In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll discover how to craft content that builds trust during a public health crisis, learn about the accessibility improvements in iOS 14, find a free online WordPress course, 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
Sometimes silence is the best answer.
— STOKED⚡ (@StokedDaily) June 25, 2020
User Experience
- In this month’s Ask UXmatters panel discussion, Warren Croce, Steven Hoober, Gavin Lew, and Baruch Sachs answer questions about UX design for compliance-heavy applications. They discuss the impact of regulations and how those constraints can benefit your designs.
- After years of minimal, flat design, does it surprise you that skeuomorphism is making a comeback?
- I’m smiling with you, Nick.
I smile every time I hit the browser back button while scrolling through Twitter and I’m back exactly where I was scrolled in my timeline. Other sites with timelines miss this huge detail… #UX
— Nick DeNardis (@nickdenardis) June 25, 2020
- Being clear and communicating accurately is crucial in building trust in a public health crisis. If your audience is the general public, avoid using technical terms.
- In moving from a sales-first to user-first design approach, Maddy Beard repurposed her ecommerce skillset to help companies focus on their audience.
As UX designers, we have to determine if a sense of urgency is important in helping a user achieve their goal.
Accessibility
- Great news for people who have been looking for captions for their online Zoom meetings; Rev is now offering automatic live captions. Longtime readers of this blog know I’m not a big fan of autocaptions, but it’s a step in the right direction to improve Zoom accessibility.
- I would love to see this happen.
Imagine if sponsors demanded to see the accessibility plan for conferences. It would advance access for everyone in a way that avoids putting the onus individual attendee requests.
All conferences, online or IRL, need to be accessible.#accessibility #a11y
— Santina (@SantinaCroniser) June 25, 2020
- At their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week, Apple announced a slew of iOS 14 accessibility improvements, including sound recognition, improvements in VoiceOver screen reader, and sign language recognition in FaceTime.
- As part of their Accessibility Learning Webinar Series, Microsoft’s 40-minute Remote Work and Inclusive Collaboration video highlights the built-in accessibility tools in Microsoft365 that can help you build an inclusive work from home routine, and create more inclusive meetings.
WordPress
- Thanks to Eric Karkovack for his helpful tips for converting existing WordPress sites to the new Block Editor.
- The two-day virtual WordCamp Denver 2020 conference starts today, have you registered? Did I mention it’s free?
- Learn how to create WordPress sites with this free online course from the University of Wisconsin. The course is a self-paced. 24 hour non-credit course. You must register by June 30, 2020.
- Whoa. According to W3Techs Web Technology Surveys, WordPress saw a growth in market share of 35.7 percent to 37.6 percent from February 2020 to June 2020. Could the COVID-19 pandemic been the reason?
CSS and HTML
- Since CSS custom properties allow you to manage the cascade in new ways, Miriam Suzanne explains how you can stack and use scope with custom properties to solve some common problems. Powerful!
- Learn about styling layout wrappers in CSS, how wrappers work and when to use them as well as when not to use them.
- What a useful operator!
CSS Tip 🔥️ There’s a special operator you can use in CSS Attribute Selectors
The operator is `i`, here’s how it works:
// Case insensitive match
a[title=”home” i] {
Will match Home or even HOME
}// Case sensitive match
a[title=”home”] {
Will only match home
}#css pic.twitter.com/UIJTGTUczt— Umar Hansa (@umaar) June 23, 2020
- Have you been wondering whether WebP is really a better format than JPEG? Johannes Siipola decided to test it out. You might be surprised by the results.
What I Found Interesting
- Whether you’re looking to show movies outside, or simply looking for an affordable projector and screen setup, here are four reasonably priced options. I like that one of the projection screens self-inflates!
- It’s no surprise to me that Affinity Photo tops the list of top 12 Photoshop alternatives. If you’re ready to say goodbye to Adobe’s subscription licensing, this roundup has an option for you.
- Did you know the Safari browser will block Google Analytics from collecting data? And it’s not only Google Analytics, Safari will block DoubleClick, Amazon, Optimizely, and other trackers as well.
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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.
