This week’s roundup includes a tutorial on creating a grid of diamonds using CSS, a re-introduction of a user experience tool many have forgotten, two recently launched WordPress resource sites, and many other resources.

For long-time readers, yes, I thought this blog would be moved to WordPress this weekend. I’m waiting for one more plugin to be sent to me before moving the 300+ posts. The plugins I’m using are beta versions, but have received good reviews from others who’ve used them to move their Posterous blogs.

My fingers are crossed I can move the blog before I leave for WordCamp Phoenix later this week.

CSS

• Who says the web is just for squares?: Cool use of CSS3, Modernizr, Sass, and Compass to create a grid of diamonds.
  
• Typesetting Responsive CSS Columns: Tommi Kaikkonen uses this proof-of-concept page to explain how he created a responsive page with CSS columns. Easily modify the display by enabling/disabling options for columns, full justification, and hyphenation.
• Build a basic responsive site with CSS: In this tutorial from net magazine, Jason Michael explains the principles behind responsive web design and points out that responsive design is not just mobile nor is it about just adding media queries.

HTML

• The harsh truth about HTML5’s structural semantics (part 1): Luke Stevens, author of The Truth About HTML5, shares history about HTML5 structural elements as well as his concerns. If you haven’t read the book, I suggest reading it. It’s spurred on a lot of discussion about HTML5.

User Experience

• What are your favorite customer support sites and why?: Can you help? Michael Angeles of Konigi is doing a review of customer support sites and needs your help. He wants to know which sites you like for providing good search results, documentation, and tutorials.
• The Power of Faces in User Experience: From UX Matters, two case studies from National Geographic and Oxfam show the impact face images have on content and trustiworthiness of your site.
• Reintroducing Page Description Diagrams: One of my favorite tools for helping to prioritize features, without getting involved with the design issues of "can you make the button bigger?" Do you use page description diagrams?
• The Power of Sketches: How We Sold a Huge Project Shift with 5 Index Cards: Love this story from Nathan Curtis of EightShapes of their process with sketching that led to their developing The Guide to the Constitution application.

Accessibility

• University student perseveres in world with no sound, light: Touching story about 24-year-old university student Miyuki Ara and her life journey in the past two years. Ara continues to take classes as she manages the loss of both sight and sound from a rare genetic disorder.
• Layout tables and repair techniques: Gez Lemon discusses how to use the ARIA presentation role to remove table semantics for pages designed using table layouts.
• The Harsh Truth about HTML5 (comment): Yes, I know I shared the same link above in the HTML5 section. But what I’m highlighting here is the thoughtful response about accessibility and semantics in the comments by Sina Bahram.
• Accessibility in Modern Interfaces: James Edwards, well-known for his JavaScript work, gives a nice introductory post on ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications).
• Using Videos—An Accessibility Angle: Graham Armfield (@coolfields) leads a discussion on Make WordPress Accessible promoting videos to help WordPress developers better understand accessibility issues faced by users.

WordPress

• Claim Google Authorship for Your WordPress Website in Three Easy Steps: Did you know about Google Authorship? It’s how Google identifies
  

  the author of a piece of content to factor it as a signal of content quality.

  Yes, it’s easy to do, and doesn’t require you to know how to code.

• A Comprehensive Beginners Guide to the WordPress Loop: With references to the WordPress Codex, this post by Zac Gordon of Treehouse walks you through the WordPress loop explaining the logic, key functions, and sharing loop examples. Good beginners guide.
• 5 Things to Look for in 3.6: Revisions, Menus, Editorial Flow, More: John Saddington of WPDaily highlights five new features expected in the upcoming 3.6 version. Based on my consulting work with clients, I’m looking forward to improvements in the menu interface. Many clients have challenges understanding how the menus work.
• WP-Mix: Jeff Starr, who co-wrote/manages Digging into WordPress book/website with Chris Coyier, launched his new WP-MIX website in December. It’s a great resource site for code snippets, mini-tutorials, and more.
• WP Daily: Another great WordPress resource site, WP Daily launched in late 2012, publishing daily updates on plugins, WordPress news, and more. Led by John Saddington, it’s another excellent resource for developers, designers, and bloggers who want to stay current on WordPress news.

What I Found Interesting

• January 7: The Pastry Box Project: Clearleft’s Andy Budd shares his thoughts on clients, time and design projects in this quick read.
• Tumblr: David Karp’s $800 Million Art Project: Are you a Tumblr fan? This is a long read from Forbes, but worth it to learn more about the 26-year-old founder of Tumblr.