+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 43, April 22, 2011.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. 

++ISSUE 43 CONTENTS.

SECTION ONE: New references.
What's new at the Web Design Reference site?
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/
New links in these categories:

01: ACCESSIBILITY.
02: BOOKS.
03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TOOLS.
11: USABILITY.


SECTION TWO: 
12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Tools and Tips for Creating Transcripts
By Glenda Watson Hyatt.
"Last week I shared the benefits of providing a transcript in addition to captioning a video (an accessibility must!). But, short of transcribing each word yourself, how do acquire the transcript?..."
http://blogaccessibility.com/tools-and-tips-for-creating-transcripts/

Accessibility and Web Innovation - A Constant Struggle
By Chris Heilmann.
"Accessibility is part of everything we do - the physical world has become much better in the last decades because we care for the needs of people with disabilities. Lowered kerbs on sidewalks, OCR Scanning, subtitles and captions on movies and TV programs - these are all things invented for a disability need but we all now benefit from it. The same can and should happen in interface design and web development. If you think about it, the features that make a good mobile interface also cover a lot of needs of different disability groups. So why don't we work together?..."
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/04/accessibility-and-web-innovation-a-constant-struggle/

Enhancement to and Replacement for longdesc
By Vlad Alexander.
"...ObjectDescription is a service via website and API that stores and serves image descriptions. To use this service with longdesc, a user enters a URL to a given image, enters a description for the image, and in return gets a URL they can enter into the longdesc attribute..."
http://rebuildingtheweb.com/en/longdesc-replacement/

Image alt Attributes Not Always Required in HTML5
By Adrian A. Roselli. 
"It has long been accepted that the alt attribute of the <img> element, while not a perfect method to provide a text alternative to an image, is still a necessary attribute to provide at least some level of access to the image content for users who cannot see the image (whether by disability or otherwise)..." 
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2011/04/image-alt-attributes-not-always.html


+02: BOOKS.

Coombs, Norman. Making Online Teaching Accessible, Jossey-Bass, 2010. 


+03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Updated WD for CSS3 Speech
By Bert Bos.
"...The Speech module contains properties for output of documents to synthesized speech. They control voice, volume, pitch, speed, pauses,  etc. They are intended to be compatible with SSML (Speech Synthesis  Mark-up Language), so that a CSS style sheet can not only be used to render a document as speech, but can also serve to convert a document into SSML instructions. The module replaces the deprecated 'aural' media  type in the appendix of  CSS level 2..."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Apr/0588.html 

Faking 'float: center' with Pseudo Elements
By Chris Coyier.
"...We're going to do it by using floated pseudo element placeholders. We'll put one in each column of text1, one floated left, one floated right. The pseudo element should be the height of the image, and half of the width (or so... remember you'll want some padding and there is the gutter to factor in)..."
http://css-tricks.com/float-center/

More Module Updates from the W3C
By Chris.
"The W3C CSS Working Group have introduced a new module to CSS3, the CSS3 Grid Layout module, as well as released two further updated specifications, for the CSS3 Multi-column Layout and CSS3 Text modules. 
http://www.css3.info/more-module-updates-from-the-w3c/

Powerful New CSS Techniques and Tools
By Smashing Magazine.
"The hard work of front-end designers never ceases to amaze us. Over the last months, we've seen Web designers creating and presenting a plethora of truly remarkable CSS techniques and tools. We have collected, analyzed, curated and feature latest useful resources for your convenience, so you can use them right away or save them for future reference..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/04/18/powerful-new-css-techniques-and-tools/


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

User Research Is Unnatural, Part II: Making User Research More Natural
By Jim Ross.
"Short of espionage or spending years living with a group of people conducting true ethnography, user research will always be somewhat unnatural."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/04/user-research-is-unnatural-part-ii-making-user-research-more-natural.php


+05: EVENTS.

Accessible Web Forms 
May 10 - June 2, 2011.
Online Class
http://www.webprotraining.org/AccessibleForms.html

Accessibility Camp Seattle 
May 20 and 21, 2011.
Seattle Washington, U.S.A.
http://accessibilitycampseattle.org/blog/


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

How to Find the Center of an Area Element with JavaScript
By Roger Johansson.
"In a recent project I was working on a script interacting with an image map consisting of irregular areas and needed to find the center of each of these areas. I couldn't find a function to do that so I wrote my own. It's pretty simple, but in case anyone else needs this I thought I'd share. The function takes two parameters..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201104/how_to_find_the_center_of_an_area_element_with_javascript/

(More) Assignment in Conditions
By James Edwards.
"...Though quite a few of you felt that the syntax was too confusing to be worth using; that it just makes for code which is too difficult to read..."
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/more-assignment-in-conditions/

