+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 8, Issue 21, November 20, 2009. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 21 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Too Hard is the Worst Excuse By Sarah E Bourne. "Accessibility is no harder and no more expensive than any other part of web development. Everything is hard and expensive if you don't know how to do it, and it's not hard when you know how. So learn how to do it, just like you learn to do anything else on the web. There is no shortage of useful information on the web; for instance, here's a place to start: WaSP InterAct Curriculum: Accessibility." http://sarahebourne.posterous.com/too-hard-is-the-worst-excuse Maximum Accessibility By Inclusive New Media Design (INMD). "How much do you know about web accessibility for site visitors with intellectual disabilities?..." http://www.inclusivenewmedia.org/blog/how-accessible-is-your-website/ Stanford Captioning System: A Workflow Model for Producing Captioned Media By John Foliot and Sean Keegan. "John Foliot approached the Office of Accessible Education with an idea to streamline the production of captioned videos at Stanford University..." http://captioning.stanford.edu/presentations/ahg2009/web.php Gov 2.0: Transparency Without Accessibility? By Alice Lipowicz. "Nearly 20 percent of Americans need sites such as Recovery.gov and Disability.gov to improve accessibility features..." http://fcw.com/articles/2009/11/16/pol-accessibility.aspx Live from NCTI 2009: Powering Students with Technology By Suzanne Robitaille. "...here are five trends that will unleash the power of assistive technology in the classroom: 1. Convergence...2. Customizability...3. Evidence-based Research.... Portability...5. Interoperability..." http://tinyurl.com/y9cga9j Expand the Awesome: Design for a Wider Audience By Ann McMeekin. "...Inclusive Design doesn't have to be ugly. It can be a thing of beauty that's a delight to use, whoever happens to be using it. It's easy to say, but I do think that Accessibility is kind of like an extreme form of Usability. If a product is easy to use by people with impairments, it is highly likely to be easier to use by people who don't have impairments..." http://tinyurl.com/y9xr4ob Do You Find Table Summaries Helpful? By Roger Johansson. "On the W3C HTML Working Group's mailing list there's been plenty of discussion about the future of the table element's summary attribute. Should it be allowed at all in HTML 5? Should it be allowed but only 'semi-valid'? Should other ways of providing information about the structure of a data table be encouraged?..." http://tinyurl.com/yh29gwv +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Vendor-Specific Extensions are Invalid CSS By Roger Johansson. Vendor-specific extensions, even if written according to the CSS 2.1 grammar, use property names and values that are not defined in the CSS specification and are invalid. http://tinyurl.com/yllblgh HTML/CSS Frameworks: Useful, Universal, Usable, Unobtrusive By Jens Meiert. "A high quality HTML/CSS framework needs to have four attributes: useful, universal, usable, and unobtrusive...Now that we think about it, maybe the universal margin and padding reset - the one I had to tweet again for simplicity reasons - is the only HTML/CSS 'frameworkÓ that meets these requirements..." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20091118/useful-universal-usable-unobtrusive/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Web Accessibility Surveys - Results are Frequently Disappointing By David Sloan. "A recent exchange on Twitter has motivated me to write about the contribution published surveys on web site accessibility make towards understanding and addressing the problems that hold back web accessibility. I've read, and continue to read, many, many papers presenting the results of surveys of web sites, and I think we need surveys to look beyond just the data and instead delve more deeply into why the results are as they are. We've gone way beyond the point where a paper simply reporting that a study of x web sites from y sector revealed 'disappointing' levels of accessibility provides anything more than a minor contribution. Surveys need to look at process not product..." http://tinyurl.com/yzubhkb +04: EVENTS. linux.conf.au January 18-23, 2010. Wellington, New Zealand http://www.lca2010.org.nz/ Future of Web Apps (FOWA) Miami 2010 Feburary 22-24, 2010. Miami, Florida, U.S.A. http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2010/miami South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive March 12-16, 2010. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. http://2009.sxsw.com/interactive/ EDUCAUSE Midwest Regional Conference 2010 March 15-17, 2010. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://net.educause.edu/content.asp?SECTION_ID=453&bhcp=1 CSUN Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference March 22-27, 2010. San Diego, California, U.S.A. http://www.csunconference.org/cfp.cfm?EID=80000218 +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The Information Architecture of Behavior Change Websites By Brian G Danaher H. Garth McKay, and John R Seeley. "The extraordinary growth in Internet use offers researchers important new opportunities to identify and test new ways to deliver effective behavior change programs. The information architecture - the structure of website information - is an important but often overlooked factor to consider when adapting behavioral strategies developed in office-based settings for Web delivery. Using examples and relevant perspectives from multiple disciplines, we describe a continuum of website IA designs ranging from a matrix design to the tunnel design." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550648/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Google Closure: How Not to Write JavaScript By Kevin Yank. "At the Edge of the Web conference in Perth last week I got to catch up with Dmitry Baranovskiy, the creator of the Raphael and gRaphael JavaScript libraries. Perhaps the most important thing these libraries do is make sophisticated vector graphics possible in Internet Explorer, where JavaScript performance is relatively poor. Dmitry, therefore, has little patience for poorly-written JavaScript like the code he found in Google's just-released Closure Library..." http://tinyurl.com/ybsy2ho +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Tim Berners-Lee on Government Data By Anne van Kesteren, Lachlan Hunt, and Marcos Caceres. During TPAC, we sat down for a chat with the Director of the W3C, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. During the interview, Tim filled us in about his goals for this year with regards to getting the world's governments to open up the people's data (yes 'raw data now!'). We grilled him about what that means: does it really mean 'raw' or is it really an RDF conspiracy? Tim has some great anecdotes about the uses of raw data and what we, as citizens, can achieve if we work together and get governments to give us raw data now! (don't be shy! shout it out! I sure as hell did). http://standardssuck.org/tim-berners-lee-on-government-data Print Design to Web Design: Comparative Analogies By Chris Coyier. "...thinking about some of the ways working in InDesign is similar to CSS, and some of the ways it's not. Let's have a look..." http://css-tricks.com/print-design-to-web-design/ Jeffrey Zeldman Interview (podcast) By Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel. "Author and co-founder of The Web Standards Project Jeffrey Zeldman talks to publisher Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel about the 3rd Edition of his book Designing with Web Standards. He also reveals why writers 'can't edit themselves.'" http://tinyurl.com/yexv9j2 Media Multitaskers Pay Mental Price, Stanford Study Shows By Adam Gorlick and Jack Hubbard. "Think you can talk on the phone, send an instant message and read your e-mail all at once? Stanford researchers say even trying may impair your cognitive control." http://tinyurl.com/nbot3p +08: NAVIGATION. How to Create Clear Web Navigation Menus By Gerry McGovern. "To create clear menus you need to understand your customers' top tasks and use the words they would look for as they seek to complete these tasks." http://tinyurl.com/y85vmju +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML5 - What Will the Web Look Like Tomorrow? By Sam Ruby. Sam's presentation slides from The South Tyrol Free Software Conference. ""W3C adds Accessibility, Semantic Web, and a level of protection against patents...Concerns such as accessibility and security may affect the adoption rates of shims such as Google Chrome Frame..." http://intertwingly.net/slides/2009/sfscon/ Implementation Progress on the HTML5 Element By Mike Smith. "If you don't know what the HTML5 ruby element is, you might want to take a minute to first read the section about the ruby element in the HTML5 specification and/or the Wikipedia article on ruby characters. To quote from the HTML5 description of the ruby element..." http://blog.whatwg.org/implementation-progress-on-the-html5-ruby-element Designing with Web Standards - The Future of Web Standards By Jeffrey Zeldman. A free sample chapter of The third edition of "Designing With Web Standards" is available. http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1409807 Coding Clean and Semantic Templates By Nick La. "If you are the guy who uses
tag for everything, this post is for you. It focuses on how you can write clean HTML code by using semantic markups and minimize the use of
tag. Have you ever edited someone's templates, don't those messy tags drive you crazy? Not only writing clean templates can benefit yourself, but your team as well. It will save you time when you have to debug and edit (particularly the large projects)..." http://tinyurl.com/yjrz68t Video in HTML5: Still an Unresolved Issue By Frederic Lardinois. "Some modern browsers already offer partial support for HTML5, but there are still quite a few issues that need to be resolved before we will see the finalized version of the HTML5 specifications. One area where there is still a lot of discussion is support for video in HTML5..." http://tinyurl.com/yjxsmpd Speculative HTML5 Parsing Landed By Henri Sivonen. "As mentioned earlier, there is an ongoing project for replacing Gecko's old HTML parser with an HTML5 parser. Today, a significant milestone landed: off-the-main-thread speculative HTML5 parsing..." http://hsivonen.iki.fi/speculative-html5-parsing/ +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Real Web Type in Real Web Context By Tim Brown. "Web fonts are here. Now that browsers support real fonts in web pages and we can license complete typefaces for such use, it's time to think pragmatically about how to use real fonts in our web projects. Above all, we need to know how our type renders in screens, in web browsers. To that end, Tim Brown has created Web Font Specimen, a handy, free resource web designers and type designers can use to see how typefaces will look on the web." