The following full-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings!

9261564 - Blogger/Copywriter/Editor - Flinja
9261652 - Front End Web Designer/Developer - IMS, Inc.
9261687 - Junior Pricing Analyst - Whitney, Bradley and Brown
9261584 - Manufacturing Electrical Engineer 1 - AAI Corporation
9261583 - Research Associate - CoStar Group, Inc.

The following part-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings!

9261656 - Anne Arundel County STEM Instructor - YMCA of Central MD
9261562 - Driver - Uber
9261540 - IT Support Specialist - BYK Gardner - USA
9261673 - Chess Coach or Aide - Silver Knights Chess
9260554 - Princess Characters - Thumbs Up Party Planning
9261527 - Welcome Center Staff - Howard County Tourism & Promotion

Sass makes working with media queries pretty excellent. You can nest them right within other blocks of CSS, which puts the properties and values you are changing right next to each other. That creates an obvious connection between them, which is a much nicer authoring experience than trying to maintain those changes separated by tons of other code or in a different file. We've covered this before. It was new in Sass 3.2.

.column-1-3 {
      width: 33.3333%;
      @media (max-width: 600px) {
        width: 100%;
      }
    }

But since we're likely to do that over and over again, we should abstract that media query away like we would any other variable.

$bp-babybear: "(max-width: 600px)";
    
    .column-1-3 {
      width: 33.33%;
      @media #{$bp-babybear} {
        width: 100%;
      }
    }

It's more common to see a @mixin be used though, in conjunction with Sass @content blocks. We covered this in the article Naming Media Queries:

@mixin bp($point) {
      @if $point == papa-bear {
        @media (max-width: 1600px) { @content; }
      }
      @else if $point == mama-bear {
        @media (max-width: 1250px) { @content; }
      }
      @else if $point == baby-bear {
        @media (max-width: 600px)  { @content; }
      }
    }

Which you use like this:

.sidebar {
      width: 33.33%;
      @include bp(baby-bear) {
        width: 100%;
      }
    }

And there is no reason you can't do both, abstracting away the media queries into variables, if you prefer the look of that:

@mixin bp($point) {
      
      $bp-babybear: "(max-width: 600px)";
      $bp-mamabear: "(max-width: 1250px)";
      $bp-papabear: "(max-width: 1600px)";
    
      @if $point == papa-bear {
        @media #{$bp-papabear} { @content; }
      }
      @else if $point == mama-bear {
        @media #{$bp-mamabear} { @content; }
      }
      @else if $point == baby-bear {
        @media #{$bp-babybear}  { @content; }
      }
    
    }

Which has the exact same usage.

As an aside, I like "bp" as a name, because it's something you have to type over and over and it's short and sweet.

At a glance, it seems like the @mixin approach has limited value. Just using a variable is less verbose and makes just as much sense. However with the @mixin, we are granted additional powers!

Perhaps we want to create a version of a stylesheet which contains no media queries at all. This is absolutely reasonable in some circumstances. Perhaps we want to create an IE 8 and down stylesheet. Nicolas Gallagher toyed with using Sass for this years ago, but this is slightly different. IE 8 and down do not natively support media queries so perhaps we decide we're going to serve them a stripped down stylesheet which does not include them at all. Old browsers like that are slower anyway, so instead of punishing them with additional code they can't use, we're helping them by serving them less. Sort of the Universal IE 6 Stylesheet idea.

We can use a combination of conditional comments to do that:

<!--[if !IE 8]><!-->
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
    <!--<![endif]-->
    
    <!--[if gte IE 9]>
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
    <![endif]-->
    
    <!--[if lte IE 8]>
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="style-NoMQs.css">
    <![endif]-->

Another reasonable and real-world reason to serve a stylesheet stripped of media queries is if you have some pages of your site that use responsive design and some pages of your site that have a mobile-specific version. I think that's reasonable. The pages that have a mobile-specific version don't really need those media queries in them.

So how do you create both a style.css and a style-NoMQs.css from the same source Sass? We use the power of our @mixin.

We use a logic condition within the bp @mixin which will either continue and output the media query, or output nothing.