A Collection of JavaScript Gotchas
By Jonathan Cardy.
"This article is an introduction to the weird side of JavaScript, and it definitely has a weird side! Software developers who usually write code in another language will find a lot of intriguing "features" when they begin to write code in the world's most widely used language. Hopefully even seasoned JavaScript developers will find some new gotchas in this article that they can watch out for..."
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/scripting/javascript-gotchas.aspx


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Norman Coombs, Ph.D., Pioneer of Accessibility Teachings for Equal Access
By Valerie Chernek.
"All will agree that some folks just think more brilliantly than others and accomplish things that many of us can only accomplish in our dreams.  These visionaries come up with terrific ideas and take them to unimaginable places. And when it comes to doing good works with a brilliant passion, Dr. Norman Coombs take the prize..."
http://blog.bookshare.org/2011/04/05/norman-coombs/


+08: NAVIGATION.

Make Links Focusable (or use real buttons)
By Roger Johansson.
"When creating functionality that depends on JavaScript, many use a simple link (a element) to create a trigger for the function - you click it and something happens..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201104/make_links_focusable_or_use_real_buttons/

Web Navigation Must Face Forwards, Not Backwards
By Gerry McGovern.
"People are on the Web to do something very specific. Great navigation relentlessly focuses on what is ahead."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2011/nt-2011-04-18-Web-navigation.htm


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 Accessibility Chops: Just Use a (Native HTML) Button
By Steve Faulkner.
"...Where ever possible it is recommended that native HTML controls be used over custom controls as their accessibility support is likely to be more robust and it's much less work. However, if you do have a need to develop a custom control there are a number of steps you will have to take to ensure it is accessible. In HTML5 it is conforming to use ARIA to help in the creation of an accessible custom control..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2011/04/html5-accessibility-chops-just-use-a-button/

Your (HTML5) Questions #17
By Richard Clark. 
Doctor treating a patient illustration The clinic is packed this week with your HTML5 ailments! Today, we'll discuss an HTML5 syntax dilemma, using sections within sections, <link> semantics, describing the contents of a figure, and marking up web app toolbars.
http://html5doctor.com/your-questions-17/


+10: TOOLS.

ObjectDescription
By Vlad Alexander. 
"ObjectDescription is a service that lets anyone write a description for any non-textual object (such as an image) on the Web."
http://objectdescription.org/


+11: USABILITY.

Are Your Users S.T.U.P.I.D?
By Stephen Turbek.
"It is an honest question: how smart are your users? The answer may surprise you: it doesn't matter. They can be geniuses or morons, but if you don't engage their intelligence, you can't depend on their brain power..."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/are-your-users-s-t-u

Novices Orienteer, Experts Teleport
By Tyler Tate.
"...Expertise significantly impacts how we seek information online. Just as novice and expert photographers prefer different tools, so novices and experts behave differently when searching for information. Understanding these differences will help us design better search interfaces for both groups of users..."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/novices-orienteer

The Usability of Passwords - FAQ 
By Thomas Baekdal. 
"Back in 2007, I wrote an article about how to make usable and secure passwords. It is one of the most popular articles I have ever written, with more than 340,000 unique readers (and counting). The article has been linked to by a large number of sites, including several of the big security companies, and last week it was picked up by ReadWriteEnterprise. Over the years, people have been asking the same questions time and again. So in this article, I am going to answer those questions once for all..."
http://www.baekdal.com/tips/the-usability-of-passwords-faq

Orbital Content
By Cameron Koczon.
"...These initial apps hint at some possible paths, but we should remember orbital content is still a wide open frontier and we are free to shape it as we please. If we get a good jump on it, we can create a web in which content creators are rewarded fairly, content consumers are given unprecedented power, and web applications are pushed to constantly innovate and improve themselves. Not too shabby."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/orbital-content/

Challenges of Using PDF Online
By 4Syllables.
"We had around 70 people at the launch of the Web Content Managers' Forum in Melbourne on April 14, 2011.  The topic was obviously popular-we had a long waiting list..."
http://www.4syllables.com.au/web-content-managers-forum/pdf-challenges-melbourne/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

Accessibility Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html

Association Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html

Book Listings.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html

Cascading Style Sheets Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html

Color Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.html

Evaluation & Testing Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html

Event Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.html

Information Architecture Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html

JavaScript Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html

Miscellaneous Web Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html

Navigation Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html

PHP Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html

Sites & Blogs Listing.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html

Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html

Tool Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html

Typography Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html

Usability Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html

XML Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/xml.html

[Section two ends.]


++END NOTES.


+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

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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:
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+ 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.]