by Harshala | Feb 9, 2018 | CSS3, Industry News, State of the Web
In January we reviewed recent CSS updates. As a web professional you must be aware of constant changes taking place in our world. CSS Grid Layout is now supported by nearly 90% of modern browsers. It was adopted as a candidate recommendation by the W3C on December 17, 2017.
CSS Grid Layout
In this article I would like to focus on CSS Grid – a powerful layout system available in CSS. It is a 2-dimensional system, meaning it can handle both columns and rows, unlike flexbox which is largely a 1-dimensional system.
CSS Grid Layout
In the article A Complete Guide to Grid, Chris House provides many details about CSS Grid Layout along with examples.
Here are some key-points:
- In his introduction, Chris references two great resources – Rachel Andrew’s book (Get Ready for CSS Grid Layout) and Chris Coyier’s Complete Guide to Flexbox.
- He reviews the basics (including getting started with your container element display:grid, setting rows and columns and placing child elements).
- Of course, it is important to know the proper terminology (including grid container, grid item, grid line and more).
- He then provides a very useful overview of properties for the grid container and grid items.
Everything you need to learn CSS Grid Layout
In Rachel Andrews article Grid by Example explained basic concepts of Grid Layout which gives us a method of creating grid structures that are described in CSS and not in HTML. It helps us to create layouts that can be redefined using Media Queries and adapt to different contexts. Her 2016 book “Get Ready for CSS Grid Layout” has a meaningful quote by Eric Meyer in the forward. We think this nicely sums up the importance of CSS Grid Layout.
“Grid Layout is to Flexbox as PNG is to BMP, and then some.”
Resources
Here are additional resources about CSS Grid we believe are useful for Web Professionals.
- A collection of resources & tools to help you manage the Grid link
- Great examples which include an image of how the example should look in a supporting browser, they each link to a page with more information about the technique being shown, code and a CodePen of the example. Examples by Rachel Andrews
- This is an older example (but still useful) which tells how CSS grid are becoming popular these days. As web applications become more and more complex, we need a more natural way to do advanced layouts easily without hacky solutions that use floats and other less burdensome techniques. An exciting new solution for creating layouts comes with the CSS Grid Layout Module.
- CSS Grid Layout excels at dividing a page into major regions, or defining the relationship in terms of size, position, and layer, between parts of a control built from HTML primitives. MDN Web Docs also have great examples of CSS Grid.
We hope you find these overviews and examples in CSS Grid world useful. As always, we look forward to your comments and feedback (whether you are a member or not). What have been your experiences with employing CSS Grid in real world applications for clients. How was the work received? Did any issues arise?
For those who would like to have a little fun, try out CSS Grid Garden.
If you aspire to be a web professional and don’t know where to start, we offer a number of beginning classes to our members via our School Of Web learning management system. These include the fundamentals of CSS and HTML (and much more). As a member, your first class is free.
by Harshala | Feb 2, 2018 | Industry News
User experience design (UX, UXD, UED or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product. User experience design encompasses traditional human–computer interaction (HCI) design, and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. As an aspiring or practicing web professional, we should make every effort to enhance user satisfaction.
UX Term origin
User Experience Architect Donald Norman – it has been said that he has invented this term as he thought human interface and usability were too narrow and he wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design graphics, the interface, the physical interaction and the manual. Since then the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose its meaning. He has written his personal reflection about this in his Wikipedia article.
(more…)
by Mark | Jan 26, 2018 | Content Management Systems, Industry News
As a web professional, you are likely aware that WordPress is used as the principle technology for over 25% of the top 10 million websites (actually now 29% based on the December WordCamp US State of the Word 2017). To better understand the reach of this technology – in the above mentioned State of the Word presentation, it was mentioned there are now over 47,000 plugins and said plugins have been downloaded over 633 million times.
Version 5 coming (Project Gutenberg)
We have recently learned that the next major update (version 5.0) will be based on Project Gutenberg. We understand this will be the most extensive update since version 2.0 of WordPress. As a web professional, it is important you understand the implications of this upgrade (and the potential effects with your clients). These include:
- the default editor is changing from the current TinyMCE editor (and changing significantly). If your clients are editing their own content, you need to either train them on the new editor or make certain you use the classic editor plugin (you might want to try both out to better understand the changes). Note this is beta software at the time of this writing so you do not want to install this on any production WordPress sites.
- although you can presently test Project Gutenberg, it is presently available as a plugin (meaning you may not be able to fully test your current themes and plugins at the moment).
- the new focus will be on conceptual editing (similar to what you may have experienced with LinkedIn Pulse or similar approaches).
- the focus is on “identifying and adding meaning to content using blocks and block contests.” See below for what this means.
(more…)
by Mark | Jan 12, 2018 | Industry News, JavaScript, Web Development
As web professionals are undoubtedly aware, many changes are happening with JavaScript these days. Yes, there is a fair amount of churn in frameworks employed on various projects. We did ask the question (some time ago) – are we relying too much on JavaScript? Regardless of your opinion about that question, we need to be aware that major changes are happening to core JavaScript as well. ES6/ ES2015 (ECMAScript 6) is the latest version making its way into browsers near you (and many other places). For those who have been working with web technologies for quite a while, you may recall that ES5 was released in 2009. Yes, nearly a decade ago. (more…)
by Mark | Jan 5, 2018 | Industry News, Web Accessibility
As we begin a new year, we thought it summarize some recent information regarding web accessibility. As a web professional, one should already know that making your pages accessible helps your search engine ranking and much more. As an organization, we have been promoting (and encouraging members) to participate in Project Silver (this initiative is focused on a new version of accessibility guidelines) for some time. We encourage you to consider helping with this initiative.
