"When you represent the date as a numeric value or label, use MM-DD-YYYY."
possibly the dumbest date format known to man. ISO 8601 for time format is eschewed, but they do go on to make a gesture towards internationalisation with:
"Use a currency's ISO three-digit numeric code when writing for computerized systems or for countries that don't use Latin scripts."
For all their talk about accessibility they go out of their way to make basic input as inaccessible as possible.
Remember how Google needed a user study with 600 people to arrive at common sense conclusion that text input has to look like text input? (And sti failed to make it be that) Yeah
You reminded me of all those Google Form inputs that only have a single line but expecting me to fill in more than a short sentence. It’s even more frustrating on mobile (Safari, iOS) that I can’t move the cursor anywhere
Modern "designers" hate that input boxes are just that: visually recognizable accessible input boxes. They go out of their way to make it anything but an easily recognizable input box.
"Oh, why don't we make it just a white field on a white background with just an underlines and perhaps invisible light gray borders. And for disabled state we'll make it an unreadable gray on gray"
You see it everywhere. That 600 people study that Google did for Material Design? It's infuriating, through and through: "Enclosed text fields with a rectangular (box) shape performed better than those with a line affordance" https://medium.com/google-design/the-evolution-of-material-d...
If contrast is an issue to you, check out accessibility options or monitor settings. Maximizing contrast everywhere usually sacrifices readability elsewhere. (Almost like everything in design is a trade-off.)
Gov.uk is a government site that has to accessible to absolutely everyone, including tech-illiterate users. It also has a comparatively low density.
If a design was chosen to work best for the majority of users but it doesn't work for you, then accessibility settings can help to accommodate you.
I think the "Increase Contrast" setting on MacOS does exactly what you want. The one in Windows 11 also seems quite decent. Maybe if you try it out, you'll realize why it isn't the default.
> how is [the uncompromising accessibility of Gov.uk] a bad thing?
It only works because of it's low density. There's very little consideration for hierarchy or depth.
My own issue with these is that they handle excessive input by horizontal scrolling, which can only be considered a solution by someone who prioritizes the consistency/alignment of their layout over usability (a truly villainous prioritization)
Since it isn't clearly mentioned on the site: PatternFly is founded by RedHat (now part of IBM) and serves as a foundation for https://ux.redhat.com/.
Formerly PatternFly was rather RedHat specific but it looks like they've spin-off the RedHat parts and made PatternFly general purpose (which is great ofcourse).
IIRC, Patternfly started many years ago, because many open source project (of Red Hat interest), had inconsistent ui. The idea was to develop a common guideline that other open source projects could use and be somewhat consistent with each other. To have a framework, artwork and guidelines that would be available on permissive terms forever.
I love when companies open source their design systems like this. It’s great for learning how to build consistent design language, like picking colors and such.
What are other similar UI component libraries, that have "enterprise" oriented components, like data tables and decent accessibility? Being JS framework agnostic (web components) is a pro too.
Taber is probably the only UI framework that has tables and such: https://preview.tabler.io/ It's not too easy to work with because you need to learn its idosyncrasies and classes etc., but design-wise it's very decent.
No one should ever recommend Material Design for anything.
In their original iteration they had to do a study with 600 people to find out that text inputs should look like text inputs: https://medium.com/google-design/the-evolution-of-material-d.... (Edit: and their text fields by default still don't look like text fields, you have to specifically set them to `outlined`)
Sorry if I may seem ignorant, but how is this different from Storybook? Is one a finished design system, and the latter one just a tool do document your design system?
PatternFly is a UI lib with premade components that you can use to build your app with. Storybook is used to showcase your app's UI and people often use it to showcase their own design systems
"When you represent the date as a numeric value or label, use MM-DD-YYYY."
possibly the dumbest date format known to man. ISO 8601 for time format is eschewed, but they do go on to make a gesture towards internationalisation with:
"Use a currency's ISO three-digit numeric code when writing for computerized systems or for countries that don't use Latin scripts."
(That's ISO 4217 for all the standards buffs.)