How to not make a résumé in React | Eric Bailey
Consider what React and other SPA frameworks are good for: stateful, extensible component-driven applications. Now consider what a résumé’s goals are.
Link tags: markup
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Chromium Blog: Updates to form controls and focus
Chromium browsers—Chrome, Edge, et al.—are getting a much-needed update to some interface elements like the progess element, the meter element, and the range, date, and color input types.
This might encourage more people to use native form controls …but until we can more accurately tweak the styling of these elements, people are still going to reach for more bloated, less accessible JavaScript-driven options. Over-engineering is under-engineering
Responsive Images the Simple Way - Cloud Four
A nice succint explanation of using the srcset and sizes attributes on the img element—remember, you probably don’t need picture and source elements if your use case is swapping out different sized versions of the same image.
One caveat thought: you do need to know the dimensions of the images. If you’re dealing with unknown or user-generated photos, that can be an issue.
Accessible HTML Elements | Amber’s Website
Amber runs through some HTML elements that help you provide semantic information—and accessibility—for your website: headings, paragraphs, lists, and more:
You may be aware that ARIA roles are often used with HTML elements. I haven’t written about them here, as it’s good to see how HTML written without ARIA can still be accessible.
Inclusive Inputs « Texte | ovl – code & design
This is a great walkthough of making a common form pattern accessible. No complex code here: some HTML is all that’s needed.
What Does `playsinline` Mean in Web Video? | CSS-Tricks
I have to admit, I don’t think I even knew of the existence of the playsinline attribute on the video element. Here, Chris runs through all the attributes you can put in there.
HTML: The Inaccessible Parts - daverupert.com
Well, this is a grim collection from Dave:
There are some cases where even using plain ol’ HTML causes accessibility problems. I get frustrated and want to quit web development whenever I read about these types of issues. Because if browsers can’t get this right, what hope is there for the rest of us.
It’s worth clicking through each link he lists—the situation is often much more nuanced than simply “Don’t use X.”
Why the GOV.UK Design System team changed the input type for numbers - Technology in government
Some solid research here. Turns out that using input type=”text” inputmode=”numeric” pattern="[0-9]*" is probably a better bet than using input type="number".
The Markup
A new online publication from Julia Angwin:
Big Tech Is Watching You. We’re Watching Big Tech.
Same HTML, Different CSS
Like a little mini CSS Zen Garden, here’s one compenent styled five very different ways.
Crucially, the order of the markup doesn’t consider the appearance—it’s concerned purely with what makes sense semantically. And now with CSS grid, elements can be rearranged regardless of source order.
CSS is powerful and capable of doing amazingly beautiful things. Let’s embrace that and keep the HTML semantical instead of adapting it to the need of the next design change.
A Complete Guide to Links and Buttons | CSS-Tricks
Chris takes two side-by-side deep dives; one into the a element, the other into the button element.
Even if you think you already know those elements well, I bet there’ll be something new here for you. Like, did you know that the button element can have form over-riding attributes like formaction, formenctype, formmethod, formnovalidate, and formtarget?
ARIA labels | Amber’s Website
A great explanation of aria-label and aria-labelledby!
Old CSS, new CSS / fuzzy notepad
I absolutely love this in-depth history of the web, written in a snappy, snarky tone.
In the beginning, there was no CSS.
This was very bad.
Even if you—like me—lived through all this stuff, I guarantee there’ll still be something in here you didn’t know.
HTML attributes to improve your users’ two factor authentication experience - Twilio
The many ways of improving a single form field in HTML.
I love these kinds of deep dives into markup!
Why `details` is Not an Accordion - daverupert.com
At the risk of being a broken record; HTML really needs
<accordion>,<tabs>,<dialog>,<dropdown>, and<tooltip>elements. Not more “low-level primitives” but good ol’ fashioned, difficult-to-get-consensus-on elements.
Hear, hear!
I wish browsers would prioritize accessibility improvements over things like main thread scheduling optimization to unblock tracking pixels and the Sisyphean task of competing with native.
If we really want to win, let’s make it easy for everyone to access the Web.
What I’ve learned about accessibility in SPAs
Nolan writes up what he learned making accessibiity improvements to a single page app. The two big takeways involve letting the browser do the work for you:
Here’s the best piece of accessibility advice for newbies: if something is a button, make it a
<button>. If something is an input, make it an<input>. Don’t try to reinvent everything from scratch using<div>s and<span>s.
And then there are all the issues that crop up when you take over the task of handling navigations:
- You need to manage focus yourself.
- You need to manage scroll position yourself.
For classic server-rendered pages, most browser engines give you this functionality for free. You don’t have to code anything. But in an SPA, since you’re overriding the normal navigation behavior, you have to handle the focus yourself.
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog [EN]: More options to help websites preview their content on Google Search
Google’s pissing over HTML again, but for once, it’s not by making up rel values:
A new way to help limit which part of a page is eligible to be shown as a snippet is the “
data-nosnippet” HTML attribute onspan,div, andsectionelements.
This is a direct contradiction of how data-* attributes are intended to be used:
…these attributes are intended for use by the site’s own scripts, and are not a generic extension mechanism for publicly-usable metadata.
The difference between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript | Zell Liew
HTML lets you create the structure of a website.
CSS lets you make the website look nice.
JavaScript lets you change HTML and CSS. Because it lets you change HTML and CSS, it can do tons of things.
Beyond automatic accessibility testing: 6 things I check on every website I build - Manuel Matuzović
Six steps that everyone can do to catch accessibility gotchas:
- Check image descriptions
- Disable all styles
- Validate HTML
- Check the document outline
- Grayscale mode
- Use the keyboard
The “P” in Progressive Enhancement stands for “Pragmatism” - Andy Bell
With a Progressive Enhancement mindset, support actually means support. We’re not trying to create an identical experience: we’re creating a viable experience instead.
Also with Progressive Enhancement, it’s incredibly likely that your IE11 user, or your user on a low-powered device, or even your user on a poor connection won’t notice that they’re experiencing a “minor” experience because it’ll just work for them. This is the magic, right there. Everyone’s a winner.