The following is a guest post by Rob Dodson (@rob_dodson). Rob and I were going back and forth in CodePen support getting Polymer (a web components polyfill, kinda) working on a demo of his. We did get it working, and things kind of evolved into this article. Take it away Rob.

Recently I was working with a client to train their internal teams on how to build web applications. During this process it occurred to me that the way we presently architect the front-end is very strange and even a bit broken. In many instances you’re either copying huge chunks of HTML out of some doc and then pasting that into your app (Bootstrap, Foundation, etc.), or you’re sprinkling the page with jQuery plugins which have to be configured using JavaScript . It puts us in the rather unfortunate position of having to choose between bloated HTML or mysterious HTML, and often we choose both.

In an ideal scenario, the HTML language would be expressive enough to create complex UI widgets and also extensible so that we, the developers, could fill in any gaps with our own tags. Today, this is finally possible through a new set of standards called Web Components.

Web Components?

Web Components are a collection of standards which are working their way through the W3C and landing in browsers as we speak. In a nutshell, they allow us to bundle markup and styles into custom HTML elements. What's truly amazing about these new elements is that they fully encapsulate all of their HTML and CSS. That means the styles that you write always render as you intended, and your HTML is safe from the prying eyes of external JavaScript.

If you want to play with native Web Components I'd recommend using Chrome Canary, since it has the best support. Be sure to enable the following settings in chrome://flags.

• Experimental JavaScript
• Experimental Web Platform Features
• HTML Imports

A Practical Example

Think about how you currently implement an image slider, it might look something like this:

<div id="slider">
      <input checked="" type="radio" name="slider" id="slide1" selected="false">
      <input type="radio" name="slider" id="slide2" selected="false">
      <input type="radio" name="slider" id="slide3" selected="false">
      <input type="radio" name="slider" id="slide4" selected="false">
      <div id="slides">
        <div id="overflow">
          <div class="inner">
            <article>
              <img src="./rock.jpg" alt="an interesting rock">
            </article>
            <article>
              <img src="./grooves.jpg" alt="some neat grooves">
            </article>
            <article>
              <img src="./arch.jpg" alt="a rock arch">
            </article>
            <article>
              <img src="./sunset.jpg" alt="a dramatic sunset">
            </article>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
      <label for="slide1"></label>
      <label for="slide2"></label>
      <label for="slide3"></label>
      <label for="slide4"></label>
    </div>

See the Pen CSS3 Slider by Rob Dodson (@robdodson) on CodePen

Image slider adapted from CSScience. Images courtesy of Eliya Selhub.

That's a decent chunk of HTML, and we haven't even included the CSS yet! But imagine if we could remove all of that extra cruft and reduce it down to only the important bits. What would that look like?

<img-slider>
      <img src="./sunset.jpg" alt="a dramatic sunset">
      <img src="./arch.jpg" alt="a rock arch">
      <img src="./grooves.jpg" alt="some neat grooves">
      <img src="./rock.jpg" alt="an interesting rock">
    </img-slider>

Not too shabby! We've ditched the boilerplate and the only code that's left is the stuff we care about. This is the kind of thing that Web Components will allow us to do. But before I delve into the specifics I'd like to tell you another story.

Hidden in the shadows

For years the browser makers have had a sneaky trick hidden up their sleeves. Take a look at this <video> tag and really think about all the visual goodies you get with just one line of HTML.

<video src="./foo.webm" controls></video>

There's a play button, a scrubber, timecodes and a volume slider. Lots of stuff that you didn't have to write any markup for, it just appeared when you asked for <video>.

But what you’re actually seeing is an illusion. The browser makers needed a way to guarantee that the tags they implemented would always render the same, regardless of any wacky HTML, CSS or JavaScript we might already have on the page. To do this, they created a secret passage way where they could hide their code and keep it out of our hot little hands. They called this secret place the Shadow DOM.

If you happen to be running Google Chrome you can open your Developer Tools and enable the Show Shadow DOM flag. That'll let you inspect the <video> element in more detail.

Inside you'll find that there's a ton of HTML all hidden away. Poke around long enough and you'll discover the aforementioned play button, volume slider, and various other elements.

Now, think back to our image slider. What if we all had access to the shadow DOM and the ability to declare our own tags like <video>? Then we could actually implement and use our custom <img-slider> tag.

Let’s take a look at how to make this happen, using the first pillar of Web Components, the template.

Templates

Every good construction project has to start with a blueprint, and with Web Components that blueprint comes from the new <template> tag. The template tag allows you to store some markup on the page which you can later clone and reuse. If you've worked with libraries like mustache or handlebars before, then the <template> tag should feel familiar.

<template>
      <h1>Hello there!</h1>
      <p>This content is top secret :)</p>
    </template>

Everything inside a template is considered inert by the browser. This means tags with external sources (i.e. <img>, <audio>, , etc.) do not make HTTP requests and <script> tags do not execute. It also means that nothing from within the template is rendered on the page until we activate it using JavaScript.

So the first step in creating our <img-slider> is to put all of its HTML and CSS into a <template>.

See the Pen CSS3 Slider Template by Rob Dodson (@robdodson) on CodePen

Once we've done this, we're ready to move it into the shadow DOM.

Shadow DOM

To really make sure that our HTML and CSS doesn't adversely affect the consumer we sometimes resort to iframes. They do the trick, but you wouldn't want to build your entire application in 'em.

Shadow DOM gives us the best features of iframes, style and markup encapsulation, without nearly as much bloat.

To create shadow DOM, select an element and call its createShadowRoot method (or webkitCreateShadowRoot if you're using Chrome 30 or Safari). This will return a document fragment which you can then fill with content.

<div class="container"></div>
    
    <script>
      var host = document.querySelector('.container');
      var root = host.createShadowRoot();
      root.innerHTML = '<p>How <em>you</em> doin?</p>'
    </script>

Shadow Host

In shadow DOM parlance, the element that you call createShadowRoot on is known as the Shadow Host. It's the only piece visible to the user, and it's where you would ask the user to supply your element with content.

If you think about our <video> tag from before, the <video> element itself is the shadow host, and the contents are the <source> tags you nest inside of it.

<video>
      <source src="trailer.mp4" type="video/mp4">
      <source src="trailer.webm" type="video/webm">
      <source src="trailer.ogv" type="video/ogg">
    </video>

Shadow Root

The document fragment returned by createShadowRoot is known as the Shadow Root. The shadow root, and its descendants, are hidden from the user, but they're what the browser will actually render when it sees our tag.

