+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 08, August 19, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 08 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: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: HTML5. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 09: TOOLS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 11: USABILITY. 12: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Leonie Watson on Giving a Damn about What You're Building By Martin Cooper. "...[Accessibility] is a creative challenge, not a challenge to creativity..." http://www.netmagazine.com/interviews/l-onie-watson-giving-damn-about-what-youre-building Accessibility Driving Mobile Technology Market By Clarizza Fernandez . "Accessibility is driving competition in the mobile market, according to President and Executive Director of The Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ict) Axel Leblois...Key points: Functionalities that persons with disabilities require happen to be useful to all users..." http://accessiq.org/news/features/2013/08/accessibility-driving-mobile-technology-market Capitalization Matters By Joanna Briggs. "...If you must abbreviate, make sure you're using the common forms of abbreviations. If in doubt, use the abbr element." http://simplyaccessible.com/bpow/capitalization-matters/ Accessibility By Virginia DeBolt. Virginia's InterLab 2013 presentation slides. http://www.vdebolt.com/interlab/ PDF Association releases Matterhorn Protocol, the Definitive Accessibility Testing Model for PDF Documents and Forms By PDF Association. "PAC 2.0, the PDF Accessibility Checker, is the first implementation of the Matterhorn Protocol..." http://www.pdfa.org/2013/08/pdf-association-releases-matterhorn-protocol-the-definitive-accessibility-testing-model-for-pdf-documents-and-forms/ +02: BOOKS. Meloncon, Lisa. "Rhetorical AccessAbility: At the Intersection of Technical Communication and Disability Studies", Baywood Publishing Company Inc., 2013. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Language-Wide Features in CSS By Louis Lazaris. "In addition to the unique property/value pairs that CSS offers, there are also a small handful of language-wide features that can come in handy, including a few that are brand new in the spec..." http://www.impressivewebs.com/language-wide-features-css/ Absolute Horizontal And Vertical Centering In CSS By Stephen Shaw. "We've all seen margin: 0 auto; for horizontal centering, but margin: auto; has refused to work for vertical centering- until now! But actually (spoiler alert!) absolute centering only requires a declared height* and these styles..." http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/08/09/absolute-horizontal-vertical-centering-css/ The CSS Shapes Module - Breaking Out of the Box By Steven Bradley. One of the limitations of developing websites is that everything is fundamentally a rectangular box. We fight against it. We create non-rectangular images, we round corners, we have a variety of creative techniques to display less box-like shapes, but still behind the scenes each of these things sits in a rectangular box and other elements react to that box seen or unseen..." http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/shapes-module/ +04: DREAMWEAVER. Using Dreamweaver Fluid Grid Layouts (video) By Virginia DeBolt. "This is an Adobe/Lynda.com video tutorial explaining how to use fluid grid layouts in Dreamweaver 6..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2013/08/07/using-dreamweaver-fluid-grid-layouts-video/ +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Usability Testing - How Do We Design Effective Tasks By Tingting Zhao. "Previously, Charline Poirier provided an excellent post about how to recruit representative participants for usability testing. To continue the story, we are going to talk about the next stage: developing effective task sets, which is a crucial part of a test protocol..." http://design.canonical.com/2013/08/usability-testing-how-do-we-design-effective-tasks/ User Experience and Scientific Methods, Part 1 - Eyetracking By James Coston. "In this series, I'll describe the application of some of the scientific techniques that user experience and market research have adopted, including eyetracking, EEG, and fMRI..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/08/user-experience-and-scientific-methods-part-1-eyetracking.php +06: HTML5. HTML5 and CSS3 Form Validation By Jonny Schnittger. "In HTML5 forms got a major upgrade with the addition of some simple, yet flexible validation attributes. To support these added attributes CSS3 also added several new pseudo selectors styling controls based on their validation state..." http://www.developerdrive.com/2013/08/html5-and-css3-form-validation/ Object-Oriented HTML, and OOCSS By Jens O. Meiert. "elements as objects, giving all these objects classes, treating objects' classes as single entities in style sheets, and taking it from there..." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20130806/object-oriented-html-and-oocss/ The Downward Spiral of Microdata By Manu Sporny. "Support for the Microdata API has just been removed from Webkit (Apple Safari). Support for the Microdata API was also removed from Blink (Google Chrome) a few months ago. This means that Apple Safari and Google Chrome will no longer support the Microdata API. Removal of the feature from a browser also shows us a likely future for Microdata, which is less and less support..." http://manu.sporny.org/2013/microdata-downward-spiral/ Improved Support for High-Resolution Displays with the srcset Image Attribute By Dean Jackson. "WebKit now supports the srcset attribute on image (img) elements..." https://www.webkit.org/blog/2910/improved-support-for-high-resolution-displays-with-the-srcset-image-attribute/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Why JavaScript Will Become The Dominant Programming Language Of The Enterprise By Nolan Wright. "A simple learning curve and flexible skill set have JavaScript on the verge of taking over the enterprise..." http://readwrite.com/2013/08/09/why-javascript-will-become-the-dominant-programming-language-of-the-enterprise +09: TOOLS. PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC2) By Access For All. "...PAC provides a fast way to test the accessibility of PDF files. PAC supports both experts as well as end users conducting accessibility evaluations..." http://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-lab/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac.html +10: TYPOGRAPHY. What Do Your Format Choices Mean to Readers? By Kim Sydow Campbell. "... your format choices influence what readers think of your content. Is it difficult or easy to use and understand? Is what you're talking about risky or safe? Is it the truth? All excellent reasons to learn a few principles for choosing a successful format for your documents..." http://proswrite.com/2013/08/05/what-do-your-format-choices-mean-to-readers/ +11: USABILITY. You Won't Finish This Article By Farhad Manjoo. I'm going to keep this brief, because you're not going to stick around for long. I've already lost a bunch of you. For every 161 people who landed on this page, about 61 of you-38 percent-are already gone. You 'bounced' in Web traffic jargon, meaning you spent no time 'engaging' with this page at all..." http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/06/how_people_read_online_why_you_won_t_finish_this_article.html Human Interest By Trent Walton. "...The only way to build is with real people in mind. They'd rather be with their families than deleting emails. They'd rather not mine a cluttered layout for content. They start off not knowing you and not caring, but if they detect a hint of grace and respect you just might have something upon which to build a relationship." http://trentwalton.com/2013/08/12/human-interest/ +12: XML. SVG and tag tricks By Alexey Ten. "...A couple of months ago this property of image tag gave me the idea to use it for graceful degradation of SVG images in browsers which do not support SVG. The idea is extremely simple, we will have a SVG image for modern browsers and regular raster image for others. And write the following code..." http://lynn.ru/examples/svg/en.html [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 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.]