3 ms·

What a odd one to single out and complain about it.

chrismorgan 4y ago
Seems very reasonable to me. The advice is very dubious, but presented as absolute truth with no nuance. That’s bad, and, applying it more generally, if there’s one thing from the first row of tips that’s bad, it’s unlikely to be the only one. This sort of thing reduces confidence. I can also say from looking through a number of others that they often lack nuance, and present a solution to a possible problem, without contemplating why that problem arose, and whether the solution is actually the right solution. (e.g. image distortion and background repeat are both a bit weird when you think about them, and the solutions offered are blunt and often not very good with no suggestion on how they could be improved. And flexbox wrapping basically assumes that horizontal scrolling is bad and needs to be fixed, which it isn’t always, but somehow also misattributes the scrolling in the diagram, making it seem as though it’s the flex container that’s scrolling, when in fact it’s just overflowing and causing its parent scroll area, probably the document scroll area, to have a scrollbar, and that is more likely to be problematic if not managed deliberately; but it also completely neglects to mention the more likely problem with flex overflow, which is your items not triggering overflow, but instead being squished narrower than intended, and that is the thing that would actually be worth while describing the solution for—flex-basis and flex-shrink.)
isleyaardvark 4y ago
"Not making content inaccessible" is one of most fundamental principles of front-end work. The famous "CSS is awesome" coffee mug shows the correct default when something is not working like expected: the content is still visible. Defensive CSS should be intended to fail gracefully, and clipping it doesn't do that. (i.e. when it breaks it'll look bad but the content should still be available.) I read this bit and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills: >In some scenarios, we might need to truncate a text that isn't important for the user, or doesn't affect the user experience. If that's the case, then what is the text even for? This is a text based medium, the text is the content, it's the reason the user is here, they're not here to admire the consistent vertical layout. The priorities are entirely backwards.
- wnevets 4y ago
  I disagree. If I'm reading a list of names like in a contacts app (e.g the example), I find it much easier and a better experience to skim entries if they have equal height and spacing. Having the trailing characters of a long last name being replaced with ellipsis is completely worth it to get the speed of skimming the list. If I actually need to interact with the person that has the long name I'm going to click their entry and get their full details anyway.

Seems very reasonable to me. The advice is very dubious, but presented as absolute truth with no nuance. That’s bad, and, applying it more generally, if there’s one thing from the first row of tips that’s bad, it’s unlikely to be the only one. This sort of thing reduces confidence. I can also say from looking through a number of others that they often lack nuance, and present a solution to a possible problem, without contemplating why that problem arose, and whether the solution is actually the right solution. (e.g. image distortion and background repeat are both a bit weird when you think about them, and the solutions offered are blunt and often not very good with no suggestion on how they could be improved. And flexbox wrapping basically assumes that horizontal scrolling is bad and needs to be fixed, which it isn’t always, but somehow also misattributes the scrolling in the diagram, making it seem as though it’s the flex container that’s scrolling, when in fact it’s just overflowing and causing its parent scroll area, probably the document scroll area, to have a scrollbar, and that is more likely to be problematic if not managed deliberately; but it also completely neglects to mention the more likely problem with flex overflow, which is your items not triggering overflow, but instead being squished narrower than intended, and that is the thing that would actually be worth while describing the solution for—flex-basis and flex-shrink.)

isleyaardvark 4y ago

"Not making content inaccessible" is one of most fundamental principles of front-end work. The famous "CSS is awesome" coffee mug shows the correct default when something is not working like expected: the content is still visible. Defensive CSS should be intended to fail gracefully, and clipping it doesn't do that. (i.e. when it breaks it'll look bad but the content should still be available.) I read this bit and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills: >In some scenarios, we might need to truncate a text that isn't important for the user, or doesn't affect the user experience. If that's the case, then what is the text even for? This is a text based medium, the text is the content, it's the reason the user is here, they're not here to admire the consistent vertical layout. The priorities are entirely backwards.

wnevets 4y ago
I disagree. If I'm reading a list of names like in a contacts app (e.g the example), I find it much easier and a better experience to skim entries if they have equal height and spacing. Having the trailing characters of a long last name being replaced with ellipsis is completely worth it to get the speed of skimming the list. If I actually need to interact with the person that has the long name I'm going to click their entry and get their full details anyway.