Dispatches From The Internets

On Adaptive Web Design’s Second Edition

I wrote the bulk of Adaptive Web Design in early 2010 while taking a much-needed break from client projects. I had originally slated for it to be released just before the holidays that year, but life happened and the book did not make it out into the world until mid-2011. Six months is a long time in the technical world, and especially on the Web. A year is forever.

Notes on use of multiple ARIA role attribute values

Did you know the ARIA role attribute allows for multiple values? It’s how role supports fault tolerance: the first value (of the space separated list) is applied, but if the assistive technology in use doesn’t understand it, the second value will be tried, etc. until a usable alternative is found. It works a lot like font stacks.

The Problem of “Fire and Forget” in Web Design

Jens Oliver Meiert on why we should continue to tidy up to and improve on our creations rather than letting them site once we’ve launched them. I’ve never been once for maintenance contracts with clients, but I also believe that sites that aren’t tended to every now and again can become overgrown or, worse, wither and die.

ES6 in WebKit (October 2015)

This is an update on where things stand with the ECMAScript 6/2015 spec in WebKit. Currently in Safari for El Capitan & iOS9:

  • Classes
  • Promises
  • Map, Set, WeakMap, WeakSet, for…of loops, and
  • Symbols

Coming soon:

  • let, const, and class block scoping
  • a portion of the Reflect API
  • some of the current module specification
  • Tail calls
  • Default parameter values
  • Default destructuring values
  • Arrow functions, and
  • a portion of the internationalization API

For an excellent overview of ES6 support, consult this handy chart.

Shadow DOM (6 October 2015)

The latest draft of the Shadow DOM spec has been published. Check it out and give the team some feedback.