$MQs: true;
    
    @mixin bp($point) {
      @if ($MQs) {
        $bp-babybear: "(max-width: 600px)";
        $bp-mamabear: "(max-width: 1250px)";
        $bp-papabear: "(max-width: 1600px)";
      
        @if $point == papa-bear {
          @media #{$bp-papabear} { @content; }
        }
        @else if $point == mama-bear {
          @media #{$bp-mamabear} { @content; }
        }
        @else if $point == baby-bear {
          @media #{$bp-babybear}  { @content; }
        }
      }
    }

You wouldn't declare that variable right outside the @mixin though. You would declare it from your "master" file that @imports all the partials. So perhaps your style.scss file is:

$MQs: true;
    
    @import "variables";
    @import "colors";
    @import "global";
    /* etc. */

And you create the "No Media Queries" version (style-NoMQs.css) by creating a style-NoMQs.scss:

$MQs: false;
    
    @import "variables";
    @import "colors";
    @import "global";
    /* etc. */

Just change that variable to false, and the output CSS will contain no media queries at all.

Big props to Cat Farman who wrote about this very idea in her Cognition article Fall Back to the Cascade, with the slight variation of passing the support variable to the @mixin itself. (Is that safer?)

And as a final aside, I know many folks who don't like how Sass outputs repetitive media queries in the final output, only "bubbling out" the media query as far as the bottom of the nesting. That's necessary to honor the source-order-specificity of the selector (as I understand it). I've personally never worried about it since, since I always serve assets with GZip enabled, and GZip eats repetitive text for breakfast, it doesn't change the file size that much. Not to mention browsers have no problem zooming through and applying those rules. However if you still don't like that (or I'm wrong), there is a Grunt plugin for that.

Conditional Media Query Mixins is a post from CSS-Tricks

An absolute must-have for any typography buff, these wood type alphabets, available as a Flickr photoset from Patricia M, make up one of the most visually stunning collections of wood type currently available.

Each of these 84 unique alphabets has been scanned in by hand and is available as a high-resolution image under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Whether you choose to download and adapt them to your specific needs, or simply appreciate their historical value, you can’t go wrong by adding these images to your collection.

Wood type alphabets, used in letterpress printing in the 19th century, were originally developed as a cheaper alternative to metal type alphabets, because they cost manufacturers approximately half as much to produce. It was also preferable to metal type because of the tendency of large metal letters to develop uneven surfaces or crack as they were being cooled.

Though the most famous example of wood type are of course, the ‘Wanted’ posters of the 19th century that are highlighted in practically every Western film ever made, wood type alphabets were used for nearly every kind of printing done at that time.

Whether it was the sale of horses or land, political rallies, booklets, packaging or circus posters—wood type helped express the message of that day. — Historical Society board member Jim Van Lanen, via the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum website

This collection makes a beautiful visual display of the wide variety of wood type alphabets that existed during the years of letterpress printing.

What do you think of wood type alphabets? Have exciting plans for these images? Let us know in the comments.

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Web Designers are typically thought to only solve design problems and create trendy sites. Little credit is given to the subtler role we play in commercial sites.

Viewers’ focus and time are an increasingly rare commodity that pays for the vast majority of free content online — through ads, sponsors, product placements, and other means. Though many don’t realize it, often one of our primary roles as designers is to direct focus to the advertisements and sponsors that monetises the site.

But what is the best way to go about doing that, without seeming excessively forceful? Below I’ll dive into what white noise is and how it affects your users’ experience.

White noise: How it affects your user’s experience

When you hear the term white noise, you typically think of the gray “fuzz” your TV presents to you when the signal is lost. However, the term can also apply to nearly anything:

White noise: noise containing many frequencies with equal intensities.

According to the Google definition, white noise can also be interpreted to mean a loss of focus or direction. In terms of web design, that would mean the user isn’t correctly directed to your website content and thus, loses interest or focus.

It’s a popular notion within the web design & development community to present a content-first approach; with advocates such as Jeff Zeldman, Luke Wroblewski, and Alex Morris writing about the subject. The idea being that with a content-first approach, it’s less likely to have the content fight for attention among advertisements, or worse, the website design itself.

