June 2, 2013: Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development Resources

With the Memorial Day weekend, the past week went by quickly for me. How about you?

In this week’s resources, you’ll learn about CSS structural pseudo-classes, discover how to improve your responsive web design strategy, reflect on the past 10 years of WordPress, and learn some practical tips for improving user experience. Let’s go!

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Sad day for journalism.

'Chicago Sun-Times' Fires Its Photographers http://t.co/jWKpWP39fq

— NPR (@NPR) May 30, 2013

CSS and HTML

• All You Need To Know About CSS3 Selectors, #1: Structural Pseudo-Classes: Thank you Emily Lewis for this explanation and walkthrough of CSS3 pseudo-classes. Bookmarked.
• Slickmap CSS: Using a simple stylesheet, display a visual representation of sitemaps directly from HTML unordered lists.
  

  

• SASS Style Guide: If you’re using SASS, check out this great guide from Chris Coyier. Good discussion in the comments, with additional recommendations.

Responsive Design

• 7 Ways to Improve Your Responsive Web Design Approach: Design upwards, think fluid, never compromise, and be mindful of performance, says Craig Buckler in this SitePoint article.
• Creating a Responsive HTML Newsletter for Codeacademy: Nicole Merlin focuses on layouts, headers, optimizing ALT text, links and font sizes as she explains how she created a responsive email template for Codeacademy’s monthly newsletter.
  

  

• It’s Not Desktop vs. Mobile: In response to his recent article about a toggle switch to turn responsive web design on or off, Craig Buckler says a single toggle switch can never provide all the options needed for the wide range of devices.

User Experience

• Meta UX—Improving the User Experience of Informal User Experience Testing: Change up the experience for your testers with these four practical tips from Stephan Rosger of Clio Labs.

• Don't underestimate your user and over-engineer your product. #socaluxcamp #ux #usability

  — UX Book Club of LA (@uxbcla) June 1, 2013

• Improving UX with Customer Journey Maps: Use customer journey maps to illustrate the key touchpoints and experiences a customer has in their interactions with a company’s service or product. The guide and example will get you started in developing your own customer journey maps.

Accessibility

• Web industry urged to embrace colour accessibility: Craig Grannell interviews designer and illustrator Geri Coady about color accessibility and her recently published A Pocket Guide to Colour Accessibility book.
• Mega Menu on Adobe.com: Adobe accessibility engineer Michael Jordan explains his approach to usability, keyboard navigation, and screen reader support for the recently released Adobe mega navigation menu.
• Ten Blunt Things I Wish I Could Tell Clients: Have you ever wanted to tell clients in plain language what they’re not understanding about accessibility? Read Karl Groves’ list of what he would tell clients.

WordPress

• Ten Good Years: On the tenth anniversary of WordPress, co-founder Matt Mullenweg reflects on its beginnings, the people who have made WordPress what it is today, and announces a new book being written on the history of WordPress.
• Manage Multiple WordPress Sites from one Location–Which Service is Best?: If you’ve been looking for a central location to manage multiple WordPress sites, this review by Joe Fylan will point you toward several options.
• Redesigning the Template Hierarchy: Thanks to my friend Michelle Schulp at Marktime Media for creating this infographic to better understand the WordPress template hierarchy. Well done, Michelle!
• WordPress Security: Slideshow from Brad Williams presentation from this weekend’s WordCamp Orange County conference.
  
• Being David in a World of Goliaths: Compete & Thrive as a WordPress Startup: Join us June 9 for our next Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup at Lawrence Technological University. Justin Ferriman, co-founder and CEO of LearnDash, will share techniques he’s used in his business to compete against well-known WordPress development firms.
• Tips And Tricks For Testing WordPress Themes: From setting up to development to testing, Daniel Pataki highlights tips he’s learned from developing and testing WordPress themes. You’ll find excellent resources in the post; I added several to my toolkit.

What I Found Interesting

• The hardest news: “I’ve got cancer”: Wow. Reuters journalist Debra Sherman launched her blog today to give back, talk about her experiences and what she is learning about new cancer treatments.
  

  It’s been difficult to get accustomed to saying it; it can’t be true. Even more frightening is my diagnosis: I have Stage 4 lung cancer, meaning the cancer has spread.

• Author-Entrepreneur: 10 Tips For Transitioning To Full-Time In The Job You Love: What I liked best about Joanna Penn’s tips for people who are self-employed—her tip to plan, plan, plan.
• Return a Lost Driver’s License By Dropping It In Any Mailbox: If you found a driver’s license, how would you return it to the owner? It’s as simple as dropping it in mailbox, no stamp required.
• An Open Letter to Science Students and Science Teachers: Carl Zimmer, science author and blogger at National Geographic’s The Loom, takes students and science teachers to task. Students :
  

  … should be learning how to learn from reading.