+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 50, June 7, 2012. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 50 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: COLOR. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: TYPOGRAPHY. 13: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 17: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Screen Reader User Survey #4 Results By Jared Smith. "The results from our most recent screen reader user survey are now available at http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/. There were 1782 valid responses, making this the most popular survey thus far. We hope the data is informative and will help promote more accessible web development..." http://webaim.org/blog/survey-4-results/ WebAIM's Survey: Headings Matter to Users of Assistive Technologies By Duff Johnson. "The May 2012 WebAIM survey is categorical: Headings are far more than a mere 'aid to navigation.' Headings really matter to users of assistive technologies, and so do heading levels..." http://www.commonlook.com/headings-matter-to-at-users Placeholder Attribute Is Not A Label! By Dennis E. Lembree. "Just so we're all clear on this, the HTML5 placeholder attribute in a text input is not a replacement for the label element. Period. The placeholder should only be used as a brief example of the text to be entered. Besides inconsistent support for screen readers, using a placeholder as an input label can create usability problems and issues for those with cognitive impairments..." http://webaxe.blogspot.com/2012/06/placeholder-attribute-is-not-label.html Accessibility Cheat Sheets By Gaining Online Accessible Learning through Self-study (GOALS). "GOALS has created a new set of resources, or 'cheat sheets' to help assist individuals in the quest to create accessible content. GOALS currently has four cheat sheets available, addressing the following topics: Creating accessible documents in Microsoft Word. Microsoft PowerPoint. PDF conversion in Microsoft Word. Creating accessible PDF documents in Acrobat X..." http://ncdae.org/blog/accessibility-cheat-sheets/ HTML5 Canvas Accessibility in Firefox 13 By Steve Faulkner. "The recently released Firefox 13 implements the HTML5 specification's canvas element fallback concept. This means that the content inside a canvas elements start and end tags is exposed to assistive technology users even when the browser supports canvas. It also means that any interactive elements, inside a canvas elements start and end tags such as links or form controls will be included in a documents default tab order even when the browser supports canvas..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2012/06/html5-canvas-accessibility-in-firefox-13/ ADA Litigation Over Website Accessibility is Poised to Explode By Jim Butler. "...Why could there be a big slug of these ADA lawsuits over websites? Marty says that there are several reasons..." http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article63740ADA_Litigation_over_Website_Accessibility_is_Poised_to_Explode.html June 6 is CaptionTHIS Day! By Char James-Tanny. "Captioning. Most people ignore it (or think it's a nuisance) until those times when they really need it. For example: at a restaurant where TVs are showing the latest sports event, in a hospital waiting room, at a really noisy (or really quiet) office, while watching foreign-language films, or any of more than a dozen other examples..." http://jtfassociates.com/june-6-is-captionthis-day/ What Do Hearing Loss, Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants Sound Like? By Meryl Evans. "I had been looking for resources that show those with normal hearing what it's like to hear with different levels of hearing loss, hearing aids and cochlear implants. I had two resources in an old blog post and found three more today, so I'm combining them in this post." http://shelaza.com/links/what-do-hearing-loss-hearing-aids-and-cochlear-implants-sound-like/ Blindfolded By Derek Featherstone. "Sometimes we're blindfolded, even to our own actions..." http://simplyaccessible.com/article/blindfolded/ Accessibility and Developers By Paul Irish. "...Most developers have no idea what effect adding ARIA markup to our documents has on people using screenreaders. We need that. Actual before-and-after video stuff makes this topic real. See zomigi's recent post: videos of screenreaders using ARIA, for great examples..." http://paulirish.com/2012/accessibility-and-developers/ +02: BOOKS. Smith, Dori. Dreamweaver CS6: Visual QuickStart, Peachpit Press 2012. Stevens, Luke. The Truth About HTML5 (For Web Designers), 2012. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Selectors That Rock By Jake Bresnehan. "...Below are 10 CSS selectors. Some of them you probably use on every project and some possibly never. Next time you're finding yourself going through the motions, maybe it's a good time to sneak in some new selectors that you wouldn't normally use..." http://web-design-weekly.com/2012/05/31/css-selectors-that-rock/ Repeating Linear Madness By Eric A. Meyer. "...The summary is as follows: NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME. In fact, not even ready for safe harbor in Europe. Whether they will become ready for use is up to the various browser makers..