#180 - When javascript fails
Hi everyone,
Welcome to issue #180!
I hope you’re staying warm and keeping well as we enter the winter months.
Personally I’ve found it hard to focus this past month. I’ve been working from a hotel room in Hamburg the last few weeks which hasn’t made it easy. A change in routine can really throw you out of sync.
I did get to catch up with some friends and make it to the Weihnachtsmarkt, so I can’t really complain. It was a great trip.
I’m now back at my desk in London, so I hope to find some flow soon enough!
This month includes:
- How to use CSS relative colors
- The semantics of Jamstack
- Resources for sustainable web design
- Tips on accessibility and performance
Let’s get right to it.
Quotes worth thinking about #
“Creativity is subtraction”.
For the past few months I’ve been exploring the concept of less and what it means to design less. So this quote from Austin Kleon’s book Steal like an artist got me thinking.
On that note, I also stubbled across this fantastic quote by artist Michelangelo.
“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
On a completely different note, here’s Greg Campion on Motion vs. Action.
“Creators, myself included, get stuck in a rut of consume, consume, consume. And plan, plan, plan. We would be better off just getting to it: create, create, create. Get the reps. It’s the only way to get better.”
Colour in CSS #
A Guide To Modern CSS Colors With RGB, HSL, HWL, LAB and LCH. Michelle Barker shares the best ways to use colors in a design system, and what we can expect from our colors in the not-too-distant future.
Dynamic Color Manipulation with CSS Relative Colors. Jim Nielsen explains how the new relative color syntax allows you to take any color type (hex, rgb, hsl, lch, even a keyword like green) and convert it on the fly to any other color type you want. No need for Sass color functions or using alpha channels!
The semantics of Jamstack #
The semantics of Jamstack. Mike Neumegen shares his thoughts on the debate of what Jamstack actually means and offers some suggestions of where it might be heading.
Accessibility and Performance #
“Link text should describe what the destination web page or document is about. It should tell people where the link is going. Ideally, it should reflect the page title or H1 header.”
How to write better link text for accessibility from the Big Hack.
“Many of us are fortunate to live in high bandwidth regions, but there are still large portions of the world that do not. By keeping your client side code small and lightweight, you can literally open your product up to new markets.” Chris Zacharias in Page Weight Matters.
“It’s estimated only 1% of people disable Javascript on purpose. But there are many reasons why JS might not load. Servers responding slowly. Content Delivery Networks going down. Dodgy signal on a mobile phone. Progressive Enhancement is the insurance policy every website needs!” A Tweet from Craig Abbott.
“When javascript fails”, rather than “if javascript fails.” A brilliant response from Andy Bell.
Eco-design and sustainable web projects #
The intro guide to digital eco-design by Aurélie Baton and Anne Faubry presents design best practices to help create digital services with a minimal environmental footprint.
Mightybytes and Wholegrain Digital have teamed up to create Sustainable Web Design a website sharing strategies for delivering sustainable web projects.
Lot’s to take from these two excellent resources.
Typography #
What’s the right font size in web design? Oliver Schöndorfer shares some best practices when it comes to working with responsive body text.
Thank you for reading #
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See you in the next one!