In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about four types of survey content, find out why it’s important to design content that creates inclusive, accessible services, discover what CSS container queries are and how to use them in your work, 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
One mode of failure is continually overlooking simple ideas while searching for a better way.
One mode of success is continually practicing simple ideas while searching for a better way.
— James Clear (@JamesClear) May 11, 2021
User Experience
- In the first post of their new series on annoying design patterns and exploring better alternatives, Smashing Magazine’s Frustrating Design Patterns That Need Fixing: Birthday Picker highlights the challenges and common UX mistakes of birthday pickers.
- Always a good first step.
Reminder: when in doubt, ask your users. #ux #design
— Doug Collins (@DougCollinsUX) May 11, 2021
- I can’t recall sharing Built for Mars before, but what I love their collection of practical case studies highlighting UX mistakes as well as UX improvements from some well-known (and not so well-known) companies around the world.
- When planning surveys, keep in mind that survey questions can be classified into four content types: attributes, behaviors, abilities, as well as thoughts, sentiments, and judgments.
- Save the date! UX Bristol returns Friday, July 16, 2021, with a day of six talks about user experience on YouTube. Did I mention it’s free?
Accessibility
- It’s important to design content that creates inclusive, accessible services. Use plain language, remove anything that could be misunderstood or misinterpreted, and format content to be easily scanned and read.
- The 18th Annual John Slatin Virtual Access U conference kicked off this week with their hands-on workshops. I attended the Accessibility Auditing workshop, fantastic! There’s still time for you to register for the three-day general conference on May 18, 19, 20, 2021.
- Ever wonder how a screen reader user conducts accessibility testing on a website or mobile application? As a 20+ year accessibility auditor and tester, Isabel Holdsworth is a veteran and explains their steps and processes using JAWS and Firefox.
- Creating a portfolio to show your accessibility-focused design projects?
How to build a portfolio of accessibility work:
There’s 2 types of things that you need to be successful with accessibility that you’ll want to be able to demonstrate.
1. knowledge of accessibility
2. skills related to accessibilityYou want your portfolio to show both.
— Derek Featherstone (@feather) May 13, 2021
WordPress
- The WordPress 5.7.2 security release, was released this week with a fix for one security issue. If your site supports automatic background updates, it will have been already updated or will be updated soon.
- A reminder from Jetpack to focus on your business, not the spam comments. Learn how to recognize spam quickly and give it the boot.
- In the Commons of Images podcast episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy and Matt Mullenweg discuss the recent purchase of CC (Creative Commons) Search by WordPress and what it means.
I think longer-term, I’d love to have a way for people who are adding media to the WordPress site to set it to be available under a Creative Commons license.
- Helpful! Thank you WP Beginner for creating your guide of WordPress layout terms. When you first start using WordPress, the words and phrases used to describe concepts and layouts can be confusing.
CSS and HTML
- Over the past decade, developers and designers used media queries to create responsive layouts. With the launch of CSS container queries in Chrome Canary, we now have another responsive layout option: CSS container queries. Learn what CSS container queries are, how they work, and how they can resolve some of the media query issues in Stephanie Eckles’ primer on CSS container queries
- For another look at container queries, check out Uma Kravets next gen CSS: @container article in CSS Tricks. Note: container queries are experimental as of May 2021.
Container queries will be the single biggest change in web styling since CSS3, altering our perspective of what “responsive design” means.
- Unexpected layout shifts on a web page are frustrating to users, but you can take steps to avoid visual shifts by measuring and improving Cumulative Layout Shift. One key step: always include
widthandheightattributes for imagery.
What I Found Interesting
- For teachers, educators, and organizations that use Common Craft videos, if you’re a Common Craft Pro member, you can now share Common Craft videos with one click.
- I was glad to read about Smashing Magazine’s experience with Hopin, the online conference platform I learned about last year. Hopin’s various features have a lot to offer conference organizers, I’ve been impressed with their product and their responses to my questions.
- I thought this advice was helpful, your thoughts?
if you didn’t learn this yet, H.A.L.T. is a heckuva tool to manage wellbeing
when you notice you’re(/a loved one is) struggling, stop (literally halt) and check in whether you’re
– Hungry?
– Angry?
– Lonely?
– Tired?then do your best to address what you find #HALT
— Laura Fitton (she/her) (@Pistachio) May 12, 2021
- How one company in California is preparing for employees to come back to work after working from home. More than 10 years ago, my husband worked at a company that used the concept of hot desks. While management loved the idea, it didn’t go over well with employees.
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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.
