From its inception, Google's search interface has been praised for its simplicity. However, simplicity is not a replacement for clarity, which is the most important attribute of a user interface. I don't know if I've ever misunderstood a user interface control as much as I misunderstood Google's I'm Feeling Lucky button.
This article explains how to zoom and center a Leaflet JavaScript map on a single marker.
In this article, I'll explain how to implement the structure and lifecycle of control and layer plugins for the Leaflet JavaScript mapping library.
This article explains how to use D3 to perform a set of tasks asynchronously and wait until those tasks have been completed before performing another task.
Downloading a web page can produce many HTTP requests. An HTTP request is made for the HTML of the web page itself and a subsequent request is made for each image, audio clip, and other multimedia content referenced in the HTML. This article describes a method of packaging multiple HTTP requests into a single request to reduce Internet traffic. The trade-off is that web servers that service multiple HTTP request packages must package the requested content before delivery to web browsers which must then unpack the content.
When headings marked-up with the h1, h2, ... h6 HTML tags are too long to fit on a single line, web browsers wrap the trailing words onto the next line. When the second line of the heading contains two or more words, this layout looks fine. However, when the second line contains just a single word, this layout is ugly-to my eye at least.
As hyperlink-style web interfaces become more common in desktop applications, developers must take care not to throw away the familiar semantics of GUI controls such as buttons. This article provides an example from Firefox where replacing buttons with hyperlinks removes the perceived safety net of cancellable operations.
This articles introduces a Ruby plugin I developed to embed responsive YouTube videos in Jekyll static websites using Bootstrap. Responsive videos automatically adjust their dimensions to fit the HTML element in which they are embedded, even when the size of that element changes, while always maintaining their aspect ratio.
Web pages can be viewed at different levels of detail depending on how much information is required. This article describes six levels of detail and explains how they can be used to implement three browser enhancements: enhanced link tool tips, navigation maps, and pre-emptive page downloading.
Users often experience a delay between clicking on a link to request a web page and the presentation of the page in the browser. This article describes web page pre-emption, a browser-based method of decreasing the download delays perceived by users, and presents five strategies for selecting which pages to pre-emptively download.