A Storied Day
Nope, still not posting about elections or debates, can’t make me. At least not here. To quote renowned WordPress philosopher Pat Ramsey, “withholding comment unless we’re in-person & the whiskey is flowing.” But there are more stories to speak of, specifically Google’s Web Stories. Over at Torque, An Introduction to Google’s New Web Stories Plugin for WordPress: “The idea is to provide what Google calls “snackable content” – quick, easy-to-read stories perfect for smartphones and on-the-go viewing.” It’s like visual AMP. I’m not the greatest fan of AMP or content being locked away somewhere other than my actual site but there is probably a use case for a specific group of users.
Speaking of AMP, XWP, who have been working with Google, Introducing Web Stories for WordPress: “Web Stories is no longer tied to AMP or the Gutenberg framework, and is built using an entirely new interface. This has allowed us to completely reimagine what Web Stories is capable of, bringing improved functionality and features.”
WP Tavern, Google Officially Releases Its Web Stories for WordPress Plugin: “It breaks away from the traditional WordPress interface and introduces users to an almost Photoshop-like experience for building out individual Stories. The Stories editor is completely drag-and-drop.”
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Not So Accessible
Sarah Gooding reporting for WP Tavern, W3C Drops WordPress from Consideration for Redesign, Narrows CMS Shortlist to Statamic and Craft: “WordPress was not submitted to the same review process as the Studio 24 team claims to have extensive experience working with it. In the summary of their concerns, Studio 24 cited Gutenberg, accessibility issues, and the fact that the Classic Editor plugin will stop being officially maintained on December 31st, 2021.” That’s too bad but as Sarah also mention, Gutenberg is still a moving target. It’s hard to commit to such a critical feature if the fundamental content input mechanism is not set in stone.
And some fascinating detail into fractions and accessibility. Kudos to Bet Hannon for 10 Ways to Make your Recipe Blog More Accessible: “In the last several years, screen speech has become wildly popular in day-to-day life – and I’m not just referring to screen readers, which people who are visually impaired use to navigate their computers and the Internet. While things like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Home are getting “smarter” and more efficient each day, they’re still AI units reading text from a website. They can’t tell when a forward-slash is being used in place of a fraction.”
Telling Tales
Podcasts, webinars, and online events have completely taken over many people’s calendars. Some as replacements to traditional events but more often as creative and useful enterprises for keeping to conversation going. Recent stuff posted or coming up include: