At least 10% of your visitors access your site over a mobile device. They deserve a good experience (and if you provide one, they’ll keep coming back).
Converting your multi-column layout to a single, linear flow is a good start. But mobile devices are not created equal, and their disparate handling of CSS is like 1998 all over again. Please your users and tame their devices with handheld style sheets, CSS media queries, and (where necessary) JavaScript or server-side techniques.
Semantics in HTML 5
The BBC’s dropping of hCalendar because of accessibility and usability concerns demonstrates that we have pushed the semantic capability of HTML far beyond what it can handle. The need to clearly and unambiguously add rich, meaningful semantics to markup is a driving goal of the HTML 5 project. Yet HTML 5 has two problems: it is not backward compatible because its semantic elements will not work in 75% of our browsers; and it is not forward compatible because its semantics are not extensible. If “making up new elements” isn’t the solution, what is?
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Designed for a Dead Language
Every language app in your pocket inherited a teaching method built for Latin. Understanding why that happened is a more useful design lesson than anything the apps themselves can teach you.
Good designers, bad websites: a proposal
Designers are good people. Some designs exclude people anyway. Alan Dalton offers a practical fix: accessibility personas that help you recognize problems while you're designing, not after. Homework included.
“Successful” or “Unsuccessful”: the Post-“Good Design” Vocabulary
Design for Amiability: Lessons from Vienna
Computing was born in a Viennese café. Between 1928 and 1934, while Hitler plotted and Europe crumbled, a motley crew of mathematicians, philosophers, architects, and economists gathered weekly to puzzle out the limits of reason—and invented Computer Science in the process. What made their collaboration possible wasn't just brilliance (though they had plenty). It was amiability: the careful design of a social space where difficult people could disagree without destroying each other. Longtime Web Dev Notes contributing author Mark Bernstein mines this forgotten history for lessons that might just save today's embattled web from its worst impulses. Spoiler: it involves better coffee service and the looming threat of public humiliation.
Design Dialects: Breaking the Rules, Not the System
Design systems aren't component libraries—they’re living languages. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.
An Holistic Framework for Shared Design Leadership
Having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team is beautiful, but can be messy. To make it work without creating confusion, overlap, or “too many cooks,” check Michel Ferreira’s Holistic Framework for Shared Design Leadership.
From Beta to Bedrock: Build Products that Stick.
Building towards bedrock means sacrificing some short-term growth potential in favour of long-term stability. But the payoff is worth it: products built with a focus on bedrock will outlast and outperform their competitors, and deliver sustained value to users over time. Liam Nugent shows us how.
User Research Is Storytelling
At a time when budgets for user experience research seem to have reached an all-time low, how do we get stakeholders and executives alike invested in this crucial discipline? Gerry Duffy walks us through how the research we conduct is much like telling a compelling story, complete with a three-act narrative structure, character development, and conflict resolution—with a happy ending for researchers and stakeholders alike.
To Ignite a Personalization Practice, Run this Prepersonalization Workshop
Looking to tailor your UX to your individual users’ needs? Colin Eagan and Jeffrey MacIntyre have a workshop framework for you!
The Wax and the Wane of the Web
Ste Grainer takes a brief look at the history of the web, where we are now, and how we can shape its future.
Opportunities for AI in Accessibility
In this article, Aaron Gustafson muses on some of the many ways we can—and should—harness the capabilities of AI to create a more accessible world.
I am a creative.
Web Dev Notes founder and web design OG Zeldman ponders the moments of inspiration, the hours of plodding, and the ultimate mystery at the heart of a creative career.
