Links from the Web community, curated by Sara Soueidan

A short and to-the-point post by Mr. Bruce on why the HTML Document Outline algorithm has (finally) been officially removed from the specification.

If you’ve been relying on the HTML Document Outline Algorithm in your work, the truth about why it has been removed may indeed shock you.

I also recommend reading Adrian’s post on the subject for more details.

Success Criterion 6.1.1 Give a Shit (Level A): For the love of God and all that is Holy, get over yourself, stop dragging your heels and make the shit you create accessible. And seriously: actually frickin’ care about it as well. Don’t make me come over there!

I kinda wish this Success Criterion were real.

Develop your designs quickly using sketches, wireframes or prototypes and share early and often. Share with your team and, even better, with the people you are designing for. Resist the temptation to dive straight in with a high fidelity design, that takes hours to make. Avoid giving your ego the time to think it’s right and that this design is “the one”. Listen carefully, accept critique, and be willing to be proven wrong by default. This will result in faster iterations towards a better design.

The best growth hack is still to build something people enjoy, then attaching no strings to it. You’d be surprised how far that can get you.

Use progressive enhancement.

What Jim said.

the <form> element was a pivot point for the entire technology industry. It is what changed the web from a read-only medium for physics papers into a read-write medium for anything. But lately I’m not so sure I think that was a good idea. […] What forms enable are transactions. Transactions of all kinds—commercial or social—can be consolidated into platforms, and platforms are where you find your margins. And margins are what yield your fortune, and that’s how you get power.

I had never considered how CSS Grid and Flexbox compare from a performance standpoint. This is insightful.

All browsers add an 8px margin on the body element – it’s part of the w3c-recommended default stylesheet which browsers generally use as a starting point for their own ‘user agent’ styles. But why 8px? Where does that come from?

I really enjoyed reading Mia’s article. The article starts by explaining the difference between initial values in CSS and browser default styles. I had an ah-ha moment that’s going to finally help me remember the difference between the initial and revert values for good!

I’d like to share some of the things online that drain my spoons to help you go beyond WCAG today. For the sake of this scenario, I’ll include how many spoons I can expect to lose when I encounter these blockers. Let’s say that I start my day with twenty spoons.

I haven’t been able to get this article out of my head since I read it. Learning about people’s experiences fundamentally changes how you think about creating for the Web. In the end, you either care; or you don’t.

A design system is a library of styles, components, and patterns used by product teams to consistently and efficiently launch new pages and features. A good system has accessibility embedded throughout and includes documentation, guidelines and implementation notes for accessibility.

Accessibility in design systems goes beyond code:

Design systems vary, but an accessible design system can include style guides, components, patterns, and accessibility documentation.

If the acronym is used once, simply using the words is usually the right approach. […] When an acronym is used multiple times, though, it’s likely it’s being used for practical reasons rather than tone of voice. Reading can be clunky if the words are written in full each time, so all we have to do is define it the first time it’s used on each page; from there on in it can be used freely.

After I tweeted this article on Twitter, Tomas shared a letter by Elon Musk to SpaceX engineers about the same topic.

Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees.

Just use the words.