In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn how to select the right method for your UX research, find a free online accessibility course, discover why WordPress classic themes aren’t going away, 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 tip for writing more: expand your definition of completing a project (any project, no matter how small) to include writing a blog post (or README or similar) that explains that project
— Simon Willison (@simonw) October 6, 2022
User Experience
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Selecting the right method for your UX research project can be challenging. Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis provide four ways to help you narrow and pick the right UX method.
A more logistical consideration is how, if at all, you can collect data (empirical or analytic) and what type of data you can collect (attitudinal or behavioral).
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Shoutout to Rosenfeld Media for offering unlimited scholarships for unemployed folks and students to Civic Design 2022 virtual conference. The conference is November 16-18, 2022. Apply for a scholarship by November 6, 2022.
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On product improvement:
In many places, being a UX designer means you’ll have to convince others to let you do the job you were hired and paid to do.
— Ana Santos (@ux_by_ana) October 5, 2022 -
You can quickly get overwhelmed by everything you generate during discovery says Teresa Torres. In discovery is messy: how do we keep track of all that we are learning? Torres explores different approaches for what to keep and for how long.
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As a design researcher, it can be hard to have the self-insight to realize that you are unintentionally steering your interviewee’s behavior says Rich Nadworny. Design researchers self-insight is as bad as everyone else’s. With training and programs on self-awareness, design researchers can do better.
Accessibility
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Following up on their announcement of the Learn HTML course, Chrome Developers announced Learn Accessibility written by Carie Fisher, the next free online course in their series to get you up to speed in web development. I can’t wait to take the course!
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Did you know an embosser can produce a tactile image, which allows people to perceive images through touch? Learn more about tactile literacy and access to graphics for New York City blind library patrons on this Marketplace podcast with Chancey Fleet, technologist at the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library.
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In your content, be mindful of the literacy of your audience.
Consider your audience's tech literacy level. Define technical terms that may be unfamiliar. Consider adding a glossary if the content contains many potentially unfamiliar terms. Include inline definitions for scientific, legal, or technical terms you can't avoid and must use.
— Accessibility Awareness (@A11yAwareness) October 4, 2022 -
While there have been improvements in recent years toward creating accessible and inclusive digital products, it’s clear from Patrick Sturdivant’s experiences as a screen reader user that developers and designers need to prioritize testing so digital accessibility isn’t a surprise.
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Introduced in the U.S. Congress last week, Ben Myers takes a first look at the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act Bill. The bill builds on the Americans with Disabilities Act. I appreciate Myers quick takes at the beginning of his post, highlighting what he believes are the top takeaways in the bill.
WordPress
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Can you help? The third beta version of WordPress 6.1 is available for download and testing. The 6.1 version is scheduled for release on November 1, 2022.
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Happy one-year anniversary! After struggling to add SVG icons to the editor, Nick Diego published the Icon Block in October 2021. The latest version of Icon Block supports all the advanced border and spacing functionality that will be released in the upcoming WordPress 6.1 version.
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With over 10,000 themes in the WordPress repository, and only 154 of them block themes, it’s clear classic WordPress themes aren’t going away any time soon. As Eric Karkovack explains, power and flexibility are what sets classic themes apart.
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To follow up on Eric’s post, I’ve updated my 9 tips for changing your WordPress theme with current info about blocks, plugins, widgets, etc. And noting the post is about switching classic WordPress themes, not block themes. There’s a lot to plan for and my recommendations will help you make a smooth switch to a new theme.
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A minimalist theme, Twenty Twenty-Three will be the default WordPress theme launched with WordPress 6.1 in November. A stripped down version of Twenty Twenty-Two, the theme has reduced heading size and a default system sans serif font (instead of the serif font in Twenty Twenty-Two).
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Hosted WordPress.com has added new Patterns for headers, footers, link in bio, and more. What I found interesting were the number of link-in-bio patterns: 14!
CSS and HTML
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Share your feedback, the State of CSS Survey 2022 is now open. Deadline to submit your feedback is October 20, 2022. You can take it anonymously or create an account (which allows you to access your own data in the future).
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Another impressive work from Lynn Fisher, a single div and only CSS used to create this illustration of Silent Bob.
See the Pen Single div CSS Silent Bob by Lynn Fisher (@lynnandtonic) on CodePen.
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Jens Oliver Meiert shares his story of working on the Google Error Page. Fun to read the backstory of how it came to be and error page requirements. Glad to learn the HTML continues to be valid, semantic, and accessible.
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On Day 7 of his 100 Days of More or Less Modern CSS, Manuel Matuzovic takes a closer look at subgrids. Did you know subgrid allows a grid-item with its own grid to align with its parent grid (only in Firefox and Safari)
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Kilian Valkhof shares an example of a use case where both a link or a button could be used, and the result would be accessible. But, Valkhof explains why he prefers the more complex button example over the link.
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Well, this is interesting. Chromium shared their intent to prototype CSS nesting. Which means you would have the ability to nest CSS style rules inside other style rules.
What I Found Interesting
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Whoa, this would be one cool present to get! Anyone have a birthday or special day coming up soon? The $250 LEGO foosball table includes 22 mini figures and actually works.
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What you say? Twitter is rolling out the long-awaited edit button. Something I’ve been wanting for years. But it’s only available to Twitter users in the United States through the Twitter Blue subscription.
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