Adactio: Links

Introducing the Button element - HankChizlJaw

It’ll never catch on.

HTML elements, unite! The Voltron-like powers of combining elements. | CSS-Tricks

This great post by Mandy ticks all my boxes! It’s a look at the combinatorial possibilities of some of the lesser-known HTML elements: abbr, cite, code, dfn, figure, figcaption, kbd, samp, and var.

How do you mark up an accordion? — Sara Soueidan

I love this deep dive that Sara takes into the question of marking up content for progressive disclosure. It reminds me Dan’s SimpleQuiz from back in the day.

Then there’s this gem, which I think is a terrificly succinct explanation of the importance of meaningful markup:

It’s always necessary, in my opinion, to consider what content would render and look like in foreign environments, or in environments that are not controlled by our own styles and scripts. Writing semantic HTML is the first step in achieving truly resilient Web sites and applications.

Conversational Semantics · An A List Apart Article

I love, love, love all the little details of HTML that Aaron offers up here. And I really like how he positions non-visual user-agents like searchbots, screen readers, and voice assisants as headless UIs.

HTML is a truly robust and expressive language that is often overlooked and undervalued, but it has the incredible potential to nurture conversations with our users without requiring a lot of effort on our part. Simply taking the time to code web pages well will enable our sites to speak to our customers like they speak to each other. Thinking about how our sites are experienced as headless interfaces now will set the stage for more natural interactions between the real world and the digital one.

The Web I Want - DEV Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻

Scores of people who just want to deliver their content and have it look vaguely nice are convinced you need every web technology under the sun to deliver text.

This is very lawnoffgetting but I can relate.

I made my first website about 20 years ago and it delivered as much content as most websites today. It was more accessible, ran faster and easier to develop then 90% of the stuff you’ll read on here.

20 years later I browse the Internet with a few tabs open and I have somehow downloaded many megabytes of data, my laptop is on fire and yet in terms of actual content delivery nothing has really changed.

Understanding why Semantic HTML is important, as told by TypeScript.

Oh, this is such a good analogy from Mandy! Choosing the right HTML element is like choosing the right data type in a strongly typed programming language.

Get to know the HTML elements available to you, and use the appropriate one for your content. Make the most it, like you would any language you choose to code with.

Accessibility: Start with the foundations | susan jean robertson

I encourage you to think about and make sure you are using the right elements at the right time. Sometimes I overthink this, but that’s because it’s that important to me - I want to make sure that the markup I use helps people understand the content, and doesn’t hinder them.

Designing Web Content for watchOS - WWDC 2018 - Videos - Apple Developer

If you don’t fancy watching this video, Eric Runyon has written down the salient points about what it means for developers now that websites can be viewed on the Apple Watch. Basically, as long as you’re writing good, meaningful markup and you’ve got a sensible font stack, you’re all set.

Or, as Tim puts it:

When we build our sites in a way that allows people using less-capable devices, slower networks and other less than ideal circumstances, we end up better prepared for whatever crazy device or technology comes along next.

CodePen Challenge - May 2018 - HTML Buddies

I really like this month’s CodePen challenge, all about HTML elements that go well together. First up: del and ins.

inessential: The View-Source Web

Lesson learned: the discoverable and understandable web is still do-able — it’s there waiting to be discovered. It just needs some commitment from the people who make websites.

Small Tweaks That Can Make a Huge Impact on Your Website’s Accessibility | CSS-Tricks

What it says on the tin—a few suggestions to ensure the accessibility of your site.

The Trials and Tribulations of the Title Attribute - 24 Accessibility

Everything you ever wanted to know about the title attribute in HTML.

What’s hot: using title on inputs, abbrs, and iframes.

What’s not: using title on anything else.

SA Labs | Just a Developer

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.

Creating accessible menus-Part 1

James has been tweaking the accessibility of his site navigation. I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Let small include subheadings? · Issue #929 · w3c/html

Here’s an interesting proposal to slightly amend the semantics of the small element so it could apply to the use-case that hgroup was trying to cover.

Microformats : Meaningful HTML

A great one-page intro to microformats (h-card in particular), complete with a parser that exports JSON. Bookmark this for future reference.

Do we need a new heading element? We don’t know - JakeArchibald.com

Jake is absolutely spot-on here. There’s been a lot of excited talk about adding an h element to HTML but it all seems to miss the question of why the currently-specced outline algorithm hasn’t been implemented.

This is a common mistake in standards discussion — a mistake I’ve made many times before. You cannot compare the current state of things, beholden to reality, with a utopian implementation of some currently non-existent thing.

If you’re proposing something almost identical to something that failed, you better know why your proposal will succeed where the other didn’t.

Jake rightly points out that the first step isn’t to propose a whole new element; it’s to ask “Why haven’t browsers implemented the outline for sectioned headings?”

(I added a small historical note in the comments pointing to the first occurrence of this proposal way back in 1991.)

Tags: semantics

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