Everyone wants their WordPress blog to run faster. There are many ways to do that, like optimizing the images you use, getting rid of generally useless plugins and using plugins that help speed up...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
A computer's browsing history is a tool among people who wants to stick their noses to what you have been doing on the web. Other people can see the sites you visited and even the different tasks you...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
A blog attracts all kinds of people; there are some who simply read the blog post, as well as some who comments on the content there. However, there are those who visit the site only to cause trouble...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
When you want a click to change something on your page, you usually reach for Javascript. Adhering to principles of modularity and separating structure, presentation, and behavior we’re supposed to use Javascript for behavior layer. However, methods exist for generating click events using only html and css. What are they and should we use them?
I recently had opportunity to use a couple of these css click events in some demos I developed for a series of responsive navigation articles for Tuts+ and found them useful and simple to implement. Then a month ago I found an article with a roundup of most of the different css click event methods on the Codrops site.
I want to briefly walk through the different methods (I’ll provide links to more detailed explanations in and below each section) and also wonder aloud if we should be using them or in the interest of modular code we should stick to using Javascript for click events.
Structure, Presentation, and Behavior
I’m sure you’ve heard someone, maybe me, talk about writing more modular code by separating structure, presentation, and behavior. This separation of concerns generally leads to less code thats’s more maintainable and reusable. When working on the front end of a website we’re told to stick with 3 technologies.
html for structure
css for presentation
javascript for behavior
Over the years, things that are the domain of Javascript have found their way into CSS. Think transforms, transitions, and animations for example. These changes are certainly to an element’s state and we’ve been told they belong to Javascript. Yet we can and do create those state changes without a scripting language.
The real question is whether or not these methods are any less maintainable than Javascript.
Click events are similar. Without Javascript there are methods for simple things like showing and hiding content or changing the presentation of an element. We can trigger an animation or completely restyle the look and layout of a page all without ever turning to a Javascript onclick event.
These non-js click events are easy to use as I’ll show in a moment, but keep in mind the question of whether or not we should avoid using them in the name of modularity as you read through the rest of this post. If the point of separating structure, presentation, and behavior is more maintainable code, are we giving back some of that maintainability in using these html/css click events.
HTML and CSS Click Events
There are a handful of methods for generating a click event, however they all fall under two general categories.
All the methods below make use pseudo selectors. Some also use html form inputs and their associated labels to trigger the event.
Pseudo Selectos
CSS provides a number of ways to style elements based on their state. I’m sure you’ve been changing links based on :hover since not long after you discovered css. Of course :hover is a temporary change of state. Move your cursor off the element and everything reverts back to it’s original state.
Some pseudo selectors allow us to maintain state for a longer duration.
The :target hack — The idea behind this method is that the :target selector will match an element with an id that’s the same as the hash in the url. If you have a url like www.domain.com/my-web-page.html#alert and in your html have
1 2 3 4 5
<a href="#alert">Click Me</a><div id="alert"><p>some alarming information here</p></div>
And with that you have yourself a click event. A visitor clicks the link which points to the same page with the addition of the hashtag. Your #alert div changes from display: none to display: block. All without the use of Javascript.
One downside is that same link can’t be used to toggle things back to the initial state. It would require a different link that doesn’t include the hash in the url. However there are times when that’s what you want. Think of an accordion menu pattern. You could set up each of the top level items with a different hash that opens its particular submenu while all others close.
There are other downsides. It’s a new url which leads to a page refresh and can throw off browser history. You can only affect the one element, since an id is required. Again there are times when none of these will be an issue and this event is now finding its way into various responsive navigation patterns.
The :focus hack — This works similarly to the :target hack. Here when an html element has focus we can use :focus to match it and then use an adjacent sibling selector to target neighbor elements.
There’s a slight catch in that not every html element can be focused by default, though we can change that by adding a tabindex attribute
1 2
<span tabindex="0">Click Me</span><p class="alert">Some alarming information here</p>
Notice the use of the tilde ( ~ ) to select an adjacent sibling.
