In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about how to choose between low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes, discover a new Unsplash plugin for WordPress, discover how to improve legibility 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
Check in: how are y’all doing? Sending love, hugs, warm baked goods from my oven, and solidarity. We all are struggling mightily. All we have at the end is one another (“one another” including our animal beasty friends of all shapes sizes and species)
— Sarah Parcak (@indyfromspace) July 23, 2020
User Experience
- When deciding whether to create low-fidelity or high-fidelity prototypes, consider what project stage you’re in, your audience, and any constraints you may have.
- Is it better for user researchers to use star ratings vs. numbered ratings? Measuring U recently conducted a comparison between the two with 335 participants from May to June 2020.
…we expected the results to be at least as close as those we found comparing numeric and slider scales, but that isn’t quite what happened.
- Finally! Denise Jacobs Clarity 2019 conference keynote has been posted, her 51-minute presentation focuses on how we can better co-create in a group. I got to know Denise in 2007 at the TODCon event, when she was a front-end developer.
- When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Rob Gifford was one of many user experience professionals who were laid off. In his developing your UX career during a recession article, Gifford shares lessons learned from that experience and how it may help you.
Accessibility
- Interesting theory. In a recent publication, Dr. Debby Sneed proposed that ancient Greeks designed their temples with accessibility in mind. Some scholars disagree, saying more case studies are needed.
- One of the most popular accessibility extensions has been updated for Chrome.
The WAVE Chrome extension has been updated. Firefox coming… soonish (it takes a while). This update includes several bug fixes and performance/accessibility enhancements. Contrast checking has been expanded to include <select> and numerous <input> types. Feedback welcome!
— WebAIM (@webaim) July 23, 2020
- Lainey Feingold shares the most recent digital accessibility court orders and settlements in digital accessibility legal update: ADA anniversary edition including one I was following: New York State agrees to make absentee ballots accessible.
- In their new Simple Things Count video series, Microsoft shares seven ways we can be more inclusive of people with disabilities. Each video (less than two minutes) is beautifully illustrated, and includes captions and American Sign Language.
WordPress
- Moving along! The third beta version of WordPress 5.5 is available for download and testing. WordPress 5.5 is scheduled for release on August 11, 2020.
- After 11 years, Hulu has disabled their oEmbed API, with no explanation why. Which means WordPress 5.5 won’t include Hulu on their list of supported oEmbed providers.
- If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to use SSH (Secure Shell) to manage your WordPress site securely from the command line, this helpful SSH beginner’s fuide for WordPress users and everyone else is for you.
- The WordPress community was abuzz this week with the news of Unsplash launching their own official plugin. This is a major announcement, which caught the attention of Matt Mullenweg and others. Check out the discussion in the comments.
CSS and HTML
- Congrats to MDN Web Docs on its 15 year anniversary! I rely on their online documentation and tutorials, they’re one of the best resources and learning tools on the web.
- Which one is your favorite? I’ve shared several of these CSS paintings in my weekly roundup, but I’ve never seen them curated in one collection of 15 amazing CSS paintings. Impressive!
- If you’ve struggled with CSS, scratched your head trying to understand the cascade and global scope, Matt Hogg’s CSS is certainly global and that’s the point post is for you.
So, just as we learn to do algebra by hand before using a calculator in high school, we ought to know how CSS works!
- First time I’ve heard of the font-size-adjust property. Learn how to improve legibility with modern CSS techniques to improve font size, line height, and word spacing.
- I remember when I first learned about inline-block, from Robert Nyman’s 2010 blog post. It’s come a far way since then, resolving all kinds of problematic design issues. When do you use inline-block?
What I Found Interesting
- Thanks to my friend Nic Steenhout for sharing Birdability, a crowd-sourced, interactive, online site created by the National Audubon Society to catalog the physical accessibility of birding sites and hiking trails across the United States. Submit your experience about local birding sites or parks, let others know about accessible spots nearby.
- I’ve been a G Suite user for over 11 years. I’m always glad to hear about new G Suite security features in Chat, Gmail, and Meet, including the new controls for how people can join a meeting.
- That’s how I’d like to live on, too!
The only thing you cannot succeed in if you put your mind to it is physically living forever, but if you make your mark on the world then at least your memory will. That’s how I’d like to live on!
— Bryony Burrell (@lifeofbryony) July 23, 2020
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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.
