What the f••k is a Design System?
Answers on a postcard, please (and by postcard, I mean textarea).
Link tags: definition
16
Defining the WHAT and WHY of Design Principles — Anton Sten — UX-lead
Just like brand values, mission statements, or vision decks, design principles can be generic and provide little to no actual value.
But used correctly, design principles help you make decisions resulting in a superior experience.
This Word Does Not Exist
This is easily my favourite use of a machine learning algorithm.
Front-of-the-front-end and back-of-the-front-end web development | Brad Frost
These definitions work for me:
A front-of-the-front-end developer is a web developer who specializes in writing HTML, CSS, and presentational JavaScript code.
A back-of-the-front-end developer is a web developer who specializes in writing JavaScript code necessary to make a web application function properly.
PWA: Progressive Web All-the-things - Tales of a Developer Advocate by Paul Kinlan
Very valuable observations from Paul on his travels, talking to developers and business people about progressive web apps—there’s some confusion out there.
My personal feeling is that everyone is really hung up on the A in PWA: ‘App’. It’s the success and failure of the branding of the concept; ‘App’ is in the name, ‘App’ is in the conscious of many users and businesses and so the associations are quite clear.
Seriously, though. What is a progressive web app? – Amberley Romo – Medium
What an excellent question! And what an excellent bit of sleuthing to get to the bottom of it. This is like linguistic spelunking on the World Wide Web.
Oh, and of course I love the little sidenote at the end.
Salva de la Puente - What is a PWA
Here’s a nice one-sentence definition for the marketing folk:
A Progressive Web App is a regular website following a progressive enhancement strategy to deliver native-like user experiences by using modern Web standards.
But if you’re talking to developers, I implore you to concretely define a Progressive Web App as the combination of HTTPS, a service worker, and a Web App Manifest.
Defining design principles at EMBL | Journal | The Personal Disquiet of Mark Boulton
Mark describes the process he favours for creating (discovering?) design principles, like the ones for EMBL (I must remember to add those to the collection).
All you do is be mindful of when the team repeats design desires. This could be several members of the team say the same thing in a slightly different way, or that you keep circling around and around a problem but struggle to articulate it. By being mindful at all times to this a team can quickly pull together principles that are derived from doing the work on their particular problem rather than principles which are imposed on the work. An important difference.
What’s the difference between style guides, pattern libraries, and design systems? – Joseph Fitzsimmons
Ah, the age-old question!
The Venn diagram here pretty much maps to how I think about these different terms, and how they relate to one another.
And now, a brief definition of the web - The Verge
Analysing what the web is. It’s not the technology stack.
To count as being part of the web, your app or page must:
- Be linkable, and
- Allow any client to access it.
I think that’s a pretty good definition.
Mind you, I think this is a bit rich in an article published on The Verge:
The HTML web may be slow and annoying and processor intensive, but before we rush too fast into replacing it, let’s not lose what’s good about it.
Excuse me? Slow, annoying, processor-intensive web pages have nothing to do with the technology, and everything to do with publishers like The Verge shoving bucketloads of intrusive JavaScript trackers into every page view.
Still, we can agree on this:
Preserving the web, or more specifically the open principles behind it, means protecting one of the few paths for innovation left in the modern tech world that doesn’t have a giant company acting as a gatekeeper.
The Shifting Definition of Front-End Developer
I don’t agree with the conclusion of this post:
Let’s define “front-end” to mean the parts of the app relating to user interface, rather than those that happen to be running in the browser’s JavaScript VM.
But I think the author definitely taps into a real issue:
The real problem is the perception that any code running in the browser is front-end code.
Let’s face it: programming something in Angular and Ember has much more in common with programming something in Rails or Django than it has with writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
This is something we’re running into at Clearleft: we’ve never done backend programming (by choice), but it gets confusing if a client wants us to create something in Angular or Ember, “because that’s front end code, right?”
Of Sites and Apps « James Pearce
James attempts to tackle the thorny question of what makes something a web “app” (rather than a web “site”). It reminds of the infamous definition of obscenity:
I know it when I see it.
In short, the answer to the question “what is a web app?” is “fuck knows.”
Lexadecimal
Hexadecimal colours and their corresponding dictionary definitions. Cute.
The Hugh Grant Squid Test
A dictionary of all-sorts. An enpsychlo-blog. A compendium of ancient wisdom of modern usage. History, philosophy, and the world around you. A "Who's who?", a "How's when?" and "What on Earth is it?" A token nod in the direction of truth and a dip in the
Apple - Web apps
Looks like Apple are trying to redefine the term "web app" to mean sites created for the iPhone. The revisionism is completely barefaced.
Wordie
Like Flickr, but without the photos. This, I like.