+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 30, January 16, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 30 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 08: TYPOGRAPHY. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Three Things to Include in Your Accessibility Help Page By Mark Walker. "AbilityNet recommends that every site should have an Accessibility help page. Whether you have a fully accessible site or not they provide a useful stepping stone on a user journey, they offer practical help to your customers and show them that you have thought about their needs..." http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/blog/three-things-include-your-accessibility-help-page Safeway Announces Website Accessibility Initiative By Law Office of Lainey Feingold. "Posted here is a press release announcing accessibility and usability improvements to Safeway's online grocery delivery website. Safeway will use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA as the standard for its online content..." http://lflegal.com/2013/12/safeway-web-press/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Single Line Comments (//) in CSS By Tab Atkins. "CSS uses the same "block comment" syntax as the C-like languages - you start a comment with /*, and end it with *..." http://www.xanthir.com/b4U10 Introducing CSS Variables By Sara Vieira. "Pre-processors like Sass and Less used them, but vanilla CSS never had variables. Until now. They've been on the horizon for a while, but only recently have variables started to be implemented in CSS, let's take a look at how they work..." http://www.developerdrive.com/2014/01/introducing-css-variables/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 5 Reasons You Should and Should Not Test With 5 Users By Jeff Sauro. "There are a lot of misconceptions about when it is and when it is not appropriate to test with five users. There's no reason to take an extreme position on this issue and think it's never acceptable or always the right number. Instead you should understand what you can and cannot learn from just a handful of users in a usability test." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/five-for-five.php Google Analytics A/B Test Worksheet for #highered: Fill in the Blanks to Optimize Your College's Web Pages By Joshua Dodson. "If website optimization is not a part of your marketing strategy, then you are missing out on some excellent opportunities..." http://higheredanalytics.com/analytics/index.php/2014/01/google-analytics-ab-test-worksheet-for-highered-fill-in-the-blanks-to-optimize-your-colleges-web-pages/ Turn User Goals Into Task Scenarios For Usability Testing By Marieke McCloskey. "Guidelines for usability test tasks: engage participants by writing task scenarios that are realistic, encourage an action, and don't give away how the interface should be used." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/task-scenarios-usability-testing/ 5 Website Usability Testing Tips By Kumail Hemani. "Usability testing helps bring together the website structure and makes it user friendly. It is a method used to improve the web layout, to make it easy-to-use and easy-to-understand." http://www.kumailhemani.com/5-website-usability-testing-tips/ +04: EVENTS. MX 2014 March 16-17, 2014. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://mxconference.com/ WebVisions Chicago September 25-26, 2014. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://www.webvisionsevent.com/chicago/ MAX 2014 October 4-8, 2014 Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. http://max.adobe.com/ Fronteers October 9-10, 2014. Amsterdam, Netherlands http://fronteers.nl/congres/2014 Assets October 20-24, 2014. Rochester, New York, U.S.A. http://www.sigaccess.org/assets14/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. Accessible JavaScript Gestures: Zoom Scaling By Dylan Barrell. "As I was implementing the prototype gesture-supporting accessible datepicker and I was playing around with all sorts of different approaches to the problem, I noticed that it became much more difficult to generate a swipe gesture on the iPhone when the browser was zoomed-in..." http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2014/01/accessible-javascript-gestures-zoom.html Enough with the JavaScript Already (Video) By Nicholas Zakas. "After consulting with several companies on performance related issues, it became clear that one of the biggest performance issues facing websites today is the sheer amount of JavaScript needed to power the page. The demand for more interactive and responsive applications has driven JavaScript usage through the roof. It's quite common for large sites to end up with over 1 MB of JavaScript code on their page even after minification. But do today's web applications really need that much JavaScript?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li4Y0E_x8zE Tips for Writing Code Comments in Developer Documentation By Tom Johnson. In sum, writing code comments may seem like a trivial exercise, but it really gets to the heart of what technical writing is all about - explaining complicated material and layering your explanation for a variety of audiences. http://idratherbewriting.com/2014/01/11/tips-for-writing-code-comments-in-developer-documentation/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Customizing Help and Tips By Input Type By Luke Wroblewski. "On today's multi-device Web, your audience might be using a mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, trackpad, or increasingly, more than one of these input types to interact with your service. Given all these possibilities, how do you let people know how they can get things done in your app?" http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1842 People, Ubiquity, and the Internet of Things - The New Mobile Context By Steven Hoober and Mudassir Azeemi. "We like to distinguish between the environmental and situational contexts of people regardless of the device...Interactions in all...contexts are important." http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/01/people-ubiquity-and-the-internet-of-things-the-new-mobile-context.php Essential Things To Remember While Doing Responsive Web Design By Hasan Latif. "... I remember an example that my teacher gave us to explain what exactly a responsive web design is. He placed a big jug, a flask and a glass on the table. Then he poured water into each one of them and asked us a question, 'What is the shape of the water?'..." http://www.globus.ae/blog/essential-things-to-remember-while-doing-responsive-web-design.html +07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. W3C EME is not DRM (nor other fear-mongering TLAs) By Aadrian Roselli. "Plenty has been written about the W3C and DRM. Sadly, most of it has been written in the form of attacks against the W3C, with very few laying out the facts." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/01/w3c-eme-is-not-drm-nor-other-fear.html Net Neutrality News By Aadrian Roselli. "If you're spitting-mad about the W3C's perceived position on DRM, we would all be better served if you re-pointed that anger at what is happening to net neutrality..." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/01/net-neutrality-news.html Why Validate? By W3C. "This document attempts to answer the questions many people have regarding why they should bother with Validating their web sites and tries to dispel a few common myths..." http://validator.w3.org/docs/why.html +08: TYPOGRAPHY. How to Use Cross Browser Web Fonts, Part 2 By Chris Mills. "In part 1 of my article I introduced web font syntax, looking at how basic @font-face and font-family syntax can work together to embed custom fonts on your web pages, and the slightly more complex cross browser reality. In this part we'll go further, looking at common real world issues associated with web fonts, and comparing free and paid options for hosting your fonts..." http://www.sitepoint.com/use-cross-browser-web-fonts-part-2/ Bulletproof Accessible Icon Fonts By Zach Leatherman. "Care must be taken when implementing icon fonts to ensure a great experience for all users. What happens when your font doesn't load? What happens when @font-face isn't supported in the browser? We'll show you how to implement bulletproof font icons..." http://filamentgroup.com/lab/bulletproof_icon_fonts/ +09: USABILITY. 10 Quick and Easy Fixes to Reduce Page Weight By Craig Buckler. "Total page weight increased by 32% in 2013 to reach a ludicrous 1.7Mb and 96 individual HTTP requests. That's an average figure; half of all sites will be larger. Website obesity has become an epidemic and we web developers are to blame. There are no excuses..." http://www.sitepoint.com/ten-quick-fixes-reduce-page-weight/ When to use target="_blank" By Chris Coyier. "Anchor links may have a target attribute which controls what happens when that link is clicked. One of the possible values of that attribute is _blank, which tells the browser to open a new window (or tab, if that's the user's preference) when that link is clicked." http://css-tricks.com/use-target_blank/ [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.]