Here we aren’t navigating to another url, however we can only target one sibling element and anything inside it. We still can’t use the same element to click back to the initial state, but since clicking anywhere outside the now focused element removes focus, we can get back to the initial state without a new element.
Unfortunately the :active state only exists after you click an element and before you release the mouse button, so it’s very short lived. However, in combination with either the :hover pseudo selector or a css transition you can maintain the state longer and do some interesting things.
The pros and cons differ a little depending on what you combine with :active, but as with the methods above it’s an easy, albeit imperfect, way to get a click event under certain circumstances.
Form elements also give us a way to alter states. Forms even come with their own click event, the submit button, but we’re actually more interested in some form inputs here.
The checkbox hack — The idea here is to use a connected form label and checkbox input to toggle the checkbox on and off and once again use an adjacent sibling selector to change the state of another element. We can use :checked to trigger different styles depending on the state of the checkbox .
Once again we’re targeting an element based on it being an adjacent sibling selector, this time of a checked input.
You probably don’t want the checkbox itself visible so it’s typically positioned off the page, though you can hide the checkbox in other ways should you want.
One advantage of the checkbox hack over the pseudo element selector hacks is we can use the same element to toggle something on and off. Click the label once to check the box. Click it again to uncheck it. This hack seems to be replacing the pseudo selector hacks for this very reason.
The radio input hack — This works much the same way as the checkbox hack, except we can now control more than a single on/off. We can use as many radio buttons as we want and change their state based on which is selected.
A common use is a tab switcher. Louis Lazaris has created a nice example of a tab switcher on Adobe Developer Connection. I’ll send you there instead of reproducing his code here.
With a checkbox a single element is in an on/off state. With radio buttons many elements can be connected with one being on and the others being off. In Louis’ example the “on” tab takes on a different look and displays its content, while the content of the “off” tabs remain hidden.
His post also provides more in-depth examples of the checkbox hack and the focus hack so it’s worth having a look.
I asked above to keep in mind the question of whether or not these hacks make sense given our goal of modularity and separating structure, presentation, and behavior. What do you think? Should we use the non javascript hacks to change the state of elements? Isn’t that behavior? Doesn’t that mean we should use Javascript even if these hacks can be easier to use at times?
I’m not sure I have a good answer at the moment, though I do expect to use the hacks above more just because they do make for simple click events. Then again adding and removing a class on an element triggered by a Javascript click event is also pretty simple and allows us to change state just as all the methods above.
One con of all these hacks, which I haven’t yet mentioned is they don’t work in every version of every browser. For the most part that means older versions of IE as you probably expect. Fallbacks typically employ Javascript so….
About a year ago Kevin Dees argued in an article on the Treehouse blog that this whole separation of structure, presentation, and behavior is dead or dying. CSS is getting structure in the form of pseudo elements and it’s getting behavior in the form of pseudo selectors and animation. Let’s face it. If these things are in css, we’re going to use them.
The real question is whether or not these methods are any less maintainable than using Javascript. I can’t claim to have thought about it exhaustively, but they don’t seem to be any less maintainable on the surface. Perhaps it’s something worth a deeper look another time.
How about you? Have you been using any of these css click events and if so what do you think? Would you use them again?
I haven’t always made good decisions in life. At times the only way I could make a decision was to fail to make one. I wanted to know in advance the outcomes of the decisions I might make and without any way to determine those outcomes, felt paralyzed by the decision making process. Fortunately I no longer do that.
Recently I was pointed to a speech by Robert Rubin, then Treasury Secretary of the United States. It was the commencement address for the University of Pennsylvania graduating class of 1999. In the speech Rubin offered 4 principles for decision making which resonated with me, since they align very well with how I now make difficult decisions.
4 Principles for Decision Making
A question I often hear new designers ask, is how to know if their design decisions are good and right and the best they can be. The person to best answer the question though, is usually the person who asked it.
The 4 principles Rubin offered can help you make better design decisions and also help you understand when you’ve made good and bad decisions. The entirety of his brief speech is worth reading as he offers additional thoughts and stories about each of the following principles.
