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'When is the party going to stop?'

'How much longer do I have?''How many more opportunities will I get?'Akshaye Khanna shares his worries




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'I have not entertained negativity in my life'

'Chhapaak is definitely the most challenging film of my career.''I have gone through many emotionally challenging experiences, but none affected me the way it did when I played an acid attack survivor.'




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'An actor is only a spare part in a car'

'The story has to be told well, it has to be marketed and presented well, and now, released well too.''Only then will the film do well.''The actor walks away with the victory credit, but we do not give enough credit to the script writers, directors and producers who put up a film that shines.'




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Blog: Can MeToo lead to a political party for and by women?




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How your smartphone became poll-savvy

On the Neta app, which describes itself as “Leaders ka report card”, users can also share their opinion in the form of video reviews and comments, tag their MLA and conduct polls, with the most active users being highlighted in a separate section called ‘star citizens’




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Novel fabric adapts to keeps you comfortable in all weathers

When conditions are warm and moist, such as those near a sweating body, the fabric allows heat to pass through. When conditions become cooler and drier, the fabric reduces the heat that escapes, researchers said.




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Concrete: microstructure, properties, and materials.

Barker Library - TA439.M364 2014




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Understanding the tensile properties of concrete / edited by Jaap Weerheijm

Barker Library - TA440.U534 2013




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Concrete and durability of concrete structures: August 11-15, 2013, Cancun, Mexico / editors, L. E. Rendon Diaz Miron, N. Ramirez Salinas, B. Martinez Sanchez

Barker Library - TA439.S96 2013




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Self-sensing concrete in smart structures / Baoguo Han, professor, School of Civil Engineering Dalian University of Technology Dalian, China, Xun Yu, associate professor, Mechanical and Energy Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton, TX. USA, Jinp

Barker Library - TA440.H26 2014




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Recent advances in concrete technology and sustainability issues: proceedings of the fourteenth international conference, Beijing, China, October-November 2018 / [edited by] Tongbo Sui, Terence C. Holland, Ziming Wang, Xiaolong Zhao

Barker Library - TA439.I584 2018




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Practices to mitigate alkali-silica reaction (ASR) affected pavements at airports / Kurt D. Smith, Thomas J. Van Dam

Barker Library - TA441.S65 2019




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The Origin of a New Progenitor Stem Cell Group in Human Development: An Immunohistochemical-, Light- and Electronmicroscopical Analysis / Hubert Wartenberg, Andreas Miething, Kjeld Møllgård

Online Resource




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Population genomics: microorganisms / Martin F. Polz, Om P. Rajora, editors

Online Resource




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The Lysenko controversy as a global phenomenon: genetics and agriculture in the Soviet Union and beyond / William deJong-Lambert, Nikolai Krementsov, editors

Hayden Library - QH429.2.L97 L975 2017




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Biodefense in the age of synthetic biology / Committee on Strategies for Identifying and Addressing Potential Biodenfense Vulnerabilities Posed by Synthetic Biology, Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology, Board on Life Sciences, Division on Earth and

Online Resource




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Advances in heart valve biomechanics: valvular physiology, mechanobiology, and bioengineering / Michael S. Sacks, Jun Liao, editors

Online Resource




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The Globe Artichoke Genome

Online Resource




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Biological innovations that built the world: a four-billion-year journey through life and earth history / Roberto Ligrone

Online Resource




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Reordering life: knowledge and control in the genomics revolution / Stephen Hilgartner

Hayden Library - QH447.H554 2017




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Inside science: stories from the field in human and animal science / Robert E. Kohler

Hayden Library - QH318.5.K64 2019




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Molecular tinkering: the Edinburgh scientists who changed the face of modern biology / Ben Martynoga

Hayden Library - QH320.G7 M37 2018




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Encyclopedia of biophysics / editors, Gordon Roberts, Anthony Watts ; European Biophysical Societies

Online Resource




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Theoretical physics for biological systems / Paola Lecca, Researcher, Department of Mathematics, University of Trento, Italy, Angela Re, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Sustainable Future Technologies CSFT@Polito, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy

Hayden Library - QH505.L397 2019




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Bioethics, public health, and the social sciences for the medical professions: an integrated, case-based approach / Amy E. Caruso Brown, Travis R. Hobart, Cynthia B. Morrow, editors

Online Resource




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Exploring sources of variability related to the clinical translation of regenerative engineering products: proceedings of a workshop / Meredith Hackmann, Theresa Wizemann, and Sarah H. Beachy, rapporteurs ; Forum on Regenerative Medicine, Board on Health

