February 12, 2021: My Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development News

In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about testing content on websites, discover how to create a custom WordPress login page, find helpful interactive guide to CSS transitions, 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!

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Tweet of the Week

Tech literacy and intelligence aren’t the same thing, and we, as digital product makers, oftentimes forget that. You don’t want to infantilize the people you design and develop for, but you also need to check each and every assumption you make.

— Eric Bailey (@ericwbailey) February 11, 2021

User Experience

• When testing content on websites, recruit participants who represent your users and can understand your content.
  

  …they should have the same mindset, situation, and user goals — especially when your tasks are content-rich, research-intensive activities.

• For products offering different sizes, Baymard Institute learned using buttons for size selection is a better choice than drop-down menus. In their usability testing, Baymard discovered users overlooked size settings in drop-down menus.
• In their comparison of the Booking vs AirBNB mobile home page user interface, Good UI highlights the approaches the two companies take, including the hamburger menu, logo usage, and form fields to break down action into multiple steps. Well worth your time.
• Without actual content, it’s a challenge to create designs. Design content first rather than greeking, which can lead to design issues.

Accessibility

• In my recap of Emily Yates’ The Importance of Access and Inclusion presentation at this week’s ACCESS At Home conference, I highlighted her personal story and experience as a wheelchair user, journalist, and accessibility consultant.
  
• In his accessibility auditing and ego post, Eric Bailey reminds us of the purpose of an accessibility audit: to improve the experience and create a roadmap with actionable steps. The goals is not to punish. Leave your ego at the door.
• A follow-up to Eric’s post, Jonathan Hassell discusses why the goal of accessibility isn’t to find issues, it’s to fix them. Whether you run an automated test or conduct an accessibility audit, you need to understand and prioritize issues, identify staff to implement changes, and take action.
• Are you aware of all of Helen Keller’s accomplishments? Perkins School for the Blind, which Keller attended, published a Q&A to combat ableism (defining people by their disabilities). Among Keller’s accomplishments: she graduated from college, wrote 12 books, piloted a plane, and learned multiple languages.

WordPress

• Can you help? The second beta of WordPress 5.7 is available for download and testing. The final version is expected to be released March 9, 2021.
• Creating a custom WordPress login page for your client makes a great impression for your clients, especially when you brand the login page with the clients colors and logo and replace the default error messages.
• For anyone using Elementor to create WordPress sites, you’ll want to lock into their current pricing before the Elementor price hike takes effect in March 2021. (Personally, I have no issues with their price increase, they haven’t raised prices in over four years.
• I haven’t used any of the notes, reminders, or instructions WordPress plugins, have you? I can see a use case for using one on the dashboard, for leaving notes.

CSS and HTML

• With the introduction of CSS grid and flex layout, how we use the float property has changed. It’s still part of CSS, despite people asking if CSS float is deprecated. Rather than using it for layout, it’s used as it’s intended: to float content in context.
• If you’re looking to better understand CSS transitions, there’s nothing better than this interactive guide for CSS transitions from Josh Comeau. Worth bookmarking. Thank you, Josh.
• Graphic design legend Saul Bass is known for his film title sequences, including one of my favorite movies: North by Northwest. In What Saul Bass Can Teach Us About Web Design, Frederick O’Brien shares principles from Bass’s work that can inform our work, from typography, color, to illustration.
  

  Whatever it is you’re dealing with — page layout, logos, icons — there is no faster way to get the ideas out of your head than by drawing them.

• Good news! :focus-visible support arrives in Firefox version 85. Note: :focus-visible works together with :focus.

What I Found Interesting

• Who knew? Not me! Carolina Wrens will nest in just about anything, including a pair of boots.
• Useful! Check out this glossary of all those website terms that can be confusing. Helpful for anyone working on the web and their clients.
• I’m always interested in new tools for my work projects. Hidden Tools is a collection of hand curated tools and resources for design, learning languages, scheduling, screen recorders, and more. Helpful!

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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.