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With the widespread acceptance of web standards, and the resulting deprecation of browser prefixes, there has been a noticeable change in the browser market. Where once browser manufacturers would try to lure users in with promises of feature support, now the focus is on privacy, speed, and developer tools.

When it comes to web development, you should really be testing on every browser and device you can lay your hands on; you’re probably already doing so using an app like LambdaTest, or BrowserStack.

When quality assurance testing, you probably work by market share: starting with Safari on mobile, Chrome on desktop, and working your way down to Opera and (if you’re a glutton for punishment) Yandax; naturally, when testing, it’s the largest number of users that concerns us the most.

But before you reach the QA stage, there are a number of browsers designed to assist development. Browsers that offer tools, especially for front-end developers, that assist with code and speed up development. Here are the best browsers for web development in 2021:

1. LT Browser

LT Browser is an app for web developers from LambdaTest. Like many of the apps in this class, it offers side-by-side comparisons of a site in different viewports. Additionally, LT Browser has a number of features that make it stand out.

As well as previewing web pages, LT Browser offers developer tools to rival Chrome, which is handy if you want to see how changes across different devices affect your Lighthouse scores. LT Browser also supports hot-reloading, which means when you make a change to your code, you don’t have to hit ‘refresh,’ the viewports simply reload — it’s surprising how much of a time-saver that simple addition is.

LT Browser requires a LambdaTest account, there is a free plan, and paid plans start at $15/month.

2. Firefox Developer

The best conventional browser for web development in 2021 is the developer edition of Mozilla’s Firefox.

The standard edition of Firefox is an excellent browser, packed with features, and privacy-focused. The developer edition adds to this with a suite of tools aimed at developers. The CSS and JavaScript debugging tools are superb, and the Grid tools are unparalleled for coding layouts with CSS Grid.

Firefox Developer is free to download.

3. Polypane

Polypane is one of the new generation of web browsers that are firmly intended as development aids rather than browsers. Polypane allows you to compare different viewports and platforms by placing them side by side. Interactions like scrolling are synced.

Polypane takes a step further than many browser apps in this class by showing social media previews. It even has a suite of accessibility tools, including some handy color blindness simulators.

Polypane has a 14-day free trial, and plans start at $8/month.

4. Blisk

Blisk is another browser for developers that allows you to line up a collection of viewports in a single app. URL and scrolling are synced, making testing interactions and animations effortless.

Blisk is awesome fun to play with and delivers a great preview of a responsive design. But be warned, synced viewports can be addictive, and it’s easy to line up browsers and become hypnotized by the synchronized movement; you’ll need a very large screen to get the most out of Blisk.

Blisk plans start at $9.99/month.

5. Sizzy

Sizzy is another app that allows you to view multiple viewports at once. It also has synchronized interactions, and like many competing apps, Sizzy allows you to screenshot different views.

Sizzy also includes a very clever synchronized inspect tool, so you can focus on individual elements across different viewports. It’s an excellent option for debugging, particularly if you’re digging into someone else’s code.

Sizzy has a 14-day free trial, and paid plans start at $7.15/month.

6. Brave

Brave is a privacy-focused browser that runs up to three times faster than Chrome. If you’re someone who balks at rendering speeds on most sites, Brave could be for you.

Brave’s main benefit for developers is that it supports Chrome extensions while maintaining privacy — it can even access the Web using Tor if simple privacy mode isn’t enough for you. There are hundreds of useful Chrome extensions, and if you avoid Chrome due to privacy concerns, then Brave solves your problem.

Brave is also pioneering a new system for monetizing site revenue, allowing viewers to tip sites, and soon, to control how advertising revenue is distributed.

Brave is free to download.

7. Chrome

Boring it may be, but Chrome is still the world’s most popular browser from the US to mainland China. Where once sites were “best viewed in IE,” Chrome is now the Web’s default.

No matter the site you’re designing, it has to work well in Chrome, and no simulator is as good as the real thing.

In addition to being the benchmark for page rendering, Chrome developer tools are the simplest way to access your Lighthouse scores, which helps you track down issues that may be holding you back in Google’s search results.

Chrome is free to download.

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The post 7 Best Browsers for Developers in 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


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HTML is one of the foundational building blocks of the Web. But just as web design best practices and techniques change over time, so does the code we use. As HTML evolves, some of its older markup has been deprecated while other parts have been repurposed.

Does that create more problems for us, though? Would we be better off starting over so we can make sure we’re all working from the same language rather than trying to edit out the bits we don’t want or need?

Problems With Holding Onto Legacy HTML

Let’s take a look at what happens when we amend the rules of HTML over time and how it impacts the Web:

1. It’s Risky to Leave Deprecated HTML Behind

Whether certain features have become outdated and need to go, or browsers have stopped supporting certain tags altogether, deprecated code eventually becomes a problem.

You’ll find a long list of deprecated HTML on the HTML.com website:

For many of these, HTML tags and attributes have been replaced by more efficient CSS styling. There are also examples of HTML deprecation because the features have become outdated (like frames).

Yet, there are still websites out there that contain deprecated HTML.