Online Resource




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Developing norms for the provision of biological laboratories in low-resource contexts: proceedings of a workshop / Frances E. Sharples and Micah D. Lowenthal, rapporteurs ; Policy and Global Affairs, Board on Life Sciences, Division on Earth and Life Stu

Online Resource




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Electrical atomic force microscopy for nanoelectronics Umberto Celano, editor

Online Resource




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SIRT6 activities in DNA damage repair and premature aging: functions of SIRT6 / Shrestha Ghosh

Online Resource




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Active particles. Nicola Bellomo, Pierre Degond, Eitan Tadmor, editors

Online Resource




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Cell migrations: causes and functions / edited by Caterina A. M. La Porta, Stefano Zapperi

Online Resource




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Trends in biomathematics: mathematical modeling for health, harvesting, and population dynamics: selected works presented at the BIOMAT Consortium Lectures, Morocco 2018 / Rubem P. Mondaini, editor

Online Resource




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The biological resources of model organisms / edited by Robert L. Jarret, Kevin McCluskey

Online Resource




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Introduction to optical microscopy / Jerome Mertz (Boston University)

Hayden Library - QH205.2.M47 2019




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Essential cell biology / Bruce Alberts [and six others]

Barker Library - QH581.2.E78 2019




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Mathematical models in developmental biology / Jerome K. Percus, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Department of Physics, New York University, Stephen Childress, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

Online Resource




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Introduction to bioinformatics / Arthur M. Lesk (The Pennsylvania State University)

Dewey Library - QH507.L47 2019




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The structure of moral revolutions: studies of changes in the morality of abortion, death, and the bioethics revolution / Robert Baker

Dewey Library - QH332.B25 2019




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Genomics data analysis: false discovery rates and empirical Bayes methods / David R. Bickel, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology, Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Dewey Library - QH438.4.S73 B53 2019




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The future of low dose radiation research in the United States: proceedings of a symposium / Ourania Kosti, rapporteur ; Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, Division on Earth and Life Studies, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine

Online Resource




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Genetics and genomics in nursing and health care / Theresa A. Beery, M. Linda Workman, Julia A. Eggert

Hayden Library - QH447.B44 2018




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The cartoon guide to biology / Larry Gonick & Dave Wessner

Dewey Library - QH309.G676 2019




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Loose ends ... false starts / Sydney Brenner

Dewey Library - QH311.B85 2019




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An Event Apart: Full-Featured Art Direction

In her Full-Featured Art Direction for the Web presentation at An Event Apart in Chicago, Mina Markham shared her approach to building Web pages that work across a variety of browsers, devices and locales. Here's my notes from her talk:

  • Full-featured art direction is progressively enhanced, localized for a particular user, yet inclusive of all visitors and locations.
  • Start with the most basic minimal viable experience for the user and move up from there. Semantic markup is your best baseline. Annotate a Web site design with HTML structure: H1, H2, H3, etc. From there, gradually add CSS to style the minimal viable experience. If everything else fails, this is what the user will see. It may be the bare minimum but it works.
  • Feature queries in CSS are supported in most browsers other than IE 11. We can use these to set styles based on what browsers support. For instance, modular font scaling allows you to update overall sizing of text in a layout. Feature Query checker allows you to see what things look like when a CSS query is not present.
  • Localization is not just text translation. Other elements in the UI, like images, may need to be adjusted as well. You can use attributes like :lang() pseudoclass to include language specific design elements in your layout.
  • Inclusive art direction ensures people can make use of our Web sites on various devices and in various locations. Don't remove default behaviors in Web browsers. Instead adjust these to better integrate with your site's design.




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An Event Apart: Content Performance Quotient

In his Beyond Engagement: the Content Performance Quotient presentation at An Event Apart in Chicago, Jeffrey Zeldman introduced a new metric for tracking how well Web sites are performing. Here's my notes from his talk:

  • The number one stakeholder request for Web sites is engagement: we need people using our services more. But is it the right metric for all these situations?
  • For some apps, engagement is clearly the right thing to measure. Think Instagram, long-form articles, or gaming sites. For others, more time spent might be a sign of customer frustration.
  • Most of the Web sites we work on are like customer service desks where we want to give people what they need and get them on their way. For these experiences, speed of usefulness should matter more than engagement.
  • Content Performance Quotient (Design CPQ) is a measure of how quickly we can get the right content to solve the customer's problem. The CPQ is a goal to iterate against and aim for the shortest distance between problem & solution. It tracks your value to the customer by measuring the speed of usefulness.
  • Pretty garbage: when a Web site looks good but doesn't help anyone. Garbage in a delightfully responsive grid is still garbage. A lot of a Web designer's job is bridging the gap between what clients say they need and what their customers actually need.
  • Marlboro's advertising company (in the 50s) rethought TV commercials by removing all the copy and focusing on conveying emotions. They went from commercials typically full of text to just ten words focused on their message.
  • Mobile is a great forcing function to re-evaluate our content. Because you can't fit everything on a small screen, you need to make decisions about what matters most.
  • Slash your architecture and shrink your content. Ask: "why do we need this?" Compare all your content to the goals you've established. Design should be intentional. Have purpose-driven design and purpose-driven content. If your design isn't going somewhere, it is going nowhere.
  • We can't always have meetings where everybody wins. We need to argue for the customer and that means not everyone in our meetings will get what they want. Purpose needs to drive our collaborations not individual agendas, which usually leak into our Web site designs.
  • It’s easy to give every stakeholder what they want. We've enabled this through Content Management Systems (CMS) that allow everyone to publish to the site. Don't take the easy way out. It’s harder to do the right thing. Harder for us, but better for the customer & bottom line.
  • Understanding the customer journey allows us to put the right content in the right place. Start with the most important interaction and build out from there. Focus on key interactions and build out from there. Sometimes the right place for your content isn't your Website -for video it could be YouTube or Vimeo.
  • Customers come to our sites with a purpose. Anything that gets in the way of that is a distraction. Constantly iterate on content to remove the cruft and surface what's needed. You can start with a content inventory to audit what is in your site, but most of this content is probably out of date and irrelevant. So being in a state of constant iteration works better.
  • When you want people to go deeper and engage, to slow down... scannability, which is good for transactions, can be bad for thoughtful content. Instead slow people down with bigger type, better typographic hierarchy, more whitespace.
  • Which sites should be slow? If the site is delivering content for the good of the general public, the presentation should enable slow, careful reading. If it’s designed to promote our business or help a customer get an answer to her question, it must be designed for speed of relevancy.




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An Event Apart: Data Basics

In her Data Basics presentation at An Event Apart in Chicago, Laura Martini walked through common issues teams face when working with data and how to get around/work with them. Here's my notes from her talk:

  • Today there's lots of data available to teams for making decisions but it can hard to know what to use and how.
  • Data tools have gotten much better and more useful. Don't underestimate yourself, you can use these tools to learn.
  • Google Analytics: The old way of looking at data is based on sessions are composed of page views and clicks with timestamps. The new way is looking at users with events. Events can be much more granular and cover more of people's behaviors than page views and clicks.
  • Different data can be stored in different systems so it can be hard to get a complete picture of what is happening across platforms and experiences. Journey maps are one way to understand traffic between apps.
  • You can do things with data that don't scale. Some visualizations can give you a sense of what is happening without being completely precise. Example: a quantified journey map can show you where to focus.
  • Individual users can also be good data sources. Zooming in allows you to learn things you can't in aggregate. Tools like Fullstory replays exactly what people did on your Website. These kinds of human-centric sessions can be more engaging/convincing than aggregate measures.
  • Data freshness changes how people use it in their workflows. Having real-time data or predictive tools allows you to monitor and adapt as insights come in.
  • How do you know what questions to ask of your data? HEART framework: happiness, engagement, adoptions, retention, and task success. Start with your goals, decide what is an indicator of success of your goals, then instrument that.
  • To decide which part of the customer journey to measure, start by laying it all out.
  • There's a number of good go-to solutions for answering questions like: funnel analysis (shows you possible improvements) or focus on user groups and split them into a test & control (allows you to test predictions).
  • The Sample Size Calculator gives you a way to determine what size audience you need for your tests.
  • Quantitative data is a good tool for understanding what is happening but it won't tell you why. For that, you often need to turn to qualitative data (talking to people). You can ask people with in-context small surveys and similar techniques.
  • Often the hardest part of using data is getting people on the same page and caring about the metrics. Try turning data insights into a shared activity, bet on results. Make it fun.
  • Dashboards surface data people care about but you need to come together as a team to decide what is important. Having user-centric metrics in your dashboards shows you care about user behavior.
  • Data can be used for good and bad. Proceed with caution when using data and be mindful where and how you collect it.




