The Best Of The Internets

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).

A nice overview of small screen design trends with backgrounds as to why these approaches work well.