In the <video> example, the play button, scrubber, timecode, etc. are all descendants of the shadow root. They show up on the screen but their markup is not visible to the user.

Shadow Boundary

Any HTML and CSS inside of the shadow root is protected from the parent document by an invisible barrier called the Shadow Boundary. The shadow boundary prevents CSS in the parent document from bleeding into the shadow DOM, and it also prevents external JavaScript from traversing into the shadow root.

Translation: Let's say you have a style tag in the shadow DOM that specifies all h3's should have a color of red. Meanwhile, in the parent document, you have a style that specifies h3's should have a color of blue. In this instance, h3's appearing within the shadow DOM will be red, and h3's outside of the shadow DOM will be blue. The two styles will happily ignore each other thanks to our friend, the shadow boundary.

And if, at some point, the parent document goes looking for h3's with $('h3'), the shadow boundary will prevent any exploration into the shadow root and the selection will only return h3's that are external to the shadow DOM.

This level of privacy is something that we've dreamed about and worked around for years. To say that it will change the way we build web applications is a total understatement.

Shadowy Sliders

To get our img-slider into the shadow DOM we'll need to create a shadow host and populate it with the contents of our template.

<template>
      <!-- Full of slider awesomeness -->
    </template>
    
    <div class="img-slider"></div>
    
    <script>
      // Add the template to the Shadow DOM
      var tmpl = document.querySelector('template');
      var host = document.querySelector('.img-slider');
      var root = host.createShadowRoot();
      // host.webkitCreateShadowRoot() in Safari and Chrome 30
      root.appendChild(tmpl.content.cloneNode(true));
    </script>

In this instance we've created a div and given it the class img-slider so it can act as our shadow host.

We select the template and access the internals with the content keyword. Calling cloneNode(true) returns a deep copy of those internals which we then append to the shadow root.

If you're using Chrome or Safari you can actually see this working in the following pen.

See the Pen CSS3 Slider Shadow DOM by Rob Dodson (@robdodson) on CodePen

Insertion Points

At this point our img-slider is inside the shadow DOM but the image paths are hard coded. Just like the <source> tags nested inside of <video>, we'd like the images to come from the user, so we'll have to invite them over from the shadow host.

To pull items into the shadow DOM we use the new <content> tag. The <content> tag uses CSS selectors to cherry-pick elements from the shadow host and project them into the shadow DOM. These projections are known as insertion points.

We'll make it easy on ourselves and assume that the slider always has four images, that way we can create four insertion points using nth-of-type.

<template>
      ...
      <div class="inner">
        <article>
          <content select="img:nth-of-type(1)"></content>
        </article>
        <article>
          <content select="img:nth-of-type(2)"></content>
        </article>
        <article>
          <content select="img:nth-of-type(3)"></content>
        </article>
        <article>
          <content select="img:nth-of-type(4)"></content>
        </article>
      </div>
    </template>

Now we can populate our img-slider.

<div class="img-slider">
      <img src="./rock.jpg" alt="an interesting rock">
      <img src="./grooves.jpg" alt="some neat grooves">
      <img src="./arch.jpg" alt="a rock arch">
      <img src="./sunset.jpg" alt="a dramatic sunset">
    </div>

This is really cool! We've cut the amount of markup that the user sees way down. But why stop here? We can take things a step further and make this more semantic by turning our img-slider into its very own HTML element.

Custom Elements

Creating your own HTML element might sound intimidating but it's actually quite easy. In Web Components speak, this new element is a Custom Element, and the only two requirements are that its name must contain a dash, and its prototype must extend HTMLElement.

Let's take a look at how that might work.

<template>
      <!-- Full of image slider awesomeness -->
    </template>
    
    <script>
      // Grab our template full of slider markup and styles
      var tmpl = document.querySelector('template');
    
      // Create a prototype for a new element that extends HTMLElement
      var ImgSliderProto = Object.create(HTMLElement.prototype);
    
      // Setup our Shadow DOM and clone the template
      ImgSliderProto.createdCallback = function() {
        var root = this.createShadowRoot();
        root.appendChild(tmpl.content.cloneNode(true));
      };
    
      // Register our new element
      var ImgSlider = document.register('img-slider', {
        prototype: ImgSliderProto
      });
    </script>

The Object.create method returns a new prototype which extends HTMLElement. When the parser finds our tag in the document it will check to see if it has a method named createdCallback. If it finds this method it will run it immediately. This is a good place to do setup work, so we create some Shadow DOM and clone our template into it.

We pass the tag name and prototype to a new method on the document, called register, and after that we're ready to go.

Now that our element is registered there are a few different ways to use it. The first, and most straightforward, is to just use the <img-slider> tag somewhere in our HTML. But we can also call document.createElement("img-slider") or we can use the constructor that was returned by document.register and stored in the ImgSlider variable. It's up to you which style you prefer.

Browser Support

Support for the various standards that makeup Web Components is currently spotty, though improving all the time. This table illustrates where we're presently at.

But don't let the table discourage you from using them! The smarties at Mozilla and Google have been hard at work building polyfill libraries which sneak support for Web Components into all modern browsers! This means you can start playing with these technologies today and give feedback to the folks writing the specs. That feedback is important so we don't end up with stinky, hard to use syntax.

Let's look at how we could rewrite our img-slider using Google's polyfill library, Polymer.

Polymer to the Rescue!

Polymer adds a new tag to the browser, <polymer-element>, which automagically turns templates into shadow DOM and registers custom elements for us. All we need to do is to tell Polymer what name to use for the tag and to make sure we include our template markup.

See the Pen Polymer Slider by Rob Dodson (@robdodson) on CodePen

I find it's often easier to create elements using Polymer because of all the niceties built into the library. This includes two-way binding between elements and models, automatic node finding and support for other new standards like Web Animations and Pointer Events. Also, the developers on the polymer-dev mailing list are extremely active and helpful, which is great when you're first learning the ropes.

This is just a tiny example of what Polymer can do, so be sure to visit its project page and also checkout Mozilla's alternative, X-Tags.

Issues

Any new standard can be controversial and in the case of Web Components it seems that they are especially polarizing. Before we wrap up, I want to open up for discussion some of the feedback I've heard over the past few months and give my take on it.

OMG it's XML!!!

