I have no doubt that showing just the top outrageous tweets leads to more engagement. If you’re constantly hitting people with outlandish news stories they’ll open the app more often and interact and post about what they think so the cycle continues.
Speculative fiction as a tool for change:
We need to think harder about the future and ask: What if our policies, institutions, and societies didn’t have to be organized as they are now? Good science fiction taps us into a rich seam of radical answers to this question.
This is the real challenge for service workers:
For 30 years, we taught billions of humans that you need to be connected to the internet to consume the web via a browser! This means web users need to unlearn that web sites can’t be used offline.
Chris Ferdinandi has a good rule of thumb:
If something I want to do with JavaScript can be done with CSS instead, use CSS.
Makes sense, given their differing error-handling models:
A JavaScript error can bring all of the JS on a page to screeching halt. Mistype a CSS property or miss a semicolon? The browser just skips the property and moves on. Use an unsupported feature? Same thing.
But he also cautions against going too far with CSS. Anything to do with state should be done with JavaScript:
If the item requires interaction from the user, use JavaScript (things like hovering, focusing, clicking, etc.).
‘Sfunny; I remember when we got pseudo-classes, I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post called :hover Considered Harmful:
Presentation and behaviour… the twain have met, the waters are muddied, the issues are confused.
Sara shows a few different approaches to building accessible toggle switches:
Always, always start thinking about the markup and accessibility when building components, regardless of how small or simple they seem.
Backlash backlash:
The nature of human nature is that it changes. It can not, therefore, serve as a stable basis for evaluating the impact of technology. Yet the assumption that it doesn’t change serves a useful purpose. Treating human nature as something static, pure and essential elevates the speaker into a position of power. Claiming to tell us who we are, they tell us how we should be.
The latest explainer/game from Nicky Case is an absolutely brilliant interactive piece on small world networks.
I like this declarative approach to associating JavaScript behaviours with HTML elements.
This gets nothing but agreement from me:
For altering the default scroll speed I honestly couldn’t come up with a valid use-case.
My theory is that site owners are trying to apply app-like whizz-banginess to the act of just trying to read some damn text, and so they end up screwing with the one interaction still left to the reader—scrolling.
A great piece by Erin on the value of a code of conduct for conferences, filled with practical advice.
Once you decide to create a code and do it thoughtfully, you’ll find the internet overflows with resources to help you accomplish your goals, and good people who’ll offer guidance and advice. From my own experience, I can say that specificity and follow-through will make your code practical and give it teeth; humane language and a strong connection to your community will make it feel real and give it a heart.
Caterina Fake takes a heartfelt look at the history of online communities:
The internet is full of strangers, generous strangers who want to help you for no reason at all. Strangers post poetry and discographies and advice and essays and photos and art and diatribes. None of them are known to you, in the old-fashioned sense. But they give the internet its life and meaning.
Timoni tackles the tricky topic of teaching taps.
Discoverability can be hard, but that shouldn’t stop us trying out new interactions.
Craig writes about the hologram of his quantified self.
It’s all about the signalling.
Wow. This might be the stupidest behaviour from a browser that I’ve ever come across: mobile Safari behaves differently depending on the top level domain of the site! Madness!
Mind you… it’s kind of poetic justice for having a ridonkulous .mobi domain in the first place.
Dan makes a very good point about Little Printer: it’s not the “printer” part that matters; it’s the “little”.
A lovely piece from Matt examining agency and behaviour in the things we surround ourselves with: frying pans, houseplants, pets, and robots.
These are the droids you are looking for.
PPK tests the various ways that mobile browsers handle position:fixed, complete with videos.
Unfortunately this article from PPK is flawed from the start: his first point (upon which all the subsequent points are based) is fundamentally flawed:
Right now responsive design is graceful degradation: design something for desktop and tablet, and remove stuff for mobile.
That’s not the way I’m doing responsive design. Responsible responsive design marries it with a mobile first approach (or more accurately, content first).