+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 15, Issue 34, February 16, 2017. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 34 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: NAVIGATION. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. 5 Approaches to Dealing with 3rd party (in)accessibility By Karl Groves. "...Remove it...Replace it...Fork it and fix it...Improve it after the fact...Push on the Vendor...Of course not choosing the inaccessible product is the best approach..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2017/02/15/5-approaches-to-dealing-with-3rd-party-inaccessibility/ Sounding Out the Web: Accessibility for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People [Part 1] By David Swallow. "The largely visual nature of the web means that we tend to focus on supporting people who are blind or partially sighted. But deaf and hard of hearing people are often overlooked. I spoke with Ruth MacMullen, who is an academic librarian and copyright specialist from York in the UK, about her experience of being deaf and how it affects her use of the web." https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2017/02/sounding-out-the-web-accessibility-for-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-people-part-1/ Website Accessibility Testing - Where to Start? By Jeffrey Singleton. "...We recommend you take the following approach: 1.) Decide what standards and guidelines you will strive to meet. 2) Identify the highest traffic pages on your website. 3) Identify the templates that make up the framework of your site. 2) Determine the critical user tasks/scenarios on your site (if any). 2) Know what your testing approach will be for the accessibility audit..." http://insight.cryptzone.com/accessibility/website-accessibility-testing-where-to-start/ Accessibility Resources By Vision Australia. "...To help organisations embed accessibility into their online delivery practices, the W3C has updated three core resources to help you get started..." http://www.visionaustralia.org/business-and-professionals/digital-access-consulting/resources/blog---accessibility-and-assistive-technology-blog/blog/accessibility-blog/2017/02/15/accessibility-resources Star Rating Widget By Rajendra Jaladi. "A star rating widget usually contains images of 5 stars which is used to rate an object..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2017/02/star-rating-widget/ IBM Updates Accessibility Checklists in Preparation for Section 508 Refresh By Michael Gower. "Last week, accessibility took a step forward. The refresh of the Section 508 Standards for Electronic and Information Technology passed another hurdle on its long journey to being updated for the first time since its release in December 2000..." http://ageandability.com/2016/09/19/ibm-updates-accessibility-checklists-in-preparation-for-section-508-refresh/ Federal Complaint Alleges School District Website 'Inaccessible' By Elena Kadvany. "In civil-rights complaint, parent-advocate seeks to make website fully useable for students with disabilities..." http://paloaltoonline.com/news/2017/02/13/school-district-hit-with-another-discrimination-complaint +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. An Introduction to the Reduced Motion Media Query By Eric Bailey. "The open web's success is built on interoperable technologies. The ability to control animation now exists alongside important features such as zooming content, installing extensions, enabling high contrast display, loading custom stylesheets, or disabling JavaScript..." https://css-tricks.com/introduction-reduced-motion-media-query/ Reduced Motion Media Query By Apple. "Use the prefers-reduced-motion media query to create styles that avoid large areas of motion for users that specify a preference for reduced motion in System Preferences." https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_10_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014305-CH12-DontLinkElementID_60 User Queries By Orde Saunders. "In the CSS breakout session at Edge Conf the idea of user queries was discussed..." https://decadecity.net/blog/2015/06/28/user-queries CSS Pseudo-Classes: Styling Elements Based on Their Index By Tiffany Brown. "CSS also provides selectors for matching elements based on their position in the document subtree. These are known as child-indexed pseudo-classes, because they rely on the position or order of the element rather than its type, attributes, or ID. There are five..." https://www.sitepoint.com/css-pseudo-classes-styling-elements-based-on-their-index/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. UX Research Cheat Sheet By Susan Farrell. "User research can be done at any point in the design cycle. This list of methods and activities can help you decide which to use when." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-research-cheat-sheet/ Is Lab Usability Testing Worthless? By Berto Ceballos. "At least for early stage digital products..." https://medium.com/design-thoughts-case-studies/lab-usability-testing-is-worthless-b85045485a3a How Long Is the Typical Online Study? By Jeff Sauro. "...like many other answers in online research is 'it depends,' which is hardly helpful. So we looked for data to provide some guidance..." http://measuringu.com/online-study-time/ Web Application Testing: A Quick-Glance 7-Step Guide By Debugme. "Before delving into the different types of web application testing, it's important to understand what web application testing is and why it is a vital procedure for any web application that is brought to market..." http://blog.debugme.eu/web-application-testing/ +04: EVENTS. Front May 19-11, 2017. Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A. https://www.frontutah.com/ User Experience Lisbon May 23-26, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal https://www.ux-lx.com/ Design & Content Conference July 17-19, 2017. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.designcontentconf.com/ +05: HTML5. HTML5 Forms: Dependable Tools in Our Toolbox By Estelle Weyl. "...HTML5 not only makes marking up forms easier on the developer, it's also better for the user. With client-side validation being handled natively by the browser, there will be greater consistency across different sites, and many pages will load faster without all that redundant JavaScript..." https://www.sitepoint.com/html5-forms-dependable-tools/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Website Prototyping: The Hands-on Guide By Ben Gremillion. "When designing for users, you need to know their end goals and actions along the way. The two are called content and user flows, respectively, and together they form the heart of any great website. But how do we go from an information outline to interactive design?" https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/website-prototyping-the-hands-on-guide/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Writing JavaScript with Accessibility in Mind By Manuel Matuzovic. "...Tips on how to improve the accessibility of your JavaScript components and provide users with more and better ways to interact with your website or web app...." https://medium.com/@matuzo/writing-javascript-with-accessibility-in-mind-a1f6a5f467b9 Intro to ARIA (Video) By Rob Dodson. "...today, we're going to be talking about ARIA, what it is, and how you can use it to make nonaccessible controls accessible..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Qff0b-lHk JavaScript Debugging Improvements By Joseph Pecoraro. "...We recently took at look at our debugger to see how we could improve the experience and make it even more useful for you..." https://webkit.org/blog/7219/javascript-debugging-improvements/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. In Browser Spellchecking By Steve Faulkner. "We have changed our Quality Assurance (QA) methods recently at TPG and now require a screen reader friendly method to find spelling errors in HTML content displayed in the browser..." https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2017/02/in-browser-spellchecking/ Discovering Resilient Web Design with Jeremy Keith By Eric Karkovack. "...Jeremy was kind of enough to chat with us about his design background, his affection for web history and how we can utilize the concept of Progressive Enhancement in our work..." https://speckyboy.com/discovering-resilient-web-design-jeremy-keith/ +09: NAVIGATION. A Look into Navigation in Web Design By Ezequiel Bruni. "...In web design, navigation is second only to content. You need good content to sell your ideas, but that content won't mean much if your users can't find what they're looking for..." https://cmd-t.webydo.com/from-simple-to-unusual-a-look-at-navigation-in-web-design-1057d0baef7b Great Alternatives to Hamburger Menus By Levi Kovacs. "How to make your navigation obvious and keep people engaged..." https://uxplanet.org/great-alternatives-to-hamburger-menus-d4c76d9414dd +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. W3C and EME: It Isn't About Preventing DRM But Saving the W3C By Baldur Bjarnason. "The debate surrounding the W3C's involvement has polarised. Unfortunately for the W3C, both sides are right..." https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/why-drm-is-a-problem-for-the-w3c/ A Battle Rages for the Future of the Web By J.M. Porup. "Should the WWW be locked down with DRM? Tim Berners-Lee needs to decide, and soon." https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/02/future-of-the-www-timbl-drm/ +15: USABILITY. Five Models for Making Sense of Complex Systems By Christina Wodtke. "In one of the classes I teach at CCA, students were confused by mental models, conceptual models, concept maps, etc. I ended up making a model for models, which may help others