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An Event Apart: Designing Progressive Web Apps

In his The Case for Progressive Web Apps presentation at An Event Apart in Chicago, Jason Grigsby walked through the process of building Progressive Web Apps for your Web experiences and how to go about it. Here's my notes from his talk:

  • Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are getting a lot of attention and positive stories about their impact are coming out. PWA Stats tracks many of these case studies. These sorts of examples are getting noticed by CEOs who demand teams build PWAs today.
  • A PWA is a set of technologies designed to make faster, more capable Web sites. They load fast, are available online, are secure, can be accessed from your home screen, have push notifications, and more.
  • But how can we define Progressive Web Apps? PWAs are Web sites enhanced by three things: https, service worker, and a manifest file.
  • HTTPS is increasingly required for browsers and APIs. Eventually Chrome will highlight sites that are not on https as "insecure".
  • Service Workers allow Web sites to declare how network requests and the cache are handled. This ability to cache things allows us to build sites that are much faster. With service workers we can deliver near instant and offline experiences.
  • A Web manifest is a JSON file that delivers some attributes about a Web site. Browsers use these files to make decisions on what to do with your site (like add to home page).
  • Are PWAs any different than well-built Web sites? Not really, but the term helps get people excited and build toward best practices on the Web.
  • PWAs are often trojan horses for performance. They help enforce fast experiences.

Feels Like a Native App

  • Does your organization have a Web site? Do you make money off your Web site? If so, you probably need a Progressive Web Site.
  • Not every customer will have your native app installed. A better Web experience will help you reach people who don't. For many people this will be their first experience with your company, so you should make it as good as possible.
  • Getting people to install and keep using native apps is difficult. App stores can also change their policies and interfaces which could negatively impact your native app.
  • The Web can do much more than we think, the Web has APIs to access location, do fast payments using fingerprint identification, push notifications, and more.
  • What should we use to design PWAs? Native app styles or Web styles? How much does your design match the platform? You can set up PWAs to use different system fonts for iOS and Android, should you? For now, we should define our own design and be consistent across different OSs.
  • What impact does going "chrome-less" have on our PWAs? You loose back buttons, menu controls, system controls. Browsers provide us with a lot of useful features and adding them back is difficult. Especially navigation via the back button is complex. So in most cases, you should avoid going full screen.
  • While not every person will add your PWA to their home screen, every person will "install" your PWA via the service worker.
  • An app shell model allows you put your common UI (header, footer, nav, etc.) into the app cache. This makes the first loading experience feel a lot faster. Should you app shell or not? If you have architected as a single page app, this is possible but otherwise might not be worth the effort.
  • Animating transitions can help with way-finding and polish on the Web. This gives Web sites even more personality.

Installation and Discovery

  • Using a Web manifest file, allows you specify a number of declarations for your app. In addition to name, icon, and even theme colors.
  • Once you have a PWA built and a manifest file, browsers will being prompting people to install your Web site. Some Browsers have subtle "add" actions. Other use more explicit banner prompts. "Add to home screen" banners are only displayed when they make sense (certain level of use).
  • Developers can request these banners to come up when appropriate. You'll want to trigger these where people are mostly likely to install. (like checkout)
  • Microsoft is putting (explicitly and implicitly) PWAs within their app store. Search results may also start highlighting PWAs.
  • You can use Trusted Web Activity or PhoneGap to wrap native shells around your PWA to put them into Android and iOS app stores.

Offline Mode

  • Your Web site would benefit from offline support. Service Workers enable you to cache assets on your device to load PWAs quickly and to decide what should be available offline.
  • You can develop offline pages and/or cache pages people viewed before.
  • If you do cache pages, make it clear what data hasn't been updated because it is not available offline.
  • You can give people control over what gets cached and what doesn't. So they can decide what they want available for offline viewing.
  • If you enable offline interactions, be explicit what interactivity is available and what isn't.

Push Notifications

  • Push notifications can help you increase engagement. You can send notifications via a Web browser using PWAs.
  • Personal push notifications work best but are difficult to do right. Generic notifications won't be as effective.
  • Don't immediately ask people for push notification permissions. Find the right time and place to ask people to turn them on. Make sure you give people control, if you'd don't they can kill them using browser controls.
  • In the next version of Chrome, Google will make push notification dialogs blocking (can't be dismissed) so people have to decide if they want notifications on or off. This also requires you to ask for permissions at the right time.

