In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn how to evaluate design quality, find a call for speakers for WordFest Live, discover an amazing animated cartoon created in HTML and 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
I don’t know who needs to hear this…but I think someone might.
— Reginé Gilbert is protecting my energy (@reg_inee) July 28, 2022
I wrote my first book when I was over 40 year old. If there is something you want to do – Do not let your age or experience get in the way of it. We all have to start somewhere. What are you waiting for?
User Experience
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As Maria Rosala and Kate Moran explain, the funnel technique in qualitative user research ensures you get rich insights while not compromising validity.
The purpose of the funnel technique is to avoid influencing user behavior or perceptions as much as possible.
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When you evaluate design quality, you need to consider three factors: marketing, usability, and the visual design. Is the design interesting? Do you get distracted by secondary elements? Is the style and color palette appropriate?
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Understand the problems of your customers first before working on a solution.
Want to shift from managing outputs to managing outcomes? Change the question use to kick off your initiatives.
— Jeff Gothelf (@jboogie) July 28, 2022
Old question: What are we going to build?
New question: What will our users do differently when we solve their problem? -
Would you be surprised to learn readability formulas, programs, and tools aren’t useful for plain language? What are the issues? First up: the formulas don’t measure the right things. Second: they assume short words are always better words.
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Marcelo Wiermann explains how enterprise application companies can start consumer-grade UX revolution today, at the team-level. But first, you need to understand the product and what customers like/don’t like. And get regular qualitative feedback from users.
Accessibility
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Though the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed 32 years ago this week, there are still challenges. Disabled people continue to face barriers at work, as Kristen Parisi discusses the unconscious biases, discrimination, and real impacts disabled people face.
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On the 32nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (hashtag #ADA32) I thought people and organizations would be mindful of creating accessible media in their tweets. I was disappointed to be proven wrong. Hundreds of folks posting about their support for ADA32.
With inaccessible content.
Don’t be that social media person tweeting about the 32nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act who doesn’t add alt text to their images, making their content inaccessible to those benefiting from the ADA. Learn about alt text here: https://t.co/ZSqbrvHFuK #a11y
— Justin Yarbrough (@FatElvis04) July 26, 2022 -
What a wonderful recognition of her work! Congrats to Sharron Rush of Knowbility who is one of the winners of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)’s Purpose Prize.
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Join TPGi on August 9, 2022 for their Supporting the Next Billion Users: Personalization for the Web free webinar. Matthew Atkinson, senior accessibility engineer at TPGi and co-chair of the W3C’s Accessible Platform Architectures working group will present on how to use emerging development standards to help people understand your content.
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In his continuing series on inclusive communications, Denis Boudreau takes a close look at acknowledging the spectrum of learning styles. Boudreau offers strategies that appeal to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners.
WordPress
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If you could rename Full Site Editing (FSE) in WordPress, what would you call it? That’s what WordPress Core folks want to know in giving FSE a more user friendly name. Based on the comments so far, Site Editor has a number of votes.
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Good! Automattic is removing WordPress.com features from the official WordPress mobile apps. The features will be removed gradually and are scheduled to be finished by end of 2022.
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It’s back! The free 24-hour online WordFest Live event returns November 18, 2022. Here’s your opportunity to share lessons learned from your latest WordPress project; submit a talk proposal.
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In this week’s release of Akismet 5.0, the anti-spam plugin, you’ll find a new Akismet feature that fights spambots. By observing behaviors, the plugin will differentiate between a typical person commenter and people-impersonating bots.
CSS and HTML
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Can you help? With a target launch date of September 2022, can you help design the State of CSS Survey 2022? Feedback is open until August 20, 2022.
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While you could build a grayscale color palette mathematically, Chris Coyier suggests there are tools that are more useful. Like Grayscale design, Color Designer, and Primer Prism,
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With Firefox version 103 released this week, Total Cookie Protection is on by default. Third party cookies are isolated into their own partition storage. Another new feature: required fields are now highlighted in PDF forms.
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Wow. Impressive work from Julia Miocene. Only written in HTML and CSS.
See the Pen Pure CSS Cartoon or Not? by Julia Miocene (@miocene) on CodePen.
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Check out the options and example code. And help pick a syntax for CSS nesting.
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Thanks to Olushuyi Olutimilehin’s helpful Smashing Magazine article, you’ll know how to choose the right HTML element,
articleorsection. How you group content affects accessibility.
What I Found Interesting
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The new Gmail Material Design is rolling out now, with a new layout which includes Meet, Chat, and Spaces integration. Don’t worry if you don’t like the new look, you can opt out.
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Like Mickey Mellen, I use my RSS feeder (Feedly) every day to keep current with news, information, and blogs I follow. It would be nice if I could filter my entire time on the Internet through RSS. But many people have chosen social media over publishing blog posts.
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Did you know fewer than 4% of animators are African-American? To boost Black animators, Peanuts Worldwide has created The Armstrong Project, named for the Peanuts character Franklin Armstrong. Created by Charles M. Schulz, Franklin was the first Black character in the comic strip.
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