The only certainty is there is no certainty
Every decision, as a consequence, is a matter of weighing probabilities
Despite uncertainty we must decide and must act
We need to judge decisions not only on results, but on how they were made
Allow me to share some of my own thoughts about these 4 principles and how they apply to design decisions.
The only certainty is there is no certainty — Accepting this is key. As much as we might like, we can’t know in advance the outcomes of our decisions. As a rule we have to make decisions with less than perfect information.
The world is not one of absolutes and neither is design. There is seldom, if ever, a single right solution to a design problem or a single right path to follow within a solution. A certain amount of design is subjective. Given the same problem definition and the same tools to solve it, you and I might come up with 2 entirely different and equally effective solutions.
The current practice of designing responsively is a good example of this principle. You can’t know in advance who will visit your design, with what device, and under what conditions. Accept uncertainty. Everything else follows.
Every decision, as a consequence, is a matter of weighing probabilities — If you can’t be certain about what is the best decision, all you can do is consider what might result from each possible choice and weigh the pros and cons; the risks and rewards of those choices.
As a rule we have to make decisions with less than perfect information
You won’t be able to accurately calculate the probabilities of unknown results, but you can make reasonable estimates based on the information you have.
Where design is concerned, lean on fundamental design principles. They’re principles because they’ve been show to work in the past and are more likely to work again now. They aren’t a guarantee for being right, but they do increase the probability of making a good decision.
Lean too on your own practice. The more you do something, the better you are in doing it again. Build a library of patterns. Develop a process. Know when to break away from both, but know both are there to lean on when needed
Despite uncertainty we must decide and must act — This is inevitable. Not deciding is still making a decision, though it’s seldom the best, or even a good, choice. It’s leaving things to chance.
Every design decision you make affects all the decisions that follow. If you fail to decide you compound one poor decision with the next one based on it. Taking the time to develop a concept can help. You won’t know that your concept is the best choice, but it will help make the decisions that follow easier as it sets a direction to lead those decisions.
Spend more time on key or important decisions that lead others.
Take the time to choose a typeface, font-size, measure, and line-height and base your other typographic choices on these key decisions.
Choose a basic unit around which to build a grid and lead your grid decisions.
You have to decide and act, but you’ll find many design decisions follow from a few key decisions. Isolate these key decisions and put more effort into weighing their possibilities in order that other decisions are easier to make.
We need to judge decisions not only on results, but on how they were made — You’ll have some criteria to judge success or failure of your decisions. Most of your decisions are meant to lead to desired outcomes and measuring their success or failure will help you judge the quality of your decisions.
You still won’t know whether or not you made the best decision, since you have no way of testing and measuring all the decisions you didn’t make. Would another concept have been better? Would a different grid have better organized the information? To accept uncertainty at the start of the process is to also accept it at the end of the process.
Judge how you arrived at your decisions. What was easy in the process? What was difficult? Why were they easy or difficult? What could help you improve your decision making the next time.
In designing websites you make decisions about similar things based on different criteria. All your sites use type and color. The information is contained within some kind of layout. Do you have more trouble making decisions about one aspect of design than another? What can you do to make it easier? Do you need more or better information to assess the probabilities? Do you need to improve certain skills? Would different tools help?
Evaluate your decision making process to understand how to improve it. It won’t change anything with the decisions you’ve already made, but it will help you make better decisions in the future.
Summary
Some decisions are easy to make. You have a good idea of what will happen given your options or you know the risk of a poor decision is so little you aren’t afraid to choose poorly.
Often though, particularly with design and all its subjective possibilities, making a decision can be difficult. You have little certainty to base your decision on and you may never know if you made the best decision. Accept this uncertainty so you can escape paralysis. Do your best to weigh the probabilities and then make a choice. Later you can evaluate your choices and the process that led to it in order to improve your decision making in the future.
Don’t let the difficulty of making a single decision keep you from making that decision. If you follow these 4 principles you’ll find yourself making the best decision you can in the moment and you’ll find your ability to make decisions improve over time.
