+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 15, October 9, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 15 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: DRUPAL. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Notes on Fixing Incorrect Table Structure Using ARIA By Steve Faulkner. "Use with caution for static table fixes..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/10/notes-on-fixing-incorrect-table-structure-using-aria/ Joining Accessibility and UX for Accessible UX By David Sloan and Sarah Horton. David and Sarah's Webvisions conference presentation slides. http://www.slideshare.net/sloandr/joining-accessibility-and-ux-for-accessible-ux Accessibility in Higher Education - The TEACH Act By Jenny Davis. "Let me start by saying, accessibility is a human rights issue, not an afterthought..." http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2014/10/02/accessibility-in-higher-education-the-teach-act/ Future of Accessibility and Video Captions According to Google, Dell, T-Mobile (Video) By 3Play Media. "Published on Feb 10, 2014 - In this session recorded at the Streaming Media West conference, panelists from Google, Dell, and T-Mobile USA discuss captioning and transcription best practices, costs and benefits derived, and tips for implementing accessibility technologies..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DFKl3MNUHs Implementation Report W3C HTML5 Image Description Extension (longdesc) By Charles McCathie Nevile and Liam R. E. Quin, editors. "This document is a collection of test results that show the longdesc attribute as described in the HTML Image Description Extension (longdesc) specification is implementable, and that independent implementations are highly interoperable, as required for a W3C specification to proceed beyond Candidate Recommendation." http://w3c.github.io/test-results/html-longdesc/cr-report.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 16 CSS3 Selectors You Should Know By Syed Fazle Rahman. "A selector is the most basic component in the CSS. It determines which element to match in the DOM and then apply a corresponding set of styling properties. Here's a definition of the selector from W3C documentation..." http://www.htmlxprs.com/post/25/16-css3-selectors-you-should-know Beware of Selector Nesting in Sass By Hugo Giraudel. "Selector nesting is a feature of CSS preprocessors, allowing authors to nest selectors within selectors in order to create shortcuts. For instance:..." http://www.sitepoint.com/beware-selector-nesting-sass/ +03: DRUPAL. Training the CMS By Eileen Webb. "Nothing brings content modeling to life like launching a shiny new site: teasers fit neatly without any awkward ellipses, images are cropped perfectly for different screen sizes, related content is wonderfully relevant. The content strategy comes to life, and all is right with the world. But for years, my joy was short livedÑbecause it would only take a couple weeks for things to begin to fall apart..." http://alistapart.com/article/training-the-cms +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Collaborative User Testing: Less Bias, Better Research By Alla Kholmatova. "...Actively engaging in user testing is the most effective way of learning I know. It's also a great way to avoid arrogance and relate to the people we are building for. Minimizing bias takes practice, honesty, and collaboration. But it's worth it." http://alistapart.com/article/collaborative-user-testing-less-bias-better-research How Can You Measure UX without Observing Users? By Jeff Sauro. "So can you evaluate the user experience without observing users? The answer is a qualified yes. Under certain circumstances you can get useful data if you use suitable proxies for direct observation of user behavior: retrospective accounts, heuristic evaluation, and keystroke-level modeling (KLM)." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/no-users.php +05: EVENTS. Web Directions South October 30-31, 2014. Sydney, Australia http://webdirections.org/wds14/ ConveyUX January 22-24, 2015. Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. http://conveyux.com Web Accessibility Training January 27-28, 2015. Logan, Utah, U.S.A. http://webaim.org/training/ ConFoo Conference February 16-20, 2015. Montreal, Canada http://confoo.ca/en Webstock 2015 February 16-20 2015. Wellington, New Zealand http://www.webstock.org.nz/ SITE Conference March 2-6, 2015. Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://site.aace.org/conf/ +06: HTML5. Why is Viewport in a Meta Tag? By Bruce Lawson. "Adam Bradley asked, '@brucel meta is data about data right, so why is viewport in a meta tag, since they're instructing the browser what to do & not desc itself?'" http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2014/why-is-viewport-in-a-meta-tag/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Lazyload (Asynchronous Loading) Your Javascript Files By Chris Lu. "An alternative to putting scripts on the bottom, is to lazyload your scripts. To lazyload your scripts there are three ways i want to show you..." https://chris.lu/article/read/506de698268c420f0d000004 5 Array Methods That You Should Be Using Now By Colin Toh. "When ECMAScript 5 was published in 3rd Dec' 2009, it brought in additional new set of Array methods that seeks to improve upon the existing one..." http://colintoh.com/blog/5-array-methods-that-you-should-use-today On Progressive Enhancement By Lara Schenck. "This post was originally going to be a summary of themes from Artifact Conf but, inspired by Jeremy Keith's presentation, I got preoccupied with progressive enhancement. I also wanted to make this picture of cookies..." http://notlaura.com/progressive-enhancement/ EpicFEL: Making Custom Widgets Accessible with ARIA By Leonie Watson. "EpicFEL (FrontEnd London) is a conference from Made By Many, organisers of the monthly FEL meetup. My talk was about making custom widgets accessible with ARIA..." (Presentation slides) http://tink.co.uk/2014/10/epicfel-making-custom-widgets-accessible-with-aria/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Conducting an Effective Stakeholder Interview By Philip Hodgson. "There are few things more likely to make your design or UX project difficult than a poorly conducted stakeholder meeting. Structuring your stakeholder interview around a few simple techniques will ensure you get off to a good start and set you up for success." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/conducting-an-effective-stakeholder-interview.html +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Decision by Consensus or by Informed Editor; Which is Better? By Jeff Jaffe. "There has been discussion in the Web standards community about which is the better way to advance technical specifications: by a formal consensus process or by having all decisions made by informed editors as they informally gather a consensus. After all, the W3C has long considered consensus a core value of W3C. On the other hand, the WHATWG describes a process whereby the relevant editor makes the decisions by trying to see where the consensus is, and is explicit about eschewing formal consensus. Which approach is better?..." http://www.w3.org/blog/2014/10/decision-by-consensus-or-by-informed-editor-which-is-better/ +10: USABILITY. Why Automatic Carousels Suck And Must Be Eliminated From Your Homepage By Eduardo Esparza. "The idea of an automatic carrousel is fundamentally flawed for the following reasons..." http://blog.market8.net/b2b-web-design-and-inbound-marketing-blog/why-automatic-carousels-suck-and-must-be-eliminated-from-your-homepage Do You Really Want to do Content Fake Marketing? By Gerry McGovern. "...Less clutter, more simplicity. A telco removed 80% of its content and saw an 80% increase in sales. Think about it: all this content marketing you're producing could actually be damaging your ability to do business." http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/do-you-really-want-do-content-fake-marketing Related Content Boosts Pageviews, When Done Right By Hoa Loranger. "Links that follow up on the user's current interest encourage site exploration and reduce bounce rates. With the proper invitation, people will stay longer on your site." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/related-content-pageviews/ Myth #33: Mobile Users Are Distracted By Zoltan Gocza. "When thinking of mobile users, many have a stereotypical image of people on the go, people with the attention span of a goat and suffering from Mobile User Attention Deficit Disorder..." http://uxmyths.com/post/99302792550/myth-33-mobile-users-are-distracted [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: 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.]