In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about a comparative study of offboarding experiences, find a masterclass on making accessibility a part of your digital product development, discover how to use the WordPress Block Editor, 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
Beginner = ignorant simplicity
Intermediate = functional complexity
Advanced = profound simplicity
— James Clear (@JamesClear) June 8, 2020
User Experience
- What do you do when you don’t have time for all four steps of human-centered design? Don Norman explains another method you can use in this four-minute video:
- Offboarding, the process where a person deletes their personal account from an online service, has no design patterns or best practices. Which is why Alex Mohebbi and Laetitia Pouilly conducted a comparative study of the offboarding experiences on four major websites.
- A good approach for your projects:
The best advice often looks too simple or too obvious to be useful, but most people still don’t follow it.
Here are a few that I say often:
“Watch real users quietly.”
“Have you tried it?”
“Don’t wait for permission to do your job.”
“Prove yourself wrong.”
“Predict the result.”— Joel Marsh (@JoelMarsh) June 11, 2020
- In 10 best UX Matters articles on foundational user research, Isabelle Peyrichoux highlights important resources that will help you conduct successful user research. Excellent resources. What I liked about Peyrichoux’s article is the clearly defined criteria used to choose the resources.
Accessibility
- On June 25, 2020 Knowbility hosts Embedding Accessibility in Your Organization, a half-day online training masterclass focused on making accessibility a part of the process of developing digital products.
- Whether you’re new or old to web development, training is crucial to improving your accessibility knowledge.
Hey DEVs. I know the PM said “fix the accessibility” but please, don’t say “OK” if your new and then add complex ARIA. Please, just say “could I have some training” or tell him you’ll do the basics (labels, headings, alt etc.) and they should get help on the complex things.
— David MacDonald (@davidmacd) June 8, 2020
- A plugin or overlay for your website won’t automatically fix accessibility problems says Joe Dolson. You need to fix the problems on your site, whether it’s from the application you use, the WordPress theme, or the code you’ve written.
- Web accessibility is not an afterthought, it’s something that needs to be considered at the the beginning of your work. In building the woke web: web accessibility, inclusion & social justice, Olu Niyiawosusi examines our current broken web and offers steps we all can take to create an inclusive web.
WordPress
- The WordPress 5.4.2 security and maintenance version was released this week, featuring 23 fixes and enhancements, including six security fixes.
- Did you miss WordCamp Kent 2020? I’ve published my recap from Abby Buzon’s Uh-oh: Troubleshooting Common Problems in WordPress presentation.
- In her review of the Astra theme, my friend Claire Brotherton takes a closer look at the speed, coding, documentation, ability to customize, and plugin integrations of the popular theme.
Custom Layouts make it easy to take advantage of Astra’s numerous theme hooks. Astra’s Visual Hook Guide will help you find the right spot for your new content.
- Looking for some help understanding the Block Editor? How to use the WordPress editor guides you through the ins and outs, and provides a helpful list of shortcuts.
CSS and HTML
- Glad to read the announcement! Introducing the MDN Web Docs front-end developer learning pathway, a free online structured course that covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and tooling.
- How do you know when to use CSS Grid vs. flexbox? Ahmad Shadded looked for a guide, couldn’t find one, and decided to write one himself: Grid for layout, Flexbox for components.
- Impressive work by Olivia Ng in creating a responsive newspaper-style layout using CSS Grid on CodePen.
What I Found Interesting
- Working from home and quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic has changed us, says Sigal Samuel. Quarantining isn’t all bad; we’ve developed eight new habits you’ll want to keep post-lockdown.
- Thanks to my friend Birgit Pauli-Haack’s tweet this week, I discovered a new digital tools newsletter. Focused on tools and apps that make a remote worker’s life easier, Wonder Tools is a free weekly newsletter. What I like about it: quick read, formatted for readability, and it’s free!
- Google Maps will now tell you whether a face mask is required on public transport. And you can find out how crowded the routes are, based on the time of day.
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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.
