Delivering bad news? Use a meme

When face-to-face communication isn’t an option, it can be challenging to express your tone. A method that I’ve found to be effective: use a meme. Here’s an example.

Visual design request:

The seemingly-simple request was for a dotted underline between elements, like this:

Shipping-dots

Response: delivering the bad news.

The response in pure text feels a bit harsh, perhaps even snarky - maybe I just have poor manners.

Shipping-dots Response

Make it friendly: add a meme.

The simple addition really makes the difference.

Choose Wisely

Bonus CSS challenge

Given the following contraints, how could we have made this dotted-line work?

  • You may only use: css/sass and haml/ruby.
  • No javascript.
  • No tables.
  • Element is in a liquid container.
  • Body/containers have background-gradients.
  • Position of element on page: unpredictable.
  • Length of string: unpredictable.