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Am I Rent Stabilized Changelog

This changelog describes significant changes to the project. It was first created on November 29, 2020 so does not account for the entire project's history.

2023-12-31 Bug Fix: slides smooth scroll (#133)

Re-implements the smooth scrolling between slides when a user has not enabled "prefers reduced motion" in their device or browser settings. The smooth scrolling had unintentionally stopped working after PR #125 which fixed accessibility issues with the slides.

2023-12-27 Bug Fix: address search (#132)

Fixes a significant bug (#131) on iOS (iphones) where the address search form's input would move out of the visual viewport (be hidden) when focused. Although it would return to the visual viewport when typing, when the input is blurred the slides layout would get stuck in a state that obscured the search button, thus preventing the user from search for an address. The fix involves temporarily hiding all non-active/visible slides when the input is focused, and then un-hiding them when the search button is clicked in order to prevent the odd layout shift from occuring.

2023-12-16 Improved A11Y of address search form (#128)

Made accessibility enhancements and bug fixes for the address search form on slide two:

  • apply aria-required="true" to the <input> element to indicate that it is required to users of assistive tech
  • dynamically apply aria-labelledby to the <input> element when needed to provide an accessible description
  • dynamically apply aria-invalid="true/false" to the <input> when it is in an invalid state
  • apply focus to the input when the user submits the form when there is an error so that error text is announced
  • cleaned up HTML for error help text
  • removed asteriks from error help text to avoid confusing users of assistive tech

2023-11-27 Fix A11Y of Homepage / Slides (#125)

Improves the accessibility of the home page's slides (main content):

  • Utilizes the HTML inert attribute to remove inactive slide content that is focusable from the tab order.
  • Applies aria-hidden="true" to all inactive slides.
  • Programmatically focuses the active slide when transitioning from the previous slide. Note: no focus ring is applied to the active slide since there may only ever be a single slide in view at a time.
  • Partially follows the WAI APG's Carousel pattern for making the slides accessible to users of assistive technology. I say "partially" because the homepage's slides pattern does not follow a typical carousel UX in that it does not allow users to go backwards / to a previous slide or jump to any slide using a specific set of controls. The implementation that follows guidance from the Carousel pattern was tested using VoiceOver on Safari with positive results.

Other:

  • Updated dev dependency caniuse-lite

2023-11-22 A11Y improvements & bug fixes (#124)

Accessibility fixes:

  • Corrected the usage of heading levels (h1-h6) through out the website so that there is one h1 per page and are sequential (see issue #85)
  • Fixes the main navigation's hamburger button (previously was a clickable <div>) by making it an actual button.

Other bug fixes & improvements:

  • fixes the "start over" button click handler which was previously not working
  • cleaned up the main navigation CSS
  • removed some unused SCSS partials

2023-02-03 App Dependency updates (#120)

  • Removed node-sass in favor of (Dart) sass
  • Upgraded webpack to latest 4.x version 4.46.0
  • Upgraded Node.JS to 16.13.2 via app/.nvmrc and .github/workflows/node.js.yml

2023-02-01 (PR #118)

Updated the app's address search UI to use v2 of NYC Planning Labs GeoSearch API, an NYC specific geocoder. The v1 of the API was sunsetted in December of 2022 and as a result the app's address search no longer worked (issue #119).

2021-04-14 (PR #89)

Reinstated the local tenants rights groups search that was missing from the 2020-11-29 JavaScript refactor. When a user searches for their address, if the geocoding API returns a successful response, the coordinates of that address are matched spatially (point in polygon) against a table containing the catchment areas of NYC tenants rights groups via CARTO's SQL API. If any results are found then they are displayed in a modal in the second to last slide. How this data is displayed to the user could be improved, and the tenants rights groups data itself most likely needs updating.

2021-03-25 (PR #87)

Fixed accessibility issues with elements that behaved like buttons but were either clickable <div> elements (ugh!) or anchor elements.

Fixed a bug where pages would load without the locale being set thereby causing an incorrect font-size value to be applied to body text.

2021-02-10 (PR #80)

Updated the ETL scripts that generate the data on NYC properties that are likely to have rent stabilized apartments. Consolidated the previous subdirectories (scripts/, sql/, and data/) into the single data/ subdirectory. The data processing is now automated via a Makefile and several Docker containers. Running the command make all in the data/ subdirectory will download the required data sources and run the necessary scripts that create a PostgreSQL database called airs with the likely_rs table containing the list of said properties. Currently this table is exported as a Shapefile and uploaded to CARTO to enable data querying and rendering by the app. A future update may replace the use of CARTO with a NodeJS server that features a RESTful API for querying the data.

2021-01-30 (PR #79)

Fixed a bug with the app's address search where an autosuggest search result selected by the user could return a different address by the search API endpoint.

2020-11-29 (PR #58)

This was a major JavaScript refactor (perhaps more so a rewrite!) of the application's codebase that amounted to over 400 commits! The primary goal of this refactor was to make the JavaScript code easier to reason about as its previous implementation was, let's say, not the easiest to reason about. Secondary goals were to improve code quality with unit tests, Continuous Integration, JS & SCSS linting, and code formatting. I also removed some 3rd party libraries that were no longer needed, upgraded ones that were kept, and implemented a new build system using Webpack.

