+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 50, June 6, 2013. 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: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: DRUPAL. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML5. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Using alt, figcaption, and longdesc Together By Shelley Powers. "I was recently asked about alt, figcaption, and longdesc being used together..." https://plus.google.com/115416893708386851153/posts/3azVNqGmnYJ Screen Readers at a Crossroads By Greg Kraus. "I believe screen reading software stands at a crossroads right now. At Google I/O 2013, Google showed some of the possibilities of the ChromeVox API. What they demonstrated showed some fundamental changes in the ways screen reader software interacts with Web browsers. In this post I will discuss how I see this as a fundamental shift. I'll discuss both the risks and rewards that I see with this model..." http://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/blog/2013/05/31/screen-readers-at-a-crossroads/ UC Seeks Comment on Proposed IT Accessibility Policy By University of California, Davis. "As UC policies go, it is relatively short, only four pages. But, oh, how important it is in the electronic information age at a public university...." http://dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.php?id=14498 Advancements in the Accessibility of Facebook By Marco Zehe. "In December 2011, I wrote this overview of the accessibility of social network sites and apps, and I had to paint a rather sad picture about most of the accessibility experiences. As time went by, some things improved here and there, others stalled..." http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/06/02/advancements-in-the-accessibility-of-facebook/ Blind Federation Criticises Captcha Security Test By British Broadcasting Corporation. "The National Federation for the Blind says its members are unable to sign an e-petition calling for printed material to be more accessible to the visually impaired because of "Captcha" security." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22754006 Rock Bottom for Captcha, White House By Dennis E. Lembree. "Unbelievable and embarrassing. Is this a new low for CAPTCHA and also for the White House? Let me explain..." http://www.webaxe.org/rock-bottom-for-captcha-white-house/ International Web Access Guidelines 'Ineffective', Academic Claims By Tristan Parker. "Conforming to the international industry standard Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) can be 'ineffective' as a method of reducing problems encountered by blind and visually impaired web users, one IT academic has claimed..." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=873 Disabled People and the Web - User-Based Measurement of Accessibility By Andre Pimenta Freire. "Being able to use websites is an important aspect of every-day life to most people, including disabled people. However, despite the existence of technical guidelines for accessibility for more than a decade, disabled users still find problems using websites. However, our knowledge of what problems people with disabilities are encountering is quite low. The aim of the work presented in this thesis was to conduct a study that characterises the problems that print-disabled users (blind, partially sighted, dyslexic users) are encountering on the web..." http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3873/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Is Generated Content Actually Content? By James Edwards. "...For me, these practical differences underline the key conceptual difference between generated content and normal text - generated content is not content text, just as background images are not content images. Text can still convey information without conveying semantics - just as colors and other design choices convey information, yet the document still makes sense when that information is missing. And that - the real point - generated content might not be seen or perceived by the user at all, so if it's important, it should be in the markup." http://www.sitepoint.com/is-generated-content-actually-content/ Firefox and the Magical text-overflow:ellipsis z-index By Roger Johansson. "A while ago I received a strange bug report for a site It's been working on. The report mentioned dots appearing on top of a dropdown menu when it was expanded. I had a look in Safari, could not see any dots, but then tried Firefox. And sure enough, there were sets of three dots in the dropdown menu..." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201305/firefox_and_the_magical_text-overflowellipsis_z-index/ Designing for Breakpoints By Stephen Hay. "Jeremy Keith notes that what happens between the breakpoints is just as important as the breakpoints themselves-perhaps even more so. While I agree with this, we do have to start somewhere. In a way, this part of the process reminds me of storyboarding, or creating animation keyframes, with the in-between frames being developed later. We're going to do that here..." http://alistapart.com/article/designing-for-breakpoints Classes and Ids No CSS Exclusives By Niels Matthijs. "When reading about classes and ids these days, you'd start believing that they were invented exclusively for css and js targeting. To the point where css and js are actually dictating the rules for using classes and ids. While it's true that css and js are the primary languages that make use of them, they are not the ones laying down the rules. Classes and ids are part of the html and are the htmler's responsibility..." http://www.onderhond.com/features/html-musings/class-id-html-function Clown Car Technique: Solving Adaptive Images In Responsive Web Design By Estelle Weyl. "Adaptive images are the current hot topic in conversations about adaptive and responsive Web design. Why? Because no one likes any of the solutions thus far. New elements and attributes are being discussed as a solution for what