In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about enterprise UX, find out why you shouldn’t disable zoom in your code, discover how to customize Browser Developer tools, 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
The most important thing tech educators need to learn is that it’s NOT about you.
— Cassie Evans (@cassiecodes) May 2, 2022
It’s not about likes or popularity & looking clever. If people view what you’re doing as complex or unobtainable and put you on a pedestal then you’ve already lost.
Strip it back. Make it easy.
User Experience
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Nielsen Norman Group articles and videos are often one of the most recognized and authoritative resources in the user experience field. However, their focus on white females demonstrates poor representation of the UX field, says Jaci Wilkinson in the “tender technicians” of Nielsen Norman Group videos. Check out Wilkinson’s recommendations for alternative resources that show diversification.
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In principles by design, interaction designer Jack Moffett reminds us that principles should be actionable. They serve as guideposts for decision-making, but they aren’t rules.
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Thankful for modern design tools.
I don’t think y’all realize how great today’s design tools are.
— Justin Marshall (@jmarshallBKLYN) May 6, 2022
In 20 min, I was able to prototype, demo, and tweak an interaction that 10 years ago I would have spent days mocking up and annotating in InDesign, only to handoff weeks later and learn it didn’t make sense. -
A product manager for California’s office of digital innovation, product marketing manager at Microsoft, and content designer at Upwork are among the speakers at Chicago Camps UX Camp Spring Home Edition on May 21, 2022.
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Another event happening this month, at Structured Content 2022 conference you’ll have the opportunity to attend 14 sessions about the benefits of structured content and fresh approaches to solving problems. The event is hybrid, you can attend in person or virtually.
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Find best practices and examples to design better user experiences in enterprise UX: designing software that help people do their jobs. Learn how QuickBooks, Asana, and Slack are providing users with products that are easy to understand and use.
Accessibility
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Thoughtful design on the Ubrelvy website offering a migraine mode, which changes colors to black and white shades while softening contrast and brightness.
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Congrats to Judy Brewer at the Web Accessibility Initiative on her recognition by the Association for Computing Machinery. Brewer received a service award for her contributions to the computing community.
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Why would any organization choose to ignore a $13 trillion market? You can’t afford to dismiss accessible content, says Ginny Weiss.
But accessible content doesn’t just help people with disability – accessible content is critical if you want better results from your content.
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Open to everyone, How accessibility can be life-changing to everyone is a talk by Ben Merrick, Deputy Disability Champion for the UK Civil Service on Thursday, May 10, 2022. The free webinar is one-hour long on Microsoft Teams, and you can register for a recording-only ticket.
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Did you know disabling zoom in the browser causes issues for people with low vision and anyone who wants to or has to zoom in on a page? I agree with Manuel Matuzović, stop disabling zoom in your code.
WordPress
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The first release candidate for WordPress 6.0 is available for download and testing. Official release is scheduled for May 24, 2022.
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In the 30th episode of WP Briefing Josepha Haden Chomphosy and Channing Ritter take a sneak peek at WordPress 6.0. (It’s gone by quickly, hard to believe WordPress Briefing has produced 30 episodes!)
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Find out what happened with WordPress in April 2022 with the monthly summary. While the focus was the WordPress 6.0 release, other significant contributions occurred including updated COVID 19 guidelines for in-person events, new Gutenberg versions released, and testing calls.
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WordPress.com is offering a free online search engine optimization course: Intro to Search Engine Optimization. The course is free, but you must register using your WordPress.com account. Disappointed they chose not to include how long the course is (number of lessons/chapters or hours), whether the videos are captioned, and whether the course is available in different languages.
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Looking to add some flair to your images? Check out the Image Filters plugin with over 20 filters. Once installed, you’ll be able to insert the Image Filters block, select an image from the Media Library, and then select View filters to select the filter you want to apply.
CSS and HTML
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Compared to years ago, there are a lot more options in CSS for preventing text wrapping. Appreciate Will Boyd’s deep dive into text wrapping and word breaking.
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Are you creating websites with built-in sustainable design and development principles. The lowwwcarbon website would love to highlight your work in the low-carbon website showcase.
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Impressive work by Gabrielle Wee, creating every single Pokémon Quest icon with CSS on CodePen.
See the Pen CSS-Only Pokémon Quest Icon Sorter by Gabrielle Wee 🧧 (@gabriellewee) on CodePen.
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At the beyond tellerand conference this week, Tim Kadlec spoke about web performance in his The Big Picture presentation, discussing how browsers load images, what’s slowing down web performance, and what techniques we have to make things faster. Find his presentation slides, social conversation, and resources on Notist.
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Thanks to Christian Heilmann for creating this two-minute video for customizing Browser Developer tools, with info on docking, resizing and layout, theming, and localisation.
What I Found Interesting
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Doesn’t matter whether you’re a designer, content writer, developer, or digital marketer. If you use software applications for your projects and work, keep a journal with notes on how to get the thing working.
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Woohoo! Congrats to Firefox on releasing version 100 this week. I remember when Firefox was first released in 2004, a welcome alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
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Need to take a break in your day? Enjoy these user-friendly online games, fun to play, no installation needed. I took a break with Connect 4. Hat tip to Christian Heilmann who shared the link on Twitter.
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