the checkbox in the upper-right corner labelled \u201cDeveloper Mode\u201d.\nClick \u201cLoad unpacked extension\u2026\u201d and select this project.\nIf everything is running smoothly, you should see your project when you open a new tab. If there are any errors, they should appear in a yellow box on the Extensions page.\n\nVoila! Like I said, this is a very light example of a Chrome extension, but Google has tons of great documentation on how to take things further. Check it out and see what inspires you.\nShare the love\nNow that you know how to make a new tab extension, go forth and create! But wield your power responsibly. New tabs are opened so often that they\u2019ve become a part of everyday life\u2013just consider how many tabs you opened today. Some people prefer to-do lists in their tabs, and others prefer cats. \nAt the end of the day, let\u2019s make something that makes us happy. Cheers!", "year": "2016", "author": "Leslie Zacharkow", "author_slug": "lesliezacharkow", "published": "2016-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2016/how-to-make-a-chrome-extension/", "topic": "code"}