Respect your guests
We’ve come a long way with website design and development. The landscape of the frontend has change dramatically during 2010-2019. Some of it has been great, but not all of it.
More than likely you have seen people touting on twitter about current Javascript framework of the day and how great it is at doing χ and does away with γ problems from yesterday. Likewise, you have probably also seen people touting going back to the old ways of HTML, CSS, and little-to-no Javascript.
There is a middle ground, web development has never been about extremes. Use your tools, and favourite frameworks all you want, you don’t have to change that. But, consider the guests on your website (or app).
These are the people who you need to respect, you need to cater too, and who you want to come back.
You know that every guest on your site is different from the last.
- Maybe this one has poor eyesight, or none at all.
- They could have an older computer with less than average hardware.
- It might be that viewing on your website using a feature-phone.
In any situation, prioritize your guest’s needs before your own.
When reaching your choice framework, ask yourself
- Will this impair or hinder my guests using this site?
- Does it support their accessibility needs?
- Does it respect their device, what about their bandwidth?
- What about their media display preference? Light or Dark to match their device. What about printed out?
- Does it have keyboard support?
The last point “keyboard support” is hugely impacting to guests who have trouble using a mouse due to any number of reasons. The depressing part about modern frontend frameworks, is keyboard support is usually a second class citizen, or not considered at all. When using that fancy, heavily customizable text input component from Github, look to see if it does everything the native browser object does.
If it does, use it, love it, your guests will like it too. If it doesn’t, look around for something else that does. Or reach back into the past, figure out how it was done before without a framework. Look to to projects like The A11Y Project
And in the end,
Don’t sacrifice your guests experience for anything.