{"rowid": 28, "title": "Why You Should Design for Open Source", "contents": "Let\u2019s be honest. Most designers don\u2019t like working for nothing. We rally against spec work and make a stand for contracts and getting paid. That\u2019s totally what you should do as a professional designer in the industry. It\u2019s your job. It\u2019s your hard-working skill. It\u2019s your bread and butter. Get paid.\n\nHowever, I\u2019m going to make a case for why you could also consider designing for open source. First, I should mention that not all open source work is free work. Some companies hire open source contributors to work on their projects full-time, usually because that project is used by said company. There are other companies that encourage open source contribution and even offer 20%-time for these projects (where you can spend one day a week contributing to open source). These are super rad situations to be in. However, whether you\u2019re able to land a gig doing this type of work, or you\u2019ve decided to volunteer your time and energy, designing for open source can be rewarding in many other ways.\n\nPortfolio building\n\nNew designers often find themselves in a catch-22 situation: they don\u2019t have enough work experience showcased in their portfolio, which leads to them not getting much work because their portfolio is bare. These new designers often turn to unsolicited redesigns to fill their portfolio. An unsolicited redesign is a proof of concept in which a designer attempts to redesign a popular website. You can see many of these concepts on sites like Dribbble and Behance and there are even websites dedicated to showcasing these designs, such as Uninvited Designs. There\u2019s even a subreddit for them.\n\nThere are quite a few negative opinions on unsolicited redesigns, though some people see things from both sides. If you feel like doing one or two of these to fill your portfolio, that\u2019s of course up to you. But here\u2019s a better suggestion. Why not contribute design for an open source project instead?\n\nYou can easily find many projects in great need of design work, from branding to information design, documentation, and website or application design. The benefits to doing this are far better than an unsolicited redesign. You get a great portfolio piece that actually has greater potential to get used (especially if the core team is on board with it). It\u2019s a win-win situation.\n\nNot all designers are in need of portfolio filler, but there are other benefits to contributing design.\n\nGiving back to the community\n\nMy first experience with voluntary work was when I collaborated with my friend, Vineet Thapar, on a pro bono project for the W3C\u2019s Web Accessibility Initiative redesign project back in 2004. I was very excited to contribute CSS to a website that would get used by the W3C! Unfortunately, it decided to go a different direction and my work did not get used. However, it was still pretty exciting to have the opportunity, and I don\u2019t regret a moment of that work. I learned a lot about accessibility from this experience and it helped me land some of the jobs I\u2019ve had since.\n\nAlmost a decade later, I got super into Sass. One of the core maintainers, Chris Eppstein, lamented on Twitter one day that the Sass website and brand was in dire need of design help. That led to the creation of an open source task force, Team Sass Design, and we revived the brand and the website, which launched at SassConf in 2013.\n\nIt helped me in my current job. I showed it during my portfolio review when I interviewed for the role. Then I was able to use inspiration from a technique I\u2019d tried on the Sass website to help create the more feature-rich design system that my team at work is building. But most importantly, I soon learned that it is exhilarating to be a part of the Sass community. This is the biggest benefit of all. It feels really good to give back to the technology I love and use for getting my work done.\n\nBen Werdmuller writes about the need for design in open source. It\u2019s great to see designers contributing to open source in awesome ways. When A List Apart\u2019s website went open source, Anna Debenham contributed by helping build its pattern library. Bevan Stephens worked with FontForge on the design of its website. There are also designers who have created their own open source projects. There\u2019s Dan Cederholm\u2019s Pears, which shares common patterns in markup and style. There\u2019s also Brad Frost\u2019s Pattern Lab, which shares his famous method of atomic design and applies it to a design system. These systems and patterns have been used in real-world projects, such as RetailMeNot, so designers have contributed to the web in an even larger way simply by putting their work out there for others to use. That\u2019s kind of fun to think about.\n\nHow to get started\n\nSo are you stoked about getting into the open source community? That\u2019s great!\n\nInitially, you might get worried or uncomfortable in getting involved. That\u2019s okay. But first consider that the project is open source for a reason. Your contribution (no matter how large or small) can help in a big way.\n\nIf you find a project you\u2019re interested in helping, make sure you do your research. Sometimes project team members will be attached to their current design. Is there already a designer on the core team? Reach out to that designer first. Don\u2019t be too aggressive with why you think your design is better than theirs. Rather, offer some constructive feedback and a proposal of what would make the design better. Chances are, if the designer cares about the project, and you make a strong case, they\u2019ll be up for it.\n\nAre there contribution guidelines? It\u2019s proper etiquette to read these and follow the community\u2019s rules. You\u2019ll have a better chance of getting your work accepted, and it shows that you take the time to care and add to the overall quality of the project. Does the project lack guidelines? Consider starting a draft for that before getting started in the design.\n\nWhen contributing to open source, use your initiative to solve problems in a manageable way. Huge pull requests are hard to review and will often either get neglected or rejected. Work in small, modular, and iterative contributions.\n\nSo this is my personal take on what I\u2019ve learned from my experience and why I love open source. I\u2019d love to hear from you if you have your own experience in doing this and what you\u2019ve learned along the way as well. Please share in the comments!\n\nThanks Drew McLellan, Eric Suzanne, Kyle Neath for sharing their thoughts with me on this!", "year": "2014", "author": "Jina Anne", "author_slug": "jina", "published": "2014-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/why-you-should-design-for-open-source/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 1, "title": "Why Bother with Accessibility?", "contents": "Web accessibility (known in other fields as inclusive design or universal design) is the degree to which a website is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility is most often used to describe how people with disabilities can access the web.\n\nHow we approach accessibility\n\nIn the web community, there\u2019s a surprisingly inconsistent approach to accessibility. There are some who are endlessly dedicated to accessible web design, and there are some who believe it so intrinsic to the web that it shouldn\u2019t be considered a separate topic. Still, of those who are familiar with accessibility, there\u2019s an overwhelming number of designers, developers, clients and bosses who just aren\u2019t that bothered.\n\nOver the last few months I\u2019ve spoken to a lot of people about accessibility, and I\u2019ve heard the same reasons to ignore it over and over again. Let\u2019s take a look at the most common excuses.\n\nExcuse 1: \u201cPeople with disabilities don\u2019t really use the web\u201d\n\nAccessibility will make your site available to more people \u2014 the inclusion case\n\nIn the same way that the accessibility of a building isn\u2019t just about access for wheelchair users, web accessibility isn\u2019t just about blind users and screen readers. We can affect positively the lives of many people by making their access to the web easier.\n\nThere are four main types of disability that affect use of the web:\n\n\n\tVisual\n\tBlindness, low vision and colour-blindness\n\tAuditory\n\tProfoundly deaf and hard of hearing\n\tMotor\n\tThe inability to use a mouse, slow response time, limited fine motor control\n\tCognitive\n\tLearning difficulties, distractibility, the inability to focus on large amounts of information\n\n\nNone of these disabilities are completely black and white\n\nExamining deafness, it\u2019s clear from the medical scale that there are many grey areas between full hearing and total deafness:\n\n\n\tmild\n\tmoderate\n\tmoderately severe\n\tsevere\n\tprofound\n\ttotally deaf\n\n\nFor eyesight, and brain conditions that affect what users see, there is a huge range of conditions and challenges:\n\n\n\tastigmatism\n\tcolour blindness\n\takinetopsia (motion blindness)\n\tscotopic visual sensitivity (visual stress related to light)\n\tvisual agnosia (impaired recognition or identification of objects)\n\n\nWhile we might have medical and government-recognised definitions that tell us what makes a disability, day-to-day life is not so straightforward. People experience varying degrees of different conditions, and often one or more conditions at a time, creating a false divide when you view disability in terms of us and them.\n\nImpairments aren\u2019t always permanent\n\nAs we age, we\u2019re more likely to experience different levels of visual, auditory, motor and cognitive impairments. We might have an accident or illness that affects us temporarily. We might struggle more earlier or later in the day. There are so many little physiological factors that affect the way people interact with the web that we can\u2019t afford to make any assumptions based on our own limited experiences.\n\nImpairments might be somewhere between the user and the website\n\nThere are also impairments that aren\u2019t directly related to the user. Environmental factors have a huge effect on the way people interact with the web. These could be:\n\n\n\tLow bandwidth, or intermittent internet connection\n\tBright light, rain, or other weather-based conditions\n\tNoisy environments, or a location where the user doesn\u2019t want to disturb their neighbours with sound\n\tBrowsing with mobile devices, games consoles and other non-desktop devices\n\tBrowsing with legacy browsers or operating systems\n\n\nSuch environmental factors show that it\u2019s not just those with physical impairments who benefit from more accessible websites. We started designing responsive websites so we could be more future-friendly, and with a shared goal of better optimised experiences, accessibility should be at the core of responsive web design.\n\nExcuse 2: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to affect the experience for the majority of our users\u201d\n\nAccessibility will improve your site for all your users \u2014 the usability case\n\nOn a basic level, the different disability groups, as shown in the inclusion case, equate to simple usability goals:\n\n\n\tVisual \u2013 make it easy to read\n\tAuditory \u2013 make it easy to hear\n\tMotor \u2013 make it easy to interact\n\tCognitive \u2013 make it easy to understand and focus\n\n\nTaking care to ensure good usability in these areas will also have an impact on accessibility. Unless your site is catering specifically to a particular disability, where extreme optimisation is most beneficial, taking care to design with accessibility in mind will rarely negatively affect the experience of your wider audience.\n\nExcuse 3: \u201cWe don\u2019t have the budget for accessibility\u201d\n\nAccessibility will make you money \u2014 the business case\n\nBy reducing your audience through ignoring accessibility, you\u2019re potentially excluding the income from those users. Designing with accessibility in mind from the beginning of a project makes it easier to make small inexpensive optimisations as part of the design and development process, rather than bolting on costly updates to increase your potential audience later on.\n\nThe following are excerpts from a white paper about companies that increased the accessibility of their websites to comply with government regulation.\n\n\n\tImprovements in accessibility doubled Legal and General\u2019s life insurance sales online.\n\n\n\n\tImprovements in accessibility increased Tesco\u2019s grocery home delivery sales by \u00a313 million in 2005\u2026 To their surprise they found that many normal visitors preferred the ease of navigation and improved simplicity of the [parallel] accessible site and switched to use it. Tesco have replaced their \u2018normal\u2019 site with their accessible version and expect a further increase in revenues.\n\n\n\n\tImprovements in accessibility increased Virgin.net sales by 68%.\n\n\nStatistics all from WSI white paper: Improve your website\u2019s usability and accessibility to increase sales (PDF).\n\nExcuse 4: \u201cAccessible websites are ugly\u201d\n\nAccessibility won\u2019t stop your site from being beautiful \u2014 the beauty case\n\nMany people use ugly accessible websites as proof that all accessible websites are ugly. This just isn\u2019t the case. I\u2019ve compiled some examples of beautiful and accessible websites with screenshots of how they look through the Color Oracle simulator and how they perform when run through Webaim\u2019s Wave accessibility checker tool.\n\nWhile automated tools are no substitute for real users, they can help you learn more about good practices, and give you guidance on where your site needs improvements to make it more accessible.\n\nAmazon.co.uk\n\nIt may not be a decorated beauty, but Amazon is often first in functional design. It\u2019s a huge website with a lot of interactive content, but it generates just five errors on the Wave test, and is easy to read under a Color Oracle filter.\n\n Screenshot of Amazon website\n Screenshot of Amazon\u2019s Wave results \u2013 five errors\n Screenshot of Amazon through a Color Oracle filter\n\n24 ways\n\nWhen Tim Van Damme redesigned 24 ways back in 2007, it was a striking and unusual design that showed what could be achieved with CSS and some imagination. Despite the complexity of the design, it gets an outstanding zero errors on the Wave test, and is still readable under a Color Oracle filter.\n\n Screenshot of pre-2013 24 ways website design\n Screenshot of 24 ways Wave results \u2013 zero errors\n Screenshot of 24ways through a Color Oracle filter\n\nOpera\u2019s Shiny Demos\n\nDemos and prototypes are notorious for ignoring accessibility, but Opera\u2019s Shiny Demos site shows how exploring new technologies doesn\u2019t have to exclude anyone. It only gets one error on the Wave test, and looks fine under a Color Oracle filter.\n\n Screenshot of Opera\u2019s Shiny Demos website\n Screenshot of Opera\u2019s Shiny Demos Wave results \u2013 1 error\n Screenshot of Opera\u2019s Shiny Demos through a Color Oracle filter\n\nSoundCloud\n\nWhen a site is more app-like, relying on more interaction from the user, accessibility can be more challenging. However, SoundCloud only gets one error on the Wave test, and the colour contrast holds up well under a Color Oracle filter.\n\n Screenshot of SoundCloud website\n Screenshot of SoundCloud\u2019s Wave results \u2013 one error\n Screenshot of SoundCloud through a Color Oracle filter\n\nEducation and balance\n\nAs with most web design, doing accessibility well is about combining your knowledge of accessibility with your project\u2019s context to create a balance that serves your users\u2019 needs. Your types of content and interactions will dictate one set of constraints. Your users\u2019 needs and goals will dictate another. In broad terms, web design as a practice is finding the equilibrium between these constraints.\n\nAnd then there\u2019s just caring. The web as a platform is open, affordable and available to many. Accessibility is our way to ensure that nobody gets shut out.", "year": "2013", "author": "Laura Kalbag", "author_slug": "laurakalbag", "published": "2013-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2013/why-bother-with-accessibility/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 67, "title": "What I Learned about Product Design This Year", "contents": "2015 was a humbling year for me. In September of 2014, I joined a tiny but established startup called SproutVideo as their third employee and first designer. The role interests me because it affords the opportunity to see how design can grow a solid product with a loyal user-base into something even better. \nThe work I do now could also have a real impact on the brand and user experience of our product for years to come, which is a thrilling prospect in an industry where much of what I do feels small and temporary. I got in on the ground floor of something special: a small, dedicated, useful company that cares deeply about making video hosting effortless and rewarding for our users.\nI had (and still have) grand ideas for what thoughtful design can do for a product, and the smaller-scale product design work I\u2019ve done or helped manage over the past few years gave me enough eager confidence to dive in head first. Readers who have experience redesigning complex existing products probably have a knowing smirk on their face right now. As I said, it\u2019s been humbling. A year of focused product design, especially on the scale we are trying to achieve with our small team at SproutVideo, has taught me more than any projects in recent memory. I\u2019d like to share a few of those lessons.\nProduct design is very different from marketing design\nThe majority of my recent work leading up to SproutVideo has been in marketing design. These projects are so fun because their aim is to communicate the value of the product in a compelling and memorable way. In order to achieve this goal, I spent a lot of time thinking about content strategy, responsive design, and how to create striking visuals that tell a story. These are all pursuits I love.\nProduct design is a different beast. When designing a homepage, I can employ powerful imagery, wild gradients, and somewhat-quirky fonts. When I began redesigning the SproutVideo product, I wanted to draw on all the beautiful assets I\u2019ve created for our marketing materials, but big gradients, textures, and display fonts made no sense in this new context.\nThat\u2019s because the product isn\u2019t about us, and it isn\u2019t about telling our story. Product design is about getting out of the way so people can do their job. The visual design is there to create a pleasant atmosphere for people to work in, and to help support the user experience. Learning to take \u201cus\u201d out of the equation took some work after years of creating gorgeous imagery and content for the sales-driven side of businesses.\nI\u2019ve learned it\u2019s very valuable to design both sides of the experience, because marketing and product design flex different muscles. If you\u2019re currently in an environment where the two are separate, consider switching teams in 2016. Designing for product when you\u2019ve mostly done marketing, or vice versa, will deepen your knowledge as a designer overall. You\u2019ll face new unexpected challenges, which is the only way to grow.\nProduct design can not start with what looks good on Dribbble\nI have an embarrassing confession: when I began the redesign, I had a secret goal of making something that would look gorgeous in my portfolio. I have a collection of product shots that I admire on Dribbble; examples of beautiful dashboards and widgets and UI elements that look good enough to frame. I wanted people to feel the same way about the final outcome of our redesign. Mistakenly, this was a factor in my initial work. I opened Photoshop and crafted pixel-perfect static buttons and form elements and color palettes that\u200a\u2014\u200awhen applied to our actual product\u200a\u2014\u200alooked like a toddler beauty pageant. It added up to a lot of unusable shininess, noise, and silliness.\nI was disappointed; these elements seemed so lovely in isolation, but in context, they felt tacky and overblown. I realized: I\u2019m not here to design the world\u2019s most beautiful drop down menu. Good design has nothing to do with ego, but in my experience designers are, at least a little bit, secret divas. I\u2019m no exception. I had to remind myself that I am not working in service of a bigger Dribbble following or to create the most Pinterest-ing work. My function is solely to serve the users\u200a\u2014\u200ato make life a little better for the good people who keep my company in business.\nThis meant letting go of pixel-level beauty to create something bigger and harder: a system of elements that work together in harmony in many contexts. The visual style exists to guide the users. When done well, it becomes a language that users understand, so when they encounter a new feature or have a new goal, they already feel comfortable navigating it. This meant stripping back my gorgeous animated menu into something that didn\u2019t detract from important neighboring content, and could easily fit in other parts of the app. In order to know what visual style would support the users, I had to take a wider view of the product as a whole.\nJust accept that designing a great product \u2013 like many worthwhile pursuits \u2013 is initially laborious and messy\nOnce I realized I couldn\u2019t start by creating the most Dribbble-worthy thing, I knew I\u2019d have to begin with the unglamorous, frustrating, but weirdly wonderful work of mapping out how the product\u2019s content could better be structured. Since we\u2019re redesigning an existing product, I assumed this would be fairly straightforward: the functionality was already in place, and my job was just to structure it in a more easily navigable way.\nI started by handing off a few wireframes of the key screens to the developer, and that\u2019s when the questions began rolling in: \u201cIf we move this content into a modal, how will it affect this similar action here?\u201d \u201cWhat happens if they don\u2019t add video tags, but they do add a description?\u201d \u201cWhat if the user has a title that is 500 characters long?\u201d \u201cWhat if they want their video to be private to some users, but accessible to others?\u201d.\nHow annoying (but really, fantastic) that people use our product in so many ways. Turns out, product design isn\u2019t about laying out elements in the most ideal scenario for the user that\u2019s most convenient for you. As product designers, we have to foresee every outcome, and anticipate every potential user need.\nWhich brings me to another annoying epiphany: if you want to do it well, and account for every user, product design is so much more snarly and tangled than you\u2019d expect going in. I began with a simple goal: to improve the experience on just one of our key product pages. However, every small change impacts every part of the product to some degree, and that impact has to be accounted for. Every decision is based on assumptions that have to be tested; I test my assumptions by observing users, talking to the team, wireframing, and prototyping. Many of my assumptions are wrong. There are days when it\u2019s incredibly frustrating, because an elegant solution for users with one goal will complicate life for users with another goal. It\u2019s vital to solve as many scenarios as possible, even though this is slow, sometimes mind-bending work.\nAs a side bonus, wireframing and prototyping every potential state in a product is tedious, but your developers will thank you for it. It\u2019s not their job to solve what happens when there\u2019s an empty state, error, or edge case. Showing you\u2019ve accounted for these scenarios will win a developer\u2019s respect; failing to do so will frustrate them.\nWhen you\u2019ve created and tested a system that supports user needs, it will be beautiful\nRemember what I said in the beginning about wanting to create a Dribbble-worthy product? When I stopped focusing on the visual details of the design (color, spacing, light and shadow, font choices) and focused instead on structuring the content to maximize usability and delight, a beautiful design began to emerge naturally.\nI began with grayscale, flat wireframes as a strategy to keep me from getting pulled into the visual style before the user experience was established. As I created a system of elements that worked in harmony, the visual style choices became obvious. Some buttons would need to be brighter and sit off the page to help the user spot important actions. Some elements would need line separators to create a hierarchy, where others could stand on their own as an emphasized piece of content. As the user experience took shape, the visual style emerged naturally to support it. The result is a product that feels beautiful to use, because I was thoughtful about the experience first.\n\nA big takeaway from this process has been that my assumptions will often be proven wrong. My assumptions about how to design a great product, and how users will interact with that product, have been tested and revised repeatedly. At SproutVideo we\u2019re about to undertake the biggest test of our work; we\u2019re going to launch a small part of the product redesign to our users. If I\u2019ve learned anything, it\u2019s that I will continue to be humbled by the ongoing effort of making the best product I can, which is a wonderful thing.\nNext year, I hope you all get to do work that takes you out of our comfort zone. Be regularly confounded and embarrassed by your wrong assumptions, learn from them, and come back and tell us what you learned in 2016.", "year": "2015", "author": "Meagan Fisher", "author_slug": "meaganfisher", "published": "2015-12-14T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/what-i-learned-about-product-design-this-year/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 12, "title": "Untangling Web Typography", "contents": "When I was a carpenter, I noticed how homeowners often had this deer-in-the-headlights look when the contractor I worked for would ask them to make tons of decisions, seemingly all at once.\n\nSquare or subway tile? Glass or ceramic? Traditional or modern trim details? Flat face or picture frame cabinets? Real wood or laminate flooring? Every day the decisions piled up and were usually made in the context of that room, or that part of that room. Rarely did the homeowner have the benefit of taking that particular decision in full view of the larger context of the project. And architectural plans? Sure, they lay out the broad strokes, but there is still so much to decide.\n\nTypography is similar. Designers try to make sites that are easy to use and understand visually. They labour over the details of line height, font size, line length, and font weights. They consider the relative merits of different typographical scales for applications versus content-driven sites. Frequently, designers consider all of this in the context of one page, feature, or view of an application. They are asked to make a million tiny decisions.\n\nSometimes designers just bump up the font size until it looks right.\n\nI don\u2019t see anything wrong with that. Instincts are important. Designing in context is easier. It\u2019s OK to leave the big picture until later. Design a bunch of things, and then look for the patterns. You can\u2019t always know everything up front. How does the current feature relate to all the other features on the site? For a large site, just like for a substantial remodel, the number of decisions you would need to internalize to make that knowable would be prohibitively large.\n\nWhen typography goes awry\n\nI should be honest. I know very little about typography. I struggle to understand vertical rhythm and the math in Tim Ahrens\u2019s talks about the interaction between type design and rendering technology kind of melted my brain. I have an unusual perspective because I\u2019m not the one making the design decisions, but I am the one implementing them and often cleaning up when a project goes off the rails.\n\nI\u2019ve seen projects with thousands of font-size declarations and headings. One project even had over ten thousand margin declarations. So while I appreciate creative exploration, I\u2019m also eager to establish patterns in typography and make sure we aren\u2019t choosing not to choose. Or, choosing all the things.\n\nAnalyzing a site\u2019s typography\n\nMost of my projects start out with an evaluation of the client\u2019s existing CSS. I look for duplication in the CSS by using Grep, though functionality is landing soon in CSS Lint to do the same thing automatically. The goal is to find the underlying missing abstractions that, once in place, would allow developers to create new functionality without needing to write additional CSS. In addition to that, my team and I would comb through each site (generally, around ten pages is enough to get the big picture), and take screenshots of each of the components we found.\n\nIn this way, we could look for subtle visual differences that were unlikely to add value to the user. By correcting these differences, we could help make the design more consistent, and at the same time the code leaner and more performant. Typography is much like a homeowner who chooses to incorporate too many disparate design elements, pairing a mid-century modern sofa with flowered country cottage curtains. Often the typography of a site ends up collecting an endless array of new typefaces as the site\u2019s overall styles evolve. Designers come and go on a project, and eventually no one can remember how the 16px Verdana got into the codebase.\n\nAutomation\n\nWe used to do this work by hand. It was incredibly tedious. We\u2019d go through the site, taking screenshots and meticulously documenting the style information we found. We didn\u2019t have to do that many times before it became incredibly clear that the task needed to be automated. So we built a little tool called the Type-o-matic that could do it for us.\n\nTo try it on your site:\n\n\n\tDownload and install the Firebug extension to Firefox\n\tDownload and install the Type-o-matic extension to Firebug (I know, I fully intend to port it to Chrome)\n\tNow, visit the site you\u2019d like to test\n\tRight click and choose Inspect element with Firebug\n\tNow click on the Typography tab\n\tClick Persist\n\tClick Generate Report\n\tChoose which pages to analyze (we\u2019ve found that ten is a good number to get the big picture, but you can analyze as many as you\u2019d like\u200a\u2014\u200ait will even work on just one page!)\n\tNow navigate to other pages, and on each subsequent page, click Generate Report\n\tThe table of results can be a bit difficult to interact with, so you can always click Copy to clipboard, and copy the results (JSON).\n\n\n \n \nA screenshot of Type-o-matic in action\n\n\nWhat does this data mean?\n\nWhen you\u2019ve analyzed as many pages or different views as you\u2019d like, you\u2019ll start to see some interesting patterns emerge in the data. In the right-hand column, you\u2019ll see examples of how each kind of typography we found has been used in a real context on your site. It is organized by color and then by size so you can easily see how you are using typography.\n\nThe next thing you\u2019ll want to take a look at is in the first column, called \u201cCount\u201d. We\u2019ve counted how many times you\u2019ve used each combination of typographical styles. This can be incredibly helpful when deciding which styles were intentional, versus one-off color pick errors or experiments that never got removed from the code base. If you\u2019ve used one color blue 1,400 times, and another just 23, it\u2019s pretty obvious which is more in line with broader site-wide styles.\n\nConsistency before perfection\n\nIt can be really tempting to try to make everything perfect\u200a\u2014\u200ato try to make every decision final. When you use the data you can collect from this tool, I\u2019d recommend trying to get to consistent before you try to make things perfect. Stop using fifteen different shades of blue type first, and then if you want to change to a new blue, go for it! You\u2019ll be able to make design changes much more easily once you\u2019ve reduced the total number of typographical styles you rely on.\n\nLower the importance of the decisions you are making. Our sites, like ourselves, are always a work in progress. Or, as a carpenter I used to work with said, \u201cYou\u2019re not building a fucking piano.\u201d We\u2019re not building houses. We can choose one typeface today and a different one tomorrow. It is OK to experiment. Be brave.", "year": "2013", "author": "Nicole Sullivan", "author_slug": "nicolesullivan", "published": "2013-12-20T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2013/untangling-web-typography/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 149, "title": "Underpants Over My Trousers", "contents": "With Christmas approaching faster than a speeding bullet, this is the perfect time for you to think about that last minute present to buy for the web geek in your life. If you\u2019re stuck for ideas for that special someone, forget about that svelte iPhone case carved from solid mahogany and head instead to your nearest comic-book shop and pick up a selection of comics or graphic novels. (I\u2019ll be using some of my personal favourite comic books as examples throughout). \n\nTrust me, whether your nearest and dearest has been reading comics for a while or has never peered inside this four-colour world, they\u2019ll thank-you for it.