Moving from static to flexible layouts involves a move from absolute to relative measurements. That generally means giving up px in favor of ems for vertical measurements and % for horizontal measurements. A question that continues to get asked is whether or not it’s ok to still use px here or there.
The short answer is no. The longer answer is I don’t believe in absolutes and as we’re moving away from absolute measurements and towards relative ones, let’s not be so absolute with an answer to the question.
Why Relative Measurements?
Responsive isn’t buzzword. It’s a change in thinking about how we develop websites. For a long time we had been creating fixed width and usually centered sites thinking it gave us more control over our designs. We inherently knew the web is a flexible medium and our static methodology wasn’t the right answer, but creating a well designed flexible experience didn’t seem possible, at least not without considerably more work and a lot more compromise than we’d like.
As the number of mobile devices increased and as more and more people began using those devices, it became clear the control we thought we were giving ourselves was an illusion. Fortunately Ethan Marcotte came along and showed us that the technology was there to develop flexible sites well and without as much effort as we thought.
You can’t have some parts of a design adjust to various conditions while others remain fixed and still maintain the proportion between them.
When you create a grid or any kind of layout in general you set it up around some fixed measurement. In print this measurement is the size of the page. It’s a fixed constraint you have to deal with and it becomes the starting point. When we moved to the web we took all our understanding and work designing around a fixed canvas and wanted to apply it so we arbitrarily fixed the canvas.
We took something that wasn’t a constraint and created an arbitrary constraint to make our lives easier.
We’ve now come to realize that a fixed size isn’t a constraint we should design around. In giving up the notion of a fixed canvas we need to find another fundamental element to design grids and layouts around, which might include:
a measure of text
the size of a banner ad
the size of an image
A measure of text (probably the best fundamental element for most sites) isn’t fixed or it shouldn’t be. It should vary with font-size and line-height. Even things that seem static like an image or ad change size in a responsive layout.
Grids and layouts are no longer about absolute widths and heights. They’re about proportion and scale. A column in an 8 column grid is 12.5% of the total. The gutter on each column might be 15% of the total column width. As soon as you start introducing an absolute measurement into the mix it throws off the rhythm and proportion. You can’t have some parts of a design adjust to various conditions while others remain fixed and still maintain the proportion between them.
But Ems and % are Difficult
The biggest reason people hang on to px is they’re easier to work with. There’s no math involved. You use your eye to choose how many px and you’re done.
With % you have to keep track of the container. 80% of what? The body? The main container div? The paragraph? With ems you have to deal with the cascade. 0.875 of 1 is easy enough to calculate, but 0.875 of 0.925 of 0.75 becomes a mess.
The math itself isn’t really that hard, though even with a calculator it can be hard to keep track of. It’s the bookkeeping and remembering what you’re dividing by what that’s a pain. It’s more math and bookkeeping than any of us wants to do. And let’s face it none of us likes seeing numbers like .80952381 in our css.
There are solutions. Preprocessors like Sass and Less will let us set some basic proportions and do the math for us through mixins and functions. It’ll look messy in the end, but we’re spending time in the clean preprocessed file.
Sure no one wants to do the math or bookkeeping, but it’s not really an excuse not to use relative measurements. It isn’t that hard and there are solutions now and on the way to make it easier.
Can I Still Use Px?
The question usually doesn’t get phrased in any way that asks when are px a better choice, but rather when is it ok for me to skip all the math and make life easy for myself. I’ve seen all sorts of responses that say you should use relative measurements, but not to beat yourself up for using px.
Even though I can’t think of a single reason why px are the better option at this point, I won’t tell you that you can never use them. Like I said I don’t believe in absolutes. Just because I can’t think of a reason, doesn’t mean a reason doesn’t exist. In fact in a moment I’ll share how px still end up in my own work despite my not thinking they should.
Again if the point is to develop flexibly and relate elements to each other proportionally then using absolute measurements makes no sense as they’ll always throw off the proportion and inhibit flexibility.