Of course, it is important to understand what we should be doing now to make certain our projects are accessible. We found the following articles to be a helpful review of what is presently happening with respect to accessibility.
In December, Scott O’Hara discussed the trials and tribulations of the title attribute. This is a great review of the current state of use/ disuse of this attribute. In a nutshell, Scott review this venerable attribute since it’s inception in the HTML 1.2 draft (yes, that was in 1993). One of the main issues with this attribute is that most browsers assume a visitor is using a mouse [for example, to see a title tooltip, you must hover your cursor]. Surprisingly, Internet Explorer 10, 11 (and MS Edge) display tooltips (after a short delay) as if the visitor hovered over them. Additionally, when you long press an image in iOS 11, the title attribute also displays in the popover menu. Of course, these sorts of examples do not help much with overall user experience (and are not consistently implemented). Scott also reviews how this attribute is somewhat useful on select elements for screen readers. NVDA and other readers will announce title on landmark elements (header, footer and so forth), but will not on div or other elements (unless role updates are provided as well). Scott provides a number of use cases where the title attribute can be helpful. The bottom line is that the title attribute can be potentially quite useful, but a number of previous bad practices and lack of consistent support among browsers and screen readers is hampering more consistent use. We encourage readers to review Scott’s entire article. It takes about 20 minutes to review and is well worth the read.
In July, IBM updated their accessibility checklist (now at version 7.0). We encourage readers to review it (if you haven’t already). In addition to providing a thorough checklist, we like the approach of combining the revised US Section 508 standards (which also incorporates Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) along with the additional requirements needed to meet European standard EN 301 549. One central checklist for multiple countries. That alone should be useful for those who conduct business in the U.S. and E.U. We encourage web professionals everywhere to make certain they review (and use) such a checklist.
Dennis Lembree provided a very useful article on the topic of building a culture of accessibility (with a focus on leadership roles). Many of us have encountered situations where initiatives fail because there is no clear leadership. What we like most about this article is the specific breakdown (by corporate division) how individual leaders can contribute to a culture of accessibility. We already look forward to follow ups to Dennis’ post and additional insights. We encourage web professionals to take 5 to 7 minutes and read his entire article.
For those using the React framework, Scott Vinkle provides a very useful overview of React’s accessibility code linter. What we found most helpful is that Scott walks you through creating a new React app and describes in detail how to employ the code linter for maximum accessibility. As a web professional, you are employing linting as part of your continuous improvement strategy (aren’t you?). We encourage you to review Scott’s article (particularly if you are considering employing React in applications you develop in 2018). It will take you a couple of hours to review this article (if you work along with his examples).
For those web professionals who are new to web accessibility, we offer a foundational course on this topic via our School of Web initiative. As a current member of Web Professionals, you first course is free.
As you surmise from the above overview, a lot has been happening in the past months regarding accessibility. We encourage you to provide comments regarding your efforts to incorporate accessibility in your projects and tell us what you have been doing to develop a culture of accessibility in your organization. We may be in contact with you to do a follow up post on the specifics you provide.
All the best for a great 2018,
Mark DuBois
Community Evangelist and Executive Director.
by Harshala | Dec 22, 2017 | Industry News, State of the Web, Usability, User Experience, Web Professional Trends
Web professionals should be aware of this discussion concerning Web Typography & Layout: Past, Present, and Future. As a web professional, it is important to know what the future holds.
Key takeaways include:
- how to avoid being overwhelmed by all the tools and typefaces available today. We need to think of typography and layout as one.
- how to move away from frameworks and bring creativity back into layout. We should focus on larger type and readable layout, including proper use of whitespace.
- we should help the reader feel like a collaborator.
Three experts—Mozilla’s Jen Simmons, publication design legend Roger Black, and Jeffrey Zeldman (A List Apart)—discuss typography and layout on today’s web: where we are now, and where we’re going. CSS grid can be a very helpful tool. Jen Simmons provides a number of examples on her labs.jensimmons.com site.
Typography can encourage long-form reading and not just scanning.
What are the most exciting areas of cutting-edge experimentation in typographic technology and digital layout, and what new skills will we need to design tomorrow’s web content? At a minimum, we should understand CSS grid and variable fonts and how they can be properly applied. Layout and typography were connected in the age of metal type, and they will be again. We must make our pages readable and employ the time tested skills that were employed by typesetters so long ago. We should think in terms of properly sized type (which is responsive given that our content may be consumed on phones, tablets, desktops, or other devices).
This discussion also reviews the history of layout on the web, and what multi-device reading and orbital publishing means to the practice of publication design as we move away from frameworks. We need to bring creativity back into layout (including layouts that break the mold). We must fully understand the implications of CSS Grid and its portents and help the reader feel like a collaborator. There is a new wave of user customization, and we need to understand how it impacts our designs.
We encourage you to watch the discussion video and review the associated transcript.
For those aspiring web professionals who need a better understanding of these concepts, we recommend the following resources:
