The Best Of The Internets

Fantastic post from Eric on how the mass appeal of content blockers has given the web a mulligan. There’s a lot of great content in his post, but I’ll just share this one emblematic passage:

Remember, this isn’t just about ads. Ads are emblematic of the root problem, but they’re not the actual root problem. If ads were the sole concern of content blockers, then the blockers (mostly) wouldn’t bother to block web fonts. It’s possible to use web fonts smartly and efficiently, but most sites don’t, so web fonts are a major culprit in slow mobile load times. The same is true for Javascript, whether it’s served by an ad network, an analytics engine, or some other source. So they’re both targeted by blockers—not for enabling ads, but for disabling the web.

An excellent (and exhaustive) overview of what’s new in iOS 9 as it pertains to web design.

This was a fascinating dive into console browser stats. You did know people use console browsers, right? And yes, for more than porn.

[A] revolutionary way of making websites so they look good in iOS 9 with external fonts turned off, work well for Opera Mini’s 250+ million users, and in Chrome, Opera, Firefox, IE, Edge, whether you’re using a computer, a phone, a tablet, a phablet (you’re not, are you?), with or without assistive technology.

Thank you Bruce!

I could not have said it better myself:

A successful plan for web accessibility addresses many areas of your organization and projects: training, quality assurance, recruiting, purchasing, marketing, content development, visual design, and more. As with other important aspects of website development, such as performance, accessibility is best approached as an integral and ongoing activity.

Screen reader compatibility is complex because it relies on a browser and a screen reader to work in tandem. As browsers can be combined with different screen readers, it makes testing a challenge. This matrix goes through a few key ARIA options and approaches, identifying which ones work and which ones don’t using a bunch of combinations. Narrator is sadly missing from the matrix, but this is still a useful resource that I hope continues to grow and get updated. In fact, to that end, I’d love to see it move to Github for more contributions.

This is a drum I’ve been beating for a while: Not all smartphones are created equal. You should be testing on low-spec smartphones.

Smart thinking (as always) from Jason Grigsby. This time he’s asking the right questions about context in the age of tiny screens (smartwatches) and giant ones (smart TVs).

Fantastic history of “Information Architecture” as a practice, with an eye for where it’s heading. Great work Christina Wodtke!

This is a fantastic rant from Thomas Fuchs on error messages and how to do them well (with lots of examples of how not to write error messages).