Posts tagged with ux

Join thousands of developers

Every two weeks, I share practical tips, tutorials, and behind-the-scenes insights from maintaining 300+ open source packages.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. You can also follow me on X.

No, disabling a button is not app logic

dev.to

David Khourshid explains how you can use state machines to make your logic more resilient.

Disabling a button is not logic. Rather, it is a sign that logic is fragile and bug-prone. In my opinion, disabling a button should only be a visual cue to the user that clicking the button will have no effect.

Read more [dev.to]

Closing Modals with the Back Button in a Vue SPA

jessarcher.com

Jess Archer recently gave an excellent talk at Laracon AU. In a new blogpost she explains one one tips given during her talk: how to close modals in a Vue app by using the back button.

On most web apps, pressing the back button while a modal dialog is open will navigate to the previous page, rather than closing the modal. This can be very frustrating! It might not seem like a huge deal on a desktop app, but on a mobile, where a modal like this will often be full-screen, and with phones having back buttons and back gestures, I believe it's a huge user experience improvement.

Read more [jessarcher.com]

These cookie warning shenanigans have got to stop

www.troyhunt.com

I fully agree with Troy Hunt here.

So in summary, everyone clicks through cookie warnings anyway, if you read them you either can't understand what they're saying or the configuration of privacy settings is a nightmare, depending on where you are in the world you either don't get privacy or you don't get UX hell, if you understand the privacy risks then it's easy to open links incognito or use an ad blocker, you can still be tracked anyway and finally, the whole thing is just conditioning people to make bad security choices.

Read more [www.troyhunt.com]

Why your form only needs one name field

uxmovement.com

Here are some good reasons why you shouldn't use a first name and last name field.

The structure of a name is not the same across cultures. Users who visit your site will consist of a broad range of people from different countries. Your name field should be culturally inclusive so that no one struggles to fill out your form. With most things in life two is better than one. But when it comes to name fields one is better than two.

Read more [uxmovement.com]

The art of the error message

thestyleofelements.org

Marina Posniak, UX writer at Spotify, shares some great tips on how to write error messages well.

To start, ask yourself if you even need the error message. Before writing anything, consider if there’s a way to redesign the experience so there’s no error at all. Is there a way to just make it work? (Really, the best error message is no error message.) But if you do need it, think carefully about the message. When things go wrong and the app “fails,” say something useful. The message should help the user solve the problem and move on.

Read more [thestyleofelements.org]

Making a case for letter case

In an older, but still relevant, post on Medium John Saito demonstrates the effect of different capitalizations.

Can you spot the differences with the messages above? The left side has a few more capital letters than the right side. Big O, little o. Who cares, right?

Well, if you write for an app or website, you should care. A little thing like capitalization can actually be a big deal. Capitalization affects readability, comprehension, and usability. It even impacts how people view your brand.

We’ll get to the juicy stuff in a bit, but first, let’s start with a little more background about capitalization.

https://medium.com/@jsaito/making-a-case-for-letter-case-19d09f653c98

Read more

The disadvantages of single page applications

Adam Silver lists a bunch of problems you need to solve if you opt to build a single page application.

Ironically, SPAs are harder to design and harder to build. And yet, they typically produce slow, disagreeable experiences for users. ... Javascript is never going to beat the browser at what it does best—browsing. We can still give users rich and enhanced experiences without cramming an entire site into one document.

We should let the browser manage the browsing experience, and spend our time solving real user problems.

https://adamsilver.io/articles/the-disadvantages-of-single-page-applications/

Read more

Let’s talk about phone numbers on mobile sites

Wes Bos shares a quick tip to make phone numbers on websites tappable.

I’m talking about when phone numbers on a website aren’t tapable. Often the HTML is so that mobile operating systems cannot select the phone number alone and you are forced to remember/recite or write down the actual number.

So, when you put a phone number on a website, don’t just use any old element, use a link with the tel protocol.

http://wesbos.com/lets-talk-about-phone-numbers-on-mobile-sites/

Read more