March 15, 2018 — Each platform has its own limitations and proprietary publishing mechanism. Creating interactive content that works across all of these environments is a real challenge. Publishing content to so many media without lots of extra development overhead can be difficult. In this article, Chris Ashton explains how they’ve approached the problem in BBC’s Visual Journalism department. Read more…

March 14, 2018 — Extensible plugins are really awesome and give us room for a lot of customization possibilities. Imagine if you were the developer of this plugin. What would you do if a user asked for some particular functionality? Just when you thought you’ve finally found a plugin that does everything you need, there’s still that one tiny important thing it can’t do. In this article, Benjamin Intal will show you how to make your plugin extensible and reduce headache. Read more…

March 13, 2018 — It’s incredible to see how far web standards have come. Flash was one of the reasons a lot of folks started building websites. Flash was one of the reasons Simon Owen started building websites. It pioneered in a lot of areas, and this led to people creating amazing things with it. Over the years, it’s pushed the web forward a great deal. Adobe’s official announcement of dropping support of Flash, though, does raise concerns. Here are some of the groundbreaking things Flash could do back then, and how we can go about doing them today. Read more…

March 13, 2018 — Even if you don’t use any client-side JavaScript at all to build a site, it doesn’t mean you have to give up on the idea of building with components. Learn how to build a static site with the help of an HTML preprocessor. In this article, Chris Coyier will take a walk through a site he built recently using this technique. He used CodePen Projects to build it, which offers Nunjucks as a preprocessor, which was perfectly up for the job. Read more…

March 12, 2018 — There are many different kinds of disabilities, however, there is a general agreement to categorize people with disability into four general categories: visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive. Including more diversity into your usability testing is vital for any product. In this article, Peter McNally provides lessons learned or tips to consider in planning and executing usability testing with participants with disabilities. Read more…

March 9, 2018 — As technologies improve and design techniques evolve, improvements in digital design are inevitable. What is truly impressive, however, is how we are now able to use design to tell a story. As attention spans shorten and visitors just want to get to the good stuff on a website, designers have to get more creative in how they communicate their website’s “story.” In this article, Suzanne Scacca suggests techniques that can be used in web design. Read more…

March 8, 2018 — Web professionals should not only think about insurance, but also understand it. Insurance is something we don’t necessarily want to budget for or consider, yet as professionals, we have to. In this article, Ashley Baxter will explore what this insurance is and how it’s designed to keep web professionals in business. She’ll also be sharing real stories of businesses who were glad they had insurance. Read more…

March 7, 2018 — The WordPress REST API is a game-changer for WordPress, which can now safely be called a web application framework — not just a CMS. If you’ve been looking for a content-driven solution, Muhammad Muhsin will explain how you can build a SPA WordPress theme with React. Continue reading this article to find out why this is a good choice for your web app’s back-end technology. Read more…

March 7, 2018 — So you think you’ve designed something that’s perfect, but your test tells you otherwise. In this article, Christopher Murphy will be focusing on usability testing, where he evaluates the design decisions made against a representative set of users to test if his assumptions are correct. User testing should be happening at every point in the process as an integral part of an iterative design process. With that thought in mind, it’s important to establish a structured framework for user testing throughout the design process. let’s explore the importance of user testing. Read more…

March 6, 2018 — Planning is essential for most businesses and organizations. Unfortunately, when it comes to websites there is often a failure to plan properly or at all. This guide aims to change that.  Always remember that a good website isn’t a one-time event, but rather an extensible communications tool. Once you’ve built a great website, keep the momentum going. Devote resources to regular maintenance, and check in with your site visitors regularly to identify areas for improvement. Read more…