This week, I had my first knowledge sharing session with my digital teammates at HY Connect. I presented a high-level overview of all the things I like to pay attention to during the course of a project. I was gathering a list of resources to email to the team and figured it might be worthwhile to share here on the blog as well. This is by no means comprehensive, but represents what I feel is a good spread of the various aspects of a build where the development team can help drive quality.
TOOLS I LOVE
XScope App
Measuring pixels, checking folds and testing common visual impairments
iconfactory.com/software/xscope
ImageAlpha
Shrinks PNG files with magic!
ImageOptim
Shrink images by removing meta data and other software and OS file cruft
imageoptim.com
Litmus
Screenshots for quick crossbrowser testing of pages and emails
litmus.com
ACCESSIBILITY
These are the standards. They are deep, but worth getting to know. In 2012, the Justice Department began planning for incorporating UI accessibility into the ADA.
WCAG 2.0: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/
ARIA 1.0: Accessible Rich Internet Applications
www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria.php
The list of litigation is growing, so I would expect to continue to see a growing interest in accessibility compliance.
Target Settles Accessibility Lawsuit for $6 Million
www.sitepoint.com/target-settles-accessibility-lawsuit-for-6-million/
Accessibility Lawsuit Filed Against JetBlue Airways
lflegal.com/2010/10/jet-blue/
List of several cases
www.karlgroves.com/2011/11/15/list-of-web-accessibility-related-litigation-and-settlements/
PERFORMANCE
Google Speed Labs
Yahoo YSlow!
Great browser plugin for grading site performance and best practices documentation
developer.yahoo.com/performance/
developer.yahoo.com/yslow/
Performance thought leaders
Tom Hughes-Croucher
@sh1mmer
kid666.com
His presentations are great. I would jump at the chance to be in any conference session he is presenting.
Steve Souders
stevesouders.com
@souders
A bit more technical, but worth following for insight into tools, evidence and interesting real world testing.
SEARCH
SEOmoz
Probably the single best resource on the web.
Search Engine Land
@sengineland
searchengineland.com
SEO thought leaders
Eric Enge
@ericenge
Stephan Spencer
@sspencer
Rand Fishkin
@randfish
Jessie Stricchiola
@Itstricchi
Matt Cutts
mattcutts.com
@mattcutts
Semantic Microformatting
SOCIAL
These are documentation of the Open Graph meta data to turn content into social objects