robinwhittleton

@robinwhittleton@mastodon.social

Lead Software Engineer at IKEA (focusing on design systems, accessibility), ex GOV.UK. Opinions my own (or at least not IKEA’s). 🇸🇪🇬🇧🇪🇺 #designSystems #accessibility #standardEbooks

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joelanman, to random
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

What's your favourite music video?

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman Björk’s Hunter has got to be up there.

robinwhittleton, to random

First conference talk in Sweden in Swedish now agreed; feels like public speaking is a pretty big milestone. I’ve asked for Q&A to be in English though 😅

I’ve definitely plateaued with Swedish comprehension to be honest. Really should start an evening class again.

erikKroes, (edited ) to random
@erikKroes@mastodon.social avatar

You're on a website. You can answer some questions to avoid printing/signing/scanning a document, which is nice.

You get a question with a checkbox. What part do you think is interactive/clickable?

(img in reply)

robinwhittleton,

@erikKroes we tried the big-grey-box approach on gov.uk, but it still wasn’t enough to get people to not try to click the actual checkbox in research. That’s the main reason we went with a custom checkbox in the end. https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/30/weve-updated-the-radios-and-checkboxes-on-gov-uk/

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman @FeralRobots @erikKroes yeah, exactly. Regardless of hints, a group of people would always try to click the checkbox, and many of those people had visual or motor disabilities that made it difficult. So rather than pile more and more hints into the component that the whole area is clickable, better to just make the object they’re going to try to click anyway bigger.

joelanman, to retrogaming
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

People don't talk about Descent much, but it came out before Quake, fully 3D, great game

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman I swear that Descent seriously boosted my ability to do the spatial reasoning rotate-this-3d-shape tests that companies in Sweden like to throw at you during interviews.

sarajw, to random
@sarajw@front-end.social avatar

This may be the first time I've seen solid criticism of the outcome of mobile-first design:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-dispersion/

It explains very eloquently and with user research how I've been feeling about some of these sites for a good while now.

There are benefits too. It's nice when web design has space to breathe. But there is also a limit to the benefit of all that negative space.

robinwhittleton,

@sarajw @joelanman before they looked good on desktop and awful on mobile. If we have to pick awful-on-something, then it might as well be desktop as there are less users there. But we can and should spend the effort for both.

joelanman, to random
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

has now gone from 'zombie notification that won't go away' to a badge that says '-1' notifications. Stellar stuff

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman I emailed them when that happened and they manually fixed it through some reset at their end.

joelanman, to random
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

Haven't seen Moon for a while. What would you like to rewatch?

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman keep on meaning to pull out Tekkonkinkreet again.

sarajw, to webdev
@sarajw@front-end.social avatar

My dudes, dudx and dudettes we really need to figure out smartphone font sizes.

I'm only a little bit old and I've only popped my android phone system font up by one level, but it messes up so many links and buttons all over the web.

What is happening? Why is this so broken?

robinwhittleton,

@sarajw this study of app users in NL found that ~36% of mobile users bumped their system font size: https://appt.org/en

robinwhittleton,

@sarajw I’d hazard a guess that internationalised sites do better at this, purely because you can never tell the eventual length of a translation. I’ve certainly had my fair share of battles to stop designers adding artful limits to text runs, as you’ll never know what context you’ll be eliding in a multilingual system.

joelanman, to random
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

New MacBook Pros are surprisingly chunky

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman all new Apple stuff is, post-Ive. Airs are thicker, iPhones are thicker, Watches are thicker and have chunky variants. I can’t think of anything that’s become thinner.

voxpelli, to random
@voxpelli@mastodon.social avatar

The iPhone Mini was the best modern iPhone there is. But apparently bigger is always better in the US and if it does sell in the US it’s an irrelevant device 🥲 https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23868428/iphone-13-mini-lineup-discontinued-apple-event

robinwhittleton,

@voxpelli good news is that Apple does battery replacements and 7-8 years’ support so my 12 Mini is set for ages.

sarajw, to EyeHealth
@sarajw@front-end.social avatar

Has anyone got, seen, or can make up mock-ups of how points of light (or... very bright text on a dark background) can look to someone who suffers halos with astigmatism?

