+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 21, November 16, 2012. 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/itss/training/online/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 04: JAVASCRIPT. 05: MISCELLANEOUS. 06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 07: TOOLS. 08: XML. SECTION TWO: 09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Making Learning Technologies Accessible By Pearson. "These guidelines explain how to: Make educational Web media accessible to people with disabilities..." http://wps.pearsoned.com/accessibility/ Playing with Longdesc By Karl Groves. "According to the the HTML 4.01 Specifcation from the W3C his attribute specifies a link to a long description of the image. This description should supplement the short description provided using the alt attribute..." http://karlgroves-sandbox.com/longdesc.php NVDA Screen Reader Now Recognises Long Description By Media Access Australia. "Free screen reader for Windows, NVDA, has been updated to recognise 'longdesc', an attribute used by web developers to describe the data that is visually presented in images such as graphs and diagrams. To access the long description, press 'NVDA'+'d' once the screen reader announces it is there..." http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/general/nvda-screen-reader-now-recognises-long-description Accessibility is Part of UX (it isn't a swear word) By Leonie Watson. "People often go a bit wobbly when accessibility is mentioned. Visions of text only websites, monochrome designs and static content swirl in their heads. Teeth are gritted, excuses are prepared, and battle conditions ensue..." http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2012/accessibility-is-part-of-ux-it-isnt-a-swear-word/ How Accessible Are Google Apps? By Greg Kraus. Greg's Accessing Higher Ground conference powerpoint slides. http://go.ncsu.edu/ahg2012-google Selling Accessibility - Embracing the Dark Side By Karl Groves. "In which I say a whole bunch of things that are unpopular..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2012/11/08/selling-accessibility-embracing-the-dark-side/ Does Section 508 Apply to Freeware? By The Section 508 Blog. "It is important to remember that Section 508 standards apply not only to the procurement of Electronic and Information Technology (EIT), but also to its use. This means that freeware is subject to Section 508 standards even if acquiring it did not require formal procurement..." http://buyaccessible.net/blog/?p=242 Universal Design IRL By Sara Wachter-Boettcher. "We talk a lot about building a web that's accessible to anyone-a web that serves more of us, more fully. But are our own events and conferences as inclusive as the web we're all working toward? Sara Wachter-Boettcher explores how we can improve the design of our own community." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/universal-design-irl/ Accessible WordPress Themes By Rian Rietveld. "The main goal of this project is that all people should be able to use and maintain a WordPress website. Started by Rian Rietveld from RRWD web development in the Netherlands. This site is to share research on WordPress and accessibility and hopefully more people will also share their findings here..." http://wp-accessible.org/themes/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The CSS Problem By Jens O. Meiert. "CSS is growing too large while CSS 2 has not nearly been understood by authors. This non-sustainable growth is a big problem for CSS..." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20121112/the-css-problem/ Related Thread on the www-style list: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2012Nov/thread.html#msg190 Why Ems? By Chris Coyier. "I've long sized text only in px. Even when it was patently uncool to do so - the days in which smart people cared about the fact that text set in px couldn't be resized in IE 6-8. I've switched over to using ems now. I haven't moved every single project over yet, but my mind has switched. Why? I finally found some compelling reasons that I now grok..." http://css-tricks.com/why-ems/ Responsive Background Images with Fixed or Fluid Aspect Ratios By Rolf Timmermans. "It is possible to make any HTML element scale its height proportional to its width. Elements with a percentual padding-top attribute will be scaled based on the their width. To make background images scale in modern browsers you can add background-size: cover. To make the aspect ratio change gradually when resizing, also set the height attribute. Based on two sizes with a different aspect ratio the correct height and vertical padding can be calculated." http://voormedia.com/blog/2012/11/responsive-background-images-with-fixed-or-fluid-aspect-ratios Stylin' Fonts and Text in CSS By Charles Wyke-Smith. "In this chapter, you'll learn about fonts and text, and the respective