Airplanes and Ashtrays – CSS Wizardry

Whenever you plan or design a system, you need to build in your own ashtrays—a codified way of dealing with the inevitability of somebody doing the wrong thing. Think of what your ideal scenario is—how do you want people to use whatever you’re building—and then try to identify any aspects of it which may be overly opinionated, prescriptive, or restrictive. Then try to preempt how people might try to avoid or circumvent these rules, and work back from there until you can design a safe middle-ground into your framework that can accept these deviations in the safest, least destructive way possible.

Airplanes and Ashtrays – CSS Wizardry

Tagged with

Related links

Building WebSites With LLMS - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S).

I really like this approach: using separate pages instead of in-page interactions. I remember Simon talking about how great this works, and that was a few years back, before we had view transitions.

I build separate, small HTML pages for each “interaction” I want, then I let CSS transitions take over and I get something that feels better than its JS counterpart for way less work.

Tagged with

Why I Like Designing in the Browser – Cloud Four

This describes how I like to work too.

Tagged with

Tagged with

UI Pace Layers - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Every UI control you roll yourself is a liability. You have to design it, test it, ship it, document it, debug it, maintain it — the list goes on.

It makes you wonder why we insist on rolling (or styling) our own common UI controls so often. Perhaps we’d be better off asking: What are the fewest amount of components we have to build to deliver value to our users?

Tagged with

Justified Text: Better Than Expected? – Cloud Four

Some interesting experiments in web typography here.

Tagged with

Related posts

Making the new Salter Cane website

A redesign with modern CSS.

Making the website for Research By The Sea

Having fun with view transitions and scroll-driven animations.

Schooltijd

Going back to school in Amsterdam.

Making the Patterns Day website

The joy of getting hands-on with HTML and CSS.

Declarative design systems

Is your design system really a system …or is it more like a collection of components?