I think the thing that probably scares most developers when they first see Custom Elements is the notion that it will turn the document into one big pile of XML, where everything on the page has some bespoke tag name and, in this fashion, we'll make the web pretty much unreadable. That's a valid argument so I decided to kick the bees' nest and bring it up on the Polymer mailing list.

The back and forth discussion is pretty interesting but I think the general consensus is that we're just going to have to experiment to see what works and what doesn't. Is it better, and more semantic, to see a tag name like <img-slider> or is our present "div soup" the only way it should be? Alex Russell composed a very thoughtful post on this subject and I'd recommend everyone take the time to read it before making up their mind.

SEO

At this moment it's unclear (at least to me) how well crawlers support Custom Elements and Shadow DOM. The Polymer FAQ states:

Search engines have been dealing with heavy AJAX based application for some time now. Moving away from JS and being more declarative is a good thing and will generally make things better.

Others have pointed out that this explanation falls short and there's a discussion on the topic over in the Polymer mailing list.

This will need to be worked out before Web Components receive wide adoption but I'm optimistic they'll get it right, primarily because Google is really pushing for it and it wouldn't make sense to implement something that stymied their search engine.

Accessibility

Obviously when you're hiding markup in secret shadow DOM sandboxes the issue of accessibility becomes pretty important. Steve Faulkner took a look at accessibility in shadow DOM and seemed to be satisfied with what he found.

Results from initial testing indicate that inclusion of ARIA roles, states and properties in content wholly inside the Shadow DOM works fine. The accessibility information is exposed correctly via the accessibility API. Screen readers can access content in the Shadow DOM without issue.

The full post is available here.

Surely there will be bumps along the way but that sounds like a pretty great start!

Style tags? Um, no thanks.

Unfortunately <link> tags do not work inside of the Shadow DOM, which means the only way to pull in external CSS is through @import. In other words, <style> tags are—for the moment—unavoidable.

Keep in mind that the styles we're talking about are relevant only to a component, whereas we've previously been trained to favor external files because they often affect our entire application. So is it such a bad thing to put a <style> tag inside of an element, if all of those styles are scoped just to that one entity? Personally I think it's OK, but the option of external files would be very nice to have.

Now it's your turn

It's up to us to figure out where these standards should go and what best practices will guide them. Give Polymer a shot, and also look at Mozilla's alternative to Polymer, X-tags (which has support all the way down to Internet Explorer 9).

Also, make sure you reach out to the developers at Google and Mozilla who are driving the bus on these standards. It'll take our feedback to properly mold these tools into something we all want to use.

While there are still some rough edges, I think Web Components will eventually usher in a new style of application development, something more akin to snapping together Legos and less like our current approach, which is often plagued by excess boilerplate. I'm pretty excited by where all of this is heading, and I look forward to what the future might hold.

A Guide to Web Components is a post from CSS-Tricks

Please see below for information from the November GSA Senate meeting.

Sean Astrakhan, Barbara Church, Jesse Fox, Romy Hübler, Dan Miller, Afsoon Saadin, and Stephanie Ward are attending the National Association of Graduate and Professional Students (NAGPS) National Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan this weekend. All UMBC graduate students are NAPGS members and should take advantage of membership benefits.

The November GSA Social Hour will be in Flat Tuesdays on November 21st from 6:00 to 8:00pm.

The second GSA IMDA Gallery is open. Please stop by the GSA Office to view the beautiful artwork of fellow graduate students.

The GSA Senate approved the #GradsHaveDebt2 Resolution.

The Bangladesh Graduate Student Organization has been approved by the GSA Senate.

If you should have any concerns that you would like to bring before the GSA Senate, feel free to send an email to Romy at rjones12@umbc.edu. 

Product findability is key to any e-commerce business — after all, if customers can’t find a product, they can’t buy it. Therefore, at Baymard Institute, we invested eight months conducting a large-scale usability research study on the product-finding experience. We set out to explore how users navigate, find and select products on e-commerce websites, using the home page and category navigation.

The one-on-one usability testing was conducted following the “think aloud” protocol, and we tested the following websites: Amazon, Best Buy, Blue Nile, Chemist Direct, Drugstore.com, eBags, GILT, GoOutdoors, H&M, IKEA, Macy’s, Newegg, Pixmania, Pottery Barn, REI, Tesco, Toys’R’Us, The Entertainer, and Zappos. The pages and design elements that we tested include the home page, category navigation, subcategories, and product lists.

Throughout the test sessions, the subjects would repeatedly abandon websites because they were unable to find the products they were looking for. Indeed, the subjects encountered over 900 usability-related problems, despite the websites having been built for multi-million dollars. All of these usability issues have been distilled into 79 concise guidelines in a report titled “Homepage & Category Usability.” In this article, we’ll go over seven of the guidelines.

1. Don’t Make Parent Categories Shallow. (Also, Have Parent Categories.)

Issue observed: When the hierarchy of categories is just labels and headers, it breaks the expectations of users and forces them into narrower sections than they desire, preventing explorative product browsing.

Grouping subcategory options in drop-down menus and other areas is a vital part of making them both manageable and scannable; and most websites have done so. Surprisingly, though, on many of the websites tested, the top level of the drop-down categories was only text labels, not actual clickable elements. This conflicted with the expectations of the majority of the test subjects, who anticipated that the headers would be clickable.

The Pottery Barn website (larger view).

“I’d think that you can click all of it,” said a subject of Pottery Barn’s website (above left) when looking at the drop-down menu, “and that the black items will take me to a general page with all ‘Living room’ items.” Alas, upon hovering over the black heading, the mouse cursor changed to a text-selector rather than a pointing hand, and the subject concluded that it wasn’t clickable after all. The same type of shallow parent headings was found on REI’s website (above right).

Most subjects expected that these headings would be clickable and often tried clicking them, despite the cursor indicating unclickability. The subjects wanted to keep a fairly broad scope of products, in the hope of landing on a page that displays a curated set of subcategories that would assist them in selecting a more defined scope (as opposed to a page listing products). Making parent categories a part of the product hierarchy (and not just be shallow text labels) is critical in supporting explorative product browsing, so that users who haven’t fully decided what they want or who are looking for inspiration on what to purchase can dip their toes in broader categories before diving into narrowly defined ones.

Pixmania.com (left) and Amazon.com (right). (larger view)

On Pixmania’s website (above left), a subject tried to select the generic “Digital Cameras” category, instead of specific camera types. He didn’t want to specify a camera type subcategory yet because he was still unsure about the exact differences and hadn’t decided on his particular needs. On Amazon (above right), another subject hovered over “Shop by Department” and tried to click ”Movies, Music & Games,” which is orange when hovered over (Amazon’s hover style for links in the drop-down menu is orange and underlined), but nothing happened. She tried again before realizing that she had to choose one of the subcategories on the left.