Everyone using the web with some frequency will have experienced this scenario at some point: You casually browse to a website, and immediately find yourself more drawn to the “extras” of the website rather than the stuff you actually came for.

Being assaulted with ads and product placements when you simply came to read an article is not a friendly user experience. At worst, the user may even leave the website with a bad image of the brand itself.

Commonly, users in these scenarios don’t even attempt to sort through the mess to find the content they came for — they leave almost immediately. So as you can see, effective placement of sponsorships and products is essential to the success of a website. Getting it wrong can result in a loss of website views, poor brand reputation, or an overall unprofessional demeanor.

While getting advertising wrong is quite easy, doing it right is actually fairly straight forward as well. Many popular websites employ advertising, and yet they still have very professional and appealing reputations to boot. It’s more a manner of approaching your own website as a viewer rather than the owner than anything else. Ultimately, you want to leave a website thinking about the brand and the content they provided, not the advertising it served up. Below are a few trends, with examples, of how websites do this today from the good… to the bad.

Common advertisement solutions

Advertisements have earned their place on the web as the primary means of paying for content. Users without an adblocking plugin will be bombarded with countless ads throughout their daily web surfing. Although it may sound like a miserable and poor experience, you may not even realize many of your favorite websites use ads as a revenue model. That isn’t because those websites do it infrequently — it’s because they do it right.

When advertising and product placements don’t interfere with your users’ website experience, you’ve done it right.

Blending content and sponsorship

Frequently you’ll venture across websites, such as Twitter, that blend their ads in with the main content. This technique is generally well accepted if done correctly.

The key to getting this right, is making the advertisement look fairly similar to the content, but to obviously designate it as a sponsorship. Otherwise, users will feel mislead into visiting the sponsor and lose trust in the parent website.

Other popular websites to employ this technique are Reddit, Tumblr and Facebook.

Subtle placement outside content

While the blending techniques has grown to be a popular solution, many websites employ other solutions. Dribbble for instance, places advertisements in the footer and sidebar of their website. They’re tucked away enough and designed to not be noticeable to those in a hurry, but to casual visitors the ads are still hitting their mark.

While this solution is generally well accepted, some sponsors feel it isn’t a direct enough approach. These type of advertisements should still look like they belong, and not unreasonably encroach upon the main content. Dribbble does a great job of keeping the content as the main focus point, but also serving up ads in off areas to bring in revenue.

Commercial advertising

Some websites have kept the traditional advertisement feel to their sponsorship placement. Youtube has options for preroll, endroll, and “commercial” type placements. Generally speaking, these types of advertisement look and feel a lot like TV. They’re very commonly found on video hosting services and typically force the user’s focus rather than acquire it naturally.

While sometimes these types of solution leave a bad taste in users’ mouths, making sure the sponsorship content is relevant will go a long way to increasing interest. Hulu does a great job of surveying user’s interests to offer up more personalized advertisements.

Blatant, non-designed advertisements

These type of placements are generally the worst for a website viewer. Advertisements are thrown on wherever they fit, with minimal effort made to make them relevant or feel “included” with the website style.

Websites offering these type of placements typically have higher sponsorship revenue — but at the cost of a lower quality looking website. Frugally Sustainable is an example of this, with nearly the entirety of the sidebar dedicated to ads. This type of solution is almost always avoided by those looking to present a professional or welcoming demeanor for their website. Sometimes a website can scrape by with such poor placements, but the sense of ad space being oversold still may linger with the user like in Yahoo’s case.

In conclusion

A lot has changed over the last few years with web based advertising and the user experience. Now more than ever, websites are attempting to present ads in a more appealing and approachable manor. In turn, this pays the bills whilst keeping the user’s focus primarily on the content.

If you’ve had an adblocking plugin since the dawn of the web 2.0 days, I highly encourage you to disable it for a while.

Many websites now don’t simply plaster “personal” ads on every available area, but rather opt for more focused and content-relevant advertising techniques. Along with this emphasis on the UX of advertising, Web Designers have also grown to require vast skills in the User Experience area; which is a good thing for casual web browsers!

How do you handle adverts on your sites? Is advertising a good way to fund free content? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, white noise image via Shuttrstock.

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