is, for most of us, a big headache: to provide every user with one image optimized for their display size and resolution, without wasting time, memory or bandwidth with a client-side solution..." http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/06/02/clown-car-technique-solving-for-adaptive-images-in-responsive-web-design/ +03: DRUPAL. Drupal 8 - Best Authoring Experience for Structured Content? By Wim Leers. "...how well does it fare with the growing importance of structured content? Do Drupal 8's WYSIWYG & in-place editing enable it or prevent it?..." http://wimleers.com/article/drupal-8-structured-content-authoring-experience WYSIWYG and In-Place Editing for Structured Content By Dries Buytaer. Karen McGrane gave a great keynote at DrupalCon Portland on future-friendly content with Drupal. It's worth watching the video recording. I agree with Karen's vision for the future. With the proliferation of different devices, screen sizes and input devices, there is a growing need for structured content that can be reused in multiple channels..." http://buytaert.net/wysiwyg-and-in-place-editing-for-structured-content +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. User Testing Observations with Disabled Mobile Users By Henny Swan. "Below are a handful of observations from user testing on mobile websites and applications I’ve seen recently. All users had some form of disability including people with limited mobility, sight impairments, cognitive impairments dyslexia or hearing loss. Testing was carried out using Android or iOS with blind users accessing using the TalkBack or VoiceOver screen readers respectively. For obvious reasons I can’t share with you any details about the products..." http://www.iheni.com/user-testing-observations-with-disabled-mobile-users/ 7 Myths of Usability Testing By Ian Franklin. "...In this article, Ian addresses the seven most common excuses we all use to avoid doing usability testing..." http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/usability/7-myths-of-usability-testing/ Note Taking During User Testing By Hua Zhang. "...I decided to tap into the knowledge and expertise of the UX team to share tips and tricks on how they take notes taking during user testing..." http://www.webcredible.co.uk/blog/note-taking-during-user-testing +05: EVENTS. User Experience Professionals Association Conference July 9-12, 2013. Washington DC, U.S.A. http://uxpa.memberclicks.net/ Open Web Camp July 13, 2013. San Jose, California, U.S.A. http://openwebcamp.com/ Advanced Web Accessibility Training September 17-18, 2013. Logan, Utah, U.S.A. http://webaim.org/training/ +06: HTML5. HTML 5 Headings Behavior With Screen Readers By Rakesh Paladugula. "Recently I have observed a slightly but significant difference in JAWS behavior while browsing a website developed on HTML 5. Below are my findings and recommended solution." http://www.maxability.co.in/2013/06/html-5-headings-behavior-with-screen-readers/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Paul Irish on JavaScript Authoring Tooling (Video) "Paul reflects on his Fluent 2012 keynote 'JavaScript Development Workflow of 2013' and what's happened in between. He also digs deep into the latest hotness within the Chrome DevTools..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqfoYaKCYUI +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Three Reasons We've Outgrown Mobile Context By SuAnne Hall. "It seems like it's taken forever, but everyone is finally taking designing experiences for smaller screens seriously - whether they're doing responsive design or designing stand-alone mobile Web sites." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/06/three-reasons-weve-outgrown-mobile-context.php 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/ +09: NAVIGATION. Mega Menu Accessibility on Adobe.com By Matt May. Editor's note: Recently, the adobe.com site switched over to a using a mega menu for global navigation. Adobe accessibility engineer Michael Jordan worked closely with our web team to build a menu system that brings great accessibility to a very design-sensitive site. Here, Michael explains his approach..." http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2013/05/adobe-com.html +10: PHP. 10 Steps to Properly do PHP Bug Tracking and Fixing as Fast as Possible By Manuel Lemos. "No matter how hard you try to test your PHP applications before putting them in production, you will always ship code to your server that has bugs..." http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/package/1351/post/1-10-Steps-to-properly-do-PHP-Bug-Tracking-and-Fixing-as-Fast-as-possible.html +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. I Met the TAG By Bruce Lawson. "On Thursday, I travelled down to the swanky Mozilla offices in London to an open invitation to meet the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG), who were in town (presumably for this week's Bilderberg meeting). I've met many of them before, and they're all jolly good people, but I'd never met them as an entity." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2013/i-met-the-tag/ +12: USABILITY. Opportunities and Challenges For Touch and Gesture-Based Systems By Don Norman and Bahar Wadia. "Paper presented at 2013 Society for Information Display conference, Vancouver, Canada (May 23, 2013) under the title 'The Next Touch Evolution. Advancing the Consumer Experience in Other Realms: Tasks and Tough Environments'..." http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/opportunities_and_ch.html Mobile Form Usability: Never Use Inline Labels By Jamie Appleseed. "Labels placed inside the form field (aka 'inline labels') are widespread in mobile apps and sites - almost to the point of being a best (mal)practice. Yet in every usability test we've conducted inline labels have suffered from major usability problems. Mobile included..." http://baymard.com/blog/mobile-forms-avoid-inline-labels [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]