+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 24, December 12, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 24 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML5. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: TOOLS. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Takeaways From Mobile Accessibility 101 By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "At yesterday's 'Mobile Accessibility 101' webinar, Deque Systems Accessibilty Evangelist Paul Adam discussed mobile assistive technology, top mobile accessibility issues, shared tips on how to avoid creating accessibility barriers, and demonstrated how to test with VoiceOver (iOS) and TalkBack (Android) screen readers. Here are some of my takeaways from the webinar..." http://www.lireo.com/takeaways-from-mobile-accessibility-101/ WCAG 2.0 Tutorial By Olga Revilla. "On December 11th, 2008 the W3C WAI released the WCAG 2.0, a new way to get accessible web pages for everyone. This site shows what they are and how to accomplish them..." http://www.oneguidelineaday.com/ Accessibility Teaching Materials By Virginia DeBolt. "I prepared a booklet (PDF) of materials that I use to teach a short class in web accessibility. There really isn't a great resource for a class in web accessibility that covers the basics in just a few hours. I took some of my handouts and made such a resource for you..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2014/12/10/accessibility-teaching-materials/ HTML5 Image Description Extension (longdesc) is a Proposed Recommendation By Shawn Henry. "The HTML5 Image Description Extension (longdesc) has been published as a Proposed Recommendation at: http://www.w3.org/TR/html-longdesc This specification ("HTML5-longdesc") enables web authors to provide longer textual descriptions for complex images. HTML5-longdesc is an extension specification that is part of the HTML5 family of specifications. HTML5-longdesc is part of W3C's work to ensure that the Open Web Platform is accessible to people with disabilities..." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2014OctDec/0196.html ReCAPTCHA Reboot By Adrian Roselli. "If you've got any stake in the wonderful world of spam bots, then you've probably heard about Google's CAPTCHA update, the No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA. Essentially a user need only check a box and Google's ground-up pixie dust automagically knows whether or not to believe you. A video overview of the update.." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/12/recaptcha-reboot.html PDF Accessibility Update from Australian Government By Digital Access. "Here's a summary of the key outcomes: The desktop environment now provides sufficient support for PDF. The mobile environment provides insufficient support for PDF to claim WCAG 2.0 conformance. Ideally, Agencies should publish documents in HTML, with an accessible PDF optionally provided..." http://www.visionaustralia.org/living-with-low-vision/learning-to-live-independently/using-technology-and-computers/blog---accessibility-and-assistive-technology-blog/blog/accessibility-blog/2014/12/10/pdf-accessibility-update-from-australian-government#vaContent Learning to be Accessible By Susan Robertson. "I'm trying to be learn more about accessibility these days. Thinking about it more, reading about it some, and generally being aware as I write code what I should and shouldn't do in that arena..." http://alistapart.com/blog/post/learning-to-be-accessible The Viking and the Lumberjack Go Looking for the 508 Refresh By Steve Faulkner. "The ham-fisted Accessibility Power Duo are back in another episode of the Viking and the Lumberjack. This time they go off in search of the legendary 508 Refresh." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/12/the-viking-and-the-lumberjack-go-looking-for-the-508-refresh/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Pop Out The Table By Karl Dubost. "The CSS table display Web design pattern emerged among Web designers. CSS table display is very well supported across browsers. It gave the ability to use HTML table semantics but keeping the table layout properties...But it also creates Web compatibility issues when combined with max-width: 100%..." http://www.otsukare.info/2014/12/10/table-layout-fixed +03: COLOR. Why Luminance Is the Key Component of Color By Steven Bradley. "In his book Interaction of Color, Joseph Albers tells us that color is almost never seen exactly as it physically is. All color judgements are relative. How a color appears is affected by the colors of the objects around it..." http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/color-luminance/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Usability vs. A/B testing - Which One Should You Use? By Arijit Banerjee. "These days, I see a lot of people arguing over the type of testing procedures they should follow - Usability testing or A/B testing. Honestly, I find this argument quite vague. In fact, it's not an argument at all, because, they serve completely different purposes. We need to clearly understand which one is required when. Let's begin by diving into what is what and when you should go for them..." http://www.loop11.com/usability-vs-ab-testing-which-one-should-you-use/ Usability Testing Tools Poll Results Tell an Interesting Story By Craig Tomlin. "The Usability testing tools poll results are coming in for the question, 'What usability testing tools do you use?' Here's the story that the results to date are telling..." http://www.usefulusability.com/usability-testing-tools-poll-results/ Guide to Usability Testing By Paul Andrew. "The biggest challenge designers and product managers face isn't how the market or different technologies work - it's how humans work. What users say versus what users do are two completely different things, and the only way to verify is to test..." http://speckyboy.com/2014/12/03/free-ebook-guide-usability-testing/ +05: EVENTS. How an Accessibility Strategy Can Unlock the Power of Academic Video December 16, 2014. Webinar. http://www.sonicfoundry.com/webcast/live-webinar-how-accessibility-strategy-can-unlock-power-academic-video +06: HTML5. Defining Multiple Captions and Alt Text for Responsive Images By Ian Devlin. "With the welcome rise of the element and srcset attribute, we now have control over what