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/real-web-type-in-real-web-context/ On Web Typography By Jason Santa Maria. Until now, chances are that if we dropped text onto a web page in a system font at a reasonable size, it was legible. But with many typefaces about to be freed for use on websites, choosing the right ones to complement a site's design will be far more challenging. Many faces to which we'll soon have access were never meant for screen use, either because they're aesthetically unsuitable or because they're just plain illegible. Jason Santa Maria, a force behind improved type on the web, presents qualities and methods to keep in mind as we venture into the http://www.alistapart.com/articles/on-web-typography/ Typography on the Web: Questions for Jeffrey Zeldman-Part 1 By Ellen Lupton. "Remember when the only typefaces you could use on a website were Georgia, Verdana, Helvetica, and a few others? We are now on the verge of a new age of typographic diversity. Jeffrey Zeldman, one the most outspoken and influential people in the web design community, agreed to answer some questions about the state of typography on the web..." http://www.printmag.com/Article/Questions-for-Jeffrey-Zeldman-Part-1 Typography on the Web: Questions for Jeffrey Zeldman-Part 2 By Ellen Lupton. "The basic conundrum for web typography revolves around the seemingly contradictory needs of users and designers. Users need the ability to re-size text on demand. Designers need the ability to create designs with predictable results in different browsers and different user scenarios. Can these competing imperatives be reconciled?..." http://www.printmag.com/Article/Questions-for-Jeffrey-Zeldman-Part-2 +11: USABILITY. First, Do No Harm By Pabini Gabriel-Petit. "...Whether you are designing interactions for desktop, Web, or mobile applications, there are some foundational design principles you should always follow..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/11/first-do-no-harm.php Cooking a Website By Dmitry Fadeyev. "...what I do find interesting is that I'm seeing several parallels between cooking and designing interfaces and websites..." http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/11/13/cooking-a-website/ A Unified Approach to Visual and Interaction Design By Nate Fortin. "...my observation has been that even when all of the right people are involved, more often than not, the various design disciplines opt to compartmentalize the problem. In other words, they divide the project into an interaction design problem, a visual design problem, and an industrial design problem. Each of these problems is then tackled separately, and the resulting individual design solutions get bolted together at the end. It's a Tower of Babel situation, where huge opportunities are lost because the team fails to work together to come up with an innovative product solution and to employ a single, unified design language." http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/11/a_unified_approach_to_design.html 6 Things Video Games Can Teach Us About Web Usability By Mark Riggan. "Those who think video games are not educational, this post is for you. Not only can video games be an enjoyable experience, they can teach us many things. Websites and video games often use similar concepts about usability in order to achieve an amazing end-product. I've come up with 6 essential concepts that video games can teach web designers about usability." http://tinyurl.com/ykdvg2p Four Key Principles of Mobile User Experience Design By Dakota Reese Brown. "...1: There is an intimate relationship between a user and their mobile device...2: Screen size implies a user's state. The user's state infers their commitment to what is on the screen.3: Mobile interfaces are truncated. Other interfaces are not...4: Design for mobile platforms Ñ the real ones..." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/four-key-principles Agile User Experience Projects By Jakob Nielsen. "Agile projects aren't yet fully user-driven, but new research shows that developers are actually more bullish on key user experience issues than UX people themselves..." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/agile-user-experience.html [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility Association Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/associations Book Listings. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/books Cascading Style Sheets Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/css Color Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/color Dreamweaver Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/dreamweaver Evaluation & Testing Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/testing Event Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/events Flash Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/flash Information Architecture Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/architecture JavaScript Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/javascript Miscellaneous Web Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/misc Navigation Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/navigation PHP Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/php Sites & Blogs Listing. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/sites Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/standards Tool Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/tools Typography Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/type Usability Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/usability XML Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/xml [Section two ends.] ++END NOTES. + SUBSCRIPTION INFO. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates. + TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN). As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN guideline information please visit: http://www.headstar.com/ten + SIGN OFF. Until next time, Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]