+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 14, Issue 48, May 26, 2016. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 48 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: HTML5. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. 13: XML. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. 5 Ways You can Experience Digital Accessibility as a Web Developer/Professional By Michaela Slade. "...We have put together a few simple ways that you can experience accessibility first hand and see what parts of your websites you need to improve to become accessible..." http://www.accessiq.org/news/features/2016/05/5-ways-you-can-experience-digital-accessibility-as-a-web-developerprofessional Inclusive Design 24 (Videos) By The Paciello Group (TPG). This year's TPG playlist of 24 Global Accessibility Awareness Day Webinars is available. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL95LOQw9SLWxmcZtzBiFuT9HAJKFJnl2n My Slides for Inclusive Design 24 for Global Accessibility Awareness Day By Adrian Roselli. "This morning I had the pleasure of presenting at the free online Inclusive Design 24 hour webinar by The Paciello Group as part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day. As promised, my slides are embedded here for you, or you can go directly to SlideShare to see them..." http://adrianroselli.com/2016/05/my-slides-for-inclusive-design-24-for-global-accessibility-awareness-day.html Accessibility is My Favorite Part of the Platform (Video) By Rob Dodson. "My favorite part of my job is when I get to work on accessibility. I see this as removing uncertainty and anxiety from people's day, and helping them access the information they need. But working with accessibility can be frustrating, especially when you feel like you're fighting the platform instead of working with it..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qjgxH384Nc The Cognitive Disability Digital Accessibility Guide By Philip Jenkinson. "...The guide is important for developers as it highlights both the parts of WCAG 2.0 that are currently being implemented in Level AA, and some of the lesser-known aspects of WCAG 2.0 found in Level AAA..." http://www.accessiq.org/news/features/2016/05/the-cognitive-disability-digital-accessibility-guide-an-invaluable-resource Optimizing for Accessibility + SEO: Site & Page Structure Overlaps By Laura Lippay. "39 million people are blind. 285 million are visually impaired. 15% of the world's population - over a billion people - have some form of disability..." https://moz.com/blog/global-accessibility-awareness-day Attention Public Accommodations: DOJ's Recent Rulemaking Action for State and Local Government Websites Reveals its Current Thinking on Web Accessibility By Minh Vu and Kristina Launey. "If you would rather not read the 30-page small print Federal Register notice, this summary will provide you with what you need to know about the Justice Department's most recent official pronouncement on web accessibility...." http://www.adatitleiii.com/2016/05/attention-public-accommodations-dojs-recent-rulemaking-action-for-state-and-local-government-websites-reveals-its-current-thinking-on-web-accessibility/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Understanding The CSS Property Value Syntax By Russ Weakley. "The World Wide Web Consortium uses a particular syntax to define the possible values that can be used for all CSS properties..." https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/05/understanding-the-css-property-value-syntax/ CSS Purge By Roy Quilor. "You may not know, but your CSS is getting out of control, it may even have a mind of its own. The specificity war is happening right now and you might not even know it..." http://www.csspurge.com/ More Meaningful CSS By Jonathan Snook. "Tim Baxter wrote an article for A List Apart discussing the possibly dogmatic, and maybe unnecessary, use of classes for styling HTML elements..." http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/more-meaningful-css All or Nothing By Jonathan Snook. "...In conclusion, the problem with all is such that the implementation is so inconsistent across browsers that it's useless. There's no way to create a consistent baseline in which to build on, thereby negating when I would ever want to use this property." http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/all-or-nothing +03: DRUPAL. Add Accessibility Checker for CKEditor to Core By Mike Gifford. "CKSource just released their Accessibility Checker for GAAD. This is a great time to look at bringing this accessibility checker in. Ideally it would be enabled by default. This should help make content editors make their content better..." https://www.drupal.org/node/2731373 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Re-Assessing the Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX) Scale By Mehmet Ilker Berkman, Dilek Karahoca. "Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX) and