On websites in which headings are actually selectable parent categories (i.e. part of the website’s taxonomy), the subjects often ended up relying on them for an initial overview of an entire category, and from there made informed decisions about which subcategories to select.

Larger view

This critical guideline isn’t limited to drop-down menus, but applies to any representation of a hierarchy of categories. Examples would be the categories displayed in the sidebar or in the site map of a product catalog, as well as permanently visible main navigation bar options (i.e. very top-level categories). In all of these cases, a parent category should exist and be selectable, as opposed to being a shallow text label.

2. Put The Same Subcategory Within Multiple Main Categories When Necessary.

Issue observed: When a subcategory could logically appear in multiple parent categories but appears only in one, users are often led astray.

Depending on your product catalog, you might end up with subcategories that users would expect to find in multiple parent categories. For example, users might look for a coffee table in both the “Living Room” and “Tables” sections, as well as in the “Accessories” subcategory of “Sofas.”

While the ideal solution is to craft a completely unambiguous set of top-level categories, this is not always realistic, and sometimes popular demand requires a fuzzy category to be introduced in the top-level categories. Therefore, to avoid the severe usability problem of users not being able find a subcategory where they expect (which often lead subjects to conclude that the store simply doesn’t carry the item), consider putting the subcategory in multiple parent categories.

BestBuy.com (larger view)

One subject was unsure whether she would find computer adapters in “Office” or “Computers & Tablets,” because the former describes a usage context, while the latter describes the type of product. Based on the subcategory options, she found the latter to be the correct one. However, in “Computers & Tablets” (above right), she was in doubt about whether to look in “Batteries & Power” or in the generic “Accessories.” Luckily, both led her to adapters. Also, notice how Best Buy has an “Ink & Toner” category within “Computers & Tablets,” as well as a “Printer Ink & Toner” category within “Office,” allowing users to find the category in any of the potentially matching parent categories.

Larger view

Consider the “Office” category in the Best Buy example above. All of its subcategories could be in other top-level categories, yet the “Office” section is presumably still needed to support the large portion of Best Buy’s customers who shop with a “home versus work” mindset. In these instances, featuring very important subcategories within multiple parent sections would be relevant (assuming that they semantically fit them equally well) because users will look in the one that best fits their context.

In terms of implementation, there are two main approaches to featuring the same subcategory in multiple parent categories. Our tests showed no conclusive evidence for one method over another. Each has its advantages and disadvantages:

• You could put the subcategory in one place in the website’s taxonomy, and then simply link to that destination in the other parent categories (for example, in the drop-down menu). The user would then jump scope to the “real” category, regardless of where they access it from. This could cause confusion if the user knows they have clicked a link in a menu named “Office” but then landed in the “Electronics” section (as indicated by the breadcrumbs).
• Alternatively, you could duplicate the categories so that each is a unique entry in the website’s hierarchy, with proper breadcrumb paths, etc. The downside here is technical complexity. Products must be tagged consistently across multiple duplicated subcategories; the search engine’s auto-suggestions must not suggest any one category more than once in a single search; and so on. Furthermore, implementing this requires canonical pages to be set up in order to avoid SEO penalties for the duplicate pages.

3. Consider Having A “What’s New” Category Or Filter.

Issue observed: Some users want to see what’s new in your store — say, to be inspired or when buying for a friend — without having to plow through previously browsed products.

“H&M is one of the websites that I check from time to time,” a test subject explained, “so I might pick ‘New Arrivals,’ like this, and see what new stuff they have.” Many subjects who had experience with a website or brand that we tested would look for a “What’s New” category. This was especially true if they cared deeply about the products and brand and already had a good idea of the product catalog and, thus, wanted to check out what had arrived since their previous visit.

Clearly, a “What’s New” filter-based category is a great way to support return visitors, so that they can easily identify what new products have arrived since their last visit. But there are other use cases for “What’s New.”

“New Arrivals” is particularly meaningful in seasonal industries, where the newness factor could be a major part of the purchasing decision. (larger view)

In seasonal industries, such as clothing and groceries, “What’s New” helps users to see what’s currently fresh and in season. “What’s New” shouldn’t be taken too literally. For example, fresh figs aren’t exactly new because they are in stores every year, but they are new to stores around summertime, and most users would expect to find them in a “What’s New” type of section, regardless of whether they are technically new (for example, the SKU might be the same). Indeed, the category or filter shouldn’t necessarily be called “What’s New”; depending on the product type, a label such as “New Arrivals” or “In Season” might be more appropriate.

Unsure of what to buy for an eight-year-old nephew, a subject decided to open the “New” category because “kids often want the latest thing.” (larger view)

Some gift-buyers want to see new releases to buy something interesting and novel. The recentness of a product also lowers the chance that the gift recipient already owns the product, which is particularly important when the buyer doesn’t know the recipient well.

Making “What’s New” a filter, rather than a separate site-wide category, is often a good idea, so that users can see new items within sections. This works well in several cases: for repeat visitors who want to check only the new items in a particular category; in seasonal industries where a user is interested only in what’s in season in a particular section, such as “Fruits”; and, last but not least, for gift-buyers who need to pick a section that’s relevant to the recipient before considering how to find the best item in that section.

“What’s New” can be integrated as an option in the filtering tools or as part of the category navigation (even if it’s actually a filter that’s presented as a subcategory). During testing, the subjects responded well to seeing it in both the filtering tools and in the category navigation of websites in seasonal industries. But they can clutter up category navigation quickly if not implemented carefully (i.e. if the options are not progressively disclosed as categories are selected). In industries in which newness isn’t as important, a filtering option would probably suffice.

4. Suggest Both Alternative And Supplementary Products On Product Pages.

Issue observed: Alternatives, substitutes, add-ons and accessories to the product that the user is currently viewing are unreasonably difficult to find without good upselling and cross-selling on the product page.

Upselling and cross-selling is great for business. And, when implemented appropriately, they can be great for usability, too. Suggesting supplementary products is great for users who are looking for add-ons or accessories to the product they are viewing, while suggesting similar products is great for users who are searching for alternatives or substitutes.

