+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 14, October 2, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 14 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: HTML5. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: NAVIGATION. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. This One Secret Will Save you $100,000 on Accessibility By Karl Groves. "The cost of remediation actually has two faces: The actual time-on-task it takes to fix issues, of course, but also the lost opportunity dollars that come from development staff time being diverted to bug fixes rather than being spent on new features. We'll skip past the opportunity cost for now because the actual remediation cost is enough to get our point across anyway..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2014/09/29/this-one-secret-will-save-you-100000-on-accessibility/ Vestibular Issues in Parallax Design By Dennis Lembree. "Over the last year or so, a design trend in the web and mobile world has been transition animations, parallax effects, and the like. For many users, this can cause vestibular issues; the symptom is usually vertigo, or a feeling of motion sickness..." http://www.webaxe.org/vestibular-issues-parallax-design/ Accessibility Camp Toronto Slides - Selfish Accessibility By Adrian Roselli. "I'll add some photos and other notes after I've the event is over and I've had a chance to write up my thoughts. In the meantime, my slides..." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/09/accessibility-camp-toronto-slides.html Why the WCAG 2.0 Reading Level Criterion is Doomed By Rachel McAlpine. "here's a major problem with the international web accessibility guideline designed to ensure that web content is as clear and simple as possible..." http://www.contented.com/blogs/news/15409689-why-the-wcag-2-0-reading-level-criterion-is-doomed Higher Education Websites Unsuitable for Special Needs Students, says Report By Colm Gorey. "A new study has found that poorly-designed Irish higher education websites could be contributing to significant dropouts among students with particular disabilities because they cannot access certain assignment services..." http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/38436-higher-education-websites-u Lack of Skills and Awareness Fuel Web Inaccessibility, Survey Finds By Headstar. "Lack of skills or knowledge and lack of awareness of web accessibility are responsible for the great majority of website accessibility problems, according to a US survey of web accessibility practitioners..." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=1057 For Bill on Disabled Access to Online Teaching Materials, the Devils in the Details By Rebecca Koenig. "As smart classrooms become the norm on more campuses and online courses proliferate, some observers worry that the digital revolution will leave students with disabilities behind. But a bill under consideration in the U.S. Congress, the Technology, Equality, and Accessibility in College and Higher Education Act (HR 3505), would deal with that concern by creating accessibility guidelines for electronic materials used or assigned by college professors and administrators..." http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/for-bill-on-disabled-access-to-online-teaching-materials-the-devils-in-the-details/ Law, Policy -- and IT? By Tracy Mitrano. "Tracy Mitrano explores the intersection where higher education, the Internet and the world meet (and sometimes collide)." https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/law-policy-and-it/convergence Portland Community College Launches Web Accessibility MOOC for Educators By Joshua Bolkan. "Portland Community College (PCC) has teamed with a private partner to launch a massive open online course (MOOC) for educators that will address Web accessibility concerns associated with online learning..." http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/09/29/portland-community-college-launches-web-accessibility-mooc-for-educators.aspx +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. On Declaration Sorting in CSS By Jens Meiert. "..."Type sorting is extraordinarily ineffective, for it's extremely slow and consistently unreliable (or reliably inconsistent)..." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20140924/on-declaration-sorting/ How to Code Object Orientated CSS By Sara Vieira. "It sounds really impossible that a language like CSS can be object oriented but it is possible to implement OOP ideas in CSS to make it into a much more pleasant writing experience whilst along the way making your CSS faster to load..." http://www.developerdrive.com/2014/09/how-to-code-object-orientated-css/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 6 Tips for Better Data Analysis By Jeff Sauro. "While you always can't control the quality of the responses, or the questions asked to participants, you can make the most with the data you receive by using these six techniques the next time you analyze data..." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/better-analysis.php +04: EVENTS. Web Accessibility MOOC for Online Educators Registration is open from September 29 until November 14, 2014. Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). https://opencourses.desire2learn.com/cat/course/web-accessibility-7195/ +05: HTML5. Making Images Responsive By Virginia DeBolt. "I've been attempting to sort out in my own mind exactly what I needed to be teaching students about responsive images. For a while, things have been a bit wobbly in this area and there were no definite best practice ideas. Thanks to the Responsive Images Community Group, I think a consensus on best practice has gelled for now..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2014/09/29/making-images-responsive/ Responsive Images - If You're Just Changing Resolutions, Use srcset By Chris Coyier. "If you're implementing responsive images (different images in HTML for different situations) and all you are doing is switching between different versions of the same image (the vast majority of usage), all you need is the srcset attribute on the ..." http://css-tricks.com/responsive-images-youre-just-changing-resolutions-use-srcset/ To Picturefill, or not to Picturefill By Scott Jehl. "This week over at the always-bustling Responsive Images W3C mailing list, a thread discussing whether we should more commonly use the srcset and sizes attributes instead of the picture element (answer: yes, we more commonly should) eventually led to another discussion over whether to polyfill these features in unsupported browsers..." http://filamentgroup.com/lab/to-picturefill.html Accessibility in a Web Components World at MakingWeb By Steve Faulkner. "Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting at the 2nd MakingWeb conference in Norway, I talked about web components." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/09/accessibility-in-a-web-components-world-at-makingweb/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. ARIA in HTML - There Goes The Neighborhood By Steve Faulkner. "Will HTML5 make the use of WAI-ARIA in HTML redundant? the short answer is definitely not. There are many ARIA roles and properties that are not provided by native elements and attributes in HTML5. Also developers still have the desire to roll their own interactive controls or web components even though they have been available in HTML as native elements for 15 years, why would this suddenly change with HTML5?" http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/10/aria-in-html-there-goes-the-neighborhood/ Douglas Crockford -The Better Parts (Video) By Douglas Crockford. "Douglas Crockford is known as The JavaScript Guy. He's famous not only for his O'Reilly book JavaScript: The Good Parts but even more so as the visionary behind the JSON data format as well as the JSLint tool." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo36MrBfTk4 +07: NAVIGATION. Thoughts on Pagination By Chris Coyier. "I've had some disparate thoughts regarding pagination lately, so I thought I'd attempt to organize them in a post..." http://css-tricks.com/thoughts-pagination/ +08: TYPOGRAPHY. Improving International Typography on the Web and in eBooks By Richard Ishida. "The W3C needs to make sure that the typographic needs of scripts and languages around the world are built in to technologies such as HTML, CSS, SVG, etc. so that Web pages and eBooks can look and behave as expected for people around the world. http://rishida.net/blog/?p=1153 @font-face with Font Load Events By Zach Leatherman. "@font-face is an established staple in the diet of almost half of the web. According to the HTTP Archive, 47% of web sites make a request for at least one custom web font. What does this mean for a casual browser of the web? In this article, I make the argument that current implementations of @font-face are actually harmful to the performance and usability of the web. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that developers have started using @font-face for two completely different use cases: content fonts and icon fonts, which should be handled differently. But there is hope. We can make small changes to how these fonts load to mitigate those drawbacks and make the web work better for everyone..." https://dev.opera.com/articles/better-font-face/ +09: USABILITY. Size Matters - Balancing Line Length And Font Size In Responsive Web Design By Laura Franz. "As we refine our methods of responsive web design, we've increasingly focused on measure (another word for 'line length') and its relationship to how people read." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/09/29/balancing-line-length-font-size-responsive-web-design/ The Most Hated Web Experience, and How to Do It Right (If You Have To) By Hannah Alvarez. "Ever since the early days of online marketing, pop-up ads have been annoying..." http://www.usertesting.com/blog/2014/09/23/the-most-hated-web-experience-and-how-to-do-it-right/ Customer Convenience By Gerry McGovern. "Today, time is more valuable than a Rolex watch. To save time in a hassle-free way is the best gift you can give the busy, stressed customer. Focus on increasing convenience for customers. Seek to reduce the effort they have to make to do business with you." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/customer-convenience Image-Focused Design - Is Bigger Better? By Kathryn Whitenton. "Large images are visually appealing, but they can harm the overall user experience if they aren't appropriately prioritized." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/image-focused-design/ [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 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.]