Beyond Progressive Web Apps

  • Auto-login with credential management APIs allows you to sign into a site using stored credentials. This streamlines the login process.
  • Apple Pay on the Web converged with the Web Payment API so there's one way to use stored payment info on the Web.
  • These next gen capabilities are not part of PWAs but make sense within PWAs.

How to Implement PWAs

  • Building PWAs is a progressive process, it can be a series of incremental updates that all make sense on their own. As a result, you can have an iterative roadmap.
  • Benchmark and measure your improvements so you can use that data to get buy-in for further projects.
  • Assess your current Web site's technology. If things aren't reasonably fast to begin with, you need to address that first. If your site is not usable on mobile, start there first.
  • Begin by building a baseline PWA (manifest, https, etc.) and then add front-end additions and larger initiatives like payment request and credential api later.
  • Every step on the path toward a PWAS make sense on their own. You should encrypt your Web sites. You should make your Web site fast. These are all just steps along the way.




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An Event Apart: Putting Design in Design Systems

In his Putting the 'Design' in Design Systems presentation at An Event Apart in Seattle, Dan Mall talked about the benefits of design systems for designers and how ensure they can be realized. Here's my notes from his talk:

  • Most content in design systems are not for designers but for developers. This helps to scale design efforts when there's a lot more developers than designers (typical in many companies).
  • But where does design and designers fit within a design system? Are they no longer required?
  • Design can be part of strategy and big picture thinking but most designers are good at making designs and iterating them, not working across the company on "big D" design.
  • When it comes time to make a design system, most people start with "let's make some components!". This is problematic because its missing "for ____". What's the purpose of our design system? Who is it for?
  • Design systems need a focus. One company's design system should not work for another company. A good "onlyness" statement can only apply to one company, it would not work for other companies.
  • Design system principles can guide your work. Some are universal like: accessible, simple. Others should be very specific so you can focus on what matters for you.
  • An audit of common components in design systems shows the coverage varies between companies; the components can focus on their core value.
  • Instead of starting with making design components, think about what components you actually need. Then make some pilot screens as proofs of concept for a design system. Will you be able to make the right kinds of things?
  • Don't start at the abstract level, start at the extract level. Take elements from within pilot designs and look for common components to pull out for reuse. Don't try to make it cover all use cases yet. As you work through a few pilots, expand components to cover additional use cases you uncover.
  • The most exciting design systems are boring. About 80% of the components you're making can be covered by your design system. They allow you to remake product experiences quickly. The remaining 20% is what designers still need to do: custom design work.
  • A good design system takes care of the stuff you shouldn't reinvent and allows you to spend time on where it matters.
  • Creative people are driven by autonomy, mastery, and purpose. A good design system will enable all of these.
  • The most common benefits of design systems are greater efficiency and consistency. But another important one is relief from having to do mundane design work. (editor's note: like maintaining & updating a design system!)
  • The real value of a design system is to help us get back to our real work.




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An Event Apart: Move Fast and Don’t Break Things

In his Move Fast and Don’t Break Things presentation at An Event Apart in Seattle, Scott Jehl shared a number of resilient patterns and tools to help us establish and maintain performant access to our Web sites. Here's my notes from his talk:

  • For successful Web design, people used to suggest we move fast and break things. Today we've become more responsible but things can still break for our users if we're not mindful.
  • So many factors that can compromise the delivery of our Web sites are out of our control. We need to be aware of these in order to build resilience into our designs.
  • We used to use browser detection and feature detection to ensure our sites were supported across Web browsers. Progressive enhancement's importance ballooned as a wide range of new devices for accessing the Web, touch interactions, and more browsers became popular.
  • Trying to make a Web site look and work the same across devices was broken, we realized this was the wrong goal and we need to adapt to varying screens, networks, input types, and more.
  • Some practices stay good. Progressive enhancement and accessibility prepared us for many of these changes but it is also a performance enhancement on its own.
  • Figuring out how to make Web sites faster used to be hard but the tools we have for measuring performance have been improving (like PageSpeedTest and WebPageTest).

