+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 12, September 16, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 12 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: EVENTS. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: TOOLS. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Why Accessibility APIs Matter By Maro Zehe. "...there were these inconsistencies between what Chrome exposes, and what chromeVox reads to users. An example quite to the contrary is the fact that Google Docs is only accessible if one uses Chrome and chromeVox. What Chrome exposes to VoiceOver or NVDA is not sufficient to gain the same level of access to Google Docs...And here's my pledge to all who still use their own DOM scraping methods on whichever platform: Stop using them! If you have an API available by the browser, use that whenever possible! You will make your product less prone to changes or additions in the HTML spec and supported elements." http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/09/07/why-accessibility-apis-matter/ The Incredible Accessible Modal Dialog By Greg Kraus. "...So what's the big deal with modal dialogs? The problem is that they work great when you interact with your computer using a mouse, but if you only use a keyboard or if you use a screen reader, they can often be traps of insanity in terms of trying to figure out what is going on..." http://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/blog/2013/09/13/the-incredible-accessible-modal-dialog/ Accessibility Summit Quick Review By Dennis Lembree. "The Accessibility Summit, an online conference on accessibility, took place earlier this week. The event is presented by the good folks at Environments for Humans (@e4h). The event was one day in the past few years but was extended to two days this year! If you attended or not, take a look at the great information in the Twitter stream using the hash tag #a11ySummit..." http://www.webaxe.org/accessibility-summit-quick-review/ Accessibility Summit 2013 Thoughts By Steve Grobschmidt. "It was pretty cool to finally get to see and hear some accessibility notables that I've followed for the past several years, such as Glenda Sims, John Foliot, Sharron Rush, and Dennis Lembree...Tonight, I thought I'd just pull out random snippets or highlights that have stuck with me..." http://www.theaccessibility.com/2013/09/accessibility-summit-2013/ Don't Disable Pinch to Zoom By Jamie Knight. "As all the other options are nowhere near as usable..." http://jkg3.com/Journal/don-t-disable-pinch-to-zoom +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Putting Flexbox Into Practice Presentation at Blend Conference By Zoe Mickley Gillenwater. Zoe's Blend Conference presnetation material on "Putting Flexbox into Practice". http://zomigi.com/blog/flexbox-presentation/ Responsive Image Container By Yoav Weiss. "...Just to sum it up, I've demonstrated (along with a prototype) how a responsive image format can work, and can resolve most of the responsive images use cases. I also went into some detail about which other bits would have to be added to the platform in order to make it a viable solution..." http://blog.yoav.ws/2013/09/Responsive-Image-Container Responsive Design is Not About Screen Sizes Any More By Gorka Molero. "To achieve truly lightweight sites, performance shouldnŐt only be a concern, it should be treated as a design feature. Performance is like any other issue. Sites that overcome it are the ones who acknowledged it from the beginning. And the ones that overlook it are the ones that suffer for it in the end." http://speckyboy.com/2013/09/11/responsive-design-is-not-about-screen-sizes-any-more/ +03: COLOR. BPOW: Color Contrast by the Numbers By Elle Waters. "Always provide good color contrast on your web pages, as insufficient contrast can affect several types of users in many different scenarios. Specifically, improving the overall color contrast on your web site or application benefits users with color blindness, users with low vision, and users with mobile devices." http://simplyaccessible.com/examples/bpow-color-contrast/ +04: EVENTS. HTML5 Developer Conference October 22-23, 2013. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://html5devconf.com/ Future of Web Apps (FOWA) October 23-25, 2013. London, England, United Kingdom http://futureofwebapps.com/london-2013/ Pittsburgh Web Design Day October 25-26, 2013. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. http://www.webdesignday.com/ WebTech Conference October 27-30, 2013. Munich, Germany http://webtechcon.de/ International PHP Conference October 27-30, 2013. Munich, Germany http://phpconference.com/2013/en Ampersand NYC November 2, 2013. New York, New York, U.S.A. http://nyc.ampersandconf.com/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. On Progressive Enhancement By Brad Frost. "...progressive enhancement is ultimately about empathy, flexibility, inclusiveness, and open-mindedness. It's about understanding that we don't have total control and that we aren't able to predict the future." http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/post/on-progressive-enhancement/ Anti-Pattern - Data in Prototype Properties By Alex Rauschmayer. "This blog post explains why it may seem like a good idea to put data in prototype properties, but actually isn't..." http://www.2ality.com/2013/09/data-in-prototypes.html Understanding ECMAScript 6 Arrow Functions By Nicholas C Zakas. "One of the most interesting new parts of ECMAScript 6 are arrow functions. Arrow functions are, as the name suggests, functions defined with a new syntax that uses an "arrow" (=>) as part of the syntax. However, arrow functions behave differently than traditional JavaScript functions in a number of important ways..." http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2013/09/10/understanding-ecmascript-6-arrow-functions/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Go Mobile or Kiss Future Students Goodbye By Toni Fuhrman. "In the competitive world of student recruitment, schools must recognize that today's students are finding--and judging--them on their mobile offerings." http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/09/12/without-mobile-first-strategy-kiss-students-goodbye.aspx +07: NAVIGATION. Responsive Navigation On Complex Websites By Jon Rundle. "...To illustrate the techniques involved in implementing responsive navigation on a large website, I'll refer to two actual clients of mine. I'll start with the process and how to get through it with research and mockups, then later get into some of the actual code that was used..." http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2013/09/11/responsive-navigation-on-complex-websites/ +08: TOOLS. Diagnostic.css - Super Quick web Accessibility Testing By Karl Groves. "In my quest to make accessibility accessible, I've created a super-easy-to-use tool that people can use to do accessibility testing. If you can view the page in the browser, you can use this tool. Diagnostic.css is a CSS (Cascading Stylesheets) file which, when applied to a web page, will highlight accessibility errors in the page..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/09/07/diagnostic-css-super-quick-web-accessibility-testing/ +09: USABILITY. Flat Design - The Next Step Forward in the Evolution of Web Design By Sufyan bin Uzayr. "Flat design is nothing but simplicity put into practice..." http://speckyboy.com/2013/09/09/flat-design-evolution/ [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 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.]