The Golden Pattern for Handling Touch Input
If you’re writing JavaScript handlers for touchscreen input, don’t forget other users too. In my opinion, this is the golden pattern today: ...
Read more ▸![[mugshot]](/media/img/me-cropped.jpg "Some things can't be unseen.")
Oh, hello there. My name is Stu.
I'm a web developer and general technology enthusiast from the UK, currently living in London and working as a Senior Developer for Potato.
Blog Posts
“Mobile” Is Meaningless
I’m finding the use of the word “mobile” less and less helpful within web circles. The word “mobile” is an adjective. But it’s increasingly being used as a noun. Every day I hear phrases like, “Tables suck on mobile,” or “When dealing with mobile, you should…”. On mobile what? When dealing with ...
Read more ▸Don’t Squash Me: Using min-width on Fluid Images
It‘s pretty common to set max-width: 100% on images in fluid layouts, so that they adapt to fit their container: ...
Read more ▸Progressive Enhancement != "No JavaScript"
So Nicholas Zakas recently gave this presentation, explaining why he thinks we rely too heavily on JavaScript nowadays. Jake Archibald followed up with this article, giving more reasons why relying on JS can be bad. I agree with every word that both of them have said: HTML and the DOM should ...
Read more ▸Using WebP with Modernizr
WebP is a new image format from the clever people over at Google. The lossy variant is 25-34% smaller than JPEG, while the lossless variant is typically 26% smaller than PNG. It's already supported in Chrome and Opera (both desktop and mobile), and the native Android browser. There's a strong argument ...
Read more ▸Client-Side vs Server-Side Detection for WebP
At time of writing, the highly efficient WebP image format is only supported by Chrome and Opera. The chances are you still want users of other browsers to see your images, so you'll need to detect support and provide a fallback for those lacking. ...
Read more ▸You Can't Detect A Touchscreen
Update: I somehow neglected to mention Modernizr.touch, which actually uses the 'Touch APIs' method below. Modernizr no longer claims to detect touch devices – see this discussion. ...
Read more ▸A UX For Developers
I wrote an article for The Nitty Gritty (TNG), a blog founded by Hans Christian Reinl and Kahlil Lechelt to present interesting thoughts and ideas about web technology. I met Kahlil in Texas when I was out there earlier this year. Top bloke. My article's about how we can think more ...
Read more ▸The Good & Bad of Level 4 Media Queries
This article discusses a bleeding edge browser feature in a state of flux, with pretty much non-existent browser support — beware! CSS3 introduced media queries: the ability to make styling decisions based on features of the media a web page is being served on. The most popular of these were width ...
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