In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about conducting a website content audit, find a discussion about the current state of web accessibility, discover how to create a printer-friendly page with 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
‘The first rule of collaboration is respect. Respect for everybody’s talents and skills. The best decisions are made when diverse thinking goes into decision making.’ @UofGDVC #UofGProfessional
— Roisin Reilly 🌷 (@RoisReilly) January 10, 2020
User Experience
- Test your knowledge of usability with Nielsen Norman Group’s UX Quiz based on their 2019 publications. Do you know what the recommendations are for touch target sizes? Or what a cognitive map is?
- The first of the year is often when companies decide to clean up website content. But where to start? Becky Radnaev explains the importance of a website content strategy and walks you through the steps of conducting a content audit using the C.R.U.D. method.
- In the final part of a three-part series on UX leadership, Molding Yourself into a Leader, Jonathan Walter highlights leadership behaviors exhibited by individuals others perceive as leaders.
Leaders do not shy away from acknowledging what they do not know.
- Search box vs. navigation. If you have limited site improvement budget, should you invest it in improving internal search or improving information architecture? Katie Sherwin of Nielsen Normal Group explains what you need to consider (three-minute video).
Accessibility
- The accessibility and user experience community mourn one of our own, as we learned about the death of Joe O’Connor. Long time accessibility and user experience advocate, Joe was someone I loved chatting with. His wife wrote a lovely tribute of his life. I’ll miss you Joe.
- Did you miss this week’s Accessibility NYC meetup with Zarina Mustapha’s presentation EdTech and HigherEd: Considerations for Digital Accessibility? You’re in luck! They’ve published their recording on YouTube, with captions (one hour eight-minute video).
- For 2020, my friend Dennis Deacon has launched a new Twitter account with daily advice and tips on digital accessibility and inclusive design. Useful info! Here’s one of this week’s tweets:
If both an image and text are linked, if the text is sufficient to describe the purpose of the link, the images may have an empty text alternative.https://t.co/UPNzsGuGxG#Accessibility #A11y #A11yAdvice pic.twitter.com/kWkotgDEoY
— A11yAdvice (@A11yAdvice) January 9, 2020
- I enjoyed this discussion about web accessibility with manager Aurélien Levy and front-end developer Hidde de Vries, focusing on the current state of accessibility and what can be done to improve accessibility on websites. I hope you will, too!
WordPress
- Cleaning up your Media Library can save you a lot of disk space on your host, reduce backup sizes, and make it easier for you to find a media file. Here are two options for cleaning up your WordPress Media Library.
- I agree. What is missing in WordPress? In one word, governance.
WordPress can not expect to be leading the way to democratize publishing without basic governance in place.
- Adding a privacy policy to your WordPress site is a lot easier with this how-to and review of three popular privacy policy plugins. Tip: consider getting legal advice about your policy.
- Have you registered for our January 21, 2020 West Metro Detroit WordPress meetup? We’re kicking off the new year with a business roundtable discussion on pricing and strategies.
CSS and HTML
- I like Matteo Duò how walks you through what features to look for in an HTML editor in their 10 free HTML editors post, highlighting syntax highlighting, error detection, and find and replace. I’ve used five of the editors in their review.
- If one of your goals for 2020 is to improve performance on your sites, you’ll want to check out Smashing Magazine’s Front-End Performance Checklist 2020, available in PDF, Apple Pages, and MS Word formats. The article is almost a two-hour read, or you can download the checklists to get started.
- While not specific to HTML and CSS, 5 things I learned from coding with other people: my first web development team project offers good recommendations and best practices for coding with others on a project. My favorite:
Ask questions, ask for help, and ask for clarification
- It’s not as common as in the past, but people do print web pages. Whether to print web receipts, read offline, or add annotations. Here’s how you can create print-friendly pages with CSS.
What I Found Interesting
- Is taking care of old links on your website on your to-do list? It’s been on mine for a while. How do you manage redirects? And pages that no longer exist?
- While Andy McIlwain’s how to become a web designer post has all kinds of learning resources for web designers, it’s also filled to the brim with helpful resources for anyone who works on the web. From project management tools to customer relationship management to time tracking and more.
- With the new year, I’m on the lookout for a new cloud backup service. Thankfully, I didn’t need to do my own research since Tom’s Guide best cloud backup services for 2020 provided me all the info I needed to decide which service I’ll be using: IDrive.
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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.
