October 21, 2022 Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development Resources

In this week’s web design and development resources roundup, you’ll learn what to pay research participants, get a sneak peak into WordPress 6.1, discover why we need CSS Speech, 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

A little reminder for myself & for all: despite our own agendas, that email we sent or voice mail we left for someone about a high priority thing for us? It’s almost certainly NOT the top thing on the recipient’s to-do list today. Patience is important. Everyone is busy.

— Christopher Barger 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 (@cbarger) October 19, 2022

User Experience

• In Behavioural Design 101: psychology mechanisms in persuasive design, psychologist and UX designer Naima Dahbar highlights almost two dozen mechanisms and techniques influencing users app decision-making process.

• Based on the results of almost 20,000 moderated and unmoderated research projects, User Interviews 2022 Research Incentives Report offers recommendations on what to pay user research participants. Their handy Incentive Calculator helps you identify the right incentive to get highly-qualified participants for your study.

  

• On the importance of creating a strong user community.

  Every time you ship a new product. You ship an entire ecosystem
  
  In the process of product, user, and market research strive to create community with our users
  
  When problems arise, it is often not fixable with a product update; you’ll need the community to help you #ux #uxr

  — Chris Thoms (@chrisvthoms) October 19, 2022

• Worth bookmarking. Nielsen Norman Group offers Psychology for UX: Study Guide, a collection of articles and videos to learn about principles of human psychology and how they relate to UX design.

Accessibility

• Discover accessible color combinations with Randoma11y, a free online tool. Select New colors for a new combination.

  

• Wishing her the best! After 25 years at the World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI at W3C), Judy Brewer is moving on to a new role with the Partnership for Public Service to work with senior US government officials.

• Wondering what WAI at W3C is working on in October 2022? Find out the latest on updating core guidelines, developing new standards, and documentation.

• Get a behind-the-scenes look at how Microsoft makes features like Narrator, Live Captions, and Voice Access for Windows 11 in this less than three-minute video.

• Accessible content design matters.

  Tempted to do a talk (to stop myself ranting) on how crucial content design is to accessibility.
  
  We need to stop this facade that accessibility is *just* colour contrast and code.
  
  Labelling, hierarchy, links, readability, perceivability, error stares, form fields: all critical.

  — Candi (@candiwrites) October 17, 2022

• Mark your calendar for WordPress Accessibility Day on November 2-3, 2022! The free, online event features accessibility consultants and WordPress users, designers, and developers from around the world.

  

WordPress

• Released this week, WordPress 6.0.3 includes several security fixes. If you don’t have automatic background updates activated, update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 3.7 have been updated.

• The second release candidate for WordPress 6.1 is available for download and testing. The 6.1 version is planned for release on November 1, 2022.

• The first ever Documentation team Contributor Day is October 25, 2022. First-time and experienced contributors are welcome to attend. The event will be held on Zoom.

• Nick Diego joins Josepha Haden Chomphosy in episode 41 of the WordPress Briefing for a sneak peek into WordPress 6.1 (18-minute podcast).

  I personally think that the biggest benefit of full site editing is really to empower no-code or low-code users. And the ability to add these templates directly in the UI really levels them up.

• Disappointed the Jetpack plugin is continuing their trend of changing free features to paid. At WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding reports on the latest change: a premium plan for Jetpack Social with free plans limited to 30 shares a month. Given additional cost and Jetpack Social’s support for only three social networks, I can imagine users will seek other social plugins for sharing.

CSS and HTML

• Nic Chan offers a good explanation of CSS specificity for beginners.

  The general rule is, the more specific your instruction, the higher its specificity. In CSS, more specific selectors win out over less specific selectors.

• Did you know there’s no way for authors to design the aural presentation of web content, like they design the visual presentation? Léonie Watson explains why we need CSS Speech.

• Another helpful tool for web developers, CanIDev? is similar to CanIUse, but for browser details. Created by Pankaj Parashar.

What I Found Interesting

• As NASA reported this week, “Knot your average discovery.” NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealed at least three galaxies forming a cosmic knot around a quasar.

• Do you work remotely? Share your feedback in the 2023 State of Remote Work survey, conducted by Buffer in partnership with NomadList and Remote OK. All responses are anonymized. (Took me a little over 5 minutes to complete)

• Halloween is less than two weeks away. Do you know why bats, owls, toads, and crows are associated with Halloween?

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