In this week’s web design and development resources roundup you’ll learn about conducting competitive analysis for UX research, find out what’s in WooCommerce 7.1, discover the difference between dialogs, modality, and popups, 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!
User Experience
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User Interviews updated their guide on when, why, and how to conduct a competitive analysis for UX research.
While you can conduct competitive analyses for both user research and market research, the key differences between a competitive analysis in marketing and UX research lies in the goals.
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I have no explanation for why there are so many confusing email unsubscribe messages. I’ve collected them for years and finally published a post with some of the unusual and interesting confirmations.
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Jesse Weaver discusses why to keep a user, sometimes you have to let them go. And reminds us that taking a product-centric approach to fixing problems ignores the fact that problems are more complex than fixes to content or features.
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Mark your calendar! Smashing Magazine offers a free one-hour session on Dark Secrets and Nightmares in UX in 2022 with real-life examples and practical techniques to fix them.
Accessibility
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For World Usability Day 2022, Intopia launched a brand new podcast series on digitally accessible health care. Their first podcast features Lauren Hayes, an accessibility consultant who is legally blind who faced numerous challenges in the health care system, including not being able to complete paperwork independently.
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The latest version of the free screen reader, NVDA 2022.3.2, has been released. Note: it’s a patch release to fix issues in 2022.3.1 and resolve a security issue. All users are recommended to upgrade.
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Join 3PlayMedia on December 8, 2022 when they host Lainey Feingold presenting her 2022 Digital Accessibilty Legal Update. I never miss this update!
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While it’s focused on accessibility issues likely to impact U.S. government websites, the Accessibility for Teams online quick-start guide is helpful for every team creating websites. You’ll find five guides: product, content, UX, visual design, and front end.
WordPress
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Folks who are podcasters will be exited to learn you can embed a Pocket Casts in seconds with a new block. There is no limit to the number of episodes and no rules on episode length. Note: the podcasts are archived on the Pocket Casts platform.
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WooCommerce 7.1 was released this week, with the long- awaited custom order tables feature (named High-Performance Order Storage: HPOS). Version 7.1 also includes cross-sells on the cart block.
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Stay up to day on recent WordPress plugin, theme, and core vulnerabilities with the weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report from iThemes. Reminder about dropped support for prior WordPress core versions as of December 1, 2022:
In more WordPress core security news, the WordPress Security Team will no longer provide security updates for WordPress core versions 3.7 – 4.0
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There’s a new and more friendly name for full-site editing: Site Editor. What do you think?
CSS and HTML
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Austin Gil had me laughing as I read his TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) summary of options near the top of blog post:
Would rather squirt jalapeno juice in my eyes.
Gil explains how to improve HTML images for users & developers in six steps. If you prefer watching over reading, Gil provides a captioned video in his post.
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Do you remember these dates in the history of CSS nesting?
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When people use words, they may not mean the same thing to everyone. Case in point: dialogs, modality, and popovers all seem similar. But they are different, as Hidde de Vries explains.
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Tired of focus styles applying on mouse clicks? :focus-visible is the trick. If you’re not comfortable with using it, you can use
@supportsfor styling.
What I Found Interesting
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Looking for alternatives to Twitter? With all the changes at Twitter, including layoffs and top management quitting, the company will soon find itself without people to maintain their system. Check out these 12 alternatives to Twitter worth considering. Personally, I’ve set up an account on Mastodon.
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Birders for the win! Glad the Rufous Hummingbird is in a warmer place for the winter. This hummingbird failed to fly south for the winter, so it got a car ride instead.
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A reminder that context is essential for learning. How do you take notes when you read a book? Do you highlight? Do you add quick notes to your highlighted text?
If you like what you’ve read today, share the post with your colleagues and friends.
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