You might not need (much) JavaScript for these common interface patterns.
While we all love the power and flexibility JS provides, we should also respect it, and our users, by limiting its use to only what it needs to do.
Yes! Client-side JavaScript should do what only client-side JavaScript can do.
I like the idea of adding this to personal websites:
Mastodon shows an “Alt” button in the bottom right of images that have associated alt text. This button, when clicked, shows the alt text the author has written for the image.
And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S).
I really like this approach: using separate pages instead of in-page interactions. I remember Simon talking about how great this works, and that was a few years back, before we had view transitions.
I build separate, small HTML pages for each “interaction” I want, then I let CSS transitions take over and I get something that feels better than its JS counterpart for way less work.
- Violates User Expectations
- Causes Motion Sickness
- Reduces Accessibility for Disabled Users
- Inconsistent Performance Across Devices
- Impairs Usability for Power Users
- Increases Page Load Times
- Breaks Native Browser Features
- Makes Scroll Position Unclear
- Adds Maintenance Overhead
- Disrespects the User’s Control
I concur:
Just because a user interface uses 3D-buttons and some shading doesn’t mean that it has to look tacky. In fact, if you have to make the choice between tacky-but-usable and minimalistic-but-hard-to-use, tacky is the way to go. You don’t have to make that choice though: It’s perfectly possible to create something that is both good-looking and easy to use.
This is a wonderfully in-depth interactive explainer on touch target sizes, with plenty of examples.
Bruce raises an interesting question with media playing in popovers—shouldn’t the media pause when the popover is closed? I agree with Bruce that this is a common use case that should be covered declaratively.
A plea to let users do web things on websites. In other words, stop over-complicating everything with buckets of JavaScript.
Honestly, this isn’t wishlist isn’t asking for much, and it’s a damning indictment of “modern” frontend development that we’ve come to this:
- Let me copy text so I can paste it.
- If something navigates like a link, let me do link things.
- …
This is a terrific resource! A pattern library of interactive components: tabs, switches, dialogs, carousels …all the usual suspects.
Each component has an example implementation along with advice and a checklist for ensuring its accessible.
It’s so great to have these all gathered together in one place!
A lot of folks assume that progressive enhancement means having to write the same code twice, but often, it can be as simple as extending the pattern you already have once the JS loads.
I’ve been having some really interesting chats with Brian about tabs, markup, progressive enhancement and accessibility. Here’s a braindump of his current thinking which is well worth perusing.
Flat, minimalist, clean, material - whatever you want to call it - is an annoying antipattern. Computers are here to make life easier for humans. Removing affordances is just a nasty thing to do to your users.
Denise shares a cautionary tale of service design gone wrong.
This is a truly wonderful web page! It’s an explanation from first principles of how cameras and lenses work.
At its most basic, it uses words which you can read in any browser. It also uses images so if your browser supports images, you get that enhancement. And it uses interactive JavaScript widgets so that you get that layer of richness if your browser supports the technology.
Then you realise that every post ever published on this personal site is equally in-depth and uses the same content-first progressive enhancement approach.
Cassie’s enthusiasm for fun and interesting SVG animation shines through in her writing!
Van11y (for Vanilla-Accessibility) is a collection of accessible scripts for rich interfaces elements, built using progressive enhancement and customisable.
Ah, look at this beautiful timeline that Cassie designed and built—so many beautiful little touches! It covers the fifteen years(!) of Clearleft so far.
But you can also contribute to it …by looking ahead to the next fifteen years:
Let’s imagine it’s 2035…
How do you hope the practice of design will have changed for the better?
Fill out an online postcard with your hopes for the future.
This is great! Ideas for allowing more styling of form controls. I agree with the goals 100% and I like the look of the proposed solutions too.
The team behind this are looking for feedback so be sure to share your thoughts (I’ll probably formulate mine into a blog post).
Some interesting research in here around user expecations with the back button:
Generally, we’ve observed that if a new view is sufficiently different visually, or if a new view conceptually feels like a new page, it will be perceived as one — regardless of whether it technically is a new page or not. This has consequences for how a site should handle common product-finding and -exploration elements like overlays, filtering, and sorting. For example, if users click a link and 70% of the view changes to something new, most will perceive this to be a new page, even if it’s technically still the same page, just with a new view loaded in.
An intro to Stimulus, the lightweight JavaScript library from Basecamp that takes a progressive enhancement approach, as seen with HEY.
One aspect I really like about the approach Stimulus encourages, is I can focus on sending HTML down the wire to my users, which is then jazzed up a little with JavaScript.
I’ve always been a fan of using the first few milliseconds of a user’s attention getting what I have to share with them — in front of them. Then worrying setting up the interaction layer while the user can start processing what they’re seeing.
Furthermore, if the JavaScript were to fail for whatever reason, the user can still see the content and interact with it without JavaScript.