+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 05, July 25, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 05 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML5. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: USABILITY. 11: XML. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Justice Department Settles with Louisiana Tech University Over Inaccessible Course Materials By justice.gov. "The Justice Department announced today that it has reached a settlement with Louisiana Tech University and the Board of Supervisors for the University of Louisiana System to remedy alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)...Under the settlement agreement, the university will adopt a number of disability-related policies, including the requirement to deploy learning technology, web pages and course content that is accessible in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA standard in the university setting. The university will also make existing web pages and materials created since 2010 accessible. The agreement also requires the university to train its instructors and administrators on the requirements of the ADA, and secured a total of $23,543 in damages for the student from the university and the Board..." http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/July/13-crt-831.html Small Demo Video About Firefox OS Accessibility By Marco Zehe. "Over the past few weeks, especially after the launch of Firefox OS devices in early July, I received a lot of questions about the accessibility of this mobile operating system purely based on web technologies..." http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/07/19/small-demo-video-about-firefox-os-accessibility/ Basic Accessibility Principles By Mark Magennis. "There are three aspects to accessibility: a user must be able to perceive, understand, and operate every control, instruction or output..." http://www.e-accessibilitytoolkit.org/toolkit/eaccessibility_basics/basic_accessibility_principles Understanding the Basics of Web Accessibility Testing By Denis Boudreau. "In the last few blog posts from this column, we've discussed the importance of focusing on core accessibility rules when it comes to tackling web accessibility requirements so designers and developers really understand what the different WCAG 2.0 guidelines and Success Criteria mean. Prior to that, we had also discussed the importance of leaving designers and developers some breathing room so they could come up with their own innovative solutions based on their understanding of those core rules..." http://www.deque.com/pragmatica11y-understanding-basics-web-accessibility-testing YouTube Accessibility WebAIM Thread. "Is YouTube generally considered to be an accessible place for video content these days?..." http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=6004 Laying the Foundations of an Accessible Website By bdaily. "Alastair Campbell, director of accessibility at design agency Nomensa, outlines which aspects of accessibility can be checked at each stage of development in order to create a fully accessible website..." http://bdaily.co.uk/advice/19-07-2013/laying-the-foundations-of-an-accessible-website/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Troubleshooting CSS By Hugo Giraudel. "Sometimes CSS can be frustrating. Learn about some tricky properties, the common issues they can cause and how to solve them." http://tympanus.net/codrops/2013/07/17/troubleshooting-css The Worst CSS Practices By Pam Selle. "Forget bleeding edge technologies. From training and style guides to code reviews, Pam Selle recommends you conquer worst practices first to improve CSS..." http://www.netmagazine.com/opinions/worst-css-practices CSS Specificity By Estelle Weyl. "Specificity determines which CSS property declaration is applied when two or more declarations apply to the same element with competing property declarations. The most specific selector takes precedence. If specificity is equal, the last declaration in the source order takes precendence.By understanding CSS Specificity, you'll understand how the browser determines which declaration is more specific and will therefore take precedence. Let's take this paragraph as an example..." http://www.standardista.com/css3/css-specificity/ +03: COLOR. Prevent Barriers to Conversions By Choosing The Right Color Contrasts By Kimberly Krause Berg. "Remember when the web design fad was to use two colors, sky blue and lime green? Today the new color is gray, and many of you can't see it...How can a visitor sign up for something they struggle to see? Why make it difficult to read your content?" http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/design/prevent-barriers-to-conversions-by-choosing-the-right-color-contrasts/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Measuring Website Visitors' True Intent By Jeff Sauro. "...One of the most cost effective and easiest ways to understand who your users are and what they are trying to do is to conduct a true intent study. As the name suggests, such studies aim to understand the intended goals of actual visitors to a website..." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/true-intent.php +05: EVENTS. Northeast PHP 2013 August 16-18, 2013. Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. http://www.northeastphp.org/ CSS Dev Conference October 21-23, 2013 Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S.A. http://2013.cssdevconf.com/ +06: HTML5. Using Caption Services with HTML5 Video By Greg Tarnoff. "One of the great things about the internet is the ability to share video. With HTML5 we can now use video without the use of Flash. This makes video more accessible as the controls are located in the DOM. However, to do accessible video right, you need to include captions and transcripts..." http://a11yproject.com/posts/using-caption-services-with-html5-video/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. jQuery UI Accessibility Analysis By Bryan Garaventa. "...Since a comprehensive accessibility analysis of jQuery UI has not recently been done, I decided to do so in order to see what the current level of accessibility is for the library, and to determine how useful it would be as an accessible development resource. To summarize, the public jQuery UI library widgets as of July 1, 2013, are mostly inaccessible for both screen reader and keyboard only users..." https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2013/07/03/jquery-ui-accessibility-analysis/ In Defense of JavaScript's Constructors By Axel Rauschmayer. "In this blog post, I explain that not all of the constructors' flaws are real. But even with those that are real, I still recommend to use them. I'll tell you why and what the future holds for constructors." http://www.2ality.com/2013/07/defending-constructors.html Why I Test Private Functions In JavaScript By Philip Walton. "Last week I published an article on this blog entitled How to Unit Test Private Functions in JavaScript. The article was well received and even mentioned in a few popular newsletters (most notably JavaScript Weekly). Still, a decent amount of the feedback I received in the comments and on Twitter strongly disagreed with my approach. The most common criticism was: unit testing private functions is unnecessary and a mark of bad design..." http://philipwalton.com/articles/why-i-test-private-functions-in-javascript/ +08: NAVIGATION. When Responsive Web Design (RWD) Goes Bad By Alastair Campbell. "Most of the time, responsive design is good news for accessibility. But, cautions Alastair Campbell, it's by no means a given..." http://www.netmagazine.com/opinions/when-rwd-goes-bad Link Purpose (WCAG) WebAIM Thread. "I'm well aware one should always use links that are meaningful without context. But according to WCAG level A, it's allowed in meaningful context, such as the preceding heading." http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=6053 +09: PHP. Google Finally Acknowledges that PHP Exists By Kevin Schroeder. "... PHP IS in the enterprise and has been for a long time. People just either don't know it or refused to admit it..." http://www.eschrade.com/page/google-finally-acknowledges-that-php-exists/ +10: USABILITY. The Importance of Designing for Readability By Carrie Cousins. "Text is not an afterthought in the design process. It should be your first consideration." http://designshack.net/articles/typography/the-importance-of-designing-for-readability/ The Human Body as Touchscreen Replacement By Jakob Nielsen. "When you touch your own body, you feel exactly what you touch - better feedback than any external device. And you never forget to bring your body." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/human-body-touch-input/ Content Auditing - the Basics By Vincent Sevilla. "...here are the essentials you need to learn about content auditing and how it's done..." http://www.sitepoint.com/content-auditing-the-basics/ +11: XML. Creating Interactive Graphs With SVG, Part 1 By Roemer Vlasveld. "In a series of two posts we take a look at building interactive graphs with SVG, CSS and Javascript. We take a real-world example from one of our projects and show you our approach. The final goal is an interactive graph (think animations, shadows and tooltips) using a jQuery-SVG plugin." http://rvlasveld.github.io/blog/2013/07/02/creating-interactive-graphs-with-svg-part-1/ [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. 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.]