In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about design ethics, get a first look at the Twenty Twenty-Two theme, find out how to create a conditional border radius 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
Bad copywriting:
• Here’s my product
• Here’s what it does
• Here’s what’s so good about itGood copywriting:
• Here’s your problem
• Here’s the benefit of solving it
• Here’s why what you’ve tried has failed
• And by the way here’s a product that will help you solve it— Dickie Bush 🚢 (@dickiebush) October 5, 2021
User Experience
- In What is a Good User Experience, Sarah Pagliaccio focuses on design ethics and the challenges of incorporating ethics into a design process. Timely, given whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen’s testimony to Congress this week.
- Ask the questions to better understand.
Because it bears repeating: the job for any and all of us in #UX or #Design is NOT to automagically know the answers.
It’s to ask questions.
There are no experts. No gurus. Only people who understand what I just said + ask a LOT of questions to get to the truth
That’s the job.
— Joe Natoli 🎃 (@joenatoli) October 6, 2021
- Do you use Figma in your design workflow? If you answered yes, you’ll want to check out Marc Andrew’s 9 Figma design tips with helpful shortcuts for your projects.
- Join my friend Carol Smith and Lisa D. Dance on November 5, 2021 for their Ethical Design Matters! Workshop. Through hands-on activities at the online workshop, you’ll learn practical frameworks for integrating ethical principles across organizations.
Accessibility
- Microsoft highlighted a slew of new accessibility features in Microsoft 365, including the announcement they’re rolling out support for Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or real-time captioning in Teams meetings.
- Kicking off the Yukon Track for 2021 WordCamp US, Bet Hannon shared her insights on accessibility in her presentation Accessibility as a Journey: Rationales and Practical Tips for Making Sites Accessible.
- From Derek Featherstone’s presentation at this week’s Big Design conference:
“How we do the work reflects what we value.” –@feather
Take a moment to reflect and ask yourself if your work reflects what you say you value. If it doesn’t, today is a great day to make a change.#a11y #accessibility #BigDesignConference
— Holly Schroeder (she/her) (@314UXHolly) October 7, 2021
- For design professionals looking to master accessibility, you’ll want to check out the Design + Accessibility Summit on November 16-19, 2021. The full schedule of the online conference has been posted.
- Glad to learn an agreement has been reached between the U.S. Department of Justice, the state of New York, and local government agencies to improve accessibility for COVID-19 vaccination websites. One of the key items found on sites: poor color contrast.
WordPress
- Want to catch up on the latest happenings in the WordPress community? Check out the month in WordPress for September 2021. You’ll find highlights from the WP Briefing Podcast, updates on the 2021 WordPress Translation Day celebrations, and more.
- You can now get a first look at the upcoming Twenty Twenty-Two default theme for WordPress 5.9 (expected in December 2021). What caught my attention quickly: the theme demo is based on bird illustrations.
- Learn the basics of what WordPress is, why it’s so popular, the types of sites you can build with WordPress, and how to create a WordPress site.
- Will Morris explains three new features in BuddyPress 9.0 and how to use them in his latest Torque article.
CSS and HTML
- It’s that time of year again. Take the State of CSS 2021 survey and help find out the latest CSS trends.
- While links go somewhere (or download something) and buttons do something, styling can make them look similar. With all the Twitter discussion about them this week, Eric Eggert decided to publish his buttons vs. links article, explaining how they aren’t the same.
- What if Chrome broke features on the web and didn’t tell anyone? Well, it did. In early 2021. Scott Gilbertson explains what happened and why browser monoculture is a bad thing.
I’ve started to notice the beautiful simplicity of an HTML page. Just the simple fact that it loads without a spinning circle makes it stand out on the web today.
- Who remembers Microsoft FrontPage? (I do!) This week marks the 25th birthday of Microsoft FrontPage 97, which was released October 7, 1996 (hat tip Web Design Museum).
- Jay Hoffman continues his History of the Web series examining the movement that began in the mid-2000’s from designing interfaces to designing systems. I remember how excited I was to read Jenifer Tidwell’s Designing Interfaces book.
- Using CSS comparison functions, Ahmad Shadeed explains how to create a conditional border radius in CSS. Impressive!
What I Found Interesting
- Available now, Yubico launches security key with built-in fingerprint reader. Will you buy one?
- What beautiful work! When Tina Pesce recently died in Stockton Springs, Maine, an amazing secret was revealed: the inside walls of her house were painted with stunning landscape murals.
- Big news this week: Microsoft Windows 11 is released! Here’s how you can skip the line and get Windows 11 now.
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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.