CSS properties you can use to style them. You'll also learn about the wonderful world of Web fonts, which download to your user along with your pages..." http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1964911 Adapting Your Site to Different Window Sizes By Matt Rakow. "Modern browsers like the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera support the width and height properties of the W3C Working Draft CSS Device Adaptation, which as of 1 November has evolved to an Editor's Draft. This gives Web developers a simple tool to control automatic content scaling across various window dimensions. In particular, it enables sites to easily adapt to browsing on touch-enabled tablet devices in the snapped view and in portrait orientation..." http://www.sitepoint.com/adapting-your-site-to-different-window-sizes/ +03: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Information Architecture's Two Schools of Thought By Nathaniel Davis. "Most of or clients and colleagues perceive information architecture in a way that resembles either a classic or a contemporary view." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/11/information-architectures-two-schools-of-thought.php +04: JAVASCRIPT. Accessible Forms With ARIA Live Regions By Leonie Watson. "When a form is used to update information on the page, it can be troublesome for screen reader users. Unless the screen reader is focused on the relevant bit of the page, the update goes by un-noticed. ARIA live regions are a simple way to improve the experience for screen reader users..." http://tink.co.uk/2012/11/accessible-forms-with-aria-live-regions/ Using ARIA to Enhance Web Application Accessibility By Jared Smith. Jared's Accessing Higher Ground conference slides. http://webaim.org/presentations/2012/ahgaria/ +05: MISCELLANEOUS. Hand Code or Frameworks? By Ed Merritt. "Hand coded markup is still essential. Preprocessors, frameworks and libraries are there to make your lives easier, but they are not intended to replace coding skills..." http://boagworld.com/dev/hand-code-or-frameworks/ How Should we Handle Responsive Images? By Dan Sheerman. "...Don't optimise for specific devices, but do optimise..." http://boagworld.com/dev/how-should-we-handle-responsive-images/ Mobile First - The Revolution is Well Under Way By David Storey. "...A little over a year ago, I wrote a post about how countries in Africa were at the foothills of a mobile web revolution. Nigeria had just started seeing more web traffic on mobile devices than traditional desktop, and more countries were on course to follow that lead. This post looks at what progress has been made since then, and what the trends look like going forward..." http://generatedcontent.org/post/35546774583/mobileprogress Interview with Robin Berjon, HTML5 editor By Bruce Lawson. "At the recent Apps World expo in London, Doctor Bruce spoke on a panel with Robin Berjon, recently appointed W3C HTML5 editor. He took the opportunity to ask Robin some questions..." http://html5doctor.com/interview-with-robin-berjon-html5-editor/ +06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web App Mistakes: Condemned to Repeat By Mike Davies. "...The Web is ubiquitous. Native apps need the Web, the Web doesn't need native apps..." http://isolani.co.uk/blog/standards/WebAppMistakesWeAreCondemnedToRepeat HTML5 figure and figure caption Elements By Ryan Boudreaux. "...This demonstration and review will encompass the

element, the

element, the nesting of multiple figure elements, and the benefits for users who access content defined with the two elements..." http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/webmaster/html5-figure-and-figure-caption-elements/2072 On HTML5 and the Proposed main Element By Ian Devlin. "...One of the elements that some claim to be missing is a main element that would indicate the main content of a document. This might be about to change..." http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2012/11/html5/on-html5-and-the-proposed-main-element The main Element By Mat Marquis. "...we've been keeping a close eye on the main element extension spec championed by Steve Faulkner, which aims to provide an element that delineates the primary content on a page, independent of HTML5's document outline..." http://filamentgroup.com/lab/the_main_element/ Meet the datalist Element By Tiffany B. Brown. "One of my favorite parts of HTML5 forms is the datalist element. Opera added support in version 9.0. Support in Firefox and Internet Explorer followed. Today, datalist finally landed in a Chrome beta release." http://tiffanybbrown.com/2012/11/08/the-datalist-element/ Preview the Proposed HTML 'Picture' Element By Scott Gilbertson. "The Responsive Images Community Group - a group of developers helping the W3C create a web standard for handling images across devices - has a new demo page showing off how the proposed HTML