In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about designing for long waits, find out what’s in the WordPress 5.8.1 maintenance and security release, discover an interactive guide for keyframe animations, 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
Before I log off, let me say it again, as I see more and more events ditch online options: if you’re going back to solely in-person events, you’re going back to inaccessibility and the exclusion of disabled people
— Karl Knights (@Inadarkwood) September 8, 2021
User Experience
- One of the first strategies for helping users cope with long waits or interruptions in applications: clearly indicate progress and time/steps remaining.
When these details are not provided, even frequent, long-term users become confused and frustrated.
- Shoutout to Stephanie Walter for compiling their list of essential resources to design data tables. You’ll find articles about basics and specific table patterns as well as how to fit big tables with a lot of content on any screen. Walter’s advice: do your user research first before you make design decisions.
- Consider creating the first version of your design in grayscale, says Steven Hoober in Color and Universal Design; then apply brand colors with necessary color contrast. Your goal is making sure your designs work for everyone.
- Are you an information architect, content strategist, UX writer/designer/researcher, or visual designer? The 2022 Information Architecture Conference is looking for volunteers to help plan the April 2022 conference.
Accessibility
- The Evincible Series: Accessibility Deep Tech Talks is hosting a free webinar on September 16, 2021: Solutions for Mobile Apps Accessibility Testing. Marcy Sutton is the webinar host. While the webinar is free, preregistration required.
- If you’re a tech trainer or publish tutorials, include accessibility in your training and tutorials.
I wish folks giving trainings and making tutorials about a variety of tech topic always touched on accessibility. “How can this tech be used to improve accessibility?”, or “How can we ensure accessible content?”
We’ll keep having problems as long as #a11y remains silo’ed.
— Nicolas Steenhout (@vavroom) September 8, 2021
- Sauce Labs offers a helpful guide to getting started with accessibility testing. Reminder to everyone involved with creating accessible websites or apps: automated accessibility testing is meant to supplement—not replace— manual testing.
- Who will you nominate to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chair’s Awards for Advancement in Accessibility? The program recognizes technology, innovative practices, and organizations that have improved quality of life for people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nominations are due September 17, 2021.
WordPress
- Released this week, WordPress 5.8.1 is a security and maintenance version featuring 60 bug fixes and three security fixes. If your site supports automatic background updates, it will have already been updated.
- No changes are expected in the near future, said the Jetpack team in their announcement about acquiring Social Image Generator. Daniel Post, founder of the plugin, will be joining Jetpack to continue developing the plugin.
- For my new client’s existing WordPress site, I had a lot of new things to learn: a theme I’ve never worked with before, a different web host, and what I needed to know about licensing for Advanced Custom Fields Pro.
- Users shared their frustration with Termly’s change to the Cookie Consent Banner plugin (limiting the free offering to 100 visitors) by posting one-star ratings in the plugin repository. Termly responded to the feedback, updating the free offering to 10,000 visitors for the Cookie Consent Banner plugin.
- Something I’ve been waiting for years to be added: links will now be underlined by default (for new sites) in GeneratePress! The 3.1 GeneratePress alpha version includes global colors and dynamic typography.
- Excellent tips for improving search engine optimization through better management of categories and tags on your site. I like the recommendation to add unique content to your taxonomy pages.
CSS and HTML
- I love this step-by-step walkthrough by Michelle Barker in Smashing Magazine’s developer decisions for building flexible components. Using a text-and-media component as the example, Barker highlights important factors like content length, background, headings, etc. to keep in mind for making decisions.
- I’ve been a fan of Web Designer Depot’s monthly new tools for designers posts for a while. Their September 2021 Exciting New Tools for Designers is filled to the brim with all kinds of helpful tools, including Buttons Generator and Card.UX/UI.
- Web performance matters.
One of the smartest decisions a product company can make is to assume *every* user is potentially a “low-bandwidth user.”
In the coming years, that decision’s going to be more necessary, not less. https://t.co/tp3zl34Nga
— Ethan Marcotte (@beep) September 9, 2021
- Learn more about keyframe animations in Josh Comeau’s interactive guide to keyframe animations. Did you know by default, keyframe animations will only run one time?
What I Found Interesting
- Woohoo! Great news about the two California Condors nestlings in Utah. One of the two condor chicks has fledged at Zion National Park.
- Something to make you smile (made me smile!).
So about that time Steve went off to college… #BluesClues25 pic.twitter.com/O8NOM2eRjy
— Nick Jr. (@nickjr) September 7, 2021
- Did you know there are online radio websites that allow you to listen to thousands of radio stations? From all over the world? Check out these five websites to listen to the radio (I’m a fan of radio.net, which shows me local stations near me.)
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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.
