+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 14, Issue 07, August 12, 2015. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 07 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. 04: JAVASCRIPT. 05: MISCELLANEOUS. 06: NAVIGATION. 07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 08: TOOLS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Developers Please Don't Detect my Screen Reader By Rakesh Paladugula. "...There are many reasons why assistive technology detection is a bad practice. Below are few of them I could think right now..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2015/08/developers-please-dont-detect-my-screen-reader/ Web Accessibility and Down Syndrome By Rakesh Paladugula. "Down syndrome is one of the most common genetic birth defects. Usually, children born with the condition have some degree of mental retardation, as well as characteristic physical features." http://www.maxability.co.in/2015/08/web-accessibility-and-down-syndrome/ Discovering Accessibility By Atul Varma. "...creating accessible static content is easy and helps extreme users, but creating accessible rich internet applications is quite difficult because screen readers implement the standards so differently. I'm eagerly hoping that this situation improves over the coming years." http://www.toolness.com/wp/2015/08/discovering-accessibility/ IT Accessibility Risk Statements and Evidence By IT Accessibility Constituent Group. "This document was created by the EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group to help identify accessibility risks that IT leaders should consider in their risk management process..." http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/it-accessibility-risk-statements-and-evidence +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Making and Breaking the Web With CSS Gradients By Mike Taylor and Dietrich Ayala. "As a Web developer, users of your web sites will be affected if you use prefixed CSS properties which later have their prefixes removed-especially if syntax has changed between prefixed and unprefixed variants..." https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/08/making-and-breaking-the-web-with-css-gradients/ How Floating Works By Ire Aderinokun. "...I decided to look into the rules that govern the behaviour of floats, and how to properly use them..." http://bitsofco.de/2015/how-floating-works/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Conducting Contextual Enquiry (or Site Visits) By Gerry Gaffney. "To do good design, you need to understand the relevant parts of your users' lives. One of the most powerful ways of gathering this information is by talking to those users. Contextual enquiry (or site visits) is a great way of doing this..." http://uxmastery.com/conducting-contextual-enquiry-or-site-visits/ Preference Testing - What to Do Before You Run A/B Tests By Jenifer Winter. "In the world of user research, A/B testing is one of the most popular types of tests we hear about. And while they're great for optimizing something that's already built, they can't really help you early on in your product's lifecycle. But don't worry, there's a test for that: preference testing..." https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2015/08/06/preference-testing/ The A/B Test Checklist By Talia Wolf. "...You've spent time on tracking, analyzing, building a hypothesis and building your test. Moments before you launch, take the time to go over the following AB test checklist to make sure you have everything you need and to ensure your test results are meaningful and scalable." http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/11/the-ab-test-checklist/ 32 Ways to Measure the Customer Experience By Jeff Sauro. "...While the "right" methods and metrics you select depend on the industry and study goals, this list covers most of the online and offline customer experience..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/32-ways-cux.php 5 Essential Statistical Tests and Calculators By Jeff Sauro. "...With the five tests I cover here, you can test most of your hypotheses in the customer experience...." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/five-essential-tests.php +04: JAVASCRIPT. Getting Started with ECMAScript 6 By Axel Rauschmayer. "This blog post helps you to get started with ECMAScript 6..." http://www.2ality.com/2015/08/getting-started-es6.html Accessible Images Using Angular By Heidi Jungel. "Angular.js is becoming a widely used framework for web development. The framework allows developers to create readable code, is known to be fully extensible, and works well with other libraries. However, developers must still ensure accessibility when using the angular framework..." http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/accessible-images-using-angular/ +05: MISCELLANEOUS. The Wrong Debate About Native And Web By Karl Dubost. "People like dichotomies and they will do everything to have their story fits the imaginary gap..." http://www.otsukare.info/2015/08/05/native-mobile-wrong-debate +06: NAVIGATION. How Google Changes Will Affect Your Page Structure By Emma Grant. "A large number of new websites-perhaps even the overwhelming majority of them-have started to take on a really familiar look...Google doesn't like it!.." http://www.developerdrive.com/2015/08/how-google-changes-will-affect-your-page-structure/ +07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Short Note on HTML Conformance Checking By Steve Faulkner. "When you check a HTML document, using the W3C HTML conformance checker, to find out whether its code conforms to the rules defined in the HTML specification (and other referenced specifications). It's useful to understand what the output means..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/08/short-note-on-html-conformance-checking/ +08: TOOLS. Quantity Queries By Drew Minns. "A tool to help build Quantity Queries for your projects..." http://quantityqueries.com/ +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Text Justification and Accessibility By Allayne Woodford. "When it comes to creating accessible content, focus can tend to be on headings, images and use of colour. Get those things right and you're well on the way to the metaphorical tick for accessibility. Taking things to the next level though, considerations include (but are very much not limited to) the use of tables, font styling and even text justification..." http://www.accessiq.org/news/news-features/2015/08/text-justification-and-accessibility +10: USABILITY. Headings Are Pick-Up Lines - 5 Tips for Writing Headlines That Convert By Hoa Loranger. "Attractive headlines and titles are critical in making the right first impression. Concise titles that sound authentic and relevant get noticed." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/headings-pickup-lines/ How 70s Appliances can Explain the Difference Between UX and UI By Mike Monteiro. "...If you're sitting at your desk designing things based on a styleguide and a pattern library while looking at some wireframes and flow diagrams that someone handed you, you're doing UI. If you're going out and meeting the people using your product or service, listening to how they use it, making decisions based on that knowledge, testing and improving, and taking into consideration things that happen before and after they interact with your product or service, you're doing UX..." https://deardesignstudent.com/the-difference-between-ui-and-ux-fa62b9837d66 Making Your Icons User-Friendly - A Guide to Usability in UI Design By Hannah Alvarez. "...This may come as a disappointment to those who say a picture is worth a thousand words: Labels dramatically increase the usability of icons. It's a common misconception that users (especially mobile users) will tap around and play with all the different icons cheerfully until they discover what each icon does. In reality, users are often intimidated by new interfaces and don't explore outside their comfort zone..." https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2015/08/04/user-friendly-ui-icons/ Apple's Products are Getting Harder to Use Because They Ignore Principles of Design By Don Norman. "...Apple has gotten carried away by the slick, minimalist appearance of their products at the expense of ease of use, understandability, and the ability to do complex operations without ever looking at the manual..." http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/apples_products_are.html Recap - Web Form Usability Tips from #UXChat By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "If you couldn't make it to today's Twitter chat on web form usability, hosted by UserTesting, I've compiled the conversation and included some of the resources mentioned during the chat...." http://www.lireo.com/recap-web-form-usability-tips-from-uxchat/ [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.]