images are loaded when, allowing us to make our images more responsive, and even to change the image entirely based on screen size. Of course showing a different image in this case is not recommended, but it is possible that you might want to change the focal point of the image, showing less of a larger image, and highlighting a particular object or person within it. This is all well and good, but what about the image's caption or alt text? How can we provide different captions or alt text per image, should the need arise?" http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2014/12/html5/defining-multiple-captions-and-alt-text-for-responsive-images HTML5 - Check it Before you Wreck it with Mike[tm] Smith By Steve Faulkner. "The W3C's Mike[tm] Smith (AKA @sideshowbarker) is the man with his head in the W3C validation markup checking tool source code; he makes the magic happen. Questions were asked for the HTML5 Doctor reader's delight and edification..." http://html5doctor.com/html5-check-it-before-you-wreck-it-with-miketm-smith/ Responsible Web Components By Jeremy Keith. "Bruce has written a great article called On the accessibility of web components. Again. In it, he takes issue with the tone of a recent presentation on web components, wherein Dimitri Glazkov declares..." https://adactio.com/journal/7967 HTML5 Differences from HTML4 By Simon Pieters, Editor. "This document covers the W3C HTML5 specification..." http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Revisiting the Pile-Sort Method of User Research By Hang Guo, Khasfariyati Razikin, and Muhammad Hatib. "The UX community has a long acquaintance with the pile-sort method of user research. In this article, we'll revisit the origin of the pile-sort method in anthropology and provide an account of how we used this method to understand user task flows. We'll also introduce an extension to the pile-sort method that helped us to collect user data more effectively while working in an agile software-development environment. Finally, we'll discuss the analytical method that we used to process our study results: factor analysis." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/12/revisiting-the-pile-sort-method-of-user-research.php If You Think Paper Prototyping is a Waste of Time, You're Doing it Wrong. By Ashlea McKay. "A former colleague of mine showed me an article that compared paper prototyping to macaroni artwork commonly found at your local preschool..." http://uxmas.com/2014/if-you-think-paper-prototyping-is-a-waste-of-time +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Responsive Enhancement By Jeremy Keith. "24 ways has been going strong for ten years. That's an aeon in internet timescales. Just think of all the changes we've seen in that time: the rise of Ajax, the explosion of mobile devices, the unrecognisably changed landscape of front-end tooling..." http://24ways.org/2014/responsive-enhancement/ Websites of Christmas Past, Present and Future By Josh Emerson. "The first website was created at CERN. It was launched on 20 December 1990 (just in time for Christmas!), and it still works today, after twenty-four years. Isn't that incredible..." http://24ways.org/2014/websites-of-christmas-past-present-and-future/ Don't Push Through the Pain By Carolyn Wood. "Carolyn Wood reminds us of what in recent years we've come to overlook, hunched as we are over laptop and tablet: our physical wellbeing. Sometimes, that tingle down your arm from shoulder to fingers isn't Christmas magic." http://24ways.org/2014/dont-push-through-the-pain/ +09: TOOLS. Long Descriptions in Context Menu By Google. This is an official longdesc extension for Chrome. "The HTML standard allows images to have a link to an additional file with a long description with the 'longdesc' attribute. In addition there's a proposed new ARIA attribute 'aria-describedat' that's similar. Normally these attributes are only exposed to users who have screen readers or other assistive technology installed that knows to look for these. This extension puts an item in the context menu so you can right-click on any element on the page and open its long description. It also gives you the option of adding a colored border to images with a long description so you know when one is available..." https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/long-descriptions-in-cont/ohbmencljkleiedahijfkagnmmhbilgp Tell Me More longdesc Chromium Extension By Charles McCathie Nevile. Chaals has made his longdesc chromium extension code available on github. https://github.com/chaals/tellmemore/ AInspector Sidebar FireFox Extension By Nicholas Hoyt. "AInspector Sidebar evaluates the accessibility compliance of web pages based on WCAG 2.0 requirements using OpenAjax Alliance rulesets. It organizes the evaluation results by Rule Categories and WCAG Guidelines." https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ainspector-sidebar/ +10: USABILITY. Task-Driven User Interfaces By Oleksandr Sukholeyster. "The user experiences of enterprise applications do have direct impact on an organization's performance. When the applications that an enterprise employs provide better user experiences and usability, its people are more efficient and productive..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/12/task-driven-user-interfaces.php Organizational Ego is Eating Trust By Gerry McGovern. "The world has changed but many organizations are still stuck in a medieval mind-set. Their egocentric websites are advertisements for why they don't deserve to be trusted. Taming the ego is the first step in rebuilding trust..." http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/organizational-ego-eating-trust Redesigning Your Website? Don't Ditch Your Old Design So Soon By Hoa Loranger. "Testing your site's existing design along with a few competitor websites provides valuable insight for new designs. Competitive studies help you avoid developing unusable new features." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/redesign-competitive-testing/ About that C Word... By Ruth Ellison. "Doug Bowman summarises the compromising challenge nicely: 'Someone recently put it to me that all design is a series of compromises; but good design finds the right ones.'" http://uxmas.com/2014/about-that-c-word [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.]