You may not think about it often, but tables are meant to be read. In this excerpt from Chapter 2 of his book, Web Typography, Richard Rutter explains how typography can improve the UX of our rows and columns.
Topic: Design
The Story of CSS Grid, from Its Creators
Designers have used grids for centuries. And after more than 20 years of waiting, they are finally here for the browser. This is the story of CSS Grid. It took a lot of people in the right place and at the right time to make it happen.
Web Typography: Numerals
In this excerpt from Chapter 2 of Richard Rutter’s Web Typography, he explains the importance of proper numeral usage in our work, including when you should and shouldn’t use “old-style” numerals.
Using Webfonts
Using webfonts begins with a simple CSS declaration, but creating usable font stacks and fallbacks is not as simple as it might sound. Bram Stein sets us up for success in an exclusive excerpt from Chapter 2 of his spanking new Webfont Handbook, available now from A Book Apart.
User Interfaces for Variable Fonts
The tools we design with have a unique effect on the way we work, constraining and empowering us while we explore, examine and create. Variable fonts give us a new, wide open typographic space with which to work. Instead of prescribing value to individual UI elements in a vacuum, we should take a hybrid and calculated approach to variable font interfaces. How do we structure our design tools to adapt to the new advantages variable fonts provide us with?
Practical CSS Grid: Adding Grid to an Existing Design
CSS Grid is here—and easier than you might expect. Eric Meyer shows us how to use Grid on an existing design without breaking things for non-grid browsers. With pictures! Also a couple of gotchas.
Long-Term Design: Rewriting the Design Sales Pitch
Hyping the latest, greatest, flashiest design options may be fun and attention-grabbing, but it doesn’t always serve your bottom line. Author Jarrod Drysdale says instead of constantly pitching new products to new customers, consider standing behind your original great designs and pitch ongoing support and design evolution to your existing clients.
I Don’t Need Help
People assume help will be there when they need it. They don’t want to wait and they don’t want to have to ask. As Neha Singh explains, designers must accept these basic human traits and develop sites accordingly. There’s no design so intuitive that it doesn’t need a help function, and there’s no complex help app so engaging that it will hold user interest.
Gaming the System…and Winning
Go ahead. Game it up. Set that corporate website abuzz with rewards and badges and magic codes. Just don’t be surprised, says user interface specialist Graham Herrli, when the site’s primary users balk at your efforts. Before incorporating cool, hip game elements, he says, it’s important to know your target. Who are they? What are their time constraints? What motivates them?
A Dao of Product Design
What the world needs now is not more emotionally fragile, harried, and uncertain people. Deeply consider the potential effect your product has on users, and how that effect can cause ripples in society. Faruk Ateş urges us to make sure our user experience fosters civility and emotional well-being, because our products don’t exist in a vacuum.