In some cases, the HTML sits silently on the other side of the website. If there’s enough of this errant code hanging around, though, those extra characters and directives could slow down your server’s processing time and render pages more slowly than usual.

In other cases, the HTML breaks features on the front-end of a website. Take, for instance, this warning from Mozilla regarding the <nobr> tag:

Using deprecated code can create inconsistent and poor experiences on the front-end. And when all browsers finally get on board and decide not to support an HTML tag anymore, all visitors will be left with a broken UI.

So, while it’s great that HTML5 has deprecated legacy HTML that’s no longer useful or necessary, that’s not to stop everyone from using it or leaving it behind on older websites. 

2. Legacy Code Focuses on Style; Not Semantics

As I mentioned, a lot of deprecated HTML has been phased out and replaced by CSS styling. And that’s a good thing.

Let me give you a simple example of this…

My favorite book is <i>The Stand</i> by Stephen King. The first time I read it, I didn’t sleep for <i>three days</i>. Thankfully, when I revisit it every year, I have fewer nightmares and can more greatly appreciate the storytelling aspect of it.

In the above paragraph, I’ve used the <i> tag to italicize several words.

In the early days of HTML,<i> stood for “italics” (the way<b> stood for “bold”). With HTML5, however,<i> will still render as italics, but its semantic meaning isn’t as broad. It’s been repurposed to indicate a stylistic change, which is important for things like book and film names, foreign words, and so on. To express emphasis, we use the <em> tag instead. 

Keeping the legacy <i> and <b> tags can lead to issues, though. 

In the statement above, I’ve italicized the name of the book (The Stand) as well as the number of sleepless nights I had (three days) with<i>. Whether the designer decides today, tomorrow or ten months down the road that they want to change the way literary or cinematic references are styled, my choice of HTML will stand in their way.

Because all of my italic text is indicated by <i>, styles can’t universally be applied to specific content (like book references). Instead, the designer would have to go through and clean up my code so that it looks like this:

My favorite book is <i>The Stand</i> by Stephen King. The first time I read it, I didn’t sleep for <em>three days</em>. Thankfully, when I inevitably revisit it every year, I have fewer nightmares and can more greatly appreciate the storytelling aspect of it.

This would then allow the semantically italicized content to remain intact while the designer or developer adjusts the styles of the book title here and across the site. (Though, really, the first italicized phrase should be surrounded by <cite> as it would be more semantically accurate.)

While it’s great that we’ve created guidelines for using legacy HTML today, keeping old code around can confuse writers, designers, and others who are familiar with the previous way of formatting content. By resetting HTML, throwing out old styles, and creating one language we use consistently across the web, we won’t create more work for ourselves later on.

3. Deprecated Code Hinders Accessibility

Another big reason why repurposed and deprecated HTML is a problem is because of accessibility.

For starters, when you leave deprecated and unsupported code behind, it’s likely to cause issues for screen readers, search engines, and browsers that use HTML for clues about the content.

Header tags (e.g.<h1><h2><h3>), for instance, aren’t just used to visibly break up large chunks of text. Header tags and, more specifically their hierarchy, present important information about the relationship between subjects on a page — and this is the kind of thing that screen readers and search engines pick up on.

That’s why we need to be very careful about the code we leave behind the scenes, even if readers on the front end can’t visibly see it. Let’s look at an example of how this can affect accessibility:

Is there an <i>à la carte</i> menu or is it just <i>prix fixe</i> tonight?

If a screen reader were to read over this sentence, the French phrases would be said with the same emphasis as any other italicized words on the page.

This is why HTML5 encourages semantic coding instead of purely stylistic.

The proper way to write HTML in the line above would be:

Is there an <i lang="fr">à la carte</i> menu or is it just <i lang="fr">prix fixe</i> tonight?

There are two reasons to do this:

  1. To indicate to screen readers that there’s a language change.
  2. To make it easier for designers or developers to create a custom style for foreign phrases.

Semantic coding is essential for designers that work on multilingual websites.

As the World Wide Web Consortium explains, languages like Japanese don’t use italicization or bolding for emphasis — at least not the way English speakers do.

So, to properly translate a page from English, a Japanese designer would need to remove the italics or bolding and add surrounding brackets to the words. However, if everything is coded with <i> and <b>, or there’s a mix of <i> and <em> and<b> and <strong>, it’s going to be really difficult to Find-and-Replace the correct HTML with ease.

So, if accessibility or internationalization are concerns for you at all, getting clear on the HTML you write with is going to be really important.

Wrap-Up

The fact of the matter is, it requires a lot of work to have the rules of HTML rewritten. So while it would be great to reset HTML, I don’t know that it’s all that practical.

All we can really do is stay abreast of what’s happening with the language, edit out legacy code from our websites the second it becomes deprecated, and always use tags and attributes that are supported. By playing around with deprecated or repurposed code, we only put the website visitors’ experience in jeopardy, so it’s best to take the time to clear out the old any chance we get.

If we can all get on the same page about this, problematic legacy HTML will eventually disappear from our websites and memories.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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The post Is It Time to Reset HTML? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


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TL;DR Talk to your users

Most people who write software for a living have one thing in common – they don’t want to be stuck supporting all of the software they’ve developed forever.

Source de l’article sur DZONE