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2012/05/30/repeating-linear-madness/ Gradient Repetition By Eric A. Meyer. "Yesterday, I shared a test of repeating linear gradients and the madness they embody in various browsers. There were some suggestions for fixes both on the intertubes as well as the comments section of the post, so I should take a moment to explore the reasons for my post and test, and also what I would consider to be stable alternatives to the patterns I was creating..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2012/05/31/gradient-repetition/ How to Resize Background Images with CSS3 By Craig Buckler. "In CSS2.1, background images applied to a container retained their fixed dimensions. Fortunately, CSS3 introduces the background-size property which allows backgrounds to be stretched or squashed. It's ideal if you're creating a template using Responsive Web Design techniques..." http://www.sitepoint.com/css3-background-size-property/ +04: COLOR. Visualizing Colors in HSL Space By Eric A. Meyer. "I've been working through and rewriting the chapters of CSS: The Definitive Guide for its fourth edition, and at present I'm nearing the end of chapter 4, 'Values and Units'. That means I just worked through the color values, which required a lot more of a rewrite than you might think. After all, when the third edition came out, RGBa, HSL, and HSLa weren't viable options, so they didn't get coverage. Expanding the color-values section to incorporate them posed two major challenges..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2012/06/04/visualizing-colors-in-hsl-space/ +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. How Many Test Users in a Usability Study? By Jakob Nielsen. "The answer is 5, except when it's not. Most arguments for using more test participants are wrong, but some tests should be bigger and some smaller." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/number-of-test-users.html 10 Things to Know about the Single Usability Metric (SUM) By Jeff Sauro. "...Here are 10 things to know about single measures of usability..." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/sum.php Why Are Contextual Inquiries So Difficult? By Jim Ross. "Contextual inquiries require a difficult balance between traditional interviewing and ethnographic observation." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/06/why-are-contextual-inquiries-so-difficult.php 5 Useful Lies to Tell User Research Participants By Lisa Duddington. "f you've ever run a research or usability test, you'll know they can be tricky to facilitate. After all, you're dealing with people; and people come with a whole host of existing preconceptions, personalities, emotions, and experiences. One thing that can help you to gain more honest and thereby useful feedback from research participants is, in fact, to lie to them." http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/5-useful-lies-to-tell-user-research-participants/ +06: EVENTS. Test the Web Forward June 15-16, 2012. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://testthewebforward.org/ Accessibility and Inclusive Design Group Meeting July 11, 2012. Santa Monica, California, U.S.A. http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Accessibility-and-Inclusive-Design-Group/events/67495812/ Accessibility Summit 2012 September 25, 2012. Online http://environmentsforhumans.com/2012/accessibility-summit/ Future of Mobile London October 15-17, 2012. London, England, United Kingdom http://future-of-mobile.com/london-2012/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Hiding Visible Content From Screen Readers with Aria-Hidden By Roger Johansson. "Sometimes you need to hide parts of a web page, either permanently or temporarily. A common use case is content that becomes visible only after the user has interacted with a control on the page, for instance by clicking a button that reveals more content or activating a tab in a tab system..." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201205/hiding_visible_content_from_screen_readers_with_aria-hidden/ Exceptional Exception Handling in JavaScript By Colin Ihrig. "When a JavaScript statement generates an error, it is said to throw an exception. Instead of proceeding to the next statement, the JavaScript interpreter checks for exception handling code. If there is no exception handler, then the program returns from whatever function threw the exception. This is repeated for each function on the call stack until an exception handler is found or until the top level function is reached, causing the program to terminate..." http://www.sitepoint.com/exceptional-exception-handling-in-javascript/ JavaScript at 17 (video) By Brendan Eich. Brendan Eich's Fluent 2012 keynote. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj49rmc01Hs Don't Feed The Trolls (video) By Nicole Sullivan. Nicole Sullivan's Fluent 2012 keynote. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulNSlES1Fds Javascript Development Workflow of 2013 (video) By Paul Irish. Paul Irish's Fluent 2012 presentation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7AU2Ozu8eo +08: MISCELLANEOUS. A New (Responsive Images) Proposal Featuring Both Advantages By Anselm Hannemann. "Kornel Lesinski just published a new proposal on the WHATWG mailing list this morning. He proposes a new element in HTML called which is shorter to write than