\n\nAside from indulging their superhero fantasies, comic books can provide web designers with a rich vein of inspiring ideas and material to help them create shirt button popping, trouser bursting work for the web. I know from my own personal experience, that looking at aspects of comic book design, layout and conventions and thinking about the ways that they can inform web design has taken my design work in often-unexpected directions. \n\nThere are far too many fascinating facets of comic book design that provide web designers with inspiration to cover in the time that it takes to pull your underpants over your trousers. So I\u2019m going to concentrate on one muscle bound aspect of comic design, one that will make you think differently about how you lay out the content of your pages in panels. \n\nA suitcase full of Kryptonite\n\nNow, to the uninitiated onlooker, the panels of a comic book may appear to perform a similar function to still frames from a movie. But inside the pages of a comic, panels must work harder to help the reader understand the timing of a story. It is this method for conveying narrative timing to a reader that I believe can be highly useful to designers who work on the web as timing, drama and suspense are as important in the web world as they are in worlds occupied by costumed crime fighters and superheroes.\n\nI\u2019d like you to start by closing your eyes and thinking about your own process for laying out panels of content on a page. OK, you\u2019ll actually be better off with your eyes open if you\u2019re going to carry on reading.\n\nI\u2019ll bet you a suitcase full of Kryptonite that you often, if not always, structure your page layouts, and decide on the dimensions of those panels according to either:\n\n\n\tThe base grid that you are working to\n\tThe Golden Ratio or another mathematical schema\n\n\nMore likely, I bet that you decide on the size and the number of your panels based on the amount of content that will be going into them. From today, I\u2019d like you to think about taking a different approach. This approach not only addresses horizontal and vertical space, but also adds the dimension of time to your designs.\n\nSlowing down the action\n\nA comic book panel not only acts as a container for its content but also indicates to a reader how much time passes within the panel and as a result, how much time the reader should focus their attention on that one panel. \n\nSmaller panels create swift eye movement and shorter bursts of attention. Larger panels give the perception of more time elapsing in the story and subconsciously demands that a reader devotes more time to focus on it. \n\nConcrete by Paul Chadwick (Dark Horse Comics)\n\nThis use of panel dimensions to control timing can also be useful for web designers in designing the reading/user experience. Imagine a page full of information about a product or service. You\u2019ll naturally want the reader to focus for longer on the key benefits of your offering rather than perhaps its technical specifications.\n\nNow take a look at this spread of pages from Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.\n\nWatchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Diamond Comic Distributors 2004)\n\nThroughout this series of (originally) twelve editions, artist Dave Gibbons stuck rigidly to his 3\u00d73 panels per page design and deviated from it only for dramatic moments within the narrative. \n\nIn particular during the last few pages of chapter eleven, Gibbons adds weight to the impending doom by slowing down the action by using larger panels and forces the reader to think longer about what was coming next. The action then speeds up through twelve smaller panels until the final panel: nothing more than white space and yet one of the most iconic and thought provoking in the entire twelve book series.\n\nWatchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Diamond Comic Distributors 2004)\n\nOn the web it is common for clients to ask designers to fill every pixel of screen space with content, perhaps not understanding the drama that can be added by nothing more than white space.\n\nIn the final chapter, Gibbons emphasises the carnage that has taken place (unseen between chapters eleven and twelve) by presenting the reader with six full pages containing only single, large panels. \n\nWatchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Diamond Comic Distributors 2004)\n\nThis drama, created by the artist\u2019s use of panel dimensions to control timing, is a technique that web designers can also usefully employ when emphasising important areas of content.\n\nThink back for a moment to the home page of Apple Inc., during the launch of their iconic iPhone, where the page contained nothing more than a large image and the phrase \u201cSay hello to iPhone\u201d. Rather than fill the page with sales messages, Apple\u2019s designers allowed the space itself to tell the story and created a real sense of suspense and expectation among their readers.\n\nBorders\n\nWhereas on the web, panel borders are commonly used to add emphasis to particular areas of content, in comic books they take on a different and sometimes opposite role. \n\nIn the examples so far, borders have contained all of the action. Removing a border can have the opposite effect to what you might at first think. Rather than taking emphasis away from their content, in comics, borderless panels allow the reader\u2019s eyes to linger for longer on the content adding even stronger emphasis.\n\nConcrete by Paul Chadwick (Dark Horse Comics)\n\nThis effect is amplified when the borderless content is allowed to bleed to the edges of a page. Because the content is no longer confined, except by the edges of the page (both comic and web) the reader\u2019s eye is left to wander out into open space. \n\nConcrete by Paul Chadwick (Dark Horse Comics)\n\nThis type of open, borderless content panel can be highly useful in placing emphasis on the most important content on a page in exactly the very opposite way that we commonly employ on the web today. \n\nSo why is time an important dimension to think about when designing your web pages? On one level, we are often already concerned with the short attention spans of visitors to our pages and should work hard to allow them to quickly and easily find and read the content that both they and we think is important. Learning lessons from comic book timing can only help us improve that experience.\n\nOn another: timing, suspense and drama are already everyday parts of the web browsing experience. Will a reader see what they expect when they click from one page to the next? Or are they in for a surprise? \n\nMost importantly, I believe that the web, like comics, is about story telling: often the story of the experiences that a customer will have when they use our product or service or interact with our organisation. It is this element of story telling than can be greatly improved by learning from comics.\n\nIt is exactly this kind of learning and adapting from older, more established and at first glance unrelated media that you will find can make a real distinctive difference to the design work that you create.\n\nFill your stockings\n\nIf you\u2019re a visual designer or developer and are not a regular reader of comics, from the moment that you pick up your first title, I know that you will find them inspiring. \n\nI will be writing more, and speaking about comic design applied to the web at several (to be announced) events this coming year. I hope you\u2019ll be slipping your underpants over your trousers and joining me then. In the meantime, here is some further reading to pick up on your next visit to a comic book or regular bookshop and slip into your stockings:\n\n\n\tComics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner (Northern Light Books 2001)\n\tUnderstanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud (Harper Collins 1994)\n\n\nHave a happy superhero season.\n\n(I would like to thank all of the talented artists, writers and publishers whose work I have used as examples in this article and the hundreds more who inspire me every day with their tall tales and talent.)", "year": "2007", "author": "Andy Clarke", "author_slug": "andyclarke", "published": "2007-12-14T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/underpants-over-my-trousers/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 148, "title": "Typesetting Tables", "contents": "Tables have suffered in recent years on the web. They were used for laying out web pages. Then, following the Web Standards movement, they\u2019ve been renamed by the populous as `data tables\u2019 to ensure that we all know what they\u2019re for. There have been some great tutorials for the designing tables using CSS for presentation and focussing on the semantics in the displaying of data in the correct way. However, typesetting tables is a subtle craft that has hardly had a mention.\n\nTable design can often end up being a technical exercise. What data do we need to display? Where is the data coming from and what form will it take? When was the last time your heard someone talk about lining numerals? Or designing to the reading direction?\n\nTables are not read like sentences\n\nWhen a reader looks at, and tries to understand, tabular data, they\u2019re doing a bunch of things at the same time.\n\n\n\tGenerally, they\u2019re task based; they\u2019re looking for something.\n\tThey are reading horizontally AND vertically\n\n\nReading a table is not like reading a paragraph in a novel, and therefore shouldn\u2019t be typeset in the same way. Designing tables is information design, it\u2019s functional typography\u2014it\u2019s not a time for eye candy.\n\nTypesetting tables\n\nTypesetting great looking tables is largely an exercise in restraint. Minimal interference with the legibility of the table should be in the forefront of any designers mind.\n\nWhen I\u2019m designing tables I apply some simple rules:\n\n\n\tPlenty of negative space\n\tUse the right typeface\n\tGo easy on the background tones, unless you\u2019re giving reading direction visual emphasis\n\tDesign to the reading direction\n\n\nBy way of explanation, here are those rules as applied to the following badly typeset table.\n\nYour default table\n\nThis table is a mess. There is no consideration for the person trying to read it. Everything is too tight. The typeface is wrong. It\u2019s flat. A grim table indeed.\n\n\n\nLet\u2019s see what we can do about that.\n\nPlenty of negative space\n\nThe badly typeset table has been set with default padding. There has been little consideration for the ascenders and descenders in the type interfering with the many horizontal rules.\n\nThe first thing we do is remove most of the lines, or rules. You don\u2019t need them \u2013 the data in the rows forms its own visual rules. Now, with most of the rules removed, the ones that remain mean something; they are indicating some kind of hierarchy to the help the reader understand what the different table elements mean \u2013 in this case the column headings.\n\n\n\nNow we need to give the columns and rows more negative space. Note the framing of the column headings. I\u2019m giving them more room at the bottom. This negative space is active\u2014it\u2019s empty for a reason. The extra air in here also gives more hierarchy to the column headings.\n\n\n\nUse the right typeface\n\nThe default table is set in a serif typeface. This isn\u2019t ideal for a couple of reasons. This serif typeface has a standard set of text numerals. These dip below the baseline and are designed for using figures within text, not on their own. What you need to use is a typeface with lining numerals. These align to the baseline and are more legible when used for tables.\n\n\n\nSans serif typefaces generally have lining numerals. They are also arguably more legible when used in tables.\n\nGo easy on the background tones, unless you\u2019re giving reading direction visual emphasis \n\nWe\u2019ve all seen background tones on tables. They have their use, but my feeling is that use should be functional and not decorative.\n\nIf you have a table that is long, but only a few columns wide, then alternate row shading isn\u2019t that useful for showing the different lines of data. It\u2019s a common misconception that alternate row shading is to increase legibility on long tables. That\u2019s not the case. Shaded rows are to aid horizontal reading across multiple table columns. On wide tables they are incredibly useful for helping the reader find what they want.\n\n\n\nBackground tone can also be used to give emphasis to the reading direction. If we want to emphasis a column, that can be given a background tone.\n\n\n\nHierarchy\n\nAs I said earlier, people may be reading a table vertically, and horizontally in order to find what they want. Sometimes, especially if the table is complex, we need to give them a helping hand.\n\nVisually emphasising the hierarchy in tables can help the reader scan the data. Column headings are particularly important. Column headings are often what a reader will go to first, so we need to help them understand that the column headings are different to the stuff beneath them, and we also need to give them more visual importance. We can do this by making them bold, giving them ample negative space, or by including a thick rule above them. We can also give the row titles the same level of emphasis.\n\n\n\nIn addition to background tones, you can give emphasis to reading direction by typesetting those elements in bold. You shouldn\u2019t use italics\u2014with sans serif typefaces the difference is too subtle.\n\nSo, there you have it. A couple of simple guidelines to make your tables cleaner and more readable.", "year": "2007", "author": "Mark Boulton", "author_slug": "markboulton", "published": "2007-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/typesetting-tables/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 174, "title": "Type-Inspired Interfaces", "contents": "One of the things that terrifies me most about a new project is the starting point. How is the content laid out? What colors do I pick? Once things like that are decided, it becomes significantly easier to continue design, but it\u2019s the blank page where I spend the most time.\n\nTo that end, I often start by choosing type. I don\u2019t need to worry about colors or layout or anything else\u2026 just the right typefaces that support the art direction. (This article won\u2019t focus on how to choose a typeface, but there are some really great resources if you interested in that sort of thing.)\n\nAnd just like that, all your work is done. \u201cHold it just a second,\u201d you might say. \u201cAll I\u2019ve done is pick type. I still have to do the rest!\u201d\n\nTo which I would reply, \u201cSilly rabbit. You already have!\u201d You see, picking the right typeface gets you farther than you might think. Here are a few tips on taking cues from type to design interfaces and interface elements.\n\nPerfecting Web 2.0\n\nIf you\u2019re going for that beloved rounded corner look, you might class it up a bit by choosing the wonderful Omnes Pro by Joshua Darden. As the typeface already has a rounded aesthetic, making buttons that fit the style should be pretty easy.\n\nI\u2019ve found that using multiples helps to keep your interfaces looking balanced and proportional. Noticing that the top left edge of the letter \u201cP\u201d has about an 12px corner radius, let\u2019s choose a 24px radius for our button (a multiple of 2), so that we get proper rounded corners. By taking mathematical measurements from the typeface, our button looks more thought out than just \u201cplace arbitrary text on arbitrarily-sized button.\u201d Pretty easy, eh?\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s in a name(plate)?\n\nRounded buttons are pretty popular buttons nowadays, so let\u2019s try something a bit more stylized.\n\nHave a gander at Brothers, a sturdy face from Emigre. The chiseled edges give us a perfect cue for a stylized button. Using the same slope, you can make plated-looking buttons that fit a different kind of style.\n\n\n\nHeadlining\n\nYou might even take some cues from the style of the typeface itself. Didone serifs are known for their lack of brackets\u30fcthat is, a gradual transition from the stem to the serif. Instead, they typically connect at a right angle. Another common characteristic is the high contrast in the strokes: very thick stems, very thin serifs.\n\nSo, when using a high contrast typeface, you can use it to your advantage to enhance hierarchy. Following our \u201cmultiples\u201d guideline, a 12px measurement from the stems helps us create a top rule with a height of 24px (a multiple of 2). We can take the exact 1px measurement from the serif\u2014a multiple of 1\u2014to create the bottom rule. Voil\u00e0! I use this technique a lot.\n\n\n\nSwashbucklers\n\nAnd don\u2019t forget the importance of visual \u201cspeed bumps\u201d to break up long passages of text. A beautiful face like Alejandro Paul\u2019s Ministry Script has over a thousand characters that can be manipulated or even combined to create elegant interface elements. Altering the partial differential character (\u2202) creates a delightful ornament that can help to guide the eye through content.\n\n\n\nStagger & Swagger\n\nWhat about layout? How can we use typography to inform how our content is displayed?\n\nLet\u2019s take a typeface like Assembler. We might use this for a design that needs to feel uneasy or uncomfortable. In design terms, that might translate into using irregular shapes and asymmetry. Using the proportional distances and degrees from the perpendiculars, we could easily create a multi-column layout that jives with the general tone. And for all you skeptics that don\u2019t think a layout like this is doable on the web, stranger things have happened.\n\n Background texture generously offered by Bittbox.\n\nOverall Design Direction\n\nFinally, your typography could impact the entire look of the site, from the navigation to the interaction and everything in between. Check out how the (now-defunct) Nike Free site\u2019s typography echoes the product itself, and in turn influences the navigation.\n\n\n\nFind Your Type\n\nWith thousands of fonts to choose from, the possibilities are ridiculously open. From angles to radii to color to weight, you\u2019ve got endless fodder before you. Great type designers spent countless hours slaving over these detailed letterforms; take advantage of it! Don\u2019t feel like you have to limit yourself to the same old Helvetica and wet floors\u2026 unless your design calls for it. \n\nHappy hunting!", "year": "2009", "author": "Dan Mall", "author_slug": "danmall", "published": "2009-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/type-inspired-interfaces/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 140, "title": "Styling hCards with CSS", "contents": "There are plenty of places online where you can learn about using the hCard microformat to mark up contact details at your site (there are some resources at the end of the article). But there\u2019s not yet been a lot of focus on using microformats with CSS. So in this installment of 24 ways, we\u2019re going to look at just that \u2013 how microformats help make CSS based styling simpler and more logical.\n\nBeing rich, quite complex structures, hCards provide designers with a sophisticated scaffolding for styling them. A recent example of styling hCards I saw, playing on the business card metaphor, was by Andy Hume, at http://thedredge.org/2005/06/using-hcards-in-your-blog/. While his approach uses fixed width cards, let\u2019s take a look at how we might style a variable width business card style for our hCards.\n\nLet\u2019s take a common hCard, which includes address, telephone and email details\n\n
Web Directions North\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t
\n\n\t\n\t\t 1485 Laperri\u00e8re Avenue \n\t\t Ottawa ON K1Z 7S8 \n\t\tCanada\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\tPhone/Fax: Work: 61 2 9365 5007\n\t\tEmail: info@webdirections.org\n\t\n\n\nWe\u2019ll be using a variation on the now well established \u201csliding doors\u201d technique (if you create a CSS technique, remember it\u2019s very important to give it a memorable name or acronym, and bonus points if you get your name in there!) by Douglas Bowman, enhanced by Scott Schiller (see http://www.schillmania.com/projects/dialog/,) which will give us a design which looks like this\n\n\n\nThe technique, in a nutshell, uses background images on four elements, two at the top, and two at the bottom, to add each rounded corner.\n\nWe are going to make this design \u201cfluid\u201d in the sense that it grows and shrinks in proportion with the size of the font that the text of the element is displayed with. This is sometimes referred to as an \u201cem driven design\u201d (we\u2019ll see why in a moment).\n\nTo see how this works in practice, here\u2019s the same design with the text \u201czoomed\u201d up in size\n\n\n\nand the same design again, when we zoom the text size down\n\n\n\nBy the way, the hCard image comes from Chris Messina, and you can download it and other microformat icons from the microformats wiki.\n\nNow, with CSS3, this whole task would be considerably easier, because we can add multiple background images to an element, and border images for each edge of an element. Safari, version 1.3 up, actually supports multiple background images, but sadly, it\u2019s not supported in Firefox 1.5, or even Firefox 2.0 (let\u2019s not mention IE7 eh?). So it\u2019s probably too little supported to use now. So instead we\u2019ll use a technique that only involves CSS2, and works in pretty much any browser.\n\nVery often, developers add div or span elements as containers for these background images, and in fact, if you visit Scott Shiller\u2019s site, that\u2019s what he has done there. But if at all possible we shouldn\u2019t be adding any HTML simply for presentational purposes, even if the presentation is done via CSS. What we can do is to use the HTML we have already, as much as is possible, to add the style we want. This can take some creative thinking, but once you get the hang of this approach it becomes a more natural way of using HTML compared with simply adding divs and spans at will as hooks for style. Of course, this technique isn\u2019t always simple, and in fact sometimes simply not possible, requiring us to add just a little HTML to provide the \u201chooks\u201d for CSS.\n\nLet\u2019s go to work\n\nThe first step is to add a background image to the whole vCard element.\n\n\n\nWe make this wide enough (for example 1000 or more pixels) and tall enough that no matter how large the content of the vCard grows, it will never overflow this area. We can\u2019t simply repeat the image, because the top left corner will show when the image repeats.\n\nWe add this as the background image of the vCard element using CSS.\n\nWhile we are at it, let\u2019s give the text a sans-serif font, some color so that it will be visible, and stop the image repeating.\n\n.vcard {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/vcardfill.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tcolor: #666;\n\tfont-family: \"Lucida Grande\", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;\n}\n\nWhich in a browser, will look something like this.\n\n\n\nNext step we need to add the top right hand corner of the hCard. In keeping with our aim of not adding HTML simply for styling purposes, we want to use the existing structure of the page where possible. Here, we\u2019ll use the paragraph of class fn and org, which is the first child element of the vcard element.\n\nWeb Directions Conference Pty Ltd
\n\nHere\u2019s our CSS for this element\n\n.fn {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/topright.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tbackground-position: top right;\n\tpadding-top: 2em;\n\tfont-weight: bold;\n\tfont-size: 1.1em;\n}\n\nAgain, we don\u2019t want it to repeat, but this time, we\u2019ve specified a background position for the image. This will make the background image start from the top, but its right edge will be located at the right edge of the element. I also made the font size a little bigger, and the weight bold, to differentiate it from the rest of the text in the hCard.\n\nHere\u2019s the image we are adding as the background to this element.\n\n\n\nSo, putting these two CSS statements together we get\n\n\n\nWe specified a padding-top of 2em to give some space between the content of the fn element and the edge of the fn element. Otherwise the top of the hCard image would be hard against the border. To see this in action, just remove the padding-top: 2em; declaration and preview in a browser.\n\nSo, with just two statements, we are well under way. We\u2019ve not even had to add any HTML so far. Let\u2019s turn to the bottom of the element, and add the bottom border (well, the background image which will serve as that border).\n\nNow, which element are we going to use to add this background image to?\n\nOK, here I have to admit to a little, teensie bit of cheating. If you look at the HTML of the hCard, I\u2019ve grouped the email and telephone properties into a div, with a class of telecommunications. This grouping is not strictly requred for our hCard.\n\nPhone/Fax: Work:\n\t\t61 2 9365 5007
\n\tEmail: info@webdirections.org
\nEmail: info@webdirections.org
\n\nTypically, in hCard, the value part of this property isn\u2019t required, and we could get away with\n\ninfo@webdirections.org\n\nThe form I\u2019ve used, with the span of class value is however, perfectly valid hCard markup (hard allows for multiple email addresses of different types, which is where this typically comes in handy). Why have I gone to all this trouble? Well, when it came to styling the hCard, I realized I needed a block element to attach the background image for the bottom right hand corner to. Typically the last block element in the containing element is the ideal choice (and sometimes it\u2019s possible to take an inline element, for example the link here, and use CSS to make it a block element, and attach it to that, but that really doesn\u2019t work with this design).\n\nSo, if we are going to use the paragraph which contains the email link, we need a way to select it exclusively, which means that with CSS2 at least, we need a class or id as a hook for our CSS selector (in CSS3 we could use the last-child selector, which selects the last child element of a specified element, but again, as last child is not widely supported, we won\u2019t rely on it here.)\n\nSo, the least worst thing we could do is take an existing element, and add some reasonably meaningful markup to it. That\u2019s why we gave the paragraph a class of email, and the email address a class of value. Which reminds me a little of a moment in Hamlet\n\n\n\tThe lady doth protest too much, methinks\n\n\nOK, let\u2019s get back to the CSS.\n\nWe add the bottom right corner image, positioning it in the bottom right of the element, and making sure it doesn\u2019t repeat. We also add some padding to the bottom, to balance out the padding we added to the top of the hCard.\n\np.email {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/bottom-right.png);\n\tbackground-position: right bottom;\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tpadding-bottom: 2em;\n}\n\nWhich all goes to make our hCard look like this\n\n\n\nIt just remains for us to clean up a little.\n\nLet\u2019s start from the top. We\u2019ll float the download image to the right like this\n\n.vcard img {\n\tfloat: right;\n\tpadding-right: 1em;\n\tmargin-top: -1em\n}\n\nSee how we didn\u2019t have to add a class to style the image, we used the fact that the image is a descendent of the vcard element, and a descendent selector. In my experience, the very widely supported, powerful descendent selector is one of the most underused aspects of CSS. So if you don\u2019t use it frequently, look into it in more detail.\n\nWe added some space to the right of the image, and pulled it up a bit closer to the top of the hCard, like this\n\n\n\nWe also want to add some whitespace between the edge of the hCard and the text. We would typically add padding to the left of the containing element, (in this case the vcard element) but this would break our bottom left hand corner, like this\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s because the div element we added this bottom left background image to would be moved in by the padding on its containing element.\n\nSo instead, we add left margin to all the paragraphs in the hCard\n\n.vcard p {\n\tmargin-left: 1em;\n}\n\n(there is the descendent selector again \u2013 it is the swiss army knife of CSS)\n\nNow, we\u2019ve not yet made the width of the hCard a function of the size of the text inside it (or \u201cem driven\u201d as we described it earlier). We do this by giving the hCard a width that is specified in em units. Here we\u2019ll set a width of say 28em, which makes the hCard always roughly as wide as 28 characters (strictly speaking 28 times the width of the letter capital M). \n\nSo the statement for our containing vcard element becomes\n\n.vcard {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/vcardfill.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tcolor: #666;\n\tfont-family: \"Lucida Grande\", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;\n\twidth: 28em;\n}\n\nand now our element will look like this\n\n\n\nWe\u2019ve used almost entirely the existing HTML from our original hCard (adding just a little, and trying as much as possible to keep that additional markup meaningful), and just 6 CSS statements.\n\nHoliday Bonus \u2013 a downloadable vCard\n\nDid you notice this part of the HTML\n\n\n \n\nWhat\u2019s with the odd looking url\n\n element that has been so often discussed is another excellent solution if you\u2019re feeling particularly future-oriented. A picture polyfill exists so that you can start using the element now without any worries about support.\n\nConditional loading\n\nDon\u2019t load any more than you absolutely need to. If a script isn\u2019t needed at certain sizes, use the matchMedia polyfill to ensure it only loads when needed. Use eCSSential to do the same for unnecessary CSS files.\n\nLast year on 24 ways, Jeremy Keith wrote an article about conditional loading of content in a responsive design based on the screen width. The technique was later refined by the Filament Group into what they dubbed the Ajax-Include Pattern. It\u2019s a powerful and simple way to lighten the load on small screens as well as reduce clutter.\n\nGo vanilla?\n\nIf you take a look at the HTTP Archive you\u2019ll see that other than image size, JavaScript is the heaviest asset on a page weighing in at 215kb on average. It also boasts the fifth highest correlation to load time as well as the second highest correlation to render time. \n\nMuch of the weight can be attributed to our industry\u2019s increasing reliance on frameworks. This is especially a concern on mobile devices. PPK recently exclaimed that current JavaScript libraries are just \u201ctoo heavy for mobile\u201d. \u201cResearch from Stoyan Stefanov on parse times supports this. On some Android and iOS devices, it can take as long as 200-300ms just to parse jQuery.\n\nThere\u2019s nothing wrong about using a framework, but the problem is that they\u2019ve become the default. Before dropping another framework or plugin into a page, we should stop to consider the value it adds and whether we could accomplish what we need to do using a combination of vanilla JavaScript and CSS instead. (This is a great example of a scenario where a performance budget could help.)\n\nStart thinking beyond visual aesthetics\n\nWe love to tout the web\u2019s universality when discussing the need for responsive design. But that universality is not limited simply to screen size. Networks and hardware capabilities must factor in as well.\n\nThe web is an incredibly dynamic and interactive medium, and designing for it demands that we consider more than just visual aesthetics. Let\u2019s not forget to give those other qualities the attention they deserve.", "year": "2012", "author": "Tim Kadlec", "author_slug": "timkadlec", "published": "2012-12-05T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/responsive-responsive-design/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 173, "title": "Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room", "contents": "My friend, the content strategist Kristina Halvorson, likes to call content \u201cthe elephant in the room\u201d of web design. She means it\u2019s the huge problem that no one on the web development team or client side is willing to acknowledge, face squarely, and plan for. \n\nA typical web project will pass through many helpful phases of research, and numerous beneficial user experience design iterations, while the content\u2014which in most cases is supposed to be the site\u2019s primary focus\u2014gets handled haphazardly at the end. Hence, elephant in the room, and hence also artist Kevin Cornell\u2019s recent use of elephantine imagery to illustrate A List Apart articles on the subject. But I digress.