Adam Silver

When I was making the final edits to Form Design Patterns, I had to attribute this quote: “Content is the user experience” Caroline Jarrett told me it was Ginny Redish, the author of “Letting Go of the Words”.

In Buttons shouldn’t have a hand cursor I explained that the hand (pointer) cursor signifies links, not that something is clickable.

This is an excerpt from Form Design Patterns.

Sometimes links are designed to look like buttons.

This is how it goes.

In 2009 I was given some new designs to implement for the forms on Argos.co.uk.

Float labels are labels that start off inside the input.

When I published MaintainableCSS, I compared semantic and non-semantic class names.

When the web was born we used 640 pixel widths.

The web has been around long enough for us to know its powers and constraints.

I used to write Javascript that initialises components automagically, like this: var datepickers = document.getElementsByClassName(‘datepicker’); for(var i = 0; i < datepickers.length; i++) { new DatePicker(datepickers[i]); } It works by looping over e…

Even if you’re completely sold on semantic class names and avoid stylistic and behavioural class names altogether, choosing a good class name is hard.

You know, it’s funny, when the web came along, we used the medium of print to set expectations for how things should be.

Products and services usually start with a set of user needs which are then translated into screens (and other things) that meet those needs.

Many designers and developers believe that the hand (or pointer) cursor signifies clickable elements.

Designers love to remove labels from inputs to save space and create a minimal aesthetic.

The placeholder attribute can be used to put hint text inside text inputs.

For the last 9 months, we at KIDLY have been designing and building a brand new online shop with the following tagline: “The best stuff for baby, all in one place” Last week we launched silently to our many early adopters who we call VIPs.

I spent almost 2 months preparing to speak at Enhanceconf 2016 in front of 180 people at the RSA in London.

This is the talk I gave at Enhanceconf 2016, a conference dedicated to Progressive Enhancement.

According to Paul Adams there are 4 aspects to design: outcome, system, interaction and visual.

Hover menus open and close when the user moves their mouse over or out of a menu.

The Scrum process says to break down stories into tasks to make estimation easier, encourage collaboration and to be able to shoow more granular progress during a sprint.

On more than one occasion I have found myself trying to convince team-mates that infinite scrolling and its close relative show more is more likely to degrade the experience than improve upon it.

I once worked on a project where users wanted to pay using PayPal.

I admit: I’ve bent the web many times in the past.

James Archer has explained why the hamburger menu can cause usability problems.

Using Javascript to design progressively enhanced interfaces is probably the most important yet, misunderstood subject in web development.

Thanks to everyone who read The Boring Front-end Developer.

A polyfill, also known as a shim, is a user-defined implementation of an API that some browsers provide natively, normalising browser differences.

CSS preprocessors have many advantages.

The role of the front-end developer extends far beyond translating designs into code.

Technical wanking is the practice of using cool and new technology because — well — it’s cool and new.

Content caching can decrease the time it takes to load a web page.

Cool front-end developers are always pushing the envelope, jumping out of their seat to use the latest and greatest and shiniest of UI frameworks and libraries.

Some forms that let users sort a list sometimes consist of single select box without a submit button.

ECMAScript doesn’t have an inherit function.

I started making websites in 2000.

Namespaces help you organise code so that it’s easy for others to find their way around it.

Multiple submit buttons are problematic for keyboard users because forms can be submitted by pressing Enter when a field is focused.