This is an experiment. Will publishing a post like this help me stop hoarding articles with an intent to “study properly later”…? To write some kind of take away for myself, I need to read – not just skim or haha, save a gazillion URLs to read later.

🔗 The Problem with Patterns by @cathy_dutton

Yesyesyes. Cannot contain my excitement about this one. I’ve probably had it open in a tab for 2 weeks and I’m so happy I didn’t accidentally close it unread. It sums up many of my problems very eloquently, and I need to revisit it later to produce some additional thoughts of my own — and figure out something actionable. But some problems with patterns can be that;

  • The design process is undervalued 👎
  • Patterns don’t start with user needs 🙈
  • User needs are conflated with one another 🤪

Having a library of design components can sometimes give the impression that all the design work has been completed.

This decision architecture cannot be predetermined using patterns.

🔗 Pixels vs. Ems: Users DO Change Font Size by Evan Minto

At the Internet Archive, they set out to see if users changed the default font size. Spoiler: they do! Not only do users increase font size, some user make it smaller than 16 pixels.

That was surprising, since we assumed the only real use case was visually impaired users who need larger font sizes for readability. It’s possible there are users setting smaller sizes in order to fit more content on-screen, maybe because they’re using a small monitor, or it could be due to browsers setting non-16px defaults.

Would be cool to run a similar test on the platform I’m working with.

🔗 The mythical 10x programmer by @antirez

I enjoyed this! I’m not so much into into the premise either way, but I’m transfering ideas to other kinds of work, not just programming. Especially this part about simplicity:

I believe that the two main drivers of complexity are the unwillingness to perform design sacrifices, and the accumulation of errors in the design activity. If you think at the design process, each time a wrong path is pursued, we get more and more far from the optimal solution.

🔗 A College Student Discovers A List Apart by Samantha Lynn

Sam analyzed 350 articles. The industry history lession she gave herself is amazing, and it makes me proud of how much of this I’ve been here for over the years.

I wonder how many of these articles I read as they were published?

🔗 Where Lines Break is Complicated by @chriscoyier

CSS-Tricks covering relevant HTML and CSS:

  • sledgehammer word-break: break-all;
  • subtle overflow-wrap: break-word;
  • sometimes hyphens: auto;
  • <br>
  • <wbr>
  • &shy;
  • pseudo ::before { content: "\A"; }

🔗 Responsive Components by @philwalton

I saw Philip speak at CSSconf EU about Container Queries, so I wanted to wrap my head around them a bit more now. And I think I get it! But at the moment, this is more complex than we are ready for in the UIs we‘re building at work. Looking forward to following developments in this area though.

This article describes a strategy for using modern web technologies to build responsive components: DOM elements that can update their style and layout in response to changes in the size of their container

🔗 The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

Not so much an article I read, but: congrats on the new design! 👏