Larger view

“It’s like when you look for movies online. If I liked this one, then I might also like these. That’s pretty smart,” a subject explained when stumbling upon the “Similar Diamonds to Consider” on the product page for Blue Nile shown above. Suggesting substitute products is an effective way to keep the user on product pages that don’t match their criteria.

If the user arrives on a product page that turns out not to match their criteria, they will either give up and abandon or look for alternatives or substitutes. Luckily, most users are patient in the beginning and opt for the latter, but they will quickly grow tired if the only way to browse alternatives is to go back to the overview list of products.

This is where suggesting similar products helps. By listing alternatives and substitutes directly on the product page, the user can go directly from one product to the next. This much richer display of information about the product keeps the user engaged on the page and close to the “Add to Cart” button and checkout process. Good suggestions of similar products also help the user find alternatives or substitutes across the website’s entire product catalog, not only easing the browsing experience but also enhancing product findability (and enabling cross-sectional navigation via breadcrumbs).

Larger view

“Sometimes they have some looks or some ideas, or something,” a subject explained after scrolling to the end of the product page on Gilt shown above. While the “May We Suggest” suggestions are great, the subject had already found a dress (on the product page she was currently on) and wanted to complete her outfit with a pair of shoes to go with the dress. Unfortunately, Gilt offered only alternative products (i.e. other dresses) and not add-ons or accessories (shoes, jewelry, makeup, etc.).

While suggestions for similar products are great, they often aren’t enough. Users will often want suggestions of add-ons and accessories, too. After deciding to purchase a product, some users will want to buy additional — supplementary — products along with it, to “complete the look” or “finish the package.” A user buying a camera is likely to want a case for it. Yet finding such supplementary products is often a hassle. Even if the website has a subcategory for accessories, the user would have to go back to the product list, select the subcategory and apply the right compatibility filters (which works only for category browsing, not search).

With a list of add-ons and accessories directly on the product page, the user would easily be able to find products to supplement their purchase. Much like suggestions for similar products, suggestions for supplementary products ease the user’s browsing experience, enhance product findability, and — to a great extent — enable cross-sectional navigation. Not to mention its obvious business appeal.

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“When they say ‘Recommended for you,’ I assume they will fit,” a subject explained, referring to the camera cases displayed after adding a Nikon Coolpix pocket camera to his cart on Tesco (above). It turned out that one of the two recommended cases didn’t fit the camera.

When suggesting supplementary products, label them appropriately if compatibility is an issue in your industry. Many of the subjects assumed that any accessories suggested would be compatible with the product they were viewing or had just added to their cart. Only when the suggested products were explicitly labeled as being based on the behavior of other users (for example, “Other customers also bought”) did the subjects not assume them to be compatible. Be careful in labelling behavior-based suggestions for supplementary products as “recommended” if you can’t guarantee their compatibility with the product they are being suggested to complement.

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“Something which is similar that other customers visited or bought,” a subject mumbled to himself when glancing over the sidebar shown above. Tesco helps its users find both alternative and supplementary products by including lists of both “Others bought these alternatives” and “Customers who bought this also bought” in the sidebar of its product pages. (And unlike on its shopping-cart page, Tesco gets the labeling right here by clearly indicating that the lists are based on the behavior of other customers.)

Given that users want suggestions for both similar and supplementary products, implementing both on product pages is recommended. The lists don’t have to be located near each other, although they could be, as long as they aren’t mixed. The subjects responded poorly when the criteria or theme of the product suggestions was not clear. Therefore, keep suggestions for similar products and supplementary products in distinct groups, but be sure to have both.

While basing these suggestions on the behavior of other users can be effective, exercise care. Tesco’s suggestions for supplementary products consisted entirely of memory cards, even though many other relevant add-ons and accessories are obvious, such as cases, lenses and batteries. So, either manually curate the suggestions or have the system generate them based on a broad range of factors, so that a diverse set of complementary product types is shown.

5. List “Recently Viewed Items.”

Issue observed: Refinding a previously visited product becomes needlessly complex when the user has to rely on the browser’s native “Back” button or has to renavigate the categories or reuse search.

During testing, subjects often wanted to return to a previously visited item — sometimes to check whether certain features of the previous item were compatible with the new one, other times to compare two products before deciding on one to purchase, and still other times to return to a certain product scope from where they could use the breadcrumbs to climb back up the category hierarchy.

Whatever the reason, the subjects simply wanted to refind a previously viewed product. Yet, on websites without a “Recently viewed items” feature, the only ways to do this were through repeated clicking of the browser’s “Back” button (an option that occurred only to some subjects) or by searching for it or plowing through the product categories once again.

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When looking for a camera case on Pixmania (above), this subject realized that he needed the name of the camera he chose. He went back to the product page using the browser’s “Back” button, then reopened the drop-down menu, then opened the “Camera Cases” subcategory in a new tab. A list of “Recently viewed items” would have greatly simplified this process.

A list of “Recently viewed items” typically consists of a row of products that the user has previously visited. It is a kind of history-based breadcrumb trail (except that it typically includes only products, not categories or other pages). The list tends to be located towards the bottom of the product page — sometimes even in the footer — but is sometimes given more prominence in a sidebar.

However, the list should be available on all pages of the website (not just the product page), because returning to a previously visited item would be just as welcomed by users who find themselves lost on a category page. The footer has the benefit of being out of the way most of the time; and then when subjects wanted to change scope or refind an item, most scrolled to the bottom of the page, likely looking for cross-sectional navigational such as “Related Items,” and thus discovering the “Recently viewed items” list.

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On Tesco (above), refinding a previously visited product is made easy by the “Items you have recently viewed” list, which is integrated in the footer on all category and product pages. Compare how easy it was for this subject to check the camera’s dimensions with the previous Pixmania example.

Another location for the “Recently viewed items” list is the sidebar, as seen here on Crate & Barrel. (larger view)

With this list readily available throughout the website, users are assured that refinding products will be easy, and they are more likely to explore other items because they know that returning to a favorite won’t be a hassle. Combined with breadcrumbs, users enjoy a powerful combination that facilitates both history-based cross-sectional navigation and section jumping. Show “Recently viewed items” to everyone, then, without requiring users to sign in; the list should be session-based, functioning much like a shopping cart.

Because the list is automatically generated for users, a couple of privacy features are worth considering. While the vast majority of users will enjoy seeing “Recently viewed items,” a few will want to hide the items because they don’t want others to know or because they’re on a public computer. In such cases, consider two features: “Clear all” and “Disable list.”

