Not sure what accessibility changes will have the most benefit to your existing software? Are you in the build process and need to make sure accessibility has been appropriately considered? Use this checklist as a starting point.
It’s Found Friday Vol 71, readers, and I’m sick as a dog. I thought about featuring Vicks Vaporub and Halls cough drops in order to garner some reader sympathy, but instead I decided to stick with the usual: the best design finds o’ the week. This week we have: an app for article-appreciating iOs users; a PNG masking technique for web images; a must-read on layout manipulation in WordPress; a bunch of pre-made CSS animations for your projects; and a javascript plugin that makes your videos responsive. It’s a good week to be a designer/developer, people!
Instapaper
I’ve been using Instapaper for a few months now, and it’s a must-have if you want to keep up to speed in the world of design and development. It just went through an awesome redesign too! Essentially, Instapaper ($2-$4 on the App Store, depending on whether for iPhone or iPad) allows you to save articles you find online to read offline later. Because there are so many awesome design & development articles being published each & every day, this is a great tool to save articles you want to read until you have time to do so.
PNG Masking: How to Dynamically Shape any Image on Your Website
This article gives a great tutorial on how to use PNGs to mask images on your site. For example, take a basic square image, use a circular PNG and some tidy CSS, and bam! You have a circular image. Worth checking out.
Advanced Layout Templates in WordPress’ Content Editor
WordPress is the bees knees, in my opinion, but one area that it can get a little tricky is the whole advanced layout bit. For example, if you have a page layout that has a large slider, a full-width text section and 3 equal width columns below it, you’re usually going to use custom post types, widgets or a variety of other WordPress “hacks” to make this work. This article, however, turns the whole layout debate on its head. A must-read for any WordPress developer.
Animate.css
“A bunch of cool, fun, cross-browser animations for you to use in your projects”. That’s what it is, and it’s pretty neat. Just don’t go buck wild; nobody wants to have a seizure thanks to your over-animated “masterpiece”.
FitVids.js
Responsive web design is the new black, but dealing with some bits ca be tricky – like videos. Enter FitVids: a simple jQuery plugin that turns your videos into responsive videos. Nice!
See you next week!