In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll find a DesignOps study guide, learn how to make job hiring more accessible, discover a new technique for creating a sticky footer in only CSS and HTML, 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
Great minds don’t think alike. They challenge each other to think differently.
The people who teach you the most are the ones who share your principles but not your thought processes.
Converging values draw you to similar questions. Diverging views introduce you to new answers.
— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) November 18, 2021
User Experience
- Nielsen Norman Group continues with their series on study guides, this week’s DesignOps: Study Guide is a collection of links, articles, videos about DesignOps, which they describe as:
…the orchestration and optimization of people, processes, and craft in order to amplify design’s value and impact at scale
- Another reason why you always need a design review before production.
When you push to production without a #design review. #ux #ui pic.twitter.com/OdFOP9Deid
— Doug Collins (@DougCollinsUX) November 17, 2021
- Caroline Jarrett discusses why plain language and Plain English are different, what causes them to be confused with each other, and whether it matters which one you talk about.
- Evelyn Wolf takes a closer look at plain language as she answers questions about passive voice (and how it impacts your plain language). Wolf offers excellent examples of how to avoid passive voice, as well as a handy “by zombies” test:
If you can add the phrase “by zombies” to the end of the sentence and it still makes grammatical sense, then it’s passive.
- Microcopy matters. In Jack Moffet’s In the Details: Cancel Timeout post, he demonstrates the importance of good button labels. And how he was tricked to make the incorrect choice. Designers shouldn’t need to explain in the modal dialog text what each button does.
Accessibility
- Education about accessibility is the first step. For ourselves and our users. In We need to talk about accessibility, again and again, and then some more, Francesca Marano explains why she’s venting again about accessibility.
- Join Knowbility on November 30, 2021 for their A11y Office Hours Episode 3: Ask Me Anything with Eric Eggert, their Accessibility Services Director. You can send your questions ahead of time on Twitter, using the hashtag #A11yOfficeHours. Or by email Knowbility with the subject “A11y Office Hours.”
- One of the steps in making job hiring more accessible: write flexible, detailed job descriptions. Be sure to include details about the physical environment and whether there is a remote work option.
Simple changes from employers can make the entire process more inclusive and expose their businesses to a wider talent pool.
- On December 9, 2021, 3PlayMedia hosts a free webinar with Lainey Feingold presenting the last Digital Accessibility Legal Update for 2021. Worthy of your time, Feingold always provides a good update with news on key cases, court decisions, settlements, best practices, and other developments.
WordPress
- Both have saved my work many times over the years. Do you know the difference between WordPress autosave and revisions?
- It’s that time of year again. If you use WordPress, it’s time to complete the 2021 WordPress annual survey. Help the WordPress community and people who build WordPress better understand how it’s used and who uses it.
- Three years after it was released, my friend Chris Wiegman talks about how he made his peace with Gutenberg. Which also included leaving WordPress completely before returning to it a year later.
I’ve had somewhat of a rocky history with using Gutenberg.
- How would you answer the question, What is one thing you’d like people to see or experience, right when they first land on wordpress.org? Find out how WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy answered that question in WP Briefing episode 20: WordPress=Blogging+.
- As my friend Eric Karkovack explains, the potential impact of of WordPress Full Site Editing on the design process is huge. It creates a whole new workflow for WordPress design.
CSS and HTML
- CSS Tricks last updated their sticky footer, five ways post in January 2020. This week CSS Tricks founder Chris Coyier highlighted a clever sticky footer technique by Sílvio Rosa, offering a sixth option using
vh. - Impressive work by Temani Afif, using only HTML and CSS.
See the Pen
Monkey D. Luffy (CSS only) by Temani Afif (@t_afif)
on CodePen. - CSS colors have come a long way over the years. Michelle Barker shares the latest techniques for using modern CSS colors, including ways you can select colors that reduce energy usage. What I’m looking forward to in the future: mixing colors in the browser.
- Not good news. Microsoft is forcing Windows 11 users into using Microsoft Edge, resulting in blocking Firefox as a default browser. My opinion: no operating system should take away my default browser decision.
What I Found Interesting
- Finally! Twitter has finally fixed the irritating auto-refresh bug that automatically refreshed your feed. You can now choose when you want new Tweets to load in your timeline.
- If you work remotely, consider taking Buffer’s State of Remote Work survey. Add your perspective about remote work; all answers are anonymized. (Short survey, took me less than five minutes to complete).
- Is it time to take a break from all your technology? Gerry McGovern’s Moving into the future at walking pace is a convincing argument for slowing down, walking away from technology, to be
…more with ourselves, with others, and with Nature.
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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.
