Tag: user interfaces

The deepest reason why modern JavaScript frameworks exist

“The deepest reason why modern JavaScript frameworks exist” is a nice article looking at the crazy world of JavaScript frameworks and exploring why things are how they are.  The conclusions from the article are:

  • The main problem modern JavaScript frameworks solve is keeping the UI in sync with the state.
  • It is not possible to write complex, efficient and easy to maintain UIs with Vanilla JavaScript.
  • Web components do not provide a solution to this problem.
  • It’s not that hard to make your own framework using an existing Virtual DOM library. But I’m not suggesting you to do that!

Read the whole thing for some examples and explanations.

A Comprehensive Guide To Web Design

“A Comprehensive Guide To Web Design” is a rather lengthy article that focuses on the non-technical bits of the web design.  It’s not about the tools and technologies, but more about the meaning and good practices.  The article covers the design of navigation, content, call to action, web forms, accessibility, and other important bits which are frequently forgotten.

Top 10: Best Tour (website guide) Javascript and jQuery plugins

As I always, I was just looking for one, but found a whole top 10 … Top 10: Best Tour (website guide) Javascript and jQuery plugins.  Any other recommendations or comments?

micron.js – a micro-interaction CSS/JavaScript library

micron.js:

a [μ] microInteraction library built with CSS Animations and controlled by JavaScript Power

It won’t change your life, but it will help with adding a little human touch to your web application.

UI Museum: Turbo Pascal 7.1

Ilya Birman continues his (now) series of the historical user interfaces with the post “UI Museum: Turbo Pascal 7.1“. (I’ve linked previously to his post about Norton Commander).

Turbo Pascal wasn’t my first programming language (some variation of BASIC was), but I’ve spent countless hours coding in Turbo Pascal, both for my studies and outside.

It’s interesting to see how different and, at the same time, similar those interfaces of the past are to those of today.  Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) have gone a long way, but their basic principles, as well as some shortcuts and UI elements, are very similar to the 30-old tools.

One thing that I find in common with Ilya’s comments is that the teachers didn’t know or cover all the options.  The information was scarce and Google wasn’t around.  For many, there was also a language barrier, rendering even the available documentation useless.

Oh, good old times!