article vs. section: How To Choose The Right One — Smashing Magazine
I really, really enjoyed this deep dive into practical HTML semantics. Sit back and enjoy!
Link tags: mag
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CSS { In Real Life } | Writing Useful Alt Text
Another post prompted by my recent musings on writing alt text. This time Michelle looks at the case of text-as-images.
Just How Long Should Alt Text Be? | CSS-Tricks - CSS-Tricks
Prompted by my recent post on alt text, Geoff shares some resources on the right length for alt attributes.
How to Imagine Climate Futures - Long Now
The best climate fiction can do more than spur us to action to save the world we have — it can help us conceptualize the worlds, both beautiful and dire, that may lie ahead. These stories can be maps to the future, tools for understanding the complex systems that intertwine with the changing climates to come.
Picture perfect images with the modern img element - Stack Overflow Blog
Addy takes a deep dive into making sure your images are performant. There’s a lot to cover here—that’s why I ended up splitting it in two for the responsive design course: one module on responsive images and one on the picture element.
Awesome astrophotography from the South Downs | Science | The Guardian
To mark the start of the Dark Skies Festival today, here are some fantastic photographics taken not that far from Brighton.
Plus Equals #4, December 2021
In which Rob takes a deep dive into isometric projection and then gets generative with it.
Plus Equals #3, September 2021
Want to take a deep dive into tiling images? Like, a really deep dive. Rob has you covered.
The Flickr Foundation
A non-profit foundation dedicated to long-term digital preservation.
Imagine if we could place ourselves 100 years into the future and still have access to the billions of photos shared by millions of people on Flickr, one of the best documented, broadest photographic archives on the planet.
The Flickr Foundation represents our commitment to stewarding this digital, cultural treasure to ensure its existence for future generations.
Its first act is the renewal of the Flickr Commons.
11ty/api-indieweb-avatar: Return an optimized avatar image from a domain name input.
Here’s a nifty little service from Zach: pass in a URL and it returns an image of the site’s icon.
Think of it as the indie web alternative to showing Twitter avatars.
Basic Pattern Repository
A nice little collection of very simple—and very lightweight—SVGs to use as background patterns.
HTTP/3 From A To Z: Core Concepts (Part 1) — Smashing Magazine
I spend most of my time in the application layers—HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—so I fascinating to dive below the surface and learn about the upcoming HTTP/3. Sounds like it’s really more of a change to how things have always worked with the TCP protocol, still chugging away since it was created by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf.
How To Build Resilient JavaScript UIs — Smashing Magazine
The opening paragraphs of this article should be a mantra recited by every web developer before they begin their working day:
Things on the web can break — the odds are stacked against us. Lots can go wrong: a network request fails, a third-party library breaks, a JavaScript feature is unsupported (assuming JavaScript is even available), a CDN goes down, a user behaves unexpectedly (they double-click a submit button), the list goes on.
Fortunately, we as engineers can avoid, or at least mitigate the impact of breakages in the web apps we build. This however requires a conscious effort and mindset shift towards thinking about unhappy scenarios just as much as happy ones.
I love, love, love the emphasis on reducing assumptions:
Taking a more defensive approach when writing code helps reduce programmer errors arising from making assumptions. Pessimism over optimism favours resilience.
Hell, yeah!
Accepting the fragility of the web is a necessary step towards building resilient systems. A more reliable user experience is synonymous with happy customers. Being equipped for the worst (proactive) is better than putting out fires (reactive) from a business, customer, and developer standpoint (less bugs!).
Earth Restored — Toby Ord
Beautifully restored high-resolution photographs of the Earth taken by Apollo astronauts.
Swipey image grids.
This is how you write up a technique! Cassie takes an SVG pattern she used on the Clearleft “services” page and explains it in step-by-step detail, complete with explanatory animated diagrams.
Guarding Against Disposable Design — Smashing Magazine
Always refreshing to see some long-term thinking applied to the web.
Meet Utopia: Designing And Building With Fluid Type And Space Scales — Smashing Magazine
An excellent explainer from Trys and James of their supersmart Utopia approach:
Utopia encourages the curation of a system small enough to be held in short-term memory, rather than one so sprawling it must be constantly referred to.
THE INTERNET — Opte
Visualising the growth of the internet.
A Complete Guide To Accessible Front-End Components — Smashing Magazine
Vitaly has rounded up a whole load of accessibility posts. I think I’ve linked to most of them at some point, but it’s great to have them all gathered together in one place.
Good, Better, Best: Untangling The Complex World Of Accessible Patterns — Smashing Magazine
I really like the approach that Carie takes here. Instead of pointing to specific patterns to use, she provides a framework for evaluating technology. Solutions come and go but this kind of critical thinking is a long-lasting skill.