Posts by Alan B Smith
The most clicked component? Our system icons, small but mighty, coming in at 68M+ clicks. Following that trend, it would be 1.02B+ icon clicks per month.
It’s easy to get lost in the details of the design system or too focused on all the inconsistencies across products. But then I look at the data and remember the impact we have.
Since Monday, we’ve had 27M+ Canvas primary button clicks In production. That feels good.
It would be nice if Slack had native crosspost / retweet / quote tweet functionality. It would save me a lot of hassle having to write “Crossposting for visibility“ to get comms out.
I thought this was a trick because it was “deepPink“ and not “deeppink.” 😂
Yeah, I guess this challenges one of the core patterns that I’ve always held to with semantic tokens: semantic tokens should always reference based tokens. But maybe that’s not necessarily true for every case.
For system / semantic tokens, we tie letter-spacing and line-height to our type ramp. system-letter-spacing-body-small goes with system-font-size-body-small, which is really helpful. But base tokens are trickier to name.
Seems like scalar values kind of fall apart here and maybe relative sizes are better (small, medium, large). Or maybe you could create relatable categories: relaxed, straight, skinny.
I'm having trouble finding examples of this, but I'm curious how to name design tokens with negative values. 🤔 Most tokens use 000 to 999. But for tokens such as letter-spacing, you probably want tokens that are negative and positive with 0 in the middle.
e.g. 0.01, 0, -0.01, -0.02, -0.03, -0.04
Two tacos in a to-go container. One is fried grouper and the other is fried shrimp.
Somewhat related, the taco or the burrito might be the perfect food. They have nearly infinite ingredient combinations and a highly efficient delivery mechanism. You could argue the sandwich is a rival, but bite-for-bite I think you’re getting more flavor from the taco or burrito.
Denver is 1000+ mi (1600+ km) from any ocean, so I’m taking every opportunity to eat seafood this week, and it’s awesome.
White sand beach and perfectly clear ocean waves
A much needed break.
Thank you, Connie! 😊
A white Negroni in a faceted rocks glass with a large ice cube and orange slice garnish.
Here’s to 39.
The Fifth Rule of Design Systems states: "For any given design system topic, there is a relevant Stu-article for it."
Thank you, friend.
Thanks! I was wanting to see if / how Spectrum handles this.
I’m thinking about a top-level mode that can be toggled with a data-attribute and components subscribe to that.
That makes sense to me! Thanks. 🙂
Good to know I'm on the right path. Thank you!
Ah, sorry. Would you prefer 2.666666666rem? 😈
Changing 8px to 6px everywhere feels like a recipe for disaster. Instead, it seems like you'd want a global density mode where components can opt in.
Design system folks who have worked on density systems: My gut feeling is that density is something you'd want to control at the component level, not the token level. Am I right?
For example, you would adjust the space tokens within the context of a menu component, but not the space tokens overall.
I like beating Chelsea very much. Good match. 😊
Hahaha so much joy! Thanks for sharing. I feel the same way about popcorn. 😂
Shit. I’m so sorry that happened, but I’m glad you’re able to take some time for yourself.
Hugs to folks at Block. 🫂
That‘s wild! Glad y’all are back at home and recovering. 🫂
Rows of green triangular pasta rest on a wood cutting board.
triangoli di spinaci