If yes to any of the above, may I use them in a talk?

Thank yooouuuu in advance!

robinwhittleton,

@janl @sarajw yep, that’s broadly my experience too, although the lines aren’t quite as long as that picture and I also get a more diffuse glow around the light itself as well as the spikes.

robinwhittleton,

@sarajw @sbourne @janl of course

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority have a brief report about what caused all the flight cancellations the other day:

https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/NERL%20Major%20Incident%20Investigation%20Preliminary%20Report.pdf (440KB PDF)

A few interesting thoughts about their findings…

The major cause was:

> The plan included two waypoints along its route that were geographically distinct but which have the same designator.

I don't know enough about ICAO4444 / ADEXP to be sure, but it sounds like an understandable, albeit avoidable, error.

(1/n)

robinwhittleton,

@Edent you wonder if anyone’s pointed AFL or another fuzzer at a test instance…

joelanman, (edited ) to random
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

anyone know how to unsubscribe from LinkedIn emails? Neither their unsubscribe link nor their guide to unsubscribing works

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman not that I’ve ever had an account, but I got fed up with the “X wants to connect with you” mails and the unsubscribe that worked for precisely one month at a time. So I emailed them and told them that I’d take them to small claims under spam legislation for each further email I received from them. I’m now on some sort of internal blocklist 😊

robinwhittleton, to accessibility

In a discussion about CAPTCHAs and accessibility, hCAPTCHA was put forwards as a solution. The good news: they forgo an audio experience (good! I’ve literally never been able to solve one) in lieu of signing up with an email address for a bypass cookie. Unfortunately this brings its own set of problems.

(1/3)

robinwhittleton,

First is that you now need to submit personal data to a US organisation. Technically this is now legal under the Data Privacy Framework, but I guess you’d have to fall back on “legitimate interest” under GDPR and that requires an opt-out that there’s no way to give.

(2/3)

robinwhittleton,

The more problematic part is that third-party cookies aren’t allowed in modern browsers. So Cloudflare’s solution is to get users who require this accessibility workaround to disable this security measure globally. I don’t think that’s acceptable behaviour, honestly. (See “Browser Instructions for Cross-Site Cookies” on https://www.hcaptcha.com/accessibility.)

So I’d recommend against hCAPTCHA as much as I do ReCAPTCHA. And all CAPTCHAs.

(3/3)

joelanman, to VideoGames
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

what are your favourite games with dynamic scenery destruction? I have a soft spot for original XCOM, Red Faction, Battlefield

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman does Dwarf Fortress count?

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman just watch streamers to be honest, although I bought the Stream release in anticipation of Mac compatibility.

chriscoyier, to random
@chriscoyier@front-end.social avatar

This chart about CSS' content-visibility is my favorite. Every year, less and less people have even heard of it. Kinda like me.

https://2023.stateofcss.com/en-US/features/layout/#content_visibility

robinwhittleton,

@chriscoyier it always seemed like Chrome trying to get web developers to work around Blink’s limitations to me 🤷‍♂️

joelanman, to random
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

Crazy Taxi, Death Stranding, I love delivery games

robinwhittleton,

@joelanman always wanted to play Emergency Call Ambulance on the same lines, but I never found a cabinet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Call_Ambulance

Edent, to maps
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

South Up Equal Earth Projection in R

Yup - I'm still banging on about this! This time, in R

Result

The colours are wrong, and the labels need adjustment - but not bad for a few lines of code!

Code

library(tidyverse)
library(rnaturalearth)
library(rnaturalearthdata)
library(sf)

centre

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/07/south-up-equal-earth-projection-in-r/

#/etc/

robinwhittleton,

@Edent https://cairosvg.org/ might be worth a shot?

robinwhittleton,

@Edent ah right, yeah I use it with base64ed data URLs for embedded raster images.

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