6. Create Dedicated Pages That List Compatible Products.

Issue observed: Users have a difficult time finding compatible products and verifying their compatibility when the website doesn’t explicitly state their compatibility or link to the corresponding products.

Finding a spare adapter for your laptop or buying a camera and matching case might sound like trivial tasks, but during testing, it turned out to be extremely difficult for subjects, who had a completion rate of only 35%. This means that 65% had to give up or, worse, ended up purchasing a product that they believed was compatible but was, in fact, not.

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The subject above opened the camera page in a new tab, but even with the camera’s dimensions close at hand, finding a matching case proved to be tiresome, as he still had to open the page for the camera case, go to the specifications, locate the dimensions, compare it to the camera’s, and repeat this for every single case. After a few attempts he gave up, like 65% of the subjects.

Finding compatibility-dependent accessories can be difficult, which is why you should always suggest both alternative and supplementary products on a product page (see guideline 5), as well as list “Recently viewed items” (guideline 6). However, if the majority of accessories in your industry are strictly compatible with certain other products (regardless of whether you sell those other products), then consider also offering whole pages listing compatible products. Technology industries are ideal for this (due to the technical dependency between products), whereas it would be overkill for a clothing store (all clothes “function” together — the only “compatibility” factor is taste).

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“I’ll pick Nikon now — originally, I didn’t necessarily want one from Nikon — but I’ll do it now hoping to find an original camera bag so I know it will fit, because I’m not really keen on going back to find my camera dimensions and then compare to the bags,” a test subject explained. “So, unless it’s insanely expensive, I’ll probably take an original.” Subjects often gave up finding a compatible case that they liked and simply tried to find anything that would fit their camera. Using brand filters was often a part of that strategy, although it led some novice photographers to purchase incompatible cases, because they assumed that most Nikon cases would fit most Nikon cameras.

When dedicating whole pages to compatible products, then the page for, say, the “Nikon D7000 camera” would list all compatible accessories, such as batteries, cases and lenses. Going a step further, the page could even filter by product type, so that users can view “compatible ‘camera cases’ for ‘Nikon D7000’.” This enables users to navigate the product catalog vertically and to find (typically high-profit) accessories, instilling confidence in the accessories’ compatibility.

Determining compatibility across a catalog is a major undertaking, but with intelligent queries for each compatibility-dependent category, a lot of the work can be automated. The benefits of determining such compatibility are many. Besides the already mentioned ability to browse vertically across categories, it enables you to create powerful filters. Imagine one filter in the “Laptop Adapters & Chargers” category that allows the user to enter their computer’s model and see compatible chargers. Furthermore, it is also great for search engine optimization, because these compatibility lists can be presented as permanent pages, giving you several highly targeted and unique landing pages for each product, such as “Lenses for Nikon D7000,” “Laptop Chargers & Adapters for MacBook Pro” and “Covers for Kindle Paperwhite.”

When seeing these camera bags being cross-sold in their shopping cart, the subject above was disappointed by their looks (all black nylon). (larger view)

Had Pixmania established compatibility across its catalog, it could have linked to a list of compatible accessories — “See all 8 compatible cases for Canon PowerShot A2300” — at the end of this cross-selling section, providing a direct path to a complete overview of relevant cases.

Establishing compatibility across a catalog helps you to avoid plainly wrong matches. (larger view)

In Tesco’s shopping cart above, the subject tried to find a matching case for the camera she had just chosen, but she completely lost faith in the website upon seeing few related accessories and a lot of irrelevant recommendations, including a saxophone!

Compatibility-based pages should be cross-linked with the original product page, as well as with any “Compatible With” lists on the product pages of compatible items. Such pages could also appear in a user’s shopping cart and be included in the filters of all relevant accessory categories across the website.

Besides being great for cross-selling and SEO, dedicated pages of compatible products can be mined for data to create filters and to improve cross-selling recommendations. They would enable you to avoid suggesting incompatible products, which is critical because most users will assume that any product being suggested fits.

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“It fits ‘X60,’ but that’s not mine. I have an X61,” a subject said, referring to the top result above. He continued, “It fits all in the X60 series. Does that mean my X61 as well? I would go to Lenovo’s website and find out.” Confusion about which models are in a “series” was common, because a series’ name can be confused with a particular model’s name.

Just showing a list of compatible products for each model doesn’t always cut it because some models are organized into series as well. In the Newegg example just above, the “Lenovo ThinkPad X61s” model is part of the “Lenovo X60 series.” This hierarchy should be reflected in the dedicated pages of compatible products as well, because some test subjects mixed up a series’ name with a model’s name. Pages for compatible products in a series should link to all models in that series to clear up any doubts the user might have.

Lastly, dedicated pages of compatible products can still be meaningful even if the website doesn’t carry all of the products. For example, an electronics store that doesn’t sell Sony digital cameras could still have pages of compatible products for Sony cameras to help customers find accessories that it does sell. The same goes for websites that don’t even sell products from a given industry; for example, a website that sells apparels or bags but not laptops or electronics might still want to list compatible products so that users can browse only the bags that fit their particular laptop.

7. Always Link Contextual Images Directly To The Products Shown.

Issue observed: Users quickly grow frustrated when they spot a product in a contextual image but can’t navigate to it.

“I want this. What do I do?… I want this one,” one subject said, laughing out of despair while pointing and clicking at a coffee table shown in a contextual image on IKEA. While inspirational images can raise the aesthetic appeal of an e-commerce website and serve as an important vertical style-based navigation path, not directly linking to the products depicted in contextual images will frustrate users to no end.

During testing, the subjects were dumbfounded that a website didn’t simply link directly to all products depicted and that they had to hunt them down to learn more or to purchase them. This lowered their perception of the website, and some took it as a sign that the owners clearly hadn’t used their own website.

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“I don’t know how I found this cushions category. I wonder why there wasn’t a cushions category along with all the sofa options up there. But then I saw this image of a cushion down the page and thought that maybe I’m on the right track.” One subject said this while looking for cushions in the sofa category on IKEA’s website. As he scrolled down the “Sofas” subcategory page, he spotted an image containing a cushion, and while the image was actually cross-selling sofa covers, the “Cushions” category was linked to it as well.

Images tend to draw a lot of attention, and when users get stuck in first attempting to find a product, they tend to scan the page very narrowly for anything that looks like a path to the product they want. Therefore, contextual images should always link to the products depicted, even if the image is meant merely as inspiration for one of the products being shown. Users will still notice the other products in the image, especially if they are actively scanning for one of those product types. Even if the purpose of the image isn’t to promote that particular product, users will become frustrated if they can see the product but not access its page.