\n\nWithout discounting the primacy of the content problem, we web design folk have now birthed ourselves a second lumbering mammoth, thanks to our interest in \u201creal fonts on the web\u201c (the unfortunate name we\u2019ve chosen for the recent practice of serving web-licensed fonts via CSS\u2019s decade-old @font-face declaration\u2014as if Georgia, Verdana, and Times were somehow unreal). \n\nFor the fact is, even bulletproof and mo\u2019 bulletproofer @font-face CSS syntax aren\u2019t really bulletproof if we care about looks and legibility across browsers and platforms.\n\nHyenas in the Breakfast Nook\n\nThe problem isn\u2019t just that foundries have yet to agree on a standard font format that protects their intellectual property. And that, even when they do, it will be a while before all browsers support that standard\u2014leaving aside the inevitable politics that impede all standardization efforts. Those are problems, but they\u2019re not the elephant. Call them the coyotes in the room, and they\u2019re slowly being tamed.\n\nNor is the problem that workable, scalable business models (of which Typekit\u2018s is the most visible and, so far, the most successful) are still being shaken out and tested. The quality and ease of use of such services, their stability on heavily visited sites (via massively backed-up server clusters), and the fairness and sustainability of their pricing will determine how licensing and serving \u201creal fonts\u201d works in the short and long term for the majority of designer/developers.\n\nNor is our primary problem that developers with no design background may serve ugly or illegible fonts that take forever to load, or fonts that take a long time to download and then display as ordinary system fonts (as happens on, say, about.validator.nu). Ugliness and poor optimization on the web are nothing new. That support for @font-face in Webkit and Mozilla browsers (and for TrueType fonts converted to Embedded OpenType in Internet Explorer) adds deadly weapons to the non-designer\u2019s toolkit is not the technology\u2019s fault. JavaScript and other essential web technologies are equally susceptible to abuse. \n\nBeauty is in the Eye of the Rendering Engine\n\nNo, the real elephant in the room\u2014the thing few web developers and no \u201cweb font\u201d enthusiasts are talking about\u2014has to do with legibility (or lack thereof) and aesthetics (or lack thereof) across browsers and platforms. Put simply, even fonts optimized for web use (which is a whole thing: ask a type designer) will not look good in every browser and OS. That\u2019s because every browser treats hinting differently, as does every OS, and every OS version. \n\nFirefox does its own thing in both Windows and Mac OS, and Microsoft is all over the place because of its need to support multiple generations of Windows and Cleartype and all kinds of hardware simultaneously. Thus \u201creal type\u201d on a single web page can look markedly different, and sometimes very bad, on different computers at the same company. If that web page is your company\u2019s, your opinion of \u201cweb fonts\u201d may suffer, and rightfully. (The advantage of Apple\u2019s closed model, which not everyone likes, is that it allows the company to guarantee the quality and consistency of user experience.) \n\nAs near as my font designer friends and I can make out, Apple\u2019s Webkit in Safari and iPhone ignores hinting and creates its own, which Apple thinks is better, and which many web designers think of as \u201cwhat real type looks like.\u201d The forked version of Webkit in Chrome, Android, and Palm Pre also creates its own hinting, which is close to iPhone\u2019s\u2014close enough that Apple, Palm, and Google could propose it as a standard for use in all browsers and platforms. Whether Firefox would embrace a theoretical Apple and Google standard is open to conjecture, and I somehow have difficulty imagining Microsoft buying in\u2014even though they know the web is more and more mobile, and that means more and more of their customers are viewing web content in some version of Webkit.\n\nThe End of Simple\n\nThere are ways around this ugly type ugliness, but they involve complicated scripting and sniffing\u2014the very nightmares from which web standards and the simplicity of @font-face were supposed to save us. I don\u2019t know that even mighty Typekit has figured out every needed variation yet (although, working with foundries, they probably will). \n\nFor type foundries, the complexity and expense of rethinking classic typefaces to survive in these hostile environments may further delay widespread adoption of web fonts and the resolution of licensing and formatting issues. The complexity may also force designers (even those who prefer to own) to rely on a hosted rental model simply to outsource and stay current with the detection and programming required.\n\nForgive my tears. I stand in a potter\u2019s field of ideas like \u201cKeep it simple,\u201d by a grave whose headstone reads \u201cWrite once, publish everywhere.\u201d", "year": "2009", "author": "Jeffrey Zeldman", "author_slug": "jeffreyzeldman", "published": "2009-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/real-fonts-and-rendering/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 131, "title": "Random Lines Made With Mesh", "contents": "I know that Adobe Illustrator can be a bit daunting for people who aren\u2019t really advanced users of the program, but you would be amazed by how easy you can create cool effects or backgrounds. In this short tutorial I show you how to create a cool looking background only in 5 steps. \n\nStep 1 \u2013 Create Lines\n\n\n\nCreate lines using random widths and harmonious suitable colors. If you get stuck on finding the right colors, check out Adobe\u2019s Kuler and start experimenting.\n\nStep 2 \u2013 Convert Strokes to Fills\n\n\n\nSelect all lines and convert them to fills. Go to the Object menu, select Path > Outline Stroke. Select the Rectangle tool and draw 1 big rectangle on top the lines. Give the rectangle a suitable color. With the rectangle still selected, go to the Object menu, select Arrange > Send to Back.\n\nStep 3 \u2013 Convert to Mesh\n\n\n\nSelect all objects by pressing the command key (for Mac users), control key (for Windows users) + the \u201ca\u201d key. Go to the Object menu and select the Envelope Distort > Make with Mesh option. Enter 2 rows and 2 columns. Check the preview box to see what happens and click the OK button.\n\nStep 4 \u2013 Play Around with The Mesh Points \n\n\n\nPlay around with the points of the mesh using the Direct Selection tool (the white arrow in the Toolbox). Click on the top right point of the mesh. Once you\u2019re starting to drag hold down the shift key and move the point upwards. \n\n\n\nNow start dragging the bezier handles on the mesh to achieve the effect as shown in the above picture. Of course you can try out all kind of different effects here. \n\nThe Final Result\n\n\n\nThis is an example of how the final result can look. You can try out all kinds of different shapes dragging the handles of the mesh points. This is just one of the many results you can get. So next time you haven\u2019t got inspiration for a background of a header, a banner or whatever, just experiment with a few basic shapes such as lines and try out the \u2018Envelope Distort\u2019 options in Illustrator or the \u2018Make with Mesh\u2019 option and experiment, you\u2019ll be amazed by the unexpected creative results.", "year": "2006", "author": "Veerle Pieters", "author_slug": "veerlepieters", "published": "2006-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/random-lines-made-with-mesh/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 277, "title": "Raising the Bar on Mobile", "contents": "One of the primary challenges of designing for mobile devices is that screen real estate is often in limited supply. Through the advocacy of Luke W and others, we\u2019ve drawn comfort from the idea that this constraint ends up benefiting users and designers alike, from obvious advantages like portability and reach, to influencing our content strategy decisions through focus and restraint. But that doesn\u2019t mean we shouldn\u2019t take advantage of every last pixel of that screen we can snag!\n\nAs anyone who has designed a website for use on a smartphone can attest, there\u2019s an awful lot of space on mobile screens dedicated to browser functions that would be better off toggled out of view. Unfortunately, the visibility of some of these elements is beyond our control, such as the buttons fixed to the bottom of the viewport in iOS\u2019s Safari and the WebOS browser. However, in many devices, the address bar at the top can be manually hidden, and its absence frees up enough pixel room for a large, impactful heading, a critical piece of navigation, or even just a little more white space to air things out.\n\nSo, as my humble contribution to this most festive of web publications, today I\u2019ll dig into the approach I used to hide the address bar in a browser-agnostic fashion for sites like BostonGlobe.com, and the jQuery Mobile framework.\n\nSurveying the land\n\nFirst, let\u2019s assess the chromes of some popular, current mobile browsers. For example purposes, the following screen-captures feature the homepage of the Boston Globe site, without any address-bar-hiding logic in place.\n\nNote: these captures are just mockups \u2013 actual experience on these platforms may vary.\n\n On the left is iOS5\u2019s Safari (running on iPhone), and on the right is Windows Phone 7 (pre-Mango).\n\n BlackBerry 7 (left), and Android 2.3 (right).\n\n WebOS (left), Opera Mini (middle), and Opera Mobile (right).\n\nSome browsers, such the default browsers on WebOS and BlackBerry 5, hide the bar automatically without any developer intervention, but many of them don\u2019t. Of these, we can only manually hide the address bar on iOS Safari and Android (according to Opera Web Opener, Mike Taylor, some discussion is underway for support in Opera Mini and Mobile as well, which would be great!). This is unfortunate, but iOS and Android are incredibly popular, so let\u2019s direct our focus there.\n\nGreat API, or greatest API?\n\nAs it turns out, iOS and Android not only allow you to hide the address bar, they use the same JavaScript method to do so, too (this shouldn\u2019t be surprising, given that they are both WebKit browsers, but nothing expected happens in mobile). However, the method they use is not exactly intuitive. You might set out looking for a JavaScript API dedicated to this purpose, like, say, window.toolbar.hide(), but alas, to hide the address bar you need to use the window.scrollTo method!\n\nwindow.scrollTo(0, 0);\n\nThe scrollTo method is not new, it\u2019s just this particular use of it that is. For the uninitiated, scrollTo is designed to scroll a document to a particular set of coordinates, assuming the document is large enough to scroll to that spot. The method accepts two arguments: a left coordinate; and a top coordinate. It\u2019s both simple and supported well pretty much everywhere. In iOS and Android, these coordinates are calculated from the top of the browser\u2019s viewport, just below the address bar (interestingly, it seems that some platforms like BlackBerry 6 treat the top of the browser chrome as 0 instead, meaning the page content is closer to 20px from the top).\n\nAnyway, by passing the coordinates 0, 0 to the scrollTo method, the browser will jump to the top of the page and pull the address bar out of view! Of course, if a quick call to scrollTo was all we need to do to hide the address bar in iOS and Android, this article would be pretty short, and nothing new. Unfortunately, the first issue we need to deal with is that this method alone will not usually do the trick: it must be called after the page has finished loading.\n\nThe browser gives us a load event for just that purpose, so we\u2019ll wrap our scrollTo method in it and continue on our merry way! We\u2019ll use the standard, addEventListener method to bind the the load event, passing arguments for event name load, and a callback function to execute when the event is triggered.\n\nwindow.addEventListener(\"load\",function() {\n window.scrollTo(0, 0);\n});\n\nFor the sake of preventing errors in those using browsers that don\u2019t support addEventListener, such as Internet Explorer 8 and under, let\u2019s make sure that method exists before we use it:\n\nif( window.addEventListener ){\n window.addEventListener(\"load\",function() {\n window.scrollTo(0, 0);\n });\n}\n\nNow we\u2019re getting somewhere, but we must also call the method after the load event\u2019s default behavior has been applied. For this, we can use the setTimeout method, delaying its execution to after the load event has run its course.\n\nif( window.addEventListener ){\n window.addEventListener(\"load\",function() {\n setTimeout(function(){\n window.scrollTo(0, 0);\n }, 0);\n });\n}\n\nSweet sugar of Christmas! Hit this demo in iOS and watch that address bar drift up and away!\n\nNot so fast\u2026\n\nWe\u2019ve got a little problem: the approach above does work in iOS but, in some cases, it works a little too well. In the process of applying this behavior, we\u2019ve broken one of the primary tenets of responsible web development: don\u2019t break the browser\u2019s default behaviour. This usability rule of thumb is often violated by developers with even the best of intentions, from breaking the browser\u2019s back button through unrecorded Ajax page refreshes, to fancy momentum touch scrolling scripts that can wreak havoc in all but the most sophisticated of devices. In this case, we\u2019ve prevented the browser\u2019s native support of deep-linking to sections of a page (a hash identifier in the URL matching a page element\u2019s id attribute, for example, http://example.com#contact) from working properly, because our script always scrolls to the top.\n\nTo avoid this collision, we\u2019ll need to detect whether a deep link, or hash, is present in the URL before applying our logic. We can do this by ensuring that the location.hash property is falsey:\n\nif( !window.location.hash && window.addEventListener ){\n window.addEventListener( \"load\",function() {\n setTimeout(function(){\n window.scrollTo(0, 0);\n }, 0);\n });\n}\n\nStill works great! And a quick test using a hash-based URL confirms that our script will not execute when a deep anchor is in play. Now iOS is looking sharp, and we\u2019ve added our feature defensively to avoid conflicts.\n\n\n\nNow, on to Android\u2026\n\nWait. You didn\u2019t expect that we could write code for one browser and be finished, right? Of course you didn\u2019t. I mentioned earlier that Android uses the same method for getting rid of the scrollbar, but I left out the fact that the arguments it prefers vary slightly, but significantly, from iOS. Bah!\n\nDifferering from the earlier logic from iOS, to remove the address bar on Android\u2019s default browser, you need to pass a Y coordinate of 1 instead of 0. Aside from being just plain odd, this is particularly unfortunate because to any other browser on the planet, 1px is a very real, however small, distance from the top of the page!\n\nwindow.scrollTo( 0, 1 );\n\nLooks like we\u2019re going to need a fork\u2026\n\nR UA Android?\n\nAt this point, some developers might decide to simply not support this feature in Android, and more determined devs might decide that a quick check of the User Agent string would be a reliable way to determine the browser and tweak the scroll value accordingly. Neither of those decisions would be tragic, but in the spirit of cross-browser and future-friendly development, I\u2019ll propose an alternative.\n\nBy this point, it should be clear that neither of the implementations above offer a particularly intuitive way to hide an address bar. As such, one might be skeptical that these approaches will stick around very long in their present state in either browser. Perhaps at some point, Android will decide to use 0 like iOS, making our lives a little easier, or maybe some new browser will decide to model their address bar hiding method after one of these implementations. In any case, detecting the User Agent only allows us to apply logic based on the known present, and in the world of mobile, let\u2019s face it, the present is already the past.