Listen To Me And Not Google: HeydonWorks
We have to stop confusing the excesses of capitalism with the hallmarks of quality. Sometimes Google aren’t better, they’re just more pervasive.
cough AMP cough
Link tags: usability
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How creating a Progressive Web App has made our website better for people and planet
Creating a PWA has saved a lot of kilobytes after the initial load by storing files on the device to reuse on subsequent requests – this in turn lowers the load time and carbon footprint on subsequent page views, making the website better for both people and planet. We’ve also enabled offline access, which significantly improves user experience for people in areas with patchy connections, such as mobile users on their commute.
The modern web is becoming an unusable, user-hostile wasteland
If you add another advertisement to your pages, you generate more revenue. If you track your users better, now you can deliver tailored ads and your conversion rates are higher. If you restrict users from leaving your walled garden ecosystem, now you get all the juice from whatever attention they have.
The question is: At which point do we reach the breaking point?
And I think the answer is: We are very close.
Facebook. Twitter. Medium. All desparate to withhold content they didn’t even create until you cough up your personal details.
Location, Privilege and Performant Websites
Testing on a <$100 Android device on a 3G network should be an integral part of testing your website. Not everyone is on a brand-new device or upgrades often, especially with the price point of a high-end phones these days.
When we design and build our websites with the outliers in mind, whether it’s for performance or even user experience, we build an experience that can be easy for all to access and use — and that’s what the web is about, access and information for all.
Why Progressive Web Apps Are The Future of Mobile Web [2019 Research]
PWAs just work better than your typical mobile site. Period.
But bear in mind:
Maybe simply because the “A” in PWA stands for “app,” too much discussion around PWAs focuses on comparing and contrasting to native mobile applications. We believe this comparison (and the accompanying discussion) is misguided.
An HTML attribute potentially worth $4.4M to Chipotle - Cloud Four
When I liveblogged Jason’s talk at An Event Apart in Chicago, I included this bit of reporting:
Jason proceeds to relate a long and involved story about buying burritos online from Chipotle.
Well, here is that story. It’s a good one, with some practical takeaways (if you’ll pardon the pun):
- Use HTML5 input features
- Support autofill
- Make autofill part of your test plans
Less… Is More? Apple’s Inconsistent Ellipsis Icons Inspire User Confusion - TidBITS
The ellipsis is the new hamburger.
It’s disappointing that Apple, supposedly a leader in interface design, has resorted to such uninspiring, and I’ll dare say, lazy design in its icons. I don’t claim to be a usability expert, but it seems to me that icons should represent a clear intention, followed by a consistent action.
4 Rules for Intuitive UX – Learn UI Design
- Obey the Law of Locality
- ABD: Anything But Dropdowns
- Pass the Squint Test
- Teach by example
Form design: from zero to hero all in one blog post by Adam Silver
This is about designing forms that everyone can use and complete as quickly as possible. Because nobody actually wants to use your form. They just want the outcome of having used it.
Maybe You Don’t Need a Date Picker | Adrian Roselli
In some situations, a date picker is overkill:
I have relied on plain text inputs as date fields with custom validation for the site, typically using the same logic on the client and the server. For known dates — birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc — it has tested well.
Baking accessibility into components: how frameworks help
A very thoughtful post by Hidde that draws a useful distinction between the “internals” of a component (the inner workings of a React component, Vue component, or web component) and the code that wires those components together (the business logic):
I really like working on the detailed stuff that affects users: useful keyboard navigation, sensible focus management, good semantics. But I appreciate not every developer does. I have started to think this may be a helpful separation: some people work on good internals and user experience, others on code that just uses those components and deals with data and caching and solid architecture. Both are valid things, both need love. Maybe we can use the divide for good?
Hello, Goodbye - Browser Extension
A handy browser extension for Chrome and Firefox:
“Hello, Goodbye” blocks every chat or helpdesk pop up in your browser.
Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms | Brad Frost
- Have a dedicated page for login
- Expose all required fields
- Keep all fields on one page
- Don’t get fancy
UX past, present, and future | Clearleft
This long zoom by Andy is right up my alley—a history of UX design that begins in 1880. It’s not often that you get to read something that includes Don Norman, Doug Engelbart, Lilian Gilbreth, and Vladimir Lenin. So good!
Thinking about permissions on the web | Sally Lait
Sally takes a long hard look at permissions on the web. It’s a fascinating topic because of all the parties involved—browsers, developers, and users.
In order to do permissions well, I think there are two key areas to think about - what’s actually being requested, and how it’s being requested.
Is a site being intrusive with what they can potentially learn about me (say, wanting my precise location when it’s unnecessary)? Or is it being intrusive in terms of how they interact with me (popping up a lot of notifications and preventing me from quickly completing my intended task)? If one of those angles doesn’t work well, then regardless of whether the other is acceptable to someone, they’re likely to start opting out and harbouring negative feelings.
Accessibility is not a feature. — Ethan Marcotte
Just last week I came across an example of what Ethan describes here: accessibility (in a pattern library) left to automatic checks rather than human experience.
‘Never assume anything’: The golden rules for inclusive design
Inclusive design is also future-proofing technology for everyone. Swan noted that many more developers and designers are considering accessibility issues as they age and encounter poor eyesight or other impairments.
Don’t Use The Placeholder Attribute — Smashing Magazine
A lot of the issues here are with abuses of the placeholder attribute—using it as a label, using it for additional information, etc.—whereas using it quite literally as a placeholder can be thought of as an enhancement (I almost always preface mine with “e.g.”).
Still, there’s no getting around that terrible colour contrast issue: if the contrast were greater, it would look too much like an actual pre-filled value, and that’s potentially worse.
Password Tips From a Pen Tester: Common Patterns Exposed
I’ve been wondering about this for quite a while: surely demanding specific patterns in a password (e.g. can’t be all lowercase, must include at least one number, etc.) makes it easier to crack them, right? I mean, you’re basically providing a ruleset for brute-forcing.
Turns out, yes. That’s exactly right.
When employees are faced with this requirement, they tend to:
- Choose a dictionary word or a name
- Make the first character uppercase
- Add a number at the end, and/or an exclamation point
If we know that is a common pattern, then we know where to start…
I Used The Web For A Day With JavaScript Turned Off — Smashing Magazine
Following on from Charlie’s experiment last year, Chris Ashton has been assessing which sites rely on JavaScript, and which sites use it in a more defensive, resilient way. Some interesting results in here.
A good core experience is indicative of a well-structured web page, which, in turn, is usually a good sign for SEO and for accessibility. It’s usually a well designed web page, as the designer and developer have spent time and effort thinking about what’s truly core to the experience. Progressive enhancement means more robust experiences, with fewer bugs in production and fewer individual browser quirks, because we’re letting the platform do the job rather than trying to write it all from scratch.