+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 49, May 30, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 49 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: COLOR. 04: DRUPAL. 05: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility and Code Development - 10 Thoughts from a MeetUp By Greg Kraus. "I recently attended a MeetUp of usability specialists involved in agile development who discussed how usability can be successfully incorporated into the agile process. I don't pretend to be an expert in either user experience testing or in agile development, but I think many of the topics that were discussed can be translated into accessibility and code development in general. I'm going to take some of the salient points from the discussion and present them as some accessibility and development tips. I present these more as thoughts than definitive how-to guides..." http://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/blog/2013/05/22/accessibility-and-code-development-10-thoughts-from-a-meetup/ 3 Steps to Avoid Negative Social Media and Lawsuits Over Website Accessibility By Zach Thompson. "Simply put, web accessibility amounts to how universally available your website is. Consider those with disabilities. For someone who is legally blind yet can still see a monitor, miniscule fonts will in effect lock him out of your site. If an individual is deaf, and you have non-signified audio messages on your site, the important information in that audio becomes in effect withheld from that individual. Web accessibility is the concept of overcoming these barriers through the appropriate programming and design techniques." http://www.corephp.com/blog/3-steps-to-avoid-negative-social-media-and-lawsuits-over-website-accessibility/ Ten Blunt Things I Wish I Could Tell Clients By Karl Groves. "Talking with clients & potential clients is always tricky. The last thing I want to do is offend someone, but there are some things I wish I could say up front and with frankness. As the saying goes, sometimes the truth hurts, so in the interest of politeness these messages are often skipped or glossed..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/05/27/ten-blunt-things-i-wish-i-could-tell-clients/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. IE10, Metro, and Media Queries By Adrian Roselli. "...The lesson I learned here is that if I want to properly test Internet Explorer 10, I can't rely on a desktop installation on Windows 7 or Windows 8, I need to also test in the Metro interface and, ideally, on the appropriate hardware as well..." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2013/05/ie10-metro-and-media-queries.html Just One of Those Weird Things About CSS - Background on body By Chris Coyier. "So you want to make the background of your website red eh? You'll probably put this in your CSS..." http://css-tricks.com/just-one-of-those-weird-things-about-css-background-on-body/ CSS Selector Length - Myth Busting By Niels Matthijs. "If I read one more misguided css post or article on css selector length I think I'm going to explode. Somehow component-based css ideologies managed to brainwash our community and launched a faux best practice that the length of css selectors is something your average csser should worry about. Well, it is not, nor should it ever be..." http://www.onderhond.com/features/css-musings/css-selector-length 03: COLOR. Web Industry Urged to Embrace Colour Accessibility By Craig Grannell. "Websites too often exclude people who cannot see a full colour range..." http://www.netmagazine.com/news/web-industry-urged-embrace-colour-accessibility-132779 +04: DRUPAL. Drupal Speak By Frank Stepanski. "One of the criticisms of Drupal is that it has a steep learning curve. Some of the terminology used to describe elements of Drupal can be a bit off putting and confusing to newcomers, so lets look at some of the Drupal 'language'..." http://www.javascriptworkshop.com/2011/05/01/drupal-speak/ +05: EVENTS. Drupalcamp Colorado June 29-20, 2013. Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. http://2013.drupalcampcolorado.org/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Quirk 7 - Inadvertent Sharing of Variables Via Closures By Axel Rauschmayer. "Closures are a powerful JavaScript feature: If a function leaves the place where it was created, it still has access to all variables that existed at that place. This blog post explains how closures work and why one has to be careful w.r.t. inadvertent sharing of variables..." http://www.2ality.com/2013/05/quirk-closures.html +07: MISCELLANEOUS. The State Of Responsive Web Design By Stephanie Walter. "Responsive Web design has been around for some years now, and it was a hot topic in 2012. Many well-known people such as Brad Frost and Luke Wroblewski have a lot of experience with it and have helped us make huge improvements in the field. But there's still a whole lot to do..." http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2013/05/29/the-state-of-responsive-web-design/ +08: PHP. Validating User Input By Kevin Waterson. "This article is an attempt to show how input from web based forms can be dealt with safely..." http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/Validating-User-Input.html Regular Expression Tester By Ruud Jansen. "Information about regular expressions, including a regexp tester, a regex reference and interactive tutorials." http://www.reg-exp.com/ +09: USABILITY. Ideal Line Length in Ems By Russ Weakley. "Let's assume that you have a chunk of body copy and you place it inside a container..." http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2013/05/25/ideal-line-length-in-ems/ Seniors as Web Users By Jakob Nielsen. "Users aged 65 and older are 43% slower at using websites than users aged 21-55. This is an improvement over previous studies, but designs must change to better accommodate aging users." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-for-senior-citizens/ Do Users Care About Your Latest News? By Paul Boag. Many website owners seem fixated on including latest news on their homepage. However, is that really the right decision? Does anybody actually care about news? http://boagworld.com/content-strategy/website-news/ The Complete Beginner's Guide to Universal Design By Andrew Maier. "...Like countless others, I initially perceived user experience design through the lens of usability: as a 'science,' devoid of the subjectivity of 'users.' If a door equipped with a push bar actually required me to pull on it in order to open it, I became upset. I considered it a bad experience. And while this does describe a bad experience due to poor usability, my viewpoint was also incredibly myopic." http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/the-complete-beginners-guide-to-universal-design/ What Does It Mean to Be Simple? By Daniel Ritzenthaler. "All designers say simplicity is important, but what does it really mean to make something simple? Most of the time we think it means less, that by removing stuff we achieve simplicity. We think by keeping content above the fold we're helping people focus, or by using bullets instead of paragraphs more people will read it, or by cutting text in half it becomes more clear. But simple doesn't mean 'less'. A better definition would be 'just enough'." http://52weeksofux.com/post/21026021557/what-does-it-mean-to-be-simple [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +10: 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 Drupal Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.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 HTML5 Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.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. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webdev_listserv.html 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.]