So how do px find their way into my work even as I seem so dead set against them? When tweaking a design it’s sometimes quicker to drop in some px and adjust than it is to keep doing the math over and over. Ideally these px get converted to ems or % once you’ve settled on an amount. Unfortunately it can be all too easy to forget and leave the px in.
One place I still specifically use px is border-widths. Often what I want is a thin line around an element and I don’t want the line getting thicker as the browser or font-size grows. There can also come a point on smaller screens where through rounding your border goes to 0 and disappears.
Relative measurements with min and max widths are the better solution and even here using a single px can throw proportions out of whack. Probably not to the eye, but then again how often have you had to correct a completely broken layout because something was a single px off?
I also still set px on images, though max-widths and heights of auto don’t make those px so absolute.
Is it ok to use px then? I’m still having a hard time thinking of a good reason, but it’s not for me to tell you what you have to do and one more time I don’t believe in absolutes. If you have a good reason for choosing px over em or %, then go ahead and use px.
However, I’d strongly suggest your reason should be more than wanting to save yourself some math and bookkeeping. Have a reason for why it improves your design beyond how it helps you avoid a couple of things you’d rather not do.
Summary
The shift toward responsive design is in part a shift toward flexible layouts. It’s one of the big 3 of responsive design after all. Much of this flexible shift is a move from absolute measurements like px to relative measurements like em or %.
We’re no longer designing to a fixed canvas. We’re designing proportionally to something within the content like the measure of text or an ad unit. Proportion requires relative measurements, especially when the elements you build that proportion around don’t have a fixed size.
Sure ems and % can be a pain to work with at times. The math gets ugly because of the cascade and we get lost in the bookkeeping. We have tools to help us deal with these things, though.
We have calculators and preprocessors and even better rems, which work most everywhere with fallbacks where they don’t.
I won’t tell you that you have to use em and % and never include a px measurement in your code, however I struggle to find any legitimate reason not to, assuming you’re developing a flexible layout. If you are going to choose px please have a reason other than not wanting to do the math.
Online marketing has several important factors that are used by today’s marketing experts. Smart marketing draws greater traffic and saves the company a considerable sum of money. Today,...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
A couple of months ago Peter commented on my post about design and context and asked whether or not you can really know if you’ve defined the right context for a design. He also wondered if it would be hard to define given you’ll likely start with vague words like professional, young, and dynamic. I wanted to address his concerns and answer both questions focusing mainly on the second.
To the first question about knowing if you’ve defined the right context, I’m not sure you can immediately know after launching a new design or while you’re developing it. You may never know if you really nailed it, though after the design has been live for a time you can measure success or failure in some way and make educated decisions about the context you set.
I want to spend the rest of this post talking about those seemingly vague words and how you can turn them into a concept that sets the atmosphere and the context for your design.
How To Get Descriptive Words from Clients
When I start a new project I begin by asking the client questions to figure out what they want in a site, what their business is about, what goals they have for both, etc. I ask them directly for some words that describe what they’re looking for in a design, but more than than I listen in between the lines.
The words they use in direct answer to my question aren’t always the the best words to go by. People will sometimes tell you what they think they should say or what others have told them they should say. If you listen to the words they use to describe their business and sites they like when they aren’t specifically answering your question you can often get more useful words.
You’re listening for words that tell their story. Words that differentiate them from the competition. Words that truly speak to what the business is all about. Everyone wants their business to be thought of as professional so it’s not the most useful word for our purpose. Does any business really want to be seen as amateur?
We all want to play with toys that are fun so describing your toy store as fun isn’t necessary. It’s built in to the business. It’s an important word to consider when designing, but it’s not one of the words we’re listening for.
Again you’re listening for words that tell the company’s story and help differentiate it from others in the industry. You’re listening for words that will help this business sell more of whatever it is they’re selling. You’ll have to listen between the questions and you might have to jot down some words you come up with as you get to know your client and his or her business.
