In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn to design a better error message, find a review of autocaptions, discover how to creatively style lists in CSS, 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
Try something for me before the end of the week: Tell someone you work with what you admire about them. It will make their day.
— Jaime Hunt | The Higher Ed CMO (@JaimeHuntIMC) August 25, 2022
User Experience
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Who hasn’t been frustrated with confusing error messages? You see them on forms, searches, and when something doesn’t quite go right on a website or app. In his latest design patterns series post, Vitaly Friedman takes a deep dive into designing a better error message user experience.
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In his book review, Quenten Steenhuis highlights his 5 takeaways from “Forms that Work” written by Caroline Jarrett and Gerry Gaffney. As he explains, in his work Steenhuis
…take court forms (many of which are challenging to use on paper) and try to breathe life into them as interactive tools, like MADE, UpToCode, and domestic violence protection forms in Massachusetts and Washington State
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The Confab call for speakers is now open. Confab 2023 the conference for people who lead, design, build, or manage digital content. The conference is April 30 to May 3, 2022 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Apply to speak in person or virtually (pre-recorded presentation). Submissions are due September 30, 2022.
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From this week’s annual Plain Language Summit (I’ve attended several of their annual events):
Shuly Babitz & Katy Karnell kicking off #PlainLanguageSummit by debunking the oversimplification myth. Takeaways:
— Rebecca Blakiston 🇺🇦 (@BlakistonR) August 24, 2022
✅ Plain language is info you can find, understand, & use
✅ Build trust by sharing why, sharing how, and showing results
✅ Our work (and websites) are never done pic.twitter.com/U9iqMmjqzy -
Make sure to bookmark these helpful user experience guides from Maze. You’ll find online guides for usability testing, UX research, card sorting, product discovery, concept testing, survey design and more.
Accessibility
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I’ve heard this for years: creating accessible products and services takes away a designer or developer’s creativity. Wrong. But the question keeps getting asked: does accessibility stifle the creative process?
It is important for project and upper management to fully understand that accessibility is a journey and not a destination.
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Join disabilities rights activist and author Emily Ladau on September 12, 2022 for Creating Cultures of Disability Inclusion. Ladau will discuss how you can become an informed a11y to disabled people in your community and congregation. The virtual event is free, requires preregistration.
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Are you familiar with the GalaPro App, which provides closed captions, audio description, and translation for live performances and theater?
Enjoyed seeing “Six” at the National Theater DC with friends tonight. First time using @GalaProApp for captioning. Appreciated how seamless it was—and ease of use. No way I could have kept up with the great musical lyrics without this #accessibility service! pic.twitter.com/1FXUEBLnXT
— Catharine McNally (@cmcnally) August 25, 2022 -
There’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to autocaptions, as Consumer Reports found in lost in transcription: auto-captions often fall short on Zoom, Facebook, Google Meet, and YouTube.
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I agree with Graeme Coleman’s assessment of accessibility and supporting Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 11 is officially retired. If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to phase out support.
WordPress
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Can you help test? The first release candidate for WordPress 6.0.2 is available for download and testing. WordPress 6.0.2 is scheduled to be released August 30, 2022.
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A reminder that Gutenberg, when used in the WordPress community, is not only the plugin. Gutenberg encompasses a number of features, including the block editor, template editor, widget editor, and site editor. Which is why Fränk Klein asks, can we we stop saying Gutenberg?
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It’s been a while! Join our Metro Detroit WordPress group on Monday, September 12, 2022 for a virtual meetup to catch up on what WordPress projects you’ve been working on. The event is free, preregistration is required.
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Woohoo! The Quote block we deserve is finally here, writes my friend Jeff Chandler. You’ll need to install the Gutenberg plugin for now, until the Quote block update is merged into WordPress core in a future version.
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Uh oh. Looks like the announcements of WebP last month were too soon. WebP by default is on hold for WordPress 6.1 after new objections from WordPress lead developers. What happens now? More research by the Performance team.
CSS and HTML
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Are you familiar with the HTML output element? My friend Amy Carney takes a closer look as she explores the underrated output element. It’s used to display results of a calculation or the outcome of a user action.
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I missed this post last week. Size container queries and units are about to ship in browsers, possible this month. Make sure you’re using the right container query syntax, it’s changed recently.
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massCode is a free and open source code snippets manager. Create and organize your own personal snippet collection and have quick access to it. massCode supports Markdown, syntax highlighting, tables, lists, and other formatting Nice!
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Michele Barker walks you through some useful creative list styling. I’m glad to see definition lists were highlighted, often forgotten by designers and developers. Helpful tip: if you use
list-style: none, Safari will no longer recognize an unordered list in the accessibility tree.
What I Found Interesting
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Writers of all ages in Michigan are invited to submit their short story for the Write Michigan Short Story Contest, an annual statewide competition. One short story per author, stories must be submitted by November 30, 2022.
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LastPass sent a notice of recent security incident to their customers (and published on their website). According to the incident report, no customer passwords, data, or personal information were compromised.
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I suspect the Roseate Spoonbill sighted last year in Saline, Michigan caused a similar boon. (I was thrilled to see it several times!) This year’s Internet-famous Steller’s Sea Eagle is another bird wandering far from home and causing a boon for local tourism.
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