Coder Survival Guide

Follow Ryan on Mastodon @ https://webperf.social/@ryantownsend hr / For the past 10+ years, JavaScript frameworks and Single Page Applications have been marketed as the solution to all our performance, robustness and productivity problems, but things haven’t worked out the way we’d all hoped, have they? * Simple marketing and ecommerce sites are still getting heavier and slower. * Features fail in weird and wonderful ways meaning we need an ever-increasing array of tooling to monitor and debug problems. * Teams armed with the latest Apple Silicon Macs, expensive CI tooling and complex build pipelines still can’t ship effectively. But it’s not all doom-and-gloom: we live in a time of unprecedented opportunity to give our users a fantastic experience – the web platform has never been more capable than it is today. Let’s look at what we can achieve by simplifying our web architecture, utilising new and upcoming Web Platform APIs and getting back to building fast, maintainable, user-friendly front-ends.

Consequential Life Cycle Assessment modelling – A collection of best practise LCA examples and open source materials

Trick Gandalf into revealing information and experience the limitations of large language models firsthand.

Last weekend I had a chance to talk with some students who just got their degree. They are pursuing their first software engineer job. In conversation with them, I learned that they have a pretty wrong perception of this job. This is because the reality for these new kids is so skewed.

A left-wing podcast for better technology and a better world.

D’un projet à un autre, en ma qualité d’analyste de la performance web environnementale, je suis souvent confronté aux mêmes interrogations : Quand faut-il s’alerter ? Quelles …

A handy tool to decide if you can drop Internet Explorer 11 support.

We have covered print stylesheets in the past here on Smashing Magazine. In this article, Rachel Andrew takes a look at the state of printing from the browser today.

Say no to “printer-friendly” versions and yes to printer-specific style sheets. CSS expert Eric Meyer shows how to conceive and design print style sheets that automatically format web c…

Handcrafted recipes to get you started with everything UX — user research, design, usability testing, and more. We're always cooking up new recipes, so check back frequently!

The problem with brainstorming is, even if there are great ideas in the room, there is often no clear-cut way to decide on what ideas to take action on. But there is a technique that Jonathan Courtney has been using with all his clients over the past year to release or enhance many successful products. Over the last year he’s found that applied USM is not just a fantastic way to get ideas that nobody would have come up with on their own, it’s also the perfect alignment tool for your client or stakeholders. Let Jonathan show you exactly how it’s done.

Helping organizations develop a mature practice in Usability / User Experience Design. A seamless suite of consulting, training, certification, and tools.

Level up your research expertise with our collection of guides, reports and industry resources.

API Green Score : How to evaluate the environment impact of your APIs - API-Green-Score/APIGreenScore: API Green Score : How to evaluate the environment impact of your APIs

Vous le savez peut-être, un audit d’accessibilité peut être long et coûteux. Pour faciliter ce processus, des outils d’accessibilité automatiques ont été développés. Ces outils sont des programmes informatiques qui permettent de détecter automatiquement les problèmes d’accessibilité sur les sites web, les applications et autres contenus numériques. Ils utilisent des algorithmes avancés pour analyser le […]

IT professionals are reporting exhaustion at alarming levels, and IT leaders must recognize the symptoms and take steps to address contributing factors to avoid increased attrition rates, decreased productivity, and a poor reputation in the tech talent market.

Date: September 2023 Released by: The Coed:Ethics Community Authors: Anne Currie, Sara Bergman, Sarah Hsu Title: The State of Green Software Practices in 2023 - The foundations of a maturity matrix License: Creative Commons 4.0 (Attribution) THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS! - Feedback welcome under th...

The Internet is the biggest machine ever built – and it has a huge impact on our environment. How can we as perf experts help make IT more sustainable? What ...

Inserisci l’URL del sito web per verificare le emissioni di CO2 che sta generando

Découvrez l'impact environnemental de votre site web avec Quanta.green. Utilisez notre outil unique pour calculer votre Score de Sobriété Numérique et prenez des mesures pour un futur plus durable. Que vous soyez gestionnaire de site ou simplement curieux, alliez numérique et écologie de manière simple et efficace.

An affordance is what someone can do with an object. When you see a well-designed everyday product, the perceived affordances should indicate how to use it. You shouldn't have to struggle to figure out how to use your shower to take a shower, and you shouldn't have to use trial and error—perhaps drenching yourself in cold water in the process. The design of an everyday thing should make it evident. An object should communicate a good part of how to use it through its affordances. A recessed button affords pressing it. A sticking-out dial affords twiddling it. A toggle switch affords toggling. An apple affords tossing and catching it; an anvil doesn't. A high stool affords sitting, leaning against or standing on it. Don Norman, who popularised the term in his classic book The Design of Everyday Things, talked a fair bit about doors. We can push or pull a door or slide it to the side. Sometimes, doors open upwards (though rarely downwards). In something as fundamental to our everyday living as a door, you might think that we had nailed their design sufficiently not to misuse them. However, I'm willing to bet that, like me, you have pulled a door when you needed to push it. A common culprit is adding a bar handle to a door on the side you need to push. While a flat plate attached to the door affords only pushing, a bar handle begs you to pull it. Often, a door designed this way gets a sign saying "Push." As Don Norman says, if your design needs a label, consider another design.  Once, I nearly walked away from a library with my two small boys because of door confusion. After going through an outer set of glass doors that slid open automatically as we approached them, the next set of glass doors stood resolutely shut. Concluding that the library must be closed, we were just walking out when someone walked up to the second set of glass doors and simply pushed them open. The first set of automatic doors had so cued me that the second set would also be automatic, and the glass doors held no clue that they would operate differently from the outer set that I almost failed to get into an open building. Don Norman became so well known for pointing out the flaws of everyday objects that poorly designed products became known as "Norman doors." Don Norman's frustrations are mostly for everyday things. If you are an air traffic controller or an astronaut flying a space shuttle, it's reasonable to expect that some training may be wise to use all the advanced functionality. Yet in specialised environments like healthcare, good design—like avoiding storing drugs in alphabetical order—is critical to reduce the potential for failure. Digital products struggle to provide affordances. Apple's touchscreen interactions and trackpads have little discoverability of what you can do with them: swipe down from the top-right, swipe up from the bottom, double-tap the side button, long-press on an icon, two-finger swipe right, triple-finger tap—all effectively invisible. Interactions like these reward repeated use and require learning to be effective. However, I think it's reasonable to expect a warm shower in a hotel on your first try without requiring training. Also see: mapping, forcing function.

Data center building complexes are changing the face of rural America, using tremendous energy, and delaying some utilities' shift away from fossil fuels.

Loyalty is often touted as a moral principle, or virtue, worth exemplifying in social and business relations. But is it always beneficial to be loyal?…

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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines apply to public sector mobile apps. The Accessibility Monitoring team shares its approach to app testing.