\n\nWriting a check\n\nIn this next step of today\u2019s technique, we\u2019ll apply some logic to quickly determine the behavior model of the browser we\u2019re using, then capitalize on that model \u2013 without caring which browser it happens to come from \u2013 by applying the appropriate scroll distance.\n\nTo do this, we\u2019ll rely on a fortunate side effect of Android\u2019s implementation, which is when you programatically scroll the page to 1 using scrollTo, Android will report that it\u2019s still at 0 because oddly enough, it is! Of course, any other browser in this situation will report a scroll distance of 1. Thus, by scrolling the page to 1, then asking the browser its scroll distance, we can use this artifact of their wacky implementation to our advantage and scroll to the location that makes sense for the browser in play.\n\nGetting the scroll distance\n\nTo pull off our test, we\u2019ll need to ask the browser for its current scroll distance. The methods for getting scroll distance are not entirely standardized across popular browsers, so we\u2019ll need to use some cross-browser logic. The following scroll distance function is similar to what you\u2019d find in a library like jQuery. It checks the few common ways of getting scroll distance before eventually falling back to 0 for safety\u2019s sake (that said, I\u2019m unaware of any browsers that won\u2019t return a numeric value from one of the first three properties).\n\n// scrollTop getter\nfunction getScrollTop(){\n return scrollTop = window.pageYOffset ||\ndocument.compatMode === \"CSS1Compat\" && document.documentElement.scrollTop ||\ndocument.body.scrollTop || 0;\n}\n\nIn order to execute that code above, the body object (referenced here as document.body) will need to be defined already, or we\u2019ll risk an error. To determine that it\u2019s defined, we can run a quick timer to execute code as soon as that object is defined and ready for use.\n\nvar bodycheck = setInterval(function(){\n if( document.body ){\n clearInterval( bodycheck );\n //more logic can go here!!\n } \n}, 15 );\n\nAbove, we\u2019ve defined a 15 millisecond interval called bodycheck that checks if document.body is defined and, if so, clears itself of running again. Within that if statement, we can extend our logic further to run other code, such as our check for the scroll distance, defined via the variable scrollTop below:\n\nvar scrollTop,\n bodycheck = setInterval(function(){\n if( document.body ){\n clearInterval( bodycheck );\n scrollTop = getScrollTop();\n } \n}, 15 );\n\nWith this working, we can immediately scroll to 1, then check the scroll distance when the body is defined. If the distance reports 1, we\u2019re likely in a non-Android browser, so we\u2019ll scroll back to 0 and clean up our mess.\n\nwindow.scrollTo( 0, 1 );\n\nvar scrollTop,\n bodycheck = setInterval(function(){\n if( document.body ){\n clearInterval( bodycheck );\n scrollTop = getScrollTop();\n window.scrollTo( 0, scrollTop === 1 ? 0 : 1 );\n } \n}, 15 );\n\nCashing in\n\nAll of the pieces are written now, so all we need to do is combine them with our previous logic for scrolling when the window is loaded, and we\u2019ll have a cross-browser solution of which John Resig would be proud. Here\u2019s our combined code snippet, with some formatting updates rolled in as well:\n\n(function( win ){\n\tvar doc = win.document;\n\n\t// If there\u2019s a hash, or addEventListener is undefined, stop here\n\tif( !location.hash && win.addEventListener ){\n\t\t//scroll to 1\n\t\twindow.scrollTo( 0, 1 );\n\t\tvar scrollTop = 1,\n\t\t\tgetScrollTop = function(){\n\t\t\t\treturn win.pageYOffset || doc.compatMode = \"CSS1Compat\" && doc.documentElement.scrollTop || doc.body.scrollTop || 0;\n\t\t\t},\n\t\t\t//reset to 0 on bodyready, if needed\n\t\t\tbodycheck = setInterval(function(){\n\t\t\t\tif( doc.body ){\n\t\t\t\t\tclearInterval( bodycheck );\n\t\t\t\t\tscrollTop = getScrollTop();\n\t\t\t\t\twin.scrollTo( 0, scrollTop = 1 ? 0 : 1 );\n\t\t\t\t}\t\n\t\t\t}, 15 );\n\t\twin.addEventListener( \u201cload\u201d, function(){\n\t\t\tsetTimeout(function(){\n\t\t\t\t\t//reset to hide addr bar at onload\n\t\t\t\t\twin.scrollTo( 0, scrollTop === 1 ? 0 : 1 );\n\t\t\t}, 0);\n\t\t} );\n\t}\n})( this );\nView code example\n\nAnd with that, we\u2019ve got a bunch more room to play with on both iOS and Android.\n\n\n\nBreak out the eggnog\n\n\u2026because we\u2019re not done yet! In the spirit of making our script act more defensively, there\u2019s still another use case to consider. It was essential that we used the window\u2019s load event to trigger our scripting, but on pages with a lot of content, its use can come at a cost. Often, a user will begin interacting with a page, scrolling down as they read, before the load event has fired. In those situations, our script will jump the user back to the top of the page, resulting in a jarring experience.\n\nTo prevent this problem from occurring, we\u2019ll need to ensure that the page has not been scrolled beyond a certain amount. We can add a simple check using our getScrollTop function again, this time ensuring that its value is not greater than 20 pixels or so, accounting for a small tolerance.\n\nif( getScrollTop() < 20 ){\n //reset to hide addr bar at onload\n window.scrollTo( 0, scrollTop === 1 ? 0 : 1 );\n}\n\nAnd with that, we\u2019re pretty well protected! Here\u2019s a final demo.\n\nThe completed script can be found on Github (full source: https://gist.github.com/1183357 ). It\u2019s MIT licensed. Feel free to use it anywhere or any way you\u2019d like!\n\nYour thoughts?\n\nI hope this article provides you with a browser-agnostic approach to hiding the address bar that you can use in your own projects today. Perhaps alternatively, the complications involved in this approach convinced you that doing this well is more trouble than it\u2019s worth and, depending on the use case, that could be a fair decision. But at the very least, I hope this demonstrates that there\u2019s a lot of work involved in pulling off this small task in only two major platforms, and that there\u2019s a real need for standardization in this area.\n\nFeel free to leave a comment or criticism and I\u2019ll do my best to answer in a timely fashion.\n\nThanks, everyone!\n\nSome parting notes\n\nI scream, you scream\u2026\n\nAt the time of writing, I was not able to test this method on the latest Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) build. According to Sencha Touch\u2019s browser scorecard, the browser in 4.0 may have a different way of managing the address bar, so I\u2019ll post in the comments once I get a chance to dig into it further.\n\nShort pages get no love\n\nToday\u2019s technique only works when the page is as tall, or taller than, the device\u2019s available screen height, so that the address bar may be scrolled out of view. On a short page, you might work around this issue by applying a minimum height to the body element ( body { min-height: 460px; } ), but given the variety of screen sizes out there, not to mention changes in orientation, it\u2019s tough to find a value that makes much sense (unless you manipulate it with JavaScript).", "year": "2011", "author": "Scott Jehl", "author_slug": "scottjehl", "published": "2011-12-20T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/raising-the-bar-on-mobile/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 27, "title": "Putting Design on the Map", "contents": "The web can leave us feeling quite detached from the real world. Every site we make is really just a set of abstract concepts manifested as tools for communication and expression. At any minute, websites can disappear, overwritten by a newfangled version or simply gone. I think this is why so many of us have desires to create a product, write a book, or play with the internet of things. We need to keep in touch with the physical world and to prove (if only to ourselves) that we do make real things.\n\nI could go on and on about preserving the web, the challenges of writing a book, or thoughts about how we can deal with the need to make real things. Instead, I\u2019m going to explore something that gives us a direct relationship between a website and the physical world \u2013 maps.\n\n\n\tA map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected.\nReif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet\n\n\nThe simplest form of map on a website tends to be used for showing where a place is and often directions on how to get to it. That\u2019s an incredibly powerful tool. So why is it, then, that so many sites just plonk in a default Google Map and leave it as that? You wouldn\u2019t just use dark grey Helvetica on every site, would you? Where\u2019s the personality? Where\u2019s the tailored experience? Where is the design?\n\nJumping into design\n\nLet\u2019s keep this simple \u2013 we all want to be better web folk, not cartographers. We don\u2019t need to go into the history, mathematics or technology of map making (although all of those areas are really interesting to research). For the sake of our sanity, I\u2019m going to gloss over some of the technical areas and focus on the practical concepts.\n\nTiles\n\nIf you\u2019ve ever noticed a map loading in sections, it\u2019s because it uses tiles that are downloaded individually instead of requiring the user to download everything that they might need. These tiles come in many styles and can be used for anything that covers large areas, such as base maps and data. You\u2019ve seen examples of alternative base maps when you use Google Maps as Google provides both satellite imagery and road maps, both of which are forms of base maps. They are used to provide context for the real world, or any other world for that matter. A marker on a blank page is useless.\n\nThe tiles are representations of the physical; they do not have to be photographic imagery to provide context. This means you can design the map itself. The easiest way to conceive this is by comparing Google\u2019s road maps with Ordnance Survey road maps. Everything about the two maps is different: the colours, the label fonts and the symbols used. Yet they still provide the exact same context (other maps may provide different context such as terrain contours).\n\n Comparison of Google Maps (top) and the Ordnance Survey (bottom).\n\nCarefully designing the base map tiles is as important as any other part of the website. The most obvious, yet often overlooked, aspect are aesthetics and branding. Maps could fit in with the rest of the site; for example, by matching the colours and line weights, they can enhance the full design rather than inhibiting it. You\u2019re also able to define the exact purpose of the map, so instead of showing everything you could specify which symbols or labels to show and hide.\n\nI\u2019ve not done any real research on the accessibility of base maps but, having looked at some of the available options, I think a focus on the typography of labels and the colour of the various elements is crucial. While you can choose to hide labels, quite often they provide the data required to make sense of the map. Therefore, make sure each zoom level is not too cluttered and shows enough to give context. Also be as careful when choosing the typeface as you are in any other design work. As for colour, you need to pay closer attention to issues like colour-blindness when using colour to convey information. Quite often a spectrum of colour will be used to show data, or to show the topography, so you need to be aware that some people struggle to see colour differences within a spectrum.\n\nA nice example of a customised base map can be found on Michael K Owens\u2019 check-in pages:\n\n One of Michael K Owens\u2019 check-in pages.\n\nAs I\u2019ve already mentioned, tiles are not just for base maps: they are also for data. In the screenshot below you can see how Plymouth Marine Laboratory uses tiles to show data with a spectrum of colour.\n\n A map from the Marine Operational Ecology data portal, showing data of adult cod in the North Sea.\n\nTechnical\n\nYou\u2019re probably wondering how to design the base layers. I will briefly explain the concepts here and give you tools to use at the end of the article. If you\u2019re worried about the time it takes to design the maps, don\u2019t be \u2013 you can automate most of it. You don\u2019t need to manually draw each tile for the entire world!\n\nWe\u2019ve learned the importance of web standards the hard way, so you\u2019ll be glad (and I won\u2019t have to explain the advantages) of the standard for web mapping from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) called the Web Map Service (WMS). You can use conventional file formats for the imagery but you need a way to query for the particular tiles to show for the area and zoom level, that is what WMS does.\n\nFeatures\n\nTiles are great for covering large areas but sometimes you need specific smaller areas. We call these features and they usually consist of polygons, lines or points. Examples include postcode boundaries and routes between places, or even something more dynamic such as borders of nations changing over time.\n\nShowing features on a map presents interesting design challenges. If the colour or shape conveys some kind of data beyond geographical boundaries then it needs to be made obvious. This is actually really hard, without building complicated user interfaces. For example, in the image below, is it obvious that there is a relationship between the colours? Does it need a way of showing what the colours represent?\n\n Choropleth map showing ranked postcode areas, using ViziCities.\n\n\n\tFeatures are represented by means of lines or colors; and the effective use of lines or colors requires more than knowledge of the subject \u2013 it requires artistic judgement.\nErwin Josephus Raisz, cartographer (1893\u20131968)\n\n\nWhere lots of boundaries are small and close together (such as a high street or shopping centre) will it be obvious where the boundaries are and what they represent? When designing maps, the hardest challenge is dealing with how the data is represented and how it is understood by the user.\n\nTechnical\n\nAs you probably gathered, we use WMS for tiles and another standard called the web feature service (WFS) for specific features. I need to stress that the difference between the two is that WMS is for tiling, whereas WFS is for specific features. Both can use similar file formats but should be used for their particular use cases. You may be wondering why you can\u2019t just use a vector format such as KML, GeoJSON (or even SVG) \u2013 and you can \u2013 but the issue is the same as for WMS: you need a way to query the data to get the correct area and zoom level.\n\nUser interface\n\nThere is of course never a correct way to design an interface as there are so many different factors to take into consideration for each individual project. Maps can be used in a variety of ways, to provide simple information about directions or for complex visualisations to explain large amounts of data. I would like to just touch on matters that need to be taken into account when working with maps.\n\nAs I mentioned at the beginning, there are so many Google Maps on the web that people seem to think that its UI is the only way you can use a map. To some degree we don\u2019t want to change that, as people know how to use them; but does every map require a zoom slider or base map toggle? In fact, does the user need to zoom at all? The answer to that one is generally yes, zooming does provide more context to where the map is zoomed in on.\n\nIn some cases you will need to let users choose what goes on the map (such as data layers or directions), so how do they show and hide the data? Does a simple drop-down box work, or do you need search? Google\u2019s base map toggle is quite nice since it doesn\u2019t offer many options yet provides very different contexts and styling.\n\nIt isn\u2019t until we get to this point that we realise just plonking a quick Google map is really quite ridiculous, especially when compared to the amount of effort we make in other areas such as colour, typography or how the CSS is written. Each of these is important but we need to make sure the whole site is designed, and that includes the maps as much as any other content.\n\nPutting it into practice\n\nI could ramble on for ages about what we can do to customise maps to fit a site\u2019s personality and correctly represent the data. I wanted to focus on concepts and standards because tools constantly change and it is never good to just rely on a tool to do the work. That said, there are a large variety of tools that will help you turn these concepts into reality. This is not a comparison; I just want to show you a few of the many options you have for maps on the web.