On Monday Apple announced that it was bringing Webkit to the Apple Watch with WatchOS 5. This will allow users to open links from the Mail and Messages apps directly on their watches. Naturally, as web developers, we wonder how this will work with our already responsive websites. Well here’s the basics.
Mind Your Cloudfront Headers
The following is a lesson learned about CDN’s and proper use of Headers. I’m going to preface this post with a disclaimer… I am neither CDN nor an AWS expert.
What's new in web accessibility (Google I/O '18)
Chrome is adding a number of features to DevTools to make testing and debugging accessibility faster and easier.
Custom Domains on GitHub Pages Gain Support for HTTPS
On May 1st GitHub announced that custom domains on GitHub Pages are gaining support for HTTPS thanks to a partnership with (no surprise) Let’s Encrypt. As someone who has hosted custom domains on GitHub Pages, this comes as great news.
The Power of Serverless
This site has been served statically for some time now. With my recent switch to Netlify for hosting, I find “serverless” services rather fascinating. Chris Coyier recently launched The Power of Serverless for Front-End Developers which lists a number of services, ideas, and resources for front-end devs looking to get started with serverless technologies.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: it still involves servers, so that word serverless might feel a bit disingenuous. It’s actually a new way to pay for and work with servers that, in many cases, is cheaper and easier than buying and managing your own servers.
Expanding the capabilities of statically hosted sites is pretty exciting.
Progressive Web Apps on iOS Are Here
On March 29th, Apple released iOS 11.3 with Safari 11.1 which includes support for Service Workers. The addition of Service Workers and PWA features in Safari on iOS means developers will now be able to build app-like experiences that will be available to a wider audience. For instance, during the month of February, iOS accounted for 28% of all traffic on our CMS at Notre Dame.
Labels Required
Maggie Wachs of Filament Group writes about the importance of using labels from an accessibility standpoint.
Out of the box, the
labelelement is all we need to indentify fields in an accessible way. Used in combination with accessible hiding and other helper elements, likeplaceholderor icons, we can ensure that a form element’s purpose is clearly communicated to all users.
2018 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results
Stack Overflow surveyed over 100,000 developers asking how they learn, build their careers, which tools they’re using, and what they want in a job.
Google's "How to Think About Speed Tools"
As part of their Web fundamentals guide, Google has released How To Think About Speed Tools where they list common perf myths and a list of tools to help you improve the performance of your site.
The Open Graph and Sharing Tags
Jonathan Snook found some instances where you can consolidate Open Graph tags with standard meta tags, cutting down on duplication. The Open Graph and Sharing Tags on snook.ca