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Above, a subject saw a table that he wanted in the thematic “Seating Solutions” image, so he clicked it, but nothing happened. He then tried the “Save to list” button, assuming it would save all of the products shown and that he could then simply remove the other products. But that didn’t happen either. “Nooo… Arrgghhh, it only added the sofa. I would like to get the sofa table,” he said, hovering over and right-clicking the table in the image. He laughed in despair as he continued, “I want this. What do I do? I want this one [pointing at the table]. I expected it would save all of them when I used the button, but it only saved the sofa.” After searching for the table, the subject ended up abandoning the website.

If an item is not being sold, ideally it shouldn’t be depicted at all. In practice, this is easier said than done because contextual images sometimes contain products that were available when the photograph was taken but that now are not (or are not in all distribution channels — for example, a store might sell some products offline only, or an international website might ship certain products to certain regions). Discarding or reshooting an entire scene of multiple products is likely unfeasible if just one or two of the products are no longer available.

In such cases, replace the product link with a description, rather than just remove it entirely (as seen in the IKEA example above). The description could be as simple as “Discontinued,” “Available only in store” or “Not available in US store” — the vital part is to indicate that the user may not purchase the item. If the item has not been discontinued but is simply unavailable for purchase in a particular channel or region (as with IKEA above), then the description can point very persistent customers in the right direction. Better yet, if similar products are available, consider linking to them or to their categories.

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In the image above on the left, one subject found the sofa in the header image interesting and clicked it to investigate further, only to be confused when presented with a list of products but not that particular sofa. In the image on the right, another subject was on the product page for a sofa. Upon inspecting the sofa images, she found that she very much liked the coffee table as well and wanted to know more about it. She looked around for links, but there weren’t any, not even in the cross-selling section further down the page.

Another way to solve this challenge is to mark up contextual images with direct links to the products being depicted, as seen above on Crate & Barrel, where clicking the “+” icon will open a quick preview of the pinned product. (larger view)

Direct links are needed not only for contextual images. Header images and even some images on product pages would benefit from having direct links to the items being shown. For images on product pages, any products that are clearly depicted could be linked to either right below the image, by having a dedicated “get the look” cross-selling list, or at the very least in a generic cross-selling section on the product page. One could even experiment with tagging the image so that users can actually click right on the products they are interested in.

If They Can’t Find It, They Can’t Buy It.

In a time when more and more customers are accessing e-commerce websites through search engines and social media links that send them deep into a website’s hierarchy, enabling users to infer their current position in the hierarchy, to go to the generic parent category and to find related products is critical. Even customers who use on-site search will depend on the website’s taxonomy of categories to infer the available range of products.

No matter how much time you spend on the aesthetics, the product images and the optimization of landing pages, the customer’s overall experience will falter if the foundational e-commerce elements, such as the taxonomy of categories, aren’t solid.

Designing user-friendly category-based navigation is no easy task. It requires a solid information architecture, systematic labelling, a logical hierarchy, curated subcategory pages and a balanced home page design. Obviously, all of this can’t be covered in an article like this, but the seven guidelines we’ve looked at are low-hanging fruit; by following them, you can quickly improve the category navigation on a typical e-commerce website:

1. Don’t make parent categories shallow.
2. Put the same subcategory within multiple main categories when necessary.
3. Consider having a “What’s New” category or filter.
4. Suggest both alternative and supplementary products on product pages.
5. List “Recently Viewed Items.”
6. Create dedicated pages that list compatible products.
7. Always link contextual images directly to the products shown.

One last note. During testing, it became clear that loosely executed categories can have more devastating consequences than “just” immediate abandonment of the website — it could permanently damage the brand. When the subjects couldn’t find a particular product type, they would often conclude that the website didn’t carry such items. Such fundamental misunderstanding leads not only to an immediate loss of a sale, but to future losses because customers won’t visit a store that they assume does not carry the type of product they are looking for.

(al, il)

Learn more guidelines about category and navigation usability in the (paid) report “Homepage & Category Usability,” by the author of this article.

© Christian Holst for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

Voices Carry

Gus Russo �72 Traces the Lesser-Known Tales of the Kennedy Assassination

Ask Gus Russo�72, political science, where he was on November 22, 1963 and he recalls it instantly. He was a student at Mount Saint Joseph High School, plunged with his fellow Roman Catholic school classmates into a deep communal grief over the assassination of John F. Kennedy � who was the first Roman Catholic president of the United States.

�One of the guys sitting next to me in that classroom was the jock of all jocks,� Russo recalls. �A five-letter guy. He was the star of every team he was on…And the most macho guy of the macho guys was crying more than anyone else.�

But for the past year, Russo has been asking other people to recount their memories of that tragic day for Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination � a new NBC documentary hosted by Tom Brokaw. The interviews for that NBC special (with a foreword by Brokaw) have also been compiled and edited by Russo and Harry Moses into a book with the same title published by Lyons Press.

Russo says that many of the people that he and Moses interviewed for the project � including prominent politicians and celebrities � had the same reaction 50 years later that his high school classmates had on that dark day in American history.

�I can�t tell you how many people on set just lost it,� observes Russo. �Tears came to their eyes. Jane Fonda did on the very first question. [Secretary of State] John Kerry welled up. [Former U.S. President Bill] Clinton choked up. A lot of people just had to pause and take a breath.�

Russo is an accomplished investigative journalist and author, with six books to his credit � including books on the Mafia and a memoir titled Boomer Days (2011) that recounts parts of his time as student at UMBC.

Also among Russo�s publications are two books on the Kennedys and Cuba: Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro (1998) and Brothers In Arms: the Kennedys, the Castros and the Politics of Murder (2008). His expertise on the assassination has led to his involvement not only in the new NBC documentary, but in numerous other works about Kennedy�s murder including ABC�s 40th anniversary documentary and (as a technical adviser) on Oliver Stone�s 1991 film JFK.

Though the NBC documentary boasts a lot of star power (actor Tom Hanks and talk show host Jay Leno also make appearances), Russo says that it is the stories of lesser-known people whose lives were transformed by the events that November day in Dallas that interest him the most.

