Dispatches From The Internets

This is an excellent and well-argued piece from Dieter Bohn. In it, he argues that “the web” is characterized by two things:

1. URLs and
2. Client agnosticism.

Reading this, I’m reminded of a lot of Jeremy’s writings about products being “on the web” rather than “of the web”. It’s an incredibly important distinction in my mind because, as Dieter so eloquently puts it

The openness of the web allowed small companies to become big ones without seeking permission from the biggest ones. Preserving the web, or more specifically the open principles behind it, means protecting one of the few paths for innovation left in the modern tech world that doesn’t have a giant company acting as a gatekeeper. And there’s reason not to trust those giant companies: there’s much less incentive to encourage openness when you have a massive empire to defend.

These are important things to consider when deciding where to invest your time and energy.

Carousel’s and slideshows are the red-headed stepchild of the web design world, but they are still used (and useful) in many scenarios. That said, they are often horribly inaccessible. This article offers a step-by-step walkthrough of common accessibility issues with this interface and details how to address them.

Do you use CKEditor? You should really grab the new Accessibility Checker.

Yes, yes, and yes!

An excellent response to Patrick Lauke’s post on High Contrast Mode in Windows. Greg makes seem great points and provides a clear use case using system color keywords.

Edge usage is growing. NetMarketShare.com puts it above Safari usage on macOS and the U.S. government websites have seen more than 98 million visits in the last 3 months alone. If you’re not testing on Edge you should be.

• PS - You can test on Edge for free over on Browserstack.

A good overview of considerations here. In particular, this bit particularly resonated with me:

I also secretly judge [agencies/freelancers] based on whether or not I would actually hire them for work. Many designers with a strong sense of aesthetics are lacking in the UX department, and their site is nearly impossible to navigate. Sometimes the the UI is easy to navigate, but there are possible functional problems. Sometimes they’re issues that could easily be solved with progressive enhancement, but no one bothered.

There are two reasons for this: bandwagon-hopping, and misplaced experimentation.