In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about UX errors of omission, find out how to start your accessibility journey, discover a fun word morphing CodePen, 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
Remember — people who need help sometimes look a lot like people who don’t need help.
— Bearly Articulating™ (@BearlyArtic) June 2, 2021
User Experience
- It’s easier to see something that is there than something that is missing, says Chris Rourke in what are UX errors of omission and commission. Rourke explains that errors of omission are no less important and shares actionable tips on how you can avoid them.
- It’s what our web services team did when I got to know our community college staff who helped students with enrollment questions.
@greggcorp providing some VERY pragmatic tips at #UXFest to find data that already exists in an organization. Sales and Support teams have a TON of data. Simply asking questions like, “What are the top 10 support requests?” is a huge opportunity to make more business sense.
— Ryan Rumsey (@ryanrumsey) June 2, 2021
- Alfred Ng and Sam Morris discuss dark patterns that mislead and trick people into making decisions they wouldn’t normally make. Take their six-question quiz and see if you can spot all the dark patterns.
- Users seek a submit button near the search field on mobile. When the search button doesn’t exist, it increases friction for users. In a recent mobile usability research study, Baymard Institute discovered 21 percent of mobile ecommerce sites failed to provide a submit button adjacent to the search field.
Accessibility
- Dona Sarker started her #100DaysOfA11y this week, to learn more about accessibility. For day one, she shares 5 things I didn’t know about sign language. Did you know many people who are deaf don’t understand sign language?
- Adding explanation text provides an inclusive, accessible, and usable web experience to everyone.
Learning from hundreds of accessibility reviews over the last 5 years:
Displaying explanatory text is always a lot easier and better than trying to hide it in possibly hard to understand icons with tooltips or show/hide controls.
— Chris Heilmann (@codepo8) June 2, 2021
- On June 8, 2021, Joel Strohmeier will discuss The Commercial Impact of Accessibility in a free webinar, highlighting how web performance affects key commercial advantages of accessibility.
- While Mark Steadman’s post on starting your accessibility journey is focused on developers, the tips and resources he shares apply to everyone who produces content or code for the web. My favorite: take 10 minutes a day to read or take an online accessibility course. Except I would increase it to 30 minutes (I don’t think 10 minutes is enough time.)
WordPress
- Good news for everyone who used the WP User Avatar plugin before ProfilePress took over and changed it to a membership solution: Forks and alternatives for WP User Avatar offer solutions for folks looking for avatar functionality.
- The WP Engine Summit 2021 conference returns June 24, 2021 for developers and marketers to discuss WordPress, site performance, WooCommerce, client management, and trends. The event is free, but you must preregister.
- Mark your calendar! WordCamp Europe 2021 has published their schedule for their online conference June 7 to 9, 2021. The conference includes two tracks over three days. Attendees can choose between 30-minute sessions, ten-minute lightning talks, workshops, discussion panels, and interviews.
- Anyone who had automatic updates disabled on their WordPress sites (and client sites) had an unexpected surprise on June 1, 2021 when Jetpack pushed a security update with their latest version. Which begs the question: why can Jetpack override administrative decision to not automatically update?
CSS and HTML
- Helpful! Shoutout to Katie Hempenius and Una Kravets for their CSS tips for improving performance and Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics post with a slew of helpful tips and recommendations.
- It’s a busy week for articles about Google’s Core Web Vitals initiative. Barry Pollard focuses on fixing Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues in his latest Smashing Magazine post.
- So cool! Amit Sheen has created an impressive CodePen of word morphing.
See the Pen
CSS morphing by Amit Sheen (@amit_sheen)
on CodePen. - It’s the first place I turn to when I have questions about CSS or HTML.
MDN (@MozDevNet) is the best resource for answering specific questions you may have about HTML, CSS, or JavaScript.
— Marko ⚡ Denic (@denicmarko) May 31, 2021
- Are you familiar with inherit, initial, unset, and revert keywords for CSS properties? Have to say it wasn’t until recently that I learned about unset and revert.
What I Found Interesting
- Big news in the software development community: Prosus has bought Stack Overflow, the popular online community Q & A site for developers and others looking to add/improve their coding skills.
- Since the interface has changed (again!), I’ve updated my post on how to turn off video autoplay on Twitter for desktop, Android, and iOS.
- Privacy and security alert for Amazon customers in the United States: On June 8, 2021, Amazon will automatically enroll your Amazon devices (Ring, Echo, Alexa) in Amazon Sidewalk. You can use the Alexa app to opt out.
If you use Alexa, Echo, or many other Amazon devices, you have only 10 days until you’re opted in to an experiment that leaves your personal privacy and security hanging in the balance.
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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.
Speaking of dark patterns, I got duped into a Linkedin premium annual (not even monthly, the whole darn year in a lump sum!) subscription and could not find any way out of it online. I finally remembered I had met and had a nice conversation with a presenter who worked at Linkedin at a conference a couple years before. I reached out to him and he handled it for me. Most people in that situation I’m sure are not so lucky.
Hi Cleo,
So frustrating. It shouldn’t be that way. Canceling a service online should be as uncomplicated as it is to sign up for it in the first place. Glad you were able to find someone to cancel it for you. But you’re right, what about all the people who don’t know someone?
I’m currently trying to cancel an online service, which requires you to email customer support. I’ve yet to receive a reply. Or acknowledgement they received my request.