Indeed, a key impetus for creation of the book was Russo�s desire to give the stories of figures close to the drama such as Marie Tippet (widow of the Dallas police officer J.D. Tippet, who was murdered by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as he fled the scene) and Buell Frazier (a friend of Oswald who drove the assassin to the Texas Book Depository on the day of the murder) greater prominence in the retelling of the story on this anniversary.

�This year, Frazier started to open up,� observes Russo, �but for about 25 or 30 years he didn�t talk to anybody. He was traumatized. Marie Tippet had never been on national television.�

He adds that the stories of these often-neglected eyewitnesses to history help build the case for his view that Oswald was solely responsible for Kennedy�s murder. �If you piece together what is known inarguably about Oswald�s chronology,� he says, �you gain a picture of a man who was capable of doing awful things.�

Russo started investigating the assassination decades ago from a viewpoint that there may have been a conspiracy against the president. �But I wasn�t going to turn my brain off to new evidence�. I think it�s a sign of intelligence when you can change your mind. Some people think that�s flip-flopping.

�I was friends with all the [conspiracy writers],� Russo continues, �but when I saw the evidence and said, �It is what is. Oswald did it,� I became the black sheep and persona non grata with these people. They don�t want to incorporate new evidence. They�re stuck in 1963.�

While five decades separate us from November 22, 1963, Russo concludes that the recollections of those who were touched by those events �are best road to understand the event in human terms, especially if you�re trying to relate it to a generation who didn�t live through it.�

(Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination was published on November 9, 2013 by Lyons Press. The NBC documentary for which its interviews were gathered will air on November 22, 2013 at 9 p.m. EST.)

(11/11/2013)

The November edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, graphic design tools, coding resources, project management tools, icons, mapping resources, and some really great new fonts.

Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.

Flaticon

Flaticon is a huge repository of downloadable free vector icons. They also offer a free plugin for using icons directly within Photoshop.

GlyphSearch

GlyphSearch makes it simple to search for icons from Glyphicons, Ionicons, and Font Awesome. You can also browse icons on the site.

Content Snippets

Content Snippets collects specific snippets of written content from around the web, and puts them together in one place for you to get inspiration.

Layers CSS

Layers CSS is a CSS framework that is lightweight and unobtrusive, and includes no dependencies. It doesn’t restrict the look and style of your design.

Free Vector Maps

Free Vector Maps gives you access to tons of vector maps of countries all over the world. They can be used for free under the Creative Commons Attribution License, or can be purchased for unlimited usage.

Slidr.js

Slidr.js is a lightweight, simple JS library, with no dependencies, for adding slide transitions to your page.

Merry Icons

Merry Icons is a set of 100 royalty-free hand drawn icons for Christmas, all for just $16.

Sir Trevor

Sir Trevor is a rich web content editor that stores your content as structured JSON and Markdown rather than HTML, makes it simple to extend your content, and much more.

Knock

Knock is an innovative way to unlock your Mac using your iPhone. All you have to do is knock on your iPhone’s screen and your Mac will unlock, no password required.

iOS7 App Icon Template for Obsessive Designers

This new iOS7 App Icon Template for Obsessive Designers takes into account the branded approach of new iOS7 icon design, which is more like logo design than ever before.

Ionicons

Ionicons are a premium icon font for the Ionic Framework, released under the open source MIT license.

Temper

Temper is a simple app to let you create questions to embed on your website to get feedback so that you can better adapt to what your visitors want. Plans start at just $12/month.

Sitedrop

Sitedrop is an easy way for creatives to share their works-in-progress. Just connect to Dropbox to share any kind of file, which can then be downloaded, commented on, or favorited.

Slack

Slack is a communication platform for teams that brings all of your communication into one place. It archives and organizes your messages as you go, and works with virtually every major platform.

Streme

Streme is an easy way to keep a collaborative stream of links, with no signup required. You can add links to videos, music, and more.

Silk

Silk is a sharing platform for creating collections about anything. Just create a site, add facts to your pages, and create overviews and visualizations.

Canva

Canva is a new graphic design platform for the masses that allows designers to license their work for use by anyone. It can also be used to collaborate with clients, and speed up your design process.

Fleep

Fleep is a chat program, pinboard, and file drawer all rolled into one, available online and for iOS.

Silvrback

Silvrback is a Markdown-powered hosted blog and bio page for your company blog. It’s clean and simple, but gives you complete control over your brand.

BamBam

BamBam is a project and task management app for teams that lets users with different work styles and roles work together more easily. It’s free for up to 10 users, with additional users only $7/each.

Snazzy Maps

Snazzy Maps is a repository of color schemes for Google Maps that you can use in your own designs. They’re all licensed under Creative Commons and are free to use.

Font Combiner

Font Combiner is a web font creator that lets you create your own custom font with options for hinting, kerning, subsetting, and more.

Typecast

Typecast is an easy way to test drive Google fonts on screen. Sign up for an account to test across devices, as well as to access more than 24,000 fonts.

CSS Inliner

If you create HTML emails, then CSS Inliner can greatly simplify the process of writing your inline CSS. Just paste your HTML and it does the rest.

Onor

Onor is a team recognition platform that simplifies the process of encouraging and rewarding your team members.

Tenebrae ($10)

Tenebrae is a font inspired by the Giallo films of the 70s, along with other cult film posters.

Sartorius ($10)

Sartorius is a display typeface that can work as either a mid-20th century futurist typeface, or an early 20th century industrial font, depending on which alternates are used.

The Hand ($25)

The Hand is a handwritten font that is generic, readable, and balanced, to work well in every kind of design.

Le Havre Layers ($69)

Le Havre Layers is a family of 21 decidedly-retro fonts that can be layered to create a wide variety of effects.

Appleton ($35)

Appleton is a typeface inspired by the late 1800s, and the food labeling of that era. It’s loaded with swashes, alternates, and stylistic and multilingual support.

Pacific Northwest ($60)

Pacific Northwest is a handwritten font that’s fun and comes in two styles (regular and rough).

Figa (free)

Figa is a free display font from Pier Paolo. It’s free to use as long as you email a copy of your work to the designer.

Farewell (free)

Farewell is a free display font designed by Marianela Grande that’s perfect for headlines.

Born (free)

Born is a humanistic serif typeface based on traditional calligraphic forms, with some modern twists. It’s highly legible, even at small sizes.

Appetite Sketch ($29)

Appetite Sketch is a handdrawn version of the popular Appetite font, designed by Denis Serebryakov.

Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments!

Over 500 Colorful Christmas Illustrations – only $17!