+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 04, July 23, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 04 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: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: HTML5. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: TOOLS. 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. Data Tables and Accessibility By Rakesh Paladugula. "Tables are often used for representing tabular data on web pages. The structure of a general data table consist of column or row header and the cells against the headers. Some tables may have both column and row headers. Captions which represent the heading for the tables are also observed in few data tables. Few data tables may have a complex structure with more than one header for same cell, content spanning across the data cells." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/07/data-tables-accessibility/ Accessibility Basics By W3C Web Education Community Group. "When you create a web site, accessibility-making the web site usable by everyone, regardless of their ability or disability-should always be a central concern. So far in this course accessibility has always been implicit in all the examples you've seen, even if you didn't realise it; in this Web Standards Curriculum article I'll now look at accessibility explicitly, so you can understand fully what it is, why it is important, how to ensure that sites are accessible, and what guidelines exist to define accessible sites..." http://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Accessibility_basics Provide User Interface Components that are Consistently Labelled By Denis Boudreau. "Make sure call to actions repeated on multiple pages are labelled consistently..." http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/92336374047/provide-user-interface-components-that-are-consistently Evaluating Web Accessibility Efforts-A Guide for Accreditation Review Teams By National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE). "This document is a guide to help Accreditation Review Teams understand and evaluate institutional evidence of web accessibility efforts. These guidelines may also serve to assist institutions as they develop, review and enhance their reaffirmation materials." http://ncdae.org/goals/accreditation/guidelines.php Justice Department Reaches Agreement with Orange County Clerk of Courts in Florida to Ensure Equal Access to Court Records for Blind Individuals By Department of Justice. "The Justice Department announced today that it has reached a settlement with the Orange County Clerk of Courts in Florida to remedy violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)..." http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/July/14-crt-751.html Best Practices for the Audio Description of Live Events By Robert Pearson. "Accessible Media Inc.'s Director of Accessible Digital Media, Robert Pearson, on the long road to making TV, film and video content accessible through audio description." http://www.accessiq.org/news/news/2014/07/best-practices-for-the-audio-description-of-live-events Anti-Social - Feds Wonder Why Social Media Companies Drag Feet on Accessibility Issues By Greg Otto. "The Federal Communications Commission hosted a panel of experts Thursday to talk about the challenges and ongoing need to make social media platforms more accessible to those with disabilities. But there was one group of representatives notably absent from the proceedings: the social media companies themselves..." http://fedscoop.com/social-media-accessibility/ Accessibility is Good for the Planet By Olivier Nourry (Correction from last week. Hat tip to Nicolas Hoffmann. Apologies to Olivier.) http://openweb.eu.org/articles/accessibility-is-good-for-the-planet +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Origin and Importance in the CSS Cascade (Screencast) By Russ Weakley. "Origin & Importance is one of the four steps of the CSS Cascade. This step determines which declaration will win - between author, user, and browser (or user-agent) styles..." http://www.sitepoint.com/screencast-origin-importance-css-cascade/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Why Isn't the Main Element in Dreamweaver CC's Insert Panel? By Virginia DeBolt. "One of the arguments Adobe uses to convince all of us that we want to fork over a monthly subscription fee for Adobe products is that we get all the latest updates. So why isn't the main element among the choices in the Insert panel?..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2014/07/18/isnt-main-element-dreamweaver-ccs-insert-panel/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Ten User Testing Bad Habits By Susan Weinschenk. "...here are 10 bad habits to watch out for when you are doing user testing..." http://www.blog.theteamw.com/2014/07/20/ten-user-testing-bad-habits/ Accessibility Testing By W3C Web Education Community Group. "Web accessibility testing is a subset of usability testing where the users under consideration have disabilities that affect how they use the web. The end goal, in both usability and accessibility, is to discover how easily people can use a web site and feed that information back into improving future designs and implementations..." http://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Accessibility_testing +05: HTML5. Responsive Images - Use Cases and Documented Code Snippets to Get You Started By Andreas Bovens. "Finally, true responsive images are becoming a reality on the web - in pure HTML, without convoluted hacks..." http://dev.opera.com/articles/responsive-images/ On the Complexity of the Picture Element By Bruce Lawson. "... Responsive images addresses 4 different use-cases. There are also new constructs like sizes and srcset to wrap your bonce around. So the syntax for addressing all four at once is, at first sight, pretty complex. But, like the most complex of the 24 English tenses, the Future Passive Perfect Continuous tense*, you'll probably rarely need it..." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2014/on-the-complexity-of-the-picture-element/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Information Architecture - Planning Out a Web Site By W3C Web Education Community Group. "...This Web Standards Curriculum Table of contents article is going to look at the early stages of planning out a web site, and a discipline that is commonly referred to as Information architecture, or IA. This involves thinking about who your target audience will be, what information and services they need from a web site, and how you should structure it to provide that for them. You'll look at the entire body of information that needs to go on the site and think about how to break that down into chunks, and how those chunks should relate to one another..." http://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Information_Architecture_-_planning_out_a_web_site Towards a New Information Architecture By Christina Wodtke. "...IA has taken a long time to find its feet after the one-two punch of interaction design and user experience (And I haven't even brought up Content Strategy!) No amount of 'let's be friends' will change the fact that IA has stagnated in the years following the rise of UX. He's also not wrong that we need IA and IA thinking more than we ever have. IA is not dead. Thank goodness. Because no matter whether you think your digital product has 'content' or not, the world is made of data. And somebody needs to make that world of data make sense to the humans who live in it. In fact, I'm even going to argue it's making a comeback..." https://medium.com/@cwodtke/towards-a-new-information-architecture-f38b5cc904c0 +07: JAVASCRIPT. An Introduction to WAI-ARIA By Stephan Max. "It might come as a shock, but I tell you: The web has changed! The last eight years have seen the rise of Ajax, JavaScript, HTML5, and countless front-end frameworks. Consequently, the internet is no longer a place of static HTML pages, as funny as they sometimes are. Rather, it has become a playground for complex, almost desktop-like web applications, each with their own widgets, controls, and behavior..." http://www.sitepoint.com/introduction-wai-aria/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Inclusive Design 24 (Screencasts) By The Paciello Group. "All 24 sessions from Inclusive Design 24 are now online at WebAble.tv" http://www.webable.tv/Events/inclusivedesign.aspx Designing for Accessibility By Laura Kalbag. Laura Kalbag's presentation at the New Worlds of JavaScript held October 2-3, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOM5eY5hG-Q Is Usability Taking a Nose Dive? (Video) By Steven Krug. Steven Krug's NELAUX Presentation at the Art Center College of Design. http://youtu.be/1LNB6SacvLQ Steve's presentation slides: http://www.slideshare.net/SteveKrug/nelaux-talk-pasadena-june-2014-posted-final How to Communicate Primary Actions (Video) By Luke Wroblewski. "Luke W on how to get your users on track with clearly identified Primary Actions and make their experience a positive one.." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl3OYHo2_b8 +09: TOOLS. Online Sitemap Generator (Hat Tip: Troy Peterson) By XML-Sitemaps. "Build your Site Map online..." http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ Refresh Your Cache By refreshyourcache. "...Refreshyourcache.com contains step by step guides to clear your browser's cache forcing it to download all latest data from a website..." http://www.refreshyourcache.com/ +10: USABILITY. Breaking Web Design Conventions = Breaking the User Experience By Katie Sherwin. "Bucknell University caused a stir with its unconventional responsive redesign, but at a high cost to usability, as shown in tests with students and parents...Minimalist and hidden navigation unanimously frustrated users and prevented them from finding information...Tools to customize homepage content and view browsing history are underutilized....Glossy visual design made the site look nice, but they hurt usability...the reality is that too often, resources are spent on making the site look great or creating an innovative widget, and usability is neglected until the very end of development (if it's even ever looked at)...Any budget that has room for an expensive glossy redesign should also have room for usability testing...Instead of guessing what customers want, find out. Then design for your users, not for glitz." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/breaking-web-conventions/ Using Top Tasks to be Top-Notch - Federal Reserve Board Usability Case Study By Ben Rosset. "The top-task process is easy to learn, execute, and repeat. It involves your users at every step of the way to create a website that features a menu structure your users will find intuitive and easy to use. In short, it helps your users complete the tasks that are most important to them in the shortest amount of time, leading to happy users and happy clients!" http://www.digitalgov.gov/2014/07/02/using-top-tasks-to-be-top-notch-federal-reserve-board-usability-case-study/ Focus on Legibility over Fancy Technology or Marketing Copy By Paul Boag. "People often spend too much time on cutting edge technology or 'clever' marketing campaigns, when basic things like legibility are not in place." http://boagworld.com/design/legibility/ Tweets Quoting 'Don't Make Me Think, Revisited' By Dennis Lembree. A short while ago, my author @DennisL read the excellent book Don't Make Me Think, Revisited by acclaimed usability professional Steve Krug..." http://www.webaxe.org/tweets-quoting-dont-make-me-think-revisited/ +11: XML. A Compendium of SVG Information By Chris Coyier. "A huge pile of information about SVG..." http://css-tricks.com/mega-list-svg-information/ [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 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 HTML 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.]