+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 15, Issue 22, November 23, 2016. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 22 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. One Small Click for Developers, One Giant Leap for A11y By Kimberly Munoz. Kimberly Munoz's WaffleJS keyboard testing presentation slides. http://slides.com/kimberlymunoz/keyboard-testing a11y = Accessibility By Adrian Roselli. "...a11y is shorthand for accessibility. Those middle characters are the number one, not lower-case Ls. Say it as A-one-one-Y or A-eleven-Y..." http://adrianroselli.com/2016/11/a11y-accessibility.html Listening to the Web, Part Three: Working with Screen Readers By Scott Vinkle. "...Destination: screen readers. You'll come away with everything you need to know to get your hands dirty when it comes to designing, developing for, and testing your sites with screen readers..." http://simplyaccessible.com/article/listening-web-part-three-working-screen-readers/ Strategic Accessibility Update By Jon R. Gunderson. Jon's slides from the 2016 Educause Pre-Conference Workshop in October http://presentations.cita.illinois.edu/2016-10-educause/ Accessibility Basics: Designing for Visual Impairment By Graeme Fulton. "...This guide will look at how designing for people with visual impairments can improve the web for everyone..." https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/accessibility-basics-designing-for-visual-impairment--cms-27634 Web Accessibility: Designing for All By Sylvia Kim. "Accessibility is an important and often forgotten element of building websites and digital products. While W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative lays out specific standards to follow, it's surprising how many of those steps are left out in websites and products we use everyday..." http://www.freshtilledsoil.com/web-accessibility-designing-for-all/ Web Accessibility in the UK - True Facts [infographic] By Claire Brotherton. "I was recently asked in one of my blogging groups to create an infographic..." http://www.abrightclearweb.com/web-accessibility-in-the-uk/ Assistive Technology Surveys By Dennis Lembree. "Digital accessibility experts are often asked about the usage of screen readers and assistive technologies..." http://www.webaxe.org/assistive-technology-surveys/ VR and Accessibility By Ian Hamilton. "...It does however aim to ask some questions, point out a few VR-specific barriers to access, and show a few possible solutions, allowing you to include more people as a result..." http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IanHamilton/20161031/284491/VR__accessibility.php Proposed Rule for State and Local Government Websites Slated for July 2017 By Minh Vu. "DOJ announces that proposed rules for state and local government websites will issue July 2017..." http://www.adatitleiii.com/2016/11/proposed-rule-for-state-and-local-government-websites-slated-for-july-2017/ What Will a Trump Presidency Mean for Digital Accessibility? By Timothy Stephen Springer. "In the wake of Donald Trump's election to the presidency, many are wondering how the new administration will affect the digital accessibility space..." https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/will-trump-presidency-mean-digital-accessibility/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS and JavaScript Accessibility Best Practices By Chris David Mills. "...CSS and JavaScript, when used property, also have the potential to allow for accessible web experiences or they can significantly harm accessibility if misused. This article outlines some CSS and JavaScript best practices that should be considered to ensure even complex content is as accessible as possible..." https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Accessibility/CSS_and_JavaScript CSS Inheritance, The Cascade And Global Scope: Your New Old Worst Best Friends By Heydon Pickering. "...I'm going to revisit inheritance, the cascade and scope here with respect to modular interface design. I aim to show you how to leverage these features so that your CSS code becomes more concise and self-regulating, and your interface more easily extensible..." https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/11/css-inheritance-cascade-global-scope-new-old-worst-best-friends/ I Totally Forgot About Print Style Sheets By Manuel Matuzovic. "A small collection of useful CSS techniques and a quick reminder that print style sheets are still a thing..." https://medium.com/@matuzo/i-totally-forgot-about-print-style-sheets-f1e6604cfd6 Generate Media Queries for Specific Devices with this Insanely Simple CSS Tool By John Hughes. "...SimpleCSS is an online tool that generates media queries for you based on your breakpoint or platform, and in this post we'll show you how you can generate them in three clicks..." https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/resources/generate-media-queries-for-specific-devices-with-this-insanely-simple-css-tool +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Project Management for User Research: The Plan By Susan Farrell. "Every UX research project should start with a plan. Project plans document the goals, methods, and logistics necessary to repeat the study." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pm-research-plan/ How to Recap Your Daily UX Research By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "Imagine you've finished a user research session and uncovered some interesting results about your new prototype design..." https://www.lireo.com/how-to-recap-your-daily-ux-research/ UX and Usability Testing Analysis By Craig Tomlin. "...The goal for UX research and usability testing analysis is to obtain qualitative WHY data for the already observed WHAT data coming from the Behavioral UX Data analysis..." http://www.usefulusability.com/ux-and-usability-testing-analysis/ The Difference Between Observed And Latent Variables By Jeff Sauro. "...Latent, or hidden, variables differ from observed variables in that they aren't measured directly. Instead we use observed variables and mathematically infer the existence and relationship of latent variables. This is the core method behind many powerful techniques..