From a Few Words a Concept Grows
If you’ve been listening, I mean really listening, you should be able to write down a handful of descriptive words. Maybe it’s a half dozen or a dozen. Even two or three is fine. Look through these words and try to pull out some themes. Find some commonality between them Look for relationships between words.
For example young and dynamic fit together. They give us something to work with. I took the word young and typed it into an online dictionary looking for synonyms. Here are a few that were returned.
blooming
blossoming
inexperienced
undeveloped
undisciplined
unfinished
recent
fresh
raw
Clearly not all words we’d want to incorporate in a design associated with a business. Undisciplined and inexperienced are probably not messages we want to communicate. On the other hand unfinished might not be as negative as it first comes across. Perhaps it suggests a design direction that’s hand drawn and illustrated. Both fit with young and dynamic. Maybe raw means elements that fall off the grid instead of rigidly adhering to it.
I also found the following in the same dictionary search.
to be young is to be immature or not old; to be youthful is having the attractive qualities of a young person
Hmm? youthful. Let’s see where that leads us.
active
enthusiastic
vigorous
full of life
buoyant
Better words than what we found for young. Active suggests angled instead of horizontal lines. Perhaps some imagery to express movement? Gradients over solid colors? These words also suggest a more primary color palette and again maybe hand drawn lines with rough edges as opposed to thin precision like and perfectly ordered lines.
These are ideas that are coming to me as I write this. It’s what the words above are suggesting to me. They might suggest something different to you and that’s fine. It’s why you and I won’t come up with the same design solution to the same design problem.
It’s also why you’ll probably never know with 100% certainty that you nailed a concept and have created the perfect context. There can be so many right answers. It’s hard to know one is the absolute best.
The point is to collect some words, find some common themes, and think about how these words might be communicated graphically.
Ultimately the words you were listening for were trying to help you understand your client and your client’s story. These are things you want to communicate to anyone visiting the site. The words will probably end up in the copy, but you can do more. The more unified the visuals are with the words, the more the message will be communicated and the more it will resonate with visitors.
Concept, Atmosphere, and Context
There’s certainly more to designing a website than creating the atmosphere that sets the context. There’s organizing the information and helping visitors find it. There’s making sure the content can be read. There’s creating a hierarchy so the most important information stands out.
The point is to collect some words, find some common themes, and think about how these words might be communicated graphically.
And there’s also creating an atmosphere and setting a context for how everything will be interpreted. The concept you come up with and especially how unified your design is under that concept will set the atmosphere and context for the site.
Visitors to the site will see the whole of your design. They’ll instantly form impressions from the colors used, the imagery they see, the organization of elements. They won’t consciously write down a list of words describing what your design makes them feel or what message they associate with the visuals. It will happen internally on a subconscious level instead.
In designing you went in the opposite direction. You started with the message; the words the client used to describe the site and business. You generated a list of related words to communicate this message. You then let those words lead you to imagery and colors that made you think of those words.
You do this consciously. Your visitor works the opposite direction unconsciously. Ideally you both have the same endpoints, leading your client to think about the site and business the way your client described it and you understood it. You want your client to see those hand drawn lines as energetic, youthful, and dynamic and then associate those words with your client’s business.
You don’t need to start from highly specific words. The vague words you might start with lead you to more specific concrete words that evoke visuals you incorporate into the site. The words you choose and the visuals they lead you to are part of the process.
Summary
The words clients use to describe what they want in a design may not alway be very specific and lead you instantly to a design, but they will lead you there if you work with them and let them lead you.
Start by actively listening. Understand to your client’s story. What is his or her business really about and how does it stand out from the competition. Add your own words to your list as you understand what your client should communicate to achieve their goals.
Expand the list of words you’ve written. Find common themes in them. Seek out more concrete synonyms that fit the theme. Where do these words lead you. What visuals do they get you to see?
Your goal isn’t to graphically design an exact set of words. It’s to create a path between your client’s story and what visitors see and experience. You aren’t trying to literally communicate the word dynamic. You’re trying to create an atmosphere and context that suggest the characteristics of dynamic in a way that helps the company tell its story and achieve it’s goals.
