What these brands are taking from web-brutalism — and truly, we should all be learning something here — is that User-centered design doesn’t need to be monopolized by the same colors, same buttons, same photography and even same copy you see in pretty much every single website or product.
Monzo’s guidelines for tone of voice, including a reference to “the curse of knowledge.”
A really deep dive into the lang attribute, and the :lang() pseudo-class (hitherto unknown to me). This is all proving really useful for a little side project I’m working on.
Conceding that a typeface is a tool sounds dangerously close to an excuse: toolmakers cannot be held responsible for things made with their tools, or the tasks leading up to those things. They are only responsible for the making of the tool itself. If a person decides to use a hammer to drive home a screw, then so be it. The hammer was only designed for nails. It’s not our fault the typography doesn’t look good. The typeface is just a tool — you’re using it wrong.
It’s really heartwarming to see this idea resonating.
The field of front-end has yet to be defined, because our industry moves too quickly and the range of skills required seems to grow with every passing day. We need to realise that it is impossible to be an expert in every one of those skills, and that’s perfectly fine.
I like this distinction between coders and developers.
The Coder is characterized by his proficiency in a narrow range of chosen skills.
By contrast the Developer’s single greatest skill is in being an applied learner.
I’m definitely not a coder. Alas, by this criterion, I’m also not a developer (because I do not pick things up fast):
Quite simply the Developer has a knack for grokking new [languages|frameworks|platforms] and becoming proficient very quickly.
I prefer Charlie’s framing. It’s not about speed, it’s about priorities:
I’m not a “developer” in that I’m obsessed with code and frameworks. I’m a “developer” as in I develop the users experience for the better.
The fascinating history of interactive fiction from adventure game to hypertext.
The split between parsers and hyperlinks reminds me of different approaches to chatbots: free text entry vs. constrained input.
Before reading this article, I didn’t understand regular expressions. But now, having read this article, I don’t understand regular expressions and I don’t understand linguistics. Progress!
Practical advice from Ire on localising web pages.
A one-stop-shop with a quick overview of the new JavaScript features in ES-whatever-we’re-calling-it-now.
A lot of “CSS is not real programming” arguments are a basic misunderstanding what CSS is there to achieve. If you want full control over and interface and strive for pixel perfection – don’t use it. If you want to build an interface for an inclusive and diverse web, CSS is a great tool.
Christian does a good job of describing the much-misunderstood declarative nature of CSS.
Also:
In any case, belittling people who write CSS and considering them not real developers is arrogant nonsense.
Some great ideas here about using metaphors when explaining technical topics.
I really like these four guidelines for good metaphors:
The perils of self-translation.
I’m often baffled by the number of people who seem to think that you can translate from one language to another simply by pulling the words of one language from a dictionary and plugging them into the syntax of the other. It just doesn’t work that way, friends.
Read to the end for a wonderfully delicious twist in the tale.
Amadán.
Some of these really tickle my fancy bone.
That’s the icing on the iceberg
You let the horse out of the cart
What planet are you living under?
That opens a whole other kettle of fish
The cat’s out of the barn
Patience comes to those who wait
That’s right up my cup of tea
Language is a technology. It’s a particularly strange one that’s made of squiggles and sounds and maps of meaning, but like any other technology, it’s hackable.
Good advice on reducing unintended stress via email.
Negativity bias is a tendency for negatives to have a greater effect than positives on our emotional state.
For email this can have radical effects: positive emails seem neutral, neutral emails seem negative, and even slightly negative emails can lead to actual, measurable pain.
Even with the best of intentions we can come off distant — or just plain mean.
The latest video from Patterns Day is up—Ellen’s superb philosophical presentation: Patterns in Language, Language in Patterns.
There’s so much packed into this one, it might take more than one viewing to take it all in.
Once again, we can learn from Christoper Alexander’s A Pattern Language when it comes to create digital design systems, especially this part (which reminds me of one of the panes you can view in Fractal’s default interface):
- Each pattern’s documentation is preceded with a list of other patterns that employ the upcoming pattern
- Each pattern’s documentation is followed by a list of other patterns that are required for this pattern
A transcript of the superb talk that Ellen delivered at Patterns Day. So good!