\n\nGoogle\n\nOK, I\u2019ve been quite critical so far about Google Maps but that is only because there is such a large amount of the default maps across the web. You can style them almost as much as anything else. They may not allow you to use custom WMS layers but Google Maps does have its own version, called styled maps. Using an array of map features (in the sense of roads and lakes and landmarks rather than the kind WFS is used for), you can style the base map with JavaScript. It even lets you toggle visibility, which helps to avoid the issue of too much clutter on the map. As well as lacking WMS, it doesn\u2019t support WFS, but it does support GeoJSON and KML so you can still show the features on the map. You should also check out Google Maps Engine (the new version of My Maps), which provides an interface for creating more advanced maps with a selection of different base maps. A premium version is available, essentially for creating map-based visualisations, and it provides a step up from the main Google Maps offering. A useful feature in some cases is that it gives you access to many datasets.\n\nLeaflet\n\nYou have probably seen Leaflet before. It isn\u2019t quite as popular as Google Maps but it is definitely used often and for good reason. Leaflet is a lightweight open source JavaScript library. It is not a service so you don\u2019t have to worry about API throttling and longevity. It gives you two options for tiling, the ability to use WMS, or to directly get the file using variables in the filename such as /{z}/{x}/{y}.png. I would recommend using WMS over dynamic file names because it is a standard, but the ability to use variables in a file name could be useful in some situations. Leaflet has a strong community and a well-documented API.\n\nMapbox\n\nAs a freemium service, Mapbox may not be perfect for every use case but it\u2019s definitely worth looking into. The service offers incredible customisation tools as well as lots of data sources and hosting for the maps. It also provides plenty of libraries for the various platforms, so you don\u2019t have to only use the maps on the web.\n\nMapbox is a service, though its map design tool is open source. Mapbox Studio is a vector-only version of their previous tool called Tilemill. Earlier I wrote about how typography and colour are as important to maps as they are to the rest of a website; if you thought, \u201cYes, but how on earth can I design those parts of a map?\u201d then this is the tool for you. It is incredibly easy to use. Essentially each map has a stylesheet.\n\nIf you do not want to open a paid-for Mapbox account, then you can export the tiles (as PNG, SVG etc.) to use with other map tools.\n\nOpenLayers\n\nAfter a long wait, OpenLayers 3 has been released. It is similar to Leaflet in that it is a library not a service, but it has a much broader scope. During the last year I worked on the GIS portal at Plymouth Marine Laboratory (which I used to show the data tiles earlier), it essentially used OpenLayers 2 to create a web-based geographic information system, taking a large amount of data and permitting analysis (such as graphs) without downloading entire datasets and complicated software. OpenLayers 3 has improved greatly on the previous version in both performance and accessibility. It is the ideal tool for complex map-based web apps, though it can be used for the simple use cases too.\n\nOpenStreetMap\n\nI couldn\u2019t write an article about maps on the web without at least mentioning OpenStreetMap. It is the place to go for crowd-sourced data about any location, with complete road maps and a strong API.\n\nViziCities\n\nThe newest project on this list is ViziCities by Robin Hawkes and Peter Smart. It is a open source 3-D visualisation tool, currently in the very early stages of development. The basic example shows 3-D buildings around the world using OpenStreetMap data. Robin has used it to create some incredible demos such as real-time London underground trains, and planes landing at an airport. Edward Greer and I are currently working on using ViziCities to show ideal housing areas based on particular personas. We chose it because the 3-D aspect gives us interesting possibilities for the data we are able to visualise (such as bar charts on the actual map instead of in the UI). Despite not being a completely stable, fully featured system, ViziCities is worth taking a look at for some use cases and is definitely going to go from strength to strength.\n\n\n\nSo there you have it \u2013 a whistle-stop tour of how maps can be customised. Now please stop plonking in maps without thinking about it and design them as you design the rest of your content.", "year": "2014", "author": "Shane Hudson", "author_slug": "shanehudson", "published": "2014-12-11T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/putting-design-on-the-map/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 134, "title": "Photographic Palettes", "contents": "How many times have you seen a colour combination that just worked, a match so perfect that it just seems obvious? \n\nNow, how many times do you come up with those in your own work? A perfect palette looks easy when it\u2019s done right, but it\u2019s often maddeningly difficult and time-consuming to accomplish.\n\nChoosing effective colour schemes will always be more art than science, but there are things you can do that will make coming up with that oh-so-smooth palette just a little a bit easier. A simple trick that can lead to incredibly gratifying results lies in finding a strong photograph and sampling out particularly harmonious colours.\n\nPhoto Selection\n\nNot all photos are created equal. You certainly want to start with imagery that fits the eventual tone you\u2019re attempting to create. A well-lit photo of flowers might lead to a poor colour scheme for a funeral parlour\u2019s web site, for example. It\u2019s worth thinking about what you\u2019re trying to say in advance, and finding a photo that lends itself to your message.\n\nAs a general rule of thumb, photos that have a lot of neutral or de-saturated tones with one or two strong colours make for the best palette; bright and multi-coloured photos are harder to derive pleasing results from. Let\u2019s start with a relatively neutral image.\n\nSampling\n\n\n\nIn the above example, I\u2019ve surrounded the photo with three different background colours directly sampled from the photo itself. Moving from left to right, you can see how each of the sampled colours is from an area of increasingly smaller coverage within the photo, and yet there\u2019s still a strong harmony between the photo and the background image. I don\u2019t really need to pick the big obvious colours from the photo to create that match, I can easily concentrate on more interesting colours that might work better for what I intend.\n\nUsing a similar palette, let\u2019s apply those colour choices to a more interesting layout:\n\n\n\nIn this mini-layout, I\u2019ve re-used the same tan colour from the previous middle image as a background, and sampled out a nicely matching colour for the top and bottom overlays, as well as the two different text colours. Because these colours all fall within a narrow range, the overall balance is harmonious.\n\nWhat if I want to try something a little more daring? I have a photo of stacked chairs of all different colours, and I\u2019d like to use a few more of those. No problem, provided I watch my colour contrast:\n\n\n\nThough it uses varying shades of red, green, and yellow, this palette actually works because the values are even, and the colours muted. Placing red on top of green is usually a hideous combination of death, but if the green is drab enough and the red contrasts well enough, the result can actually be quite pleasing. I\u2019ve chosen red as my loudest colour in this palette, and left green and yellow to play the quiet supporting roles.\n\nObviously, there are no hard and fast rules here. You might not want to sample absolutely every colour in your scheme from a photo. There are times where you\u2019ll need a variation that\u2019s just a little bit lighter, or a blue that\u2019s not in the photo. You might decide to start from a photo base and tweak, or add in colours of your own. That\u2019s okay too.\n\nTonal Variations\n\nI\u2019ll leave you with a final trick I\u2019ve been using lately, a way to bring a bit more of a formula into the equation and save some steps.\n\n\n\nStarting with the same base palette I sampled from the chairs, in the above image I\u2019ve added a pair of overlaying squares that produce tonal variations of each primary. The lighter variation is simply a solid white square set to 40% opacity, the darker one is a black square at 20%. That gives me a highlight and shadow for each colour, which would prove handy if I had to adapt this colour scheme to a larger layout.\n\nI could add a few more squares of varying opacities, or adjust the layer blending modes for different effects, but as this looks like a great place to end, I\u2019ll leave that up to your experimental whims. Happy colouring!", "year": "2006", "author": "Dave Shea", "author_slug": "daveshea", "published": "2006-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/photographic-palettes/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 50, "title": "Make a Comic", "contents": "For something slightly different over Christmas, why not step away from your computer and make a comic? \nDefinitely not the author working on a comic in the studio, with the desk displaying some of the things you need to make a comic on paper.\nWhy make a comic?\nFirst of all, it\u2019s truly fun and it\u2019s not that difficult. If you\u2019re a designer, you can use skills you already have, so why not take some time to indulge your aesthetic whims and make something for yourself, rather than for a client or your company. And you can use a computer \u2013 or not.\nIf you\u2019re an interaction designer, it\u2019s likely you\u2019ve already made a storyboard or flow, or designed some characters for personas. This is a wee jump away from that, to the realm of storytelling and navigating human emotions through characters who may or may not be human. Similar medium and skills, different content. \nIt\u2019s not a client deliverable but something that stands by itself, and you\u2019ve nobody\u2019s criteria to meet except those that exist in your imagination! \nThanks to your brain and the alchemy of comics, you can put nearly anything in a sequence and your brain will find a way to make sense of it. Scott McCloud wrote about the non sequitur in comics: \n\n\u201cThere is a kind of alchemy at work in the space between panels which can help us find meaning or resonance in even the most jarring of combinations.\u201d \n\nHere\u2019s an example of a non sequitur from Scott McCloud\u2019s Understanding Comics \u2013 the images bear no relation to one another, but since they\u2019re in a sequence our brains do their best to understand it: \n\nOnce you know this it takes the pressure off somewhat. It\u2019s a fun thing to keep in mind and experiment with in your comics! \nMaterials needed\n\nA4 copy/printing paper \nHB pencil for light drawing\nDip pen and waterproof Indian ink \nBristol board (or any good quality card with a smooth, durable surface) \n\nStep 1: Get ideas\nYou\u2019d be surprised where you can take a small grain of an idea and develop it into an interesting comic. Think about a funny conversation you had, or any irrational fears, habits, dreams or anything else. Just start writing and drawing. Having ideas is hard, I know, but you will get some ideas when you start working. \nOne way to keep track of ideas is to keep a sketch diary, capturing funny conversations and other events you could use in comics later. \nYou might want to just sketch out the whole comic very roughly if that helps. I tend to sketch the story first, but it usually changes drastically during step 2.\nStep 2: Edit your story using thumbnails\nHow thumbnailing works.\nWhy use thumbnails? You can move them around or get rid of them! \nDrawings are harder and much slower to edit than words, so you need to draw something very quick and very rough. You don\u2019t have to care about drawing quality at this point. \nYou might already have a drafted comic from the previous step; now you can split each panel up into a thumbnail like the image above. \nGet an A4 sheet of printing paper and tear it up into squares. A thumbnail equals a comic panel. Start drawing one panel per thumbnail. This way you can move scenes and parts of the story around as you work on the pacing. It\u2019s an extremely useful tip if you want to expand a moment in time or draw out a dialogue, or if you want to just completely cut scenes. \nStep 3: Plan a layout\nSo you\u2019ve got the story more or less down: you now need to know how they\u2019ll look on the page. Sketch a layout and arrange the thumbnails into the layout.\nThe simplest way to do this is to divide an A4 page into equal panels \u2014 say, nine. But if you want, you can be more creative than that. The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins is an excellent example of the scope for using page layout creatively. You can really push the form: play with layout, scale, story and what you think of as a comic.\nStep 4: Draw the comic\nI recommend drawing on A4 Bristol board paper since it has a smooth surface, can tolerate a lot of rubbing out and holds ink well. You can get it from any art shop. \nUsing your thumbnails for reference, draw the comic lightly using an HB pencil. Don\u2019t make the line so heavy that it can\u2019t be erased (since you\u2019ll ink over the lines later).\nStep 5: Ink the comic\nImage before colour was added.\nYou\u2019ve drawn your story. Well done!\nNow for the fun part. I recommend using a dip pen and some waterproof ink. Why waterproof? If you want, you can add an ink wash later, or even paint it. \nIf you don\u2019t have a dip pen, you could also use any quality pen. Carefully go over your pencilled lines with the pen, working from top left to right and down, to avoid smudging it. It\u2019s unfortunately easy to smudge the ink from the dip pen, so I recommend practising first. \nYou\u2019ve made a comic! \nStep 6: Adding colour\nComics traditionally had a limited colour palette before computers (here\u2019s an in-depth explanation if you\u2019re curious). You can actually do a huge amount with a restricted colour palette. Ellice Weaver\u2019s comics show how very nicely how you can paint your work using a restricted palette. So for the next step, resist the temptation to add ALL THE COLOURS and consider using a limited palette. \nOnce the ink is completely dry, erase the pencilled lines and you\u2019ll be left with a beautiful inked black and white drawing. \nYou could use a computer for this part. You could also photocopy it and paint straight on the copy. If you\u2019re feeling really brave, you could paint straight on the original. But I\u2019d suggest not doing this if it\u2019s your first try at painting! \nWhat follows is an extremely basic guide for painting using Photoshop, but there are hundreds of brilliant articles out there and different techniques for digital painting. \nHow to paint your comic using Photoshop\n\nScan the drawing and open it in Photoshop. You can adjust the levels (Image \u2192 Adjustments \u2192 Levels) to make the lines darker and crisper, and the paper invisible. At this stage, you can erase any smudges or mistakes. With a Wacom tablet, you could even completely redraw parts! Computers are just amazing. Keep the line art as its own layer. \nAdd a new layer on top of the lines, and set the layer state from normal to multiply. This means you can paint your comic without obscuring your lines. Rename the layer something else, so you can keep track.\nStart blocking in colour. And once you\u2019re happy with that, experiment with adding tone and texture.\n\nChristmas comic challenge!\nWhy not challenge yourself to make a short comic over Christmas? If you make one, share it in the comments. Or show me on Twitter \u2014 I\u2019d love to see it.\n\nCredit: Many of these techniques were learned on the Royal Drawing School\u2019s brilliant \u2018Drawing the Graphic Novel\u2019 course.", "year": "2015", "author": "Rebecca Cottrell", "author_slug": "rebeccacottrell", "published": "2015-12-20T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2015/make-a-comic/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 26, "title": "Integrating Contrast Checks in Your Web Workflow", "contents": "It\u2019s nearly Christmas, which means you\u2019ll be sure to find an overload of festive red and green decorating everything in sight\u2014often in the ugliest ways possible. \n\nWhile I\u2019m not here to battle holiday tackiness in today\u2019s 24 ways, it might just be the perfect reminder to step back and consider how we can implement colour schemes in our websites and apps that are not only attractive, but also legible and accessible for folks with various types of visual disabilities.