Making Web Sites Fast

  • First meaningful content: how soon does a page appear to be useful to a user. Progressive enhancement is about starting with meaningful HTML and then layering additional enhancements on top of it. When browsers render HTML, they look for dependencies in the file (CSS and Javascript) before displaying anything.
  • CSS and Javascript are most often the render-blockers on sites, not images & videos. Decide if they need to load at high priority and if not, load async or defer. If you need them to run right away, consider server push (HTTP2) to send files that you know the browser needs making them ready to render right away.
  • If your server does not support push, you can inline your critical CSS and/or Javascript. Inlining however is bad for caching as it does not get reused by other pages. To get around this you can use the Cache API to inline content and cache it as a file for reuse.
  • Critical CSS tools can look over a series of files and identify the common CSS you need across a number of different pages for initial rendering. If you inline your critical CSS, you can preload the rest of your CSS (not great browser support today).
  • Inlining and push are best for first time visits, for return visits they can be wasteful. We can use cookies for checking for return visits or make use of Service Worker.
  • Time to interactive: time it takes a site to become interactive for the user. We should be aiming for interactivity in under 5seconds on a median mobile phone on 3G. Lower end phones can take a long time to process Javascript after it downloads.
  • More weight does not mean more wait. You can prioritize when things load to make pages render much faster.

Keeping Web Sites Fast

  • Making a web site fast is easier than keeping it fast. Over time, Web sites will add a number of third party services with unknown performance consequences.
  • We can use a number of tools, like Lighthouse, to track performance unfriendly dependencies. Speed Curves will let you set performance budgets and see when things are over. This allows people to ask questions about the costs of what we're adding to sites.
  • Varying content and personalization can increase optimizations but they are costly from a performance perspective since they introduce a second meaningful content render. Moving these features to the server-side can help a lot.
  • Cloudflare has a solution that allows you to manipulate pages on their server before it comes down to browser. These server-side service workers allow you to adjust pages off the client and thereby avoid delays.
  • Homepages and landing pages are often filled with big images and videos. They're difficult to keep performant because the change all the time and are often managed outside of a central CMS.
  • For really image heavy pages, we can use srcset attributes to define multiple sizes of images. Writing this markup can be tricky if written by hand. Little helper apps can allow people to write good code.
  • Soon we'll have a native lazy load feature in browsers for images and iframes. Chrome has it in testing now and can send aspect ratios before actual images.




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An Event Apart: Third-Party Software

In his Third-Party Software and the Fate of the Web presentation at An Event Apart in Denver, Trent Walton talked through the impact of third party scripts on Web sites and how to ensure they don't degrade performance and user experience. Here's my notes from his talk:

  • With most client work, no one is paying attention to the impact of third parties on Web sites.
  • Third parties are requests on a Web page coming from an external URL. Examples: TypeKit, Google Analytics, etc. People use third parties to get data to make product decisions, earn income (ads, marketing), add content (videos, fonts), add functionality (comments, chat, etc.).
  • But third parties can also create issues. Loading scripts and files can really slow things down or provide an inconsistent UI and create privacy issues based on how they handle user data.
  • If you care about the final deliverable for a Web site, you need to be aware of the impact of third parties on your product. All the work we do on optimizing images, code, and designs can be quickly outweighed by the addition of third party scripts to a site.
  • Starting with the categories of 3rd party scripts helps you get a good sense of why people are using them: Advertising, A/B testing Tools, Analytics, Social Media, CDN, Customer Interaction, Comments, Essential.
  • Looking at the top third party requests across the Alexa top 46 sites in the United States shows 213 different domain sources. The average site has 22 different domains. News sites have the most third party domains.
  • Several tools can help you understand what's happening with third party scripts on a site. Request Map Generator can help you create a visualization of the different third parties on your Web site to help create awareness of what's happening on your site. Chrome's Lighthouse tool has a similar set of capabilities.
  • How do third parties impact end users? Does your site depend on third parties to function? As more people block these components, will it break? Re-marketing can create creepy experiences as content begins "follow" you online.
  • Web builders are on the front lines. We can advocate for the right approaches to privacy and data management. Though some of these conversations may be hard, it's our responsibility to end users.
  • Web browsers now have tools to help you manage third party scripts like cookies and cross-site tracking. But most people are likely not turing on the stricter versions of these features.
  • If you control a site, you can decide what third parties you want to include. But what about sites you don't control? Consider the perspective of your clients/companies and present data that explains the impact of third party on conversion and user experience.
  • Establish some standards for third party integrations: determine the value, avoid redundant services, work with a performance budget, comply with privacy policies.
  • Audit the third parties on your site and include data that illustrates how they perform against your standards. Compare this audit to competitors in order to set benchmarks or comparisons.
  • Get specific insights: there's usually a few instances of third parties that have become redundant, unnecessary, or are blocking page rendering. These wins create credibility and illustrate impact.
  • Maintain ongoing conversations with teams to make effective decisions about third parties on your sites.