In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about infinite scrolling, find out what’s in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2, get a preview of WordPress 6.1, 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
Normalize honest conversations about health and work. Ask: “Are you better or are you here?” when someone comes back after being off sick. It gives them the chance to be honest about how they are feeling, their energy level, and whether they should still be off. #leadership
— spydergrrl🕷️ (@spydergrrl) September 4, 2022
User Experience
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While infinite scrolling can be beneficial to users by reducing interruptions and lowering interaction cost, it also causes a number of usability issues. It’s not a good fit for all websites. If you’re going to implement it, consider these infinite scrolling tips from Tim Neusesser.
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Thanks to Vitaly Friedman for this great collection of helpful UX checklists for interface designers. One of my favorites is Checklist Design, a collection of best design practices, which I’ve highlighted in a previous roundup post.
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Thinking of conducting a survey?
That survey should be a conversation.
— Erika Hall (@mulegirl) September 8, 2022 -
Celebrate World Interaction Design Day 2022 on September 27! The theme for this year is: Fundamentals and Perspectives. Events will be held around the world, many online. Check out World Interaction Design Day events for an array of talks and and mark your calendar!
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I miss user experience book reviews. They were common 10-15 years ago on blogs, but somehow few people seem to be publishing them now. Which is why I was delighted to read Caroline Jarrett’s review of From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Practice by Natalie Marie Dunbar. Hope you enjoy the review as much as I did.
Accessibility
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It’s almost here! The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 is at the Candidate Recommendation stage. Glenda Sims explains the new success criteria and what needs to happen before WCAG 2.2 becomes final.
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What’s needed for accessibility to be successful in your organization? From this week’s WebAIM Conference:
WebAIM has found the following as keys to a11y success:
— Amy Carney (@click2carney) September 7, 2022
* Active leadership and stakeholders
* Planning, policy, and governance
* Investment (humans, tools)
* Measurement of progress
Most importantly, you have to start!#WebAIMConf -
Join Knowbility on September 15, 2022 for this month’s Be a Digital Ally session Your Website’s Toolbox – Content Management Systems and What You Need to Know. Learn what a content management system (CMS) is and what you need to consider when selecting a CMS, including what accessibility features to look for.
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Ilknur Eren updated their brief introduction to JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver, three popular screen readers. Did you know a recent survey of over 1,500 participants showed 53.7% used JAWS on Windows, almost 31% used NVDA on Windows, and around 6.5% used VoiceOver on macOS?
WordPress
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If you’re using BackupBuddy, you’ll want to update to version 8.7.5 immediately. Affecting BackupBuddy versions 8.5.8.0 through 8.7.4.1, the BackupBuddy vulnerability is considered a high security issue which could cause a breach of your WordPress site, says iThemes.
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No tickets needed! Catch the WordCamp US 2022 free livestream on Friday, September 9, 2022 and Saturday, September 10, 2022. Note: all times on the WordCamp US schedule are US Pacific Time, but you can quickly change it to your own time zone.
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Get a preview of WordPress 6.1 with a walkthrough by release squad members and contributors on September 13, 2022. The online event is an informal preview of the major features in 6.1.
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I’m a long time fan of the GeneratePress theme; I’ve used it on sites since 2017 and it’s the first theme I recommend to people looking to start a WordPress site. Check out Colin Newcomer’s review of GeneratePress with seven key features and pros and cons. Good info, I only wish Newcomer had included accessibility details in his review.
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Released this week, Björk, a free WordPress block theme for blogs and personal websites by Anders Norén, has a classic blog theme look. You’ll find seven theme styles and 15 block patterns to help you build your layout quickly.
CSS and HTML
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Before 2017, if you wanted to overlap content in your layout, you had multiple ways to do it. But it was tricky, especially making sure the design displayed well across multiple viewports, says HJ Chen. But since Grid rolled out, it’s a lot easier for a designer to overlap content.
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Harry Roberts takes a closer look at critical CSS in the real world, and explains why it’s not a good idea.
Critical CSS only helps if CSS is your biggest render-blocking bottleneck, and quite often, it isn’t.
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Yuan Chuan walks you through three ways to create a dreamy blur on your images with CSS. Have you used any of these methods?
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Karolina Szczur offers four proven methods to correct performance issues and improve largest contentful paint for faster load times on your page.
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Loraine Lawson shares HTML markup tips for developing accessible websites, their recap from Cory House’s “Building Accessible Web App”s talk at CodepaLOU developer conference in August 2022. For his talk, House used VoiceOver to demonstrate how visually-impaired people experience websites.
What I Found Interesting
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It’s time to update Google Chrome again. A patch was released to fix a major zero-day security flaw.
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The U.S. Library of Congress has launched an API for the U.S. Congress. Which means it will be a lot easier to build sites/mash up data sets drawn from congressional data, says Daniel Schuman.
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Did you know the word turquoise dates back to 14th-century England? It’s been mined in Europe, Asia, and Africa for thousands of years. Andy Hollandbeck reveals the roots of the word turquoise, tracing it back to the Ottoman Empire.
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