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Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

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Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#41

Post by straws »

Havoc wrote: post #34

When looking at a random website I expect to know roughly what I'm looking at within 20 seconds - max. Ideally 5 if not text heavy. >shared set of tools [...] government websites That is exactly what I wanted to know. Pity thats hidden on page 3 and I had to read credits & something about some Joanne's problems first. The narrative story flow is fine...but you've got to give something solid up front. e.g. Do the star…

That's a bit unfair — you're talking about an expository and introductory Medium post. Compare that to the first sentence of the guide itself:

  Open source UI components and visual style guide to create consistency and
  beautiful user experiences across U.S. federal government websites.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#42

Post by tracker1 »

rakk wrote: post #36
ksml wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this recommendation, even for those not using Ruby! The Sass compiler is written in Ruby but that doesn't mean you have to know Ruby to use Sass.

If you can do without the latest of the latest in Sass I highly recommend using a libsass implementation. So much faster than the Ruby version! OT: I also like that they've used a BEM-like approach, although I personally prefer a double underscore as separator between elements.

I've been using node-sass (libsass wrapper) recently, which hasn't been too bad compared to less (which is native to node/js). Seems to be working fine with bootstrap-sass, and surprisingly fast, compared to less, so I imaging the ruby sass implementation would be similarly slow by comparison.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#44

Post by chuckgreenman »

mattchue wrote: post #33

Doesn't this make it incredibly easy for phishing websites to be created? I suppose such websites would exist anyway, but this would certainly diminish a user's ability to differentiate between a legitimate .gov or another page with malicious intent at a glance.

That was my thought at first glance too, however it is already really easy to just download a sites assets and make a mock up.

Sometimes you just have to trust that people are going to pay attention before submitting sensitive information on the net.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#46

Post by chuckgreenman »

I really like this, but as someone who recently went through the federal loans process I know that the interface isn't the only thing holding back our government's web presence. Can we adopt a standard work flow? Something that behaves as expected when you submit forms?

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#47

Post by tracker1 »

Numberwang wrote: post #11

I really like the look of this and think it is a great initiative. Especially as I am the only human on earth who don't love Material Design more than my own mother.

I think that material design works well for applications in particular... a lot of the time too much is shoveled into applications without a concern for information overload, material design enforces this to some extent.

That said, even looking a step back towards, for example twitter bootstrap, it's about keeping things clean and orderly. One of the examples I appreciated was the password prompt, too often what is allowed in a password isn't clear, and to be honest, I'm almost in favor of allowing pretty much anything, I wish people would use "passphrase" instead of "password" and encourage multi-word phrases, even a full sentence. "Fear is the mind k1ll3r." for example.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#48

Post by STRML »

rakk wrote: post #36
ksml wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this recommendation, even for those not using Ruby! The Sass compiler is written in Ruby but that doesn't mean you have to know Ruby to use Sass.

If you can do without the latest of the latest in Sass I highly recommend using a libsass implementation. So much faster than the Ruby version! OT: I also like that they've used a BEM-like approach, although I personally prefer a double underscore as separator between elements.

Libsass is night & day vs Ruby Sass. No problems using libsass with Bourbon, Bourbon thankfully stays away from the bleeding-edge features (many of which can be emulated with clever functions).

In a previous project, we saw Sass compiles go from ~15s to about 400ms by moving to libsass. Completely changes the development cycle (with HMR or livereload) as you see changes immediately.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#49

Post by benaiah »

tptacek wrote: post #21
benaiah wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "POA" heading is misaligned. You can tell they used table-less design - things don't line up right. Um, that's not the case. Those look like table tags, as they should be (it's a table). The only problem is that that column header is left-aligned, not right-aligned like the rows are. Most of your complaints are bullshit, frankly, and the rest are about interaction design/UX, not visual design, which is all that…

This would have been a great comment without the word "bullshit", which made the whole thing read needlessly venomous.

Re-reading this a couple hours later, I agree. I responded to needless negativity with more needless negativity. Guess my IRC habits have been leaking into my other hobbies. I'd edit it, but it's been too long since it was posted.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#50

Post by tptacek »

benaiah wrote: post #49
tptacek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would have been a great comment without the word "bullshit", which made the whole thing read needlessly venomous.

Re-reading this a couple hours later, I agree. I responded to needless negativity with more needless negativity. Guess my IRC habits have been leaking into my other hobbies. I'd edit it, but it's been too long since it was posted.

I'm sure I bring that habit here way way more than you do! Thanks for being cool about it.
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