As April is ending, I thought it would be a good time to review articles of interest which I have been reviewing this month (and articles members and colleagues have made me aware of). As readers know, web technologies are always evolving. This is that keeps me interested in all things web (and has for well over three decades).
Accessibility
New software has been developed to enable blind and low vision users to create interactive, accessible charts. The software is called Umwelt and was created by researchers at MIT and University College London. The software is designed for screen reader users.
AI
If you happen to own an iPhone (and it is newer than 5 years old with iOS 17), there are AI features available to you now. These include cinematic video editing (subject can be detected and focus can be changed depending on the action). You can also use the Live Text feature to copy text from images. Yes, this has been around for a while, but has been significantly improved. You can also create stickers from your own photos. Obviously a lot more is coming with IOS 18.
A recent study also revealed a surge in the use of AI to enhance video accessibility. Wistia’s State of Video report is summarized in the linked article. Interestingly, part of the study also found that shorter videos are not necessarily that much more engaging. We encourage you to read the summary and the full report.
CSS
This article on CSS trends for 2024 is most interesting. It is amazing how much continues to evolve with this technology. From new color systems to subgrids to cascade layers, there are many changes happening. Frameworks such as Tailwind CSS, Chakra UI also continue to evolve. Readers are encouraged to check out the above linked article.
Web Design trends
Here are some web design trends emerging in 2024. These include: denser, richer graphics, AI generated designs, micro interactions, kinetic typography and much more continue to evolve.
WordPress
Given that this technology supports roughly 38% of websites, we thought readers might want to know what is new for developers with the release of version 6.5. For those who do not know, the next version (6.6) will drop support for older versions of PHP (7.0 and 7.1). The WordPress Playground continues to evolve and some enhancements are discussed in this article as well.
Those are some of the articles we found interesting in the past month. We are curious what you found interesting as well. Please let us know in the comments.
