I’ve been complaining about “man in the middle” attacks brought on by internet service providers a bunch over the last year. The only way to keep uninvited third parties from injecting JavaScript and more—potentially screwing up your page—is to move to HTTPS. So, as much as it pains me to abandon good old fashioned HTTP, I’ve decided to lock things down a bit.
Dispatches From The Internets
Moved to HTTPS
Towards a New Information Architecture
Fantastic history of “Information Architecture” as a practice, with an eye for where it’s heading. Great work Christina Wodtke!
How to write a great error message
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).
Mobile 2015: UI/UX Trends
A nice overview of small screen design trends with backgrounds as to why these approaches work well.
7 Ways Form Accessibility Can Boost Conversions
There’s some really good forms advice in here. Just be careful when manipulating the tab flow.
More Proof We Don’t Control Our Web Pages
I’ve talked about this before: As web designers, we can’t trust the network. Sure, we have to contend with mobile data “dead zones” and dropped connections as our users move about throughout the day, but there’s a lot more to the network that’s beyond our control.
Where to Put Your Search Role
Not on the form. Noted.
Making radio buttons and checkboxes easier to use
Experiments in radio and checkbox resizing. It’s a sad state of affairs. The small hit targets are why I recommend adding negative margins above and below the label, coupled with equal padding top and bottom. It’s a recommendation from my forms talk that I will write up soon.
A fictional conversation about progressive enhancement
A cheeky fictional conversation about progressive enhancement, though I might take it a bit further: If you want to edit the rich document and JavaScript enhancements aren’t available, there’s always Markdown or Textile or any other plain text pseudo-formatting language. Where there’s a will…
Accessibility - Beyond the Screen Reader
This is a fantastic overview of the accessibility considerations you should be making. Most are far more important than screen reader support.