ux-bar

Overview

My design/UX bar. It layers on top of frontend-design (reference it for the craft) and adds the rules I care about. Usable standalone on a diff, and invoked by the quality stage of eskills:task-flow.

Semantic color — the rule I break most often

• Brand is brand, never status. Coral (#FF5A47 light / #FF7A66 dark) is the brand. Coral conventionally reads as "owe / alert" in money apps, so brand color must never also mean a debt or an error.
• Map status to its own semantic token:
  • "te deben" / credit / owed-to-you → pos (green)
  • "tú debes" / owes → warn (amber)
  • error / delete / destructive / alert → danger (red)
• Use brand sparingly — icon, hero, primary CTA — not to paint balances or errors.

Design-system discipline

• Use tokens, never hardcoded palette values (no raw slate-/violet-/rose-NNN). Surfaces, text, border, brand all go through semantic CSS variables so light/dark flip for free.
• Ship light and dark; verify both. Respect system as the default preference.

Accessibility floor (WCAG 2.2 AA)

POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust. The checks that catch most barriers:

• Contrast: small text 4.5:1, large text / UI components 3:1. A sub-AA choice is a finding unless named on purpose (e.g. coral fill + white text sits at ~3:1 — kept, with the darker #E8472F fallback documented).
• Semantics first: use the real element (button, a, nav, label) before a div + ARIA. Correct Name / Role / Value; text alternatives for icons and images.
• Keyboard: every interactive element reachable and operable by keyboard, with a visible focus indicator (SC 2.4.11). No keyboard traps; logical focus order.
• Target size: interactive targets ≥ 24×24 CSS px (SC 2.5.8).
• Dynamic state: announce async changes via aria-live/live regions; descriptive errors with how to fix (SC 3.3.3).
• Errors in the interface language: never append an error's technical message after a translated prefix ("No se pudo guardar. Failed to save meeting"). Infrastructure returns a structured reason, the interface maps it to translated copy, and message stays for diagnostics only.
• Reflow: usable up to 400% zoom without loss of content or function.

Responsive & horizontal overflow

The responsive bug I hit most. Symptom → cause → fix:

• Grid/flex items don't shrink → the page overflows. A grid/flex item defaults to min-width: auto, so it refuses to go below its content's intrinsic min-size and drags the whole track wider than the viewport. Fix: min-width: 0 on the item (the grid/flex child) — not on the inner element.
• Native controls keep an intrinsic width. <select>/<input> carry a min width (~longest option / ~20ch) that ignores min-width:0 on the control itself. Put min-width:0 on its grid/flex container; width:0 on the control alone does nothing.
• Intrinsic grids beat breakpoints: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(min(BASIS, 100%), 1fr)). The min(BASIS,100%) is essential — it stops the column floor (BASIS) from overflowing below that width. Wraps N→1 with no magic media query.
• overflow-x: clip is a mask, not a fix. It hides the overflow (and preserves position:sticky, unlike hidden), but the element is still too wide. Find and shrink the real culprit; keep clip only as defense-in-depth.
• A header narrower than the content = overflow elsewhere. On mobile, horizontal overflow expands the layout viewport, so a max-width/centered header stops lining up with full-width cards. Don't fix the header — find what overflows.

Measure, don't eyeball. For any "not responsive" report: render at real widths and check documentElement.scrollWidth > clientWidth. Bisect the culprit by hiding each child (display:none) and re-measuring; confirm the fix by injecting the candidate style and re-measuring before editing. Verify down to 320px (real floor; Galaxy Fold cover ~280px) in every view. Harness: eskills:stack-gotchas → "mobile rendering in WSL".

UX checks

• Destructive actions confirm or are undoable; loading/empty/error states exist.
• Graceful degradation: a missing key/integration hides the feature, it doesn't crash.
• Inclusive copy: UI strings follow the inclusive-language rule in eskills:standards — neutral/collective wording (no niños/as, no -x/-e), no assumed gender or family shape. Report offenders file:line → fix.

Output

When reviewing, report findings as file:line → which rule → the fix. Default to passing only what you actually checked.