In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about common pitfalls in mobile ecommerce sites, find out what Wix did to have the WordPress community abuzz, discover how to use SVG beyond illustrations, and more.
If you’re new to my blog, each Friday I publish a post highlighting my favorite user experience, accessibility, WordPress, CSS, and HTML posts I’ve read in the past week.
Hope you find the resources helpful in your work or projects!
Want more resources like these on a daily basis? Follow me @redcrew on Twitter.
Tweet of the Week
I’ve been asked a couple of times why captions are called “closed captions”
Closed Captions are an overlay on a video that can be turned off and on
Open Captions are embedded into the original video and can’t be turned off
— Jon Attenborough (@JonAttenborough) April 7, 2021
User Experience
- In their latest two+ year mobile UX study, Baymard Institute learned the mobile user experience has
generally improved.
However, in their almost 300 sessions conducted for the study, they identified 18 common pitfalls that apply to most mobile ecommerce sites. - How do you make sense of the mess of UX roles? Teo Yu Siang offers a helpful guide to understanding UX roles and which one is best for you. My advice: read the job description carefully. The job title may not match the description of responsibilities and tasks.
- The new Product Elevation meetup launches May 5, 2021 with Jeff Gothelf discussing the latest lean UX case studies. The free online event is 6:15pm to 8:15pm Greenwich Mean Time; you must register to attend.
- Another one of my pet peeves. I’m so glad our local Korean restaurant created their menu and contact info with HTML.
As a…
– restaurant website visitor
I want to…
– have the restaurant phone number appear as an uncopiable raster image on page 9 of their 48mb stock-photo-filled pdf menu
So that…
– I can call them pic.twitter.com/57cdxZXiFk— Shit User Story (@ShitUserStory) April 8, 2021
Accessibility
- In episode 9 of the Word Wrap podcast (18 minutes), Steph Eckles and Claire Lipskey discuss Web Content Accessibility Guideline Success Criteria you may not be meeting and how the success criteria relate to your web development.
- Not the news I expected to read this week. The Winn-Dixie decision a few years ago was heralded as a success fo the accessibility community. However, Winn-Dixie appealed and the 11th Circuit court reversed the decision. In my opinion, that’s a mistake.
- There’s a big difference between accessibility maturity and compliance, says Alistair McNaught. Compliance isn’t the goal when it comes to accessibility.
Accessibility maturity is about ensuring the things that promote good practices continue to grow. This means being embedded in cultural practice and consciousness.
- Thanks to Chris Coyier for sharing some articles about accessibility he’s saved recently.
WordPress
- It’s been quite the week in the WordPress community, as Wix released a set of videos and shipments of Bose headphones to WordPress influencers in a new marketing campaign. The result: many WordPress users found Wix’s tactics shady and bad publicity.
- Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, shared his thoughts on Wix and their dirty tricks, pointing out
They are so insecure that they are also the only website creator I’m aware of that doesn’t allow you to export your content, so they’re like a roach motel where you can check in but never check out.
Ouch.
- With their announcement this week that iThemes has acquired Kadence WP (team behind Kadence Blocks), the company announced they will be sunsetting iThemes Builder and their legacy themes at the beginning of 2022.
- According to W3Techs (World Wide We Technology Surveys), as of April 1, 2021, WordPress now has 41% of the market share for content management systems.
CSS and HTML
- Wonderful news to read! Ten years after inception, Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) becomes an official web standard. Thank goodness we no longer have to download and install apps to play video and audio.
- Want to learn about swipey image grids? Cassie Evans shares how she used SVG to create a swooshy image grid, sharing info about animations and interactivity as well as some cute puppy images.
- I remember when
smallwas avoided by coders and wastossed in the Dustbin of Frowned-Upon Elements
. Then HTML5 brought it back and usingsmallwas good again. I rarely use it, but if you do, check out Day 8 of #30DaysofHTML:smallby Jen Kramer and Erika Lee.
What I Found Interesting
- Kristen Hare comments about journalists during the past year of the COVID pandemic in we love the flexibility of working from home. We miss the humans..
- Not only for developers, but for designers, user experience professionals, and others. Portia Buton explains what you can do instead of coding challenges when interviewing for a new job.
- Wondering how long it takes to re-rank a website with fixed quality issues? Google’s John Mueller offers his thoughts, and explains how Google handles changes.
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Did I miss some resources you found this week? I’d love to see them! Post them in the comments below.
