Great! Even if you disagree, just the existence of a Gov standard will:<p>1) Create a minimal common language for all sites that the citizens are forced to use. Now we can all can use these patterns in our sites knowing that more users will know them. Remember that software isn't intuitive, but familiar: <a href="http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html</a><p>2) Force software developers for public services to put up a minimal decent interface, instead of just a list of features.<p>The best page is their Design Principles: <a href="https://standards.usa.gov/design-principles/" rel="nofollow">https://standards.usa.gov/design-principles/</a>
I'm really surprised all the typography options require downloadable fonts (Source Sans Pro and/or Merriweather).<p>I'm on a 1mbit throttled connection right now, and it's really noticeable, even on these pages, the font loading takes a while and suddenly the whole page jumps around and re-renders.<p>Though apart from that It's a great guideline.<p>Really glad they put so many color choices in there and taking care of showing how to combine typography with color. Many guidelines I've seen have two accent colors and when you come to implementing the site, you straight away must deviate from the guideline and invent new things.
Been using this on a govt. site Ive been redesigning for 2 years and could be doing so for another year or more.<p>We've went from one govt. design standard to another and I'm not sure if the site will ever get redesigned or finished as it has to get signed off by a 100 govt. VP types. I'm burnt out by the bureaucracy and they need someone to get this thing approved vs. what do you think and what do you think and oh what do you think ... each person having a different opinion and nothing getting done but revise it again. What version are we on now .. oh number 599.<p>Keeps me gainfully employed thankfully, but redesigning a website should not take 3 years or more.
This is great at this point because it's short and simple, but I could imagine this becoming terrifying in a few years if it does not remain in good hands. The natural thing to do is point out what could be added and pretty soon it could become a massive burden to make sure you're compliant with the standards. Long term I suspect this could increase the weight (cost and time of delivery) of government software projects. If only we could have some predefined limit set of how long and complex it can become. My libertarian side is coming out here, but the government is really good at adding cool things, not so good at taking them away, decreasing them, or even maintaining them.
>18F specifically does not recommend using Bootstrap for production work because:<p>>It is difficult to adapt its opinionated styles to bespoke design work, and<p>They have a tool on their website to generate a theme (Bourbon and PureCSS do not), and Sass functions and mixins for customizing elements. Bourbon and PureCSS's components are just as opinionated (and there are less of them).<p>>Its CSS style places semantic layout instructions directly in HTML classes.<p>Sure, but you can just use the Sass mixins instead, allowing you to use the grid system without adding a single class to HTML.<p>Seems they knew this about Bourbon:<p>>Bourbon is a Sass mixin library that has extensions for a robust semantic grid (Neat)<p>The same is true of Bootstrap, so they recommend against it?<p>It sounds like the author wasn't familiar with Bootstrap.
I love this:<p>> The UI components are built on a solid HTML foundation, progressively enhanced to provide core experiences across browsers. All users will have access to the same critical information and experiences regardless of what browser they use, although those experiences will render better in newer browsers. If JavaScript fails, users will still get a robust HTML foundation.<p>I guess it remains to be seen just how robust this really is, but it's a fantastic goal to see explicitly embraced for modern websites. I skimmed some things in Lynx and w3m (elinks failed with an SSL error; rumor has it that it doesn't support SNI), and it honestly looks better than I remember a lot of sites looking in Lynx ~20 years ago, let alone the average modern site. Sure, part of that is imagemaps and frames going out of style, but modern sites haven't necessarily replaced them with more graceful constructs.
> An official website of the United States government Here's how you know...<p>> This site is also protected by an SSL certificate that's been signed by the U.S. government...<p>Oh really?<p>DST Root CA X3
- Let's Encrypt Authority X3
- standards.usa.gov<p>Kudos for using Let's Encrypt though!
The main page developers will care about:<p><a href="https://pages.18f.gov/frontend/#intro" rel="nofollow">https://pages.18f.gov/frontend/#intro</a><p>Some things are great, and show a pulse on the industry, but some aren't. For example, Bower is prohibited, but yarn isn't even mentioned or encouraged, much less required.<p>Though they do give devs the freedom to choose any framework, with a very nice pros/cons lists of the popular ones<p><a href="https://pages.18f.gov/frontend/#js-frameworks" rel="nofollow">https://pages.18f.gov/frontend/#js-frameworks</a>
I had a manager once who had a prior career in government. One of their many cynical internal catchphrases was "the conveniences which you have requested are now mandatory".<p>Anyone with common sense and a knowledge of history knows exactly where this is going. As things continue to move online, internet access and associated technology standards begin to be declared a "public necessity" or some other nonsense along similar rhetorical lines.<p>You don't even need to look very far for examples. UK accessibility laws (not that they're an unqualified evil, simply a legislative 'gateway drug'), references to 'digital haves and have-nots' from a few US election cycles ago, etc.<p>I'd really hoped to be closer to retirement before this sort of thing started happening.<p>Edit for clarity: I'm not saying this is immediately going to turn into some draconian thing, but as a founding member of a standards body[0] with a narrowly-defined intent, I've seen how easy it is for something like this to become a de-facto industry standard that non-experts use to judge things against, even when it's not appropriate.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.php-fig.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.php-fig.org/</a>
The introduction to the colors section talks about communicating warmth and trustworthiness. How does a mostly blue, grey and white page communicate those feelings. Personally, I have always associated blue and grey with cold and isolation.
This is really well done. Code is well laid out, well documented. Will make it easy to use this for training new college hires for sure. Didn't expect something like this out of the government. Nice to be surprised here.
This is great. Also worth noting in the UK, accessibility features for web pages are required by law (EQA, DDA). In the US, RAA 1998 is the similar legislation. Most govt agencies and private-sector businesses are required by law to provide accessible web pages, or face lawsuits and/or fines.<p>TL;DR: all sites of reasonable size (govt and otherwise) should follow WCAG 2.0.<p>WCAG: <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/" rel="nofollow">https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/</a><p>UK - Equality Act 2010 (EQA): <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents" rel="nofollow">http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents</a><p>UK - Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA): <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/50/contents" rel="nofollow">http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/50/contents</a><p>US - Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 (RAA):
<a href="https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/105th-congress/senate-report/166/1" rel="nofollow">https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/105th-congress...</a>
it says on the site: "This site is also protected by an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate that’s been signed by the U.S. government. "<p>But when you look at the certificate, it is signed by "Issued by: Let's Encrypt Authority X3"
From the installation: <i>Note: Using npm to install the Standards will include jQuery version 2.2.0. Please make sure that you’re not including any other version of jQuery on your page.</i><p>Isn't that pretty much precisely what peer dependencies are for?
Is this supposed to be used by non-US gov sites? Can any old private site use it? It's public domain in the US, so assuming the answer to that question is yes, would it make sense for a private site to use it?
I have an older Firefox that I'm running and the Web Design Standards page is all borked up. I'm wondering how many people that don't keep the upgrade stream going for their browsers will now have problems.