\n\n This simulated photo demonstrates how red and green Christmas baubles could appear to a person affected by protanopia-type colour blindness\u2014not as festive as you might think. Source: Derek Bruff\n\nI\u2019ve been fortunate to work with Simply Accessible to redesign not just their website, but their entire brand. Although the new site won\u2019t be launching until the new year, we\u2019re excited to let you peek under the tree and share a few treats as a case study into how we tackled colour accessibility in our project workflow. Don\u2019t worry\u2014we won\u2019t tell Santa!\n\nCreate a colour game plan\n\nA common misconception about accessibility is that meeting compliance requirements hinders creativity and beautiful design\u2014but we beg to differ. Unfortunately, like many company websites and internal projects, Simply Accessible has spent so much time helping others that they had not spent enough time helping themselves to show the world who they really are. This was the perfect opportunity for them to practise what they preached.\n\nAfter plenty of research and brainstorming, we decided to evolve the existing Simply Accessible brand. Or, rather, salvage what we could. There was no established logo to carry into the new design (it was a stretch to even call it a wordmark), and the Helvetica typography across the site lacked any character. The only recognizable feature left to work with was colour. It was a challenge, for sure: the oranges looked murky and brown, and the blues looked way too corporate for a company like Simply Accessible. We knew we needed to inject a lot of personality.\n\nThe old Simply Accessible website and colour palette.\n\nAfter an audit to round up every colour used throughout the site, we dug in deep and played around with some ideas to bring some new life to this palette. \n\nChoose effective colours\n\nWhether you\u2019re starting from scratch or evolving an existing brand, the first step to having an effective and legible palette begins with your colour choices. While we aren\u2019t going to cover colour message and meaning in this article, it\u2019s important to understand how to choose colours that can be used to create strong contrast\u2014one of the most important ways to create hierarchy, focus, and legibility in your design.\n\nThere are a few methods of creating effective contrast.\n\nLight and dark colours\n\nThe contrast that exists between light and dark colours is the most important attribute when creating effective contrast.\n\nTry not to use colours that have a similar lightness next to each other in a design.\n\n\n\nThe red and green colours on the left share a similar lightness and don\u2019t provide enough contrast on their own without making some adjustments. Removing colour and showing the relationship in greyscale reveals that the version on the right is much more effective. \n\nIt\u2019s important to remember that red and green colour pairs cause difficulty for the majority of colour-blind people, so they should be avoided wherever possible, especially when placed next to each other. \n\nComplementary contrast\n\n\n\nEffective contrast can also be achieved by choosing complementary colours (other than red and green), that are opposite each other on a colour wheel.\n\nThese colour pairs generally work better than choosing adjacent hues on the wheel.\n\nCool and warm contrast\n\nContrast also exists between cool and warm colours on the colour wheel.\n\nImagine a colour wheel divided into cool colours like blues, purples, and greens, and compare them to warm colours like reds, oranges and yellows.\n\n\n\nChoosing a dark shade of a cool colour, paired with a light tint of a warm colour will provide better contrast than two warm colours or two cool colours. \n\nDevelop colour concepts\n\nAfter much experimentation, we settled on a simple, two-colour palette of blue and orange, a cool-warm contrast colour scheme. We added swatches for call-to-action messaging in green, error messaging in red, and body copy and form fields in black and grey. Shades and tints of blue and orange were added to illustrations and other design elements for extra detail and interest.\n\nFirst stab at a new palette.\n\nWe introduced the new palette for the first time on an internal project to test the waters before going full steam ahead with the website. It gave us plenty of time to get a feel for the new design before sharing it with the public.\n\nPutting the test palette into practice with an internal report\n\nIt\u2019s important to be open to changes in your palette as it might need to evolve throughout the design process. Don\u2019t tell your client up front that this palette is set in stone. If you need to tweak the colour of a button later because of legibility issues, the last thing you want is your client pushing back because it\u2019s different from what you promised.\n\nAs it happened, we did tweak the colours after the test run, and we even adjusted the logo\u2014what looked great printed on paper looked a little too light on screens.\n\nConsider how colours might be used\n\nDon\u2019t worry if you haven\u2019t had the opportunity to test your palette in advance. As long as you have some well-considered options, you\u2019ll be ready to think about how the colour might be used on the site or app. \n\nObviously, in such early stages it\u2019s unlikely that you\u2019re going to know every element or feature that will appear on the site at launch time, or even which design elements could be introduced to the site later down the road. There are, of course, plenty of safe places to start.\n\nFor Simply Accessible, I quickly mocked up these examples in Illustrator to get a handle on the elements of a website where contrast and legibility matter the most: text colours and background colours. While it\u2019s less important to consider the contrast of decorative elements that don\u2019t convey essential information, it\u2019s important for a reader to be able to discern elements like button shapes and empty form fields.\n\nA basic list of possible colour combinations that I had in mind for the Simply Accessible website\n\nRun initial tests\n\nOnce these elements were laid out, I manually plugged in the HTML colour code of each foreground colour and background colour on Lea Verou\u2019s Contrast Checker. I added the results from each colour pair test to my document so we could see at a glance which colours needed adjustment or which colours wouldn\u2019t work at all.\n\nNote: Read more about colour accessibility and contrast requirements\n\n\n\n\n\nAs you can see, a few problems were revealed in this test. To meet the minimum AA compliance, we needed to slightly darken the green, blue, and orange background colours for text\u2014an easy fix. A more complicated problem was apparent with the button colours. I had envisioned some buttons appearing over a blue background, but the contrast ratios were well under 3:1. Although there isn\u2019t a guide in WCAG for contrast requirements of two non-text elements, the ISO and ANSI standard for visible contrast is 3:1, which is what we decided to aim for.\n\nWe also checked our colour combinations in Color Oracle, an app that simulates the most extreme forms of colour blindness. It confirmed that coloured buttons over blue backgrounds was simply not going to work. The contrast was much too low, especially for the more common deuteranopia and protanopia-type deficiencies.\n\nHow our proposed colour pairs could look to people with three types of colour blindness\n\nMake adjustments if necessary\n\n\n\nAs a solution, we opted to change all buttons to white when used over dark coloured backgrounds. In addition to increasing contrast, it also gave more consistency to the button design across the site instead of introducing a lot of unnecessary colour variants.\n\nPutting more work into getting compliant contrast ratios at this stage will make the rest of implementation and testing a breeze. When you\u2019ve got those ratios looking good, it\u2019s time to move on to implementation.\n\nImplement colours in style guide and prototype\n\nOnce I was happy with my contrast checks, I created a basic style guide and added all the colour values from my colour exploration files, introduced more tints and shades, and added patterned backgrounds. I created examples of every panel style we were planning to use on the site, with sample text, links, and buttons\u2014all with working hover states. Not only does this make it easier for the developer, it allows you to check in the browser for any further contrast issues.\n\n\n\n\n\nRun a final contrast check\n\nDuring the final stages of testing and before launch, it\u2019s a good idea to do one more check for colour accessibility to ensure nothing\u2019s been lost in translation from design to code. Unless you\u2019ve introduced massive changes to the design in the prototype, it should be fairly easy to fix any issues that arise, particularly if you\u2019ve stayed on top of updating any revisions in the style guide.\n\nOne of the more well-known evaluation tools, WAVE, is web-based and will work in any browser, but I love using Chrome\u2019s Accessibility Tools. Not only are they built right in to the Inspector, but they\u2019ll work if your site is password-protected or private, too.\n\nChrome\u2019s Accessibility Tools audit feature shows that there are no immediate issues with colour contrast in our prototype \n\nThe human touch\n\nFinally, nothing beats a good round of user testing. Even evaluation tools have their flaws. Although they\u2019re great at catching contrast errors for text and backgrounds, they aren\u2019t going to be able to find errors in non-text elements, infographics, or objects placed next to each other where discernible contrast is important. \n\n\n\nOur final palette, compared with our initial ideas, was quite different, but we\u2019re proud to say it\u2019s not just compliant, but shows Simply Accessible\u2019s true personality. Who knows, it may not be final at all\u2014there are so many opportunities down the road to explore and expand it further.\n\n\n\nAccessibility should never be an afterthought in a project. It\u2019s not as simple as adding alt text to images, or running your site through a compliance checker at the last minute and assuming that a pass means everything is okay. Considering how colour will be used during every stage of your project will help avoid massive problems before launch, or worse, launching with serious issues. \n\nIf you find yourself working on a personal project over the Christmas break, try integrating these checks into your workflow and make colour accessibility a part of your New Year\u2019s resolutions.", "year": "2014", "author": "Geri Coady", "author_slug": "gericoady", "published": "2014-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/integrating-contrast-checks-in-your-web-workflow/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 146, "title": "Increase Your Font Stacks With Font Matrix", "contents": "Web pages built in plain old HTML and CSS are displayed using only the fonts installed on users\u2019 computers (@font-face implementations excepted). To enable this, CSS provides the font-family property for specifying fonts in order of preference (often known as a font stack). For example:\n\nh1 {font-family: 'Egyptienne F', Cambria, Georgia, serif}\n\nSo in the above rule, headings will be displayed in Egyptienne F. If Egyptienne F is not available then Cambria will be used, failing that Georgia or the final fallback default serif font. This everyday bit of CSS will be common knowledge among all 24 ways readers.\n\nIt is also a commonly held belief that the only fonts we can rely on being installed on users\u2019 computers are the core web fonts of Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, Georgia and friends. But is that really true?\n\nIf you look in the fonts folder of your computer, or even your Mum\u2019s computer, then you are likely to find a whole load of fonts besides the core ones. This is because many software packages automatically install extra typefaces. For example, Office 2003 installs over 100 additional fonts. Admittedly not all of these fonts are particularly refined, and not all are suitable for the Web. However they still do increase your options. \n\nThe Matrix\n\nI have put together a matrix of (western) fonts showing which are installed with Mac and Windows operating systems, which are installed with various versions of Microsoft Office, and which are installed with Adobe Creative Suite.\n\n\n\nThe matrix is available for download as an Excel file and as a CSV. There are no readily available statistics regarding the penetration of Office or Creative Suite, but you can probably take an educated guess based on your knowledge of your readers.\n\nThe idea of the matrix is that use can use it to help construct your font stack. First of all pick the font you\u2019d really like for your text \u2013 this doesn\u2019t have to be in the matrix. Then pick the generic family (serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy or monospace) and a font from each of the operating systems. Then pick any suitable fonts from the Office and Creative Suite lists.\n\nFor example, you may decide your headings should be in the increasingly ubiquitous Clarendon. This is a serif type face. At OS-level the most similar is arguably Georgia. Adobe CS2 comes with Century Old Style which has a similar feel. Century Schoolbook is similar too, and is installed with all versions of Office. Based on this your font stack becomes:\n\nfont-family: 'Clarendon Std', 'Century Old Style Std', 'Century Schoolbook', Georgia, serif\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNote the \u2018Std\u2019 suffix indicating a \u2018standard\u2019 OpenType file, which will normally be your best bet for more esoteric fonts.\n\nI\u2019m not suggesting the process of choosing suitable fonts is an easy one. Firstly there are nearly two hundred fonts in the matrix, so learning what each font looks like is tricky and potentially time consuming (if you haven\u2019t got all the fonts installed on a machine to hand you\u2019ll be doing a lot of Googling for previews). And it\u2019s not just as simple as choosing fonts that look similar or have related typographic backgrounds, they need to have similar metrics as well, This is especially true in terms of x-height which gives an indication of how big or small a font looks.\n\nOver to You\n\nThe main point of all this is that there are potentially more fonts to consider than is generally accepted, so branch out a little (carefully and tastefully) and bring a little variety to sites out there. If you come up with any novel font stacks based on this approach, please do blog them (tagged as per the footer) and at some point they could all be combined in one place for everyone to consider.\n\nAppendix\n\nWhat about Linux?\n\nThe only operating systems in the matrix are those from Microsoft and Apple. For completeness, Linux operating systems should be included too, although these are many and varied and very much in a minority, so I omitted them for time being. For the record, some Linux distributions come packaged with Microsoft\u2019s core fonts. Others use the Vera family, and others use the Liberation family which comprises fonts metrically identical to Times New Roman and Arial.\n\nSources\n\nThe sources of font information for the matrix are as follows:\n\n\n\tWindows XP SP2\n\tWindows Vista\n\tOffice 2003\n\tOffice 2007\n\tMac OSX Tiger\n\tMac OSX Leopard (scroll down two thirds)\n\tOffice 2004 (Mac) by inspecting my Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts folder\n\tOffice 2008 (Mac) is expected to be as Office 2004 with the addition of the Vista ClearType fonts\n\tCreative Suite 2 (see pdf link in first comment)\n\tCreative Suite 3", "year": "2007", "author": "Richard Rutter", "author_slug": "richardrutter", "published": "2007-12-17T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/increase-your-font-stacks-with-font-matrix/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 248, "title": "How to Use Audio on the Web", "contents": "I know what you\u2019re thinking. I never never want to hear sound anywhere near a browser, ever ever, wow! \ud83d\ude49\nYou\u2019re having flashbacks, flashbacks to the days of yore, when we had a