its shorter form variant UMUX-LITE are recent additions to standardized usability questionnaires..." http://www.uxpajournal.org/assessing-usability-metric-umux-scale/ Open-Ended vs. Closed-Ended Questions in User Research By Susan Farrell. "Open-ended questions prompt people to answer with sentences, lists, and stories. Closed-ended questions limit possible answers. What to use when?" https://www.nngroup.com/articles/open-ended-questions/ Usability Testing: Too Early? Too Much Talking? Too Many Problems? By Morten Hertzum. "Usability testing has evolved in response to a search for tests that are cheap, early, easy, and fast..." http://www.uxpajournal.org/usability-testing-early-talking-problems/ Can You Take the Mean of Ordinal Data? By Jeff Sauro. "Yes, of course you can..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/mean-ordinal.php +05: EVENTS. Accessible Online Courses: Challenges and Solutions June 1, 2016. Online Webinar http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/2016-May/011348.html +06: HTML5. HTML5 Video and Multiple Track Display By Ian Devlin. "Normally when using using subtitles or captions with HTML5 video, even if you provide different track files in different languages, you will only want to display one set to the user at a time. However, it is possible to display multiple track files at once, should you want to. Here's how..." https://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2016/05/html5/html5-video-and-multiple-track-display +07: JAVASCRIPT. Six Nifty ES6 Tricks By Axel Rauschmayer. "In this blog post, I show six tricks enabled by new ES6 features. At the end of each section, I point to related material in my book 'Exploring ES6' (which is free to read online)..." http://www.2ality.com/2016/05/six-nifty-es6-tricks.html +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Technology is Neither Magical nor Neutral By Gerry McGovern. "In most organizations, technology is neither properly understood nor managed. It is bought and it is used. Management expect it to do magical things like improve productivity without them having to be in any way involved in managing it. In fact, technology is so magical that it is expected to do the managing..." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/technology-neither-magical-nor-neutral +09: NAVIGATION. The Importance of URLs By Stuart Langridge. "Lots of discussion about progressive web apps recently, with a general consensus among forward-thinking web people that this is the way we should be building things for the web from now on..." http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2016/05/24/the-importance-of-urls/ On URLs in Progressive Web Apps By Bruce Lawson. "I'm writing this as a short commentary on Stuart Langridge's post The Importance of URLs..." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2016/on-urls-in-progressive-web-apps/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Understanding Semantics By Léonie Watson. "The word 'semantic' is regularly used in the context of web development. We talk about 'semantic code' and the 'semantics' of a given element, but what do we really mean by it, and why is it important?.." http://tink.uk/understanding-semantics/ +11: TOOLS. Mobile Friendly Test By Google. "Is your web page mobile-friendly? Enter a URL to find out..." https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly Visual Acuity Defects Simulator By Patrick Kelley. "This JavaScript bookmarklet simulates various vision impairments on a web page in real-time, facilitating understanding and empathy for users with vision disabilities." https://github.com/UIPCOLLC/Visual-Acuity-Defects-Simulator +12: USABILITY. Rotating Website Carousels: 4 Alternatives That Drive Sales By Dan MacDonald. "...Here's the hard truth. Despite the popularity of rotating carousels, they do not improve UX, they’re generally ineffective, and many websites are deeply attached to them..." https://studio.uxpin.com/blog/rotating-carousels-4-alternatives-drive-sales/ +13: XML. SVG Clipping Path Examples - Using Paths And Text By Steven Bradley. "Today and next week, I thought I'd walk you through a variety of examples. I'll show you how to use paths and text to clip elements, how to clip groups of elements at the same time, and how to create clipping paths from multiple SVG elements. I'll close next week with an example where I clip an image using a variety of SVG elements." http://vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-clipping-path-examples-1/ SVG Clipping Path Examples - Multiple Shapes and Images By Steven Bradley. "Today I want to continue with more examples starting with one where we'll use a variety of SVG elements to build up a more complex clipping path..." http://vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-clipping-path-examples-2/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +14: 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.]