November 4, 2022 Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development News

In this week’s web design and development resources roundup, you’ll learn what a content audit is, find out what’s in WordPress 6.1, discover how to create fancy image decorations in CSS, 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

“When you combine your own intuition with a sensitivity to other people’s feelings and moods, you may be close to the origins of valuable human attributes such as generosity, altruism, compassion, sympathy, and empathy.”

— MisterRogersQuotes (@MisterRogersSay) November 4, 2022

User Experience

• Learn what a content audit is, when and how you should conduct one, and the types of tools you can use in the latest article from Content Science.

• On user research:

  #UXResearch
  A very complex thing in our job, is to help people get comfortable with changing their assumptions about users, the product, after learning new information via research. Give them some time, old habits and assumptions die hard. Help them process the new information.

  — Stef Walter (@WalterStephanie) November 3, 2022

• In the drivers of digital, Kate Tarling highlights four important and common drivers organizations use to transform digital capability and improve digital services, products, and processes.

• Alan Pringle at Scriptorium had some Halloween fun with his content creature feature, explaining how you can discover ghoulish creatures lurking in your content processes. Boo!

• In the latest post of his design patterns series, Vitaly Friedman explores alternative design patterns for designing the perfect mobile navigation UX.

  Slide-in-menus don’t perform very well; they are slow and distracting. Accordions are likely to perform better.

• Caroline Jarrett highlights key takeaways in her Using and abusing surveys in customer onboarding chapter of The Customer Onboarding Handbook. You can download a free copy of the ebook by subscribing to The CX Lead.

Accessibility

• If you missed it earlier this week, this week, the WordPress Accessibility Day YouTube recordings are available in six-session videos. I’ll publish my recap of sessions I attended next week.

• Thank you Lynda Carter for spreading the word!

  The wonderful disability rights activist @emily_ladau has pointed out how helpful it is to use the “ALT” text on images and captions for videos… Happy to do it in order to make my puns and whatnots more accessible! After all, I am an ALTman! Thank you, Emily!

  — Lynda Carter (@RealLyndaCarter) November 2, 2022

• Created with the disability community, the new Microsoft Adaptive Accessories remove barriers for people with disabilities. The accessories provide a way for disabled people to work more productively, with more control.

• Four new modules have been added to the free online Learn Accessibility Course, focusing on accessible content structure, keyboard focus, the Document, as well as video and audio.

• The Teach Access 2022 Accessibility Skills Gap Survey wants to learn about the demand for accessibility skills and supply of people to fill those roles. Survey should take 10-15 minutes to complete. Deadline to submit your feedback is December 16, 2022.

WordPress

• What we’ve all been waiting for, WordPress 6.1 has been released! You’ll find a new Twenty Twenty-three default theme along with block editor updates, fluid typography, and more.

• I’m excited to learn about all the improvements in the writing experience in core WordPress, including the changes in the transforms menu. Note: while many improvements are in WordPress 6.1, others will only be available when Gutenberg 14.4 is released (and you install it on your site).

• Heads up! WP All Import announced they are ending unlimited, lifetime licenses. No date was given for when it will end, but later this year or next year, WP All Import will switch to annual licensing. All existing lifetime licenses will be honored.

• They used to be harmless, but no more. What am I talking about? WordPress.com ads on free sites. As Jen Tocker says, the ads are like a nightmare on your main street. Like Jen, I’m not a fan.

CSS and HTML

• In the last of their three-part series on fancy image decorations, Temani Afif explores the CSS outline property and complex animations. Have to admit, I would not have thought to use CSS outline for image decoration.

• What does coding have to do with cheap speakers? Chris Ferdinandi shares a story about an audio engineer testing their music on both expensive and cheap speakers. It’s like code, as Ferdinandi explains his three principles for making sure sites work on cheap setups as well as expensive setups.

• Scott Kellum explains, it’s due to rem sizing, reducing inheritance issues, and viewport consolidation.

  Friends: Never add font styles to `body`. Add them to `html` instead. Aside from resetting margins you really shouldn’t be styling `body` at all.

  — Scott Kellum (@ScottKellum) November 2, 2022

• On day 29 of his 100 days of more or less modern CSS, Manuel Matuzovic takes a look at !important and how it works with custom properties. Like Manuel, I didn’t realize it didn’t work as I expected.

What I Found Interesting

• The sixth annual Unsplash Annual Awards are happening throughout November 2022. Enter your images in 11 categories, guest judges will select featured images for each category.

• A new browser? Built by someone with over 20 years working on browsers? Check out Darin Fisher and why he thinks it’s time to reinvent the browser. I miss the days, so many years ago, when there was active development of new browsers. I remember when both Firefox and Chrome launched.

• Not surprised by the study finding that being around birds improved people’s well-being, which could last up to eight hours. Some other fascinating reads in this week’s Hidden Brain Newsletter, What makes altruistic people so generous?

• Sad lessons learned about owning your content, after Manuel Matuzovic discovered his Twitter account was permanently suspended. Your images, direct messages, bookmarks are all gone. As well as the relationships you created over the years.

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