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by ethin 32 days ago
I'd like to add:

* Don't roll your own standard controls

Seriously. Don't. You want a single-select box? Use a combo box or radio button group. Want an edit box? Use an edit box. Want a list that finds things as you type? That's in the standard too. Don't roll your own.

This "roll our own controls for everything" bothers me to no end as a screen reader user, because practically nobody properly follows ARIA best practices, and that leads to a less accessible internet.

2 comments

Things wouldn't have gone this way if browser vendors and the working groups were not so lagging on adopting better UX for controls and had more built-in ways of customizing the looks.

Take a look how long it took to be able to customize <select>.

A hamburger menu or an accordion with proper viewport scrolling should be a couple of lines of html css...

Yeah I could not agree more. I find myself wasting a lot of time building controls that really feel like they have probably been built ten thousand times before.
Don't worry, they bother everyone else as well since they are usually broken one way or the other.