In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about the benefits of UX writers and technical writers teaming up, find six options for WordPress search, discover a whistle-stop tour of four CSS color features, 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 and news helpful in your work or projects!
Tweet of the Week
Making sure the web works for everyone, on any device, in any language, for all users, is an incredible labor of love.
— W3C (@w3c) February 14, 2022
Wishing all the Web Community who #lovetheWeb a very happy valentines day! 💙
User Experience
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When UX writers and technical writers team up, they are stronger together says Alaina Fialkoff. UX writers can gain a stronger understanding about the product or service, crafting microcopy that allows users to reach their goals.
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Have you made your plans for World Information Architecture (IA) Day on March 5, 2022? Join UX Research & Strategy for their free, online presentation Getting Started in Clinical UX by Gyles Morrison. Event. Note: it’s limited to the first 1,000 people who join the Zoom meeting.
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Oooh, nice deal! PeachPit is offering Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug at 50% off for the eBook this week (through February 19, 2022). Sales price is $17.99 (U.S. dollars).
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When I worked at the community college, one of the first conferences I attended was WebCon at the University of Illinois. That was the first time (but not the last time) I met Luke Wroblewski in person, who had recently published his Web Form Design book. An excellent conference, I’m glad WebCon 2022 returns this year April 6 to 8, 2022 as an online event, with virtual pre-conference workshops.
Accessibility
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Accessibility consultant Molly Watt shares her knowledge of helping designers, developers, and others understand the importance of inclusion in her March 8, 2022 You don’t understand inclusion until you understand what it’s like to be excluded presentation. The talk is free, online, but requires pre-registration.
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I’ve been asking for seven years for WordPress.com to publish captioned videos, not videos with autocaptions. I even provided instructions on how to do it. After seven years, I decided to write about it.
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A reminder to not rely on color alone for your links.
Errors are red
— Rachele DiTullio (@racheleditullio) February 14, 2022
Links are blue
Don’t rely on color alone
Add an icon or underline too -
Crystal Preston-Watson tried to buy an Non-Fungible Token (NFT). And she wasn’t surprised with what she discovered as she shares her thoughts on the accessibility of NFTs and Web3. But she did discover three show-stopping blockers: identify verification, wallet recovery phrase, and NFT alternative text.
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Apply to present at this year’s HighEdWeb Accessibility Summit. Vendors and organizations outside of higher education can apply. Deadline for submissions: February 20, 2022.
WordPress
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The release candidate for WordPress 5.9.1 was shipped February 17, 2022. Given no unexpected issues, the final WordPress 5.9.1 release is scheduled for February 22, 2022.
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As many WordPress users have discovered, WordPress’s default search engine doesn’t provide all the functionality you might want for your site. Learn about six other options to improve WordPress search. (Personal note: I’m a fan of the Relevanssi plugin for search, which is described in the post.)
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If you haven’t already discovered it, WordPress News on WordPress.org has a new look. What I noticed immediately: new layout, new typefaces for better readability, different color palette, and new header and footer. What do you think?
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In their 2021 WordPress Maintenance Survey of 1,700 participants, ManageWP identified multiple key trends, of which three stood out for me:
- Most maintenance providers are developers, designers, or web professionals
- Most single-tier packages include plugin, theme, and core updates, backups, and security of malware cleanup.
- 71.13 percent of participants don’t use Gutenberg
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I’ve never liked pop-ups or banners in the WordPress backend. And lately, there seem to be more of them. Like Jeff Chandler, I’m glad to live in a world where an ad-blocker plugin for the WordPresss backend exists.
CSS and HTML
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Chris Coyier gives a whistle-stop tour of 4 new CSS color features. I agree with Coyier’s comments: this stuff is complicated and I’m wondering why I should care. His post takes a deep dive into the features, let me know if it makes sense to you. My head is whirling.
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Shoutout to Miriam Suzanne for their CSS/HTML diagram of how the cascade works.
See the Pen The Entire Cascade (as a funnel) by Miriam Suzanne (@miriamsuzanne) on CodePen.
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It’s that time again! Take part in the State of Frontend 2022 online survey. Last year, over 4,500 developers participated. The survey is short, will only take about eight minutes of your time.
What I Found Interesting
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Yes, as a freelancer you can still be paid to write a book review or interview an author at these 72 publications. Rates range $15 to $1,000. I like that Adam Morgan, who compiled the list, provided helpful how to pitch links for many of the publications.
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According to The Factual, their Media Bias and Credibility Chart aims to prioritize data, not politics.
Our intention is to create a simple, easy-to-use resource that focuses solely on the informative quality of news articles.
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Princeton University Press is holding their annual featured collection sale from February 14 to 28, 2022. Get a 75% discount on more than 1,800 books with code LOVE75 at checkout. Note: offer good only for orders shipping within the U.S. or Canada, good only on certain editions while supplies last.
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The numbers keep getting closer as Microsoft Edge will soon take over Safari as the second most-used browser. Are you surprised?
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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.
