February 11, 2022 Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development News

In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about Fitt’s Law in the touch era, find a deep introduction to WordPress block themes, discover why aspect-ratio is great, 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!

Tweet of the Week

People keep telling me how scared they are to make mistakes so I’m gonna keeping saying it…

We all mess up. All of of us. It’s really ok. Do you need to apologize? Giddy up. Mess? Clean up. Did you learn something? Bet you did. Remember it. Apply.

Welcome to being human.

— Holly Schroeder (she/her) (@314UXHolly) February 10, 2022

User Experience

• In his Fitts’ Law in the Touch Era post on Smashing Magazine, Steven Hoober reminds designers not to make assumptions. Example: while laying out content top to bottom, left to right is a guideline for someone using a mouse and desktop, people read and interact faster with the center of the screen on touch and mobile.

• Submit your session proposal for Design Musuem Week, happening April 24-29, 2022. Session formats for the eight-track program include lighting talk, conversation or panel, workshop, demonstration, or in-person tour events. Note: the event is a hybrid online/in-person event. Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2022.

• MakerX recently conducted a user research study to learn how people research a company for a new role. Their findings? For senior people, leadership and vision ranked high on their list. Interesting to learn what methodology was used for the study.

  For everyone, part of their research process was to try to see how diverse the team was.

• Recognize that people spend little time reading copy on your website; make it easy for people to scan your copy. Format your content with headings, highlight text, include summaries and links, says Paul Boag. Use plain language and bullet points. Avoid jargon.

Accessibility

• Looking for guidance on teaching (or learning) web accessibility? The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) updated their Curricula on Web Accessibility (framework to build your own courses) with seven new Designer Modules.

• Is it possible to conduct accessibility testing without screen readers? Yes, it’s only one tool you can use to test accessibility manually. In his Digital A11y post, Raghavendra Satish Peri explains the benefits of using a screen reader.

• A good place to start: include people with disabilities on your team.

  Conforming to WCAG is a practice in making your future lawyers happy. Real accessibility strives to make people with disabilities happy.
  
  The only way to do that (after doing whatever is standard) is to involve them in your work.

  — Frank ⌁ (@FrankElavsky) February 10, 2022

• Accessibility consultant, blogger, podcaster, and public speaker Nic Steenhout will present The Internet is Unusable: The Disabled View on Monday, February 21, 2022. His talk will focus on findings from usability testing, including how people with disabilities experience barriers on the web. The event is free, online (on Zoom), and requires pre-registration.

WordPress

• In a deep introduction to WordPress Block Themes, Ganesh Dahal provides an overview of block themes, global settings and styles with theme.json, approaches, and building block child themes.

  The structure of a block theme is drastically different from the classic WordPress Template Hierarchy that we all are used to.

• According to a brief mention in the weekly editor chat meeting notes, WordPress 5.9.1 is tentatively scheduled for February 16, 2022. I couldn’t find any blog post announcing expected bug fixes, so here’s the list of tickets currently assigned for version 5.9.1.

• My first look at the new Super List Block plugin, which fits one of my needs: nesting blocks within list items. Which I use every week on this weekly roundup post. Made my writing so much easier this week! Shoutout to Aurooba Ahmed for developing the plugin.

  

• Eric Karkovack takes an early look at the WordPress Photo Directory: Openverse. A successor to Creative Commons Search, Openverse offers images with the CC0 license. Which means photos can be used for any purpose, copied, modified, and redistributed without asking permission.

CSS and HTML

• Have you started using the aspect-ratio CSS property in your projects? Michelle Barker explains why aspect-ratio is great, sharing use cases and coding examples.

• Interesting read about creating a slanted container with CSS for a site’s main layout. Who would have thought to create a new font to make sure the text would read upright? Not me! Check out the comments for other approaches and recommendations.

• I remember the first time I created a favicon file, over 20 years ago. Fast forward to today, and it’s a lot more complicated. Here’s how to favicon in 2022 with only six files. Recommendation: User SVG format rather than PNG.

• Windows Developer kicks off it’s new 30 Days of Progressive Web Apps (PWA) learning series, its 30 day journey to learn PWA. Intended for both beginners and experts, each daily post takes about 5-10 minutes to read, followed by a sample snippet or example.

• Oops. Mazda caused radio station issues in Seattle with bricked infotainment systems in certain Mazda model years. What happened? Mazda’s infotainment system for 2014-1017 model years requires file extensions for image files; the local NPR station sent out images in its HD radio stream without file extensions.

What I Found Interesting

• Former metro Detroit journalist Peg McNichol, who left the area years ago, returned to our area, now working at The Oakland Press. Her first long story was published this week: a story about Elizabeth Denison Forth, Michigan’s first Black female landowner. Fascinating to read the history of Forth! Three memorial signs will be constructed in Oakland County to honor Forth’s life and legacy.

• Did you notice the new brand icon for Chrome? The shadows have been removed and the colors brightened.

• Stunning. The winners of the 2022 Underwater Photographer of the Year contest have been announced. Gorgeous photos of wrecks, animals, people, and more.

If you like what you’ve read today, share the post with your colleagues and friends.

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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.