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/latent-variables.php Usability Testing of Inline Form Validation: 40% Don't Have It, 20% Get It Wrong By Christian Holst. "During our just-released checkout usability study, we time and again observed that there's a direct correlation between how and when users are presented with form validation errors and the pace and effort with which they are able resolve those errors..." http://baymard.com/blog/inline-form-validation +04: EVENTS. Smashing Conference April 4-5, 2017. San Francisco, Califorina, U.S.A. https://smashingconf.com/ DrupalCon Baltimore 2017 April 24-28, 2017. Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. https://events.drupal.org/baltimore2017 MinneWebCon May 1-2, 2017. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://minnewebcon.org/ CHI 2017 May 6-11, 2017. Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. https://chi2017.acm.org/ +05: HTML5. HTML: A Good Basis for Accessibility By Chris David Mills. "A great deal of web content can be made accessible just by making sure the correct HTML elements are used for the correct purpose at all times. This article looks in detail at how HTML can be used to ensure maximum accessibility..." https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Accessibility/HTML HTML 5.1 is the Gold Standard By Philippe le Hegaret. "A couple weeks ago the W3C Web Platform Working Group published HTML 5.1 as a Standard..." https://www.w3.org/blog/2016/11/html-5-1-is-the-gold-standard/ Timeline for HTML5.2 By Léonie Watson. "We have a proposed timeline for HTML5.2. It goes a little something like this..." https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2016Nov/0014.html +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The Wireframe Perfectionist's Guide By Edric Lapniramai. "...Striving for perfection is a great goal, but be practical with your time, too. Most real-world projects don't have ample timelines, so figure out your priorities, and use the guidelines that make sense..." https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/11/wireframe-perfectionist-guide/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript is Not an Enemy of Accessibility! By Maro Zehe. "...When I started making my social media rounds this morning, I came across Jeffrey Zeldman's call to action for this year's Blue Beany Day on November 30th. But I respectfully disagree with a number of points he is making in his post about JavaScript frameworks and their accessibility implications..." https://www.marcozehe.de/2016/11/23/javascript-not-enemy-accessibility/ Less JavaScript By Jeremy Keith. "Every front-end developer at Clearleft went to FFConf last Friday: me, Mark, Graham, Charlotte, and Danielle..." https://adactio.com/journal/11512 +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Insisting on Core Development Principles By Kendra Skeene. "The web community talks a lot about best practices in design and development: methodologies that are key to reaching and retaining users, considerate design habits, and areas that we as a community should focus on..." http://alistapart.com/article/insisting-on-core-development-principles +09: PHP. PHP Crash Course By Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. "Web architects Luke Welling and Laura Thomson provide a quick overview of PHP syntax and language constructs by working through lots of real-world examples taken from their experiences building real websites..." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2738464 +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Listening to the Web, Part Two: It's All Semantics By Scott Vinkle. "...We cover the basics of writing semantic HTML, and we explore why native HTML elements are so effective in creating highly user-friendly websites..." http://simplyaccessible.com/article/listening-web-part-two-semantics/ This Year More Than Ever, Blue Beanie Day Matters By Jeffery Zeldman. "...#a11y is Code for 'Love Your Neighbor'..." http://www.zeldman.com/2016/11/22/year-ever-blue-beanie-day-matters/ +11: TOOLS. Jeffrey's Image Metadata Viewer By Jeffrey Friedl. "...I wrote a little online Exif viewer to view whatever data might be encoded..." http://regex.info/exif.cgi +12: USABILITY. Give Thanks for Good UX By Katie Sherwin. "User experiences that bring joy through ease or delight deserve our appreciation. We extend our gratitude for some of this year's design improvements." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-thanks/ Great Customer Experience Means Reducing Customer Effort By Gerry McGovern. "The best way to understand digital customer experience is to measure the effort people need to make to complete their top tasks..." http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/great-customer-experience-means-reducing-customer-effort A Useful Guide to Content Types, Part 1 By Carrie Hane. "Content types are the essential building blocks for a brand, a content management system, and a digital ecosystem. Too often, deciding what content types will be created and what properties they have are decided by a marketer or developer with little context about the content they will contain or how it will be used..." http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/a-useful-guide-to-content-types-part-1/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]