Bruce Lawson, a web standards and accessibility advocate, writes about HTML, browsers, screen readers, and Apple's browser policies.
HN commenters cite it to rebut the claim that screen readers can't handle JavaScript, and for his criticism of Apple's Safari and EU compliance.
> Do consumers actually want it? This feels like developer projections.
Asking whether consumers want any developer API they clearly don't know exists is always tricky as is going to be a "want" by proxy. First and foremost, there's cost. Developers will pass on FCM service costs in app pricing which is clearly bad for consumers. Service choice encourages price competitiveness. But beyond that, in this case, I would also say that consumers installing a secure messaging client or non-Google email client likely don't want Google collecting metadata on all of their secure messages (& potentially actual data on their plaintext messages - regional legal compliance depending).
> For years we heard that mobile web apps were almost there but for the laggard Apple
Both Google and Apple each have their primary focus areas when it comes to marketing & propaganda - for Apple, its privacy (the justification for their walled gardens); for Google, they're pushing the web forward.
Neither are true. The reality Google have always been behind what's actually needed in implementing true PWAs (despite inventing the term) - calling out Apple was a distraction tactic. Google will only ever push PWAs to the point that they don't interfere with their adjacent revenue priorities. Which is often.
> The new IE?
Nothing new about it. Chrome has been the new IE almost since inception. Here's an entertaining sendup from 13 years ago, just 3 years after its inception - the parallel to Chrome was…
I took a react class and the intro was a lot of html/css/design stuff. The CSShints site isn't just CSS, so its worth exploring.
There is a lot of good stuff published that's hard to find. I wish I had a better catch all resource page.
Codepen.io is a good playground to play around with html/css/javascript and it has some javascript frameworkstuff too.
A lot of people put together good content. It seems to surface though blogs and twitter.
Some links/papers we used (without the CSShints pages). A lot of them have more content if you explore.
https://cssclass.es/materials/#elements-and-tags
https://chenhuijing.com/blog/how-i-design-with-css-grid/#%F0%9F%8E%99
https://www.wpkube.com/html5-cheat-sheet/
https://programmingdesignsystems.com/what-is-a-design-system/index.html
https://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/chapter-1/
http://alistapart.com/article/the-king-vs-pawn-game-of-ui-design/
https://brucelawson.co.uk/2018/the-practical-value-of-semantic-html/
https://alistapart.com/article/my-accessibility-journey-what-ive-learned-so-far
You are right to question this. There does seem to be a bit of a long standing myth that ALL javascript is bad for accessibility:
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/javascript-and-screenreaders/
In this case though, from an accessibility point of view there are a few issues with the use of a link tag rather than the standard form 'input submit' or 'button'.
Problems include:
- It goes against user expectations of how the form functions
- User would not be able to submit the form while focus is on one of the inputs (although this could be remedied with more js)
- User would have to realise that this form does not have a standard submit button and realise that the link tag is the submit button (difficult for screen readers because there are no alt tags).
There is also an issue with usability for the few who don't have js enabled, as they will not be able to submit this form.
Or, Apple could actually invest in Safari to make it better than the competition, instead of artificially making it the best browser on iThings. As one of the founder members of Open Web Advocacy (the group who have been briefing UK, EU, Japanese and Australian regulators) wrote, "But let’s set out aspirations higher. Imagine a fantastic Safari on iOS, Mac, Android, Windows and Linux, giving Chrome a run for its money. If anyone can take on Google, Apple can. It has talented WebKit engineers, excellent Standards experts, a colossal marketing budget, and great brand recognition.
If Apple allowed Safari to actually compete, it would be better for web developers, businesses, consumers, and for the health of the web. Come on, Apple, set Safari free!"
https://brucelawson.co.uk/2021/set-safari-free/
> 1. Autofocus on the first field
However, there are some accessibility concerns. Screenreader users may be dumped into a form field without context and/or explanatory content, which may have preceded the form field and may be essential. Sometimes it's still best to let users decide, when they are ready for a specific interaction.
[1] https://medium.com/@gavyn/til-autofocus-inputs-are-an-accessibility-problem-32ced60c3109
[2] https://brucelawson.co.uk/2009/the-accessibility-of-html-5-autofocus/
"Screenreaders in generally do not support JavaScript."
Please stop saying that. It hasn't been true for a good 5 years or so.
* http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/javascript-and-screenreaders/
* http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/#javascript
* http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/client-side-script.html