Non-goals of this refactor included:

  • porting the codebase to a JavaScript framework such as React or Vue
  • porting the codebase to Typescript
  • refactoring the styles (SCSS/Sass)
  • fixing accessibility issues
  • adding new features (well except for autosuggest in the address search!)

However, when an a11y related fix or SCSS improvement could be made with little effort I did so. I plan on fixing the major a11y issues with the website following this refactor.

The following is a comprehensive overview of the changes that were made.

Code Refactor

  • refactor JavaScript in previous app/js/app directory
  • restructure the sub-directories in app/, e.g. use the src/ and public directory conventions that are commonly used with modern frontend web apps.
  • modularize the code using ES modules
  • use ES6+ features / syntax
  • isolate interactive UI elements as ES6 Class components that inherit from a super class.
  • utilize immutable application state management

Components

Create Component classes for each interactive element to isolate its logic, styles, and DOM element(s).

  • Component super class
  • AddToCalendar
  • AddressSearchForm
  • AdvanceSlides
  • KeyboardNavigation
  • LanguageToggle
  • LanguageToggleButton
  • MapTileLayers
  • MapPopup
  • Navigation
  • ProgressIndicator
  • RentHistoryEmail
  • SearchResultMap
  • SearchValidationErrors
  • slidesContainer
  • StartOver
  • VerifyRentStabilized

State Management

  • use Redux.JS for managing application state
  • use Redux Dev Tools for tracking state when in dev mode
  • use redux-logger in a "debug" mode for debugging builds when necessary
  • use redux-thunk for handling async actions
  • use custom middlewares for logging errors and crashes
  • use an observeStore function that allows for Components to react to state changes

Frontend Build System Eval

  • evaluated the previous frontend build system that used Gulp.JS and found it to be difficult to modify and improve so scrapped it.
  • use Webpack as a frontend build system with support for "develop" and "production" build options
  • use Webpack Dev Server
  • use Babel.JS for transpiling ES6+ code to ES5 for IE11
  • create separate entry points (code split) for index.html and info/*.html pages

Code Quality Improvement

  • set up an ESLint task
  • set up StyleLint task for CSS/SCSS
  • set up a Prettier code formatting task
  • set up the Jest testing framework
  • set up a git commit hook that runs Prettier and ESLint
  • write unit tests
  • setup Github Action for building the app and running tests in pull requests
  • setup lightweight error/exception logging using Google Analytics gtag.js

Static Assets

  • Split up locales JSON files (previously all three supported languages were in one file per HTML page)
  • Rename app/data/ directory to app/public/locales/
  • use [page-name]-[lang-code].json file naming convention for locale files
  • updated translation buisness logic to accommodate this new convention

3rd Party Deps

  • upgrade GSAP dependency
  • remove packages installed in bower_components (think this is just cartodb.js?)
  • remove jQuery
  • remove cartodb.js
  • remove aja.js
  • kept addthis.js (social media sharing widget)
  • upgrade atc.js (Add to Calendar)
  • upgrade handlebars.js
  • upgrade analytics.js to gtag.js

Geographic Map

  • remove usage of Leaflet.JS / CartoDB.JS
  • use d3-tile and d3-geo for lightweight map implementation
  • use CARTO Maps API for querying likely rent stabilized map tiles
  • kept CARTO Positron basemap tiles

Use NYC Planning Labs Geocoder for Address Search

The previous address geocoding API being used required the street address and borough name to be passed as separate params which required separate inputs in the UI. The newer Geocoding API supports autosuggest which provides a better User Experience.

  • documentation
  • remove borough select / dropdown
  • use autosuggest API endpoint and show results via an HTML datalist
  • update form validations error messages & styling
  • update translation text for form input & error validations
  • fix handling of form submit
  • made the form's "search" button an actual form submit button
  • add HTML label for form's text/search input

Other

  • use Netlify for Preview Deploys, builds, and other misc checks on pull requests
  • use Netlify to host the website and automatically deploy it when pushing to the master git branch
  • removed the "Rent Logic" button / link from last slide (Rent Logic is a startup and they haven't donated a dime to me so why feature it for free on the website's homepage?)

Left Overs

The following items I did not get around to completing and intend to address after Pull Request #58 has been merged (you can only fit so much in a single PR!)

  • JS resize handler for setting slide size

    • when the browser is resized, the layout shifts oddly. A resize event handler would fix this.
    • or perhaps dispatching the goToSlideIdx action with the current slide index?

  • Tenants Rights search component

    • needs a modal component (could combine with rent-history modal?)
    • needs the tenants rights spatial search query
    • needs an SQL query for CARTO
    • needs async action for fetching data
    • could move hbs template from index.html page to a file

A11Y:

  • manage focus when scrolling between slides (see this write up for why)

  • Fix tab index so that the user can't jump between slides by tabbing

  • make buttons actual HTML buttons and not clickable <div> elements

Misc:

  • add a 404 page and adjust translation business logic for it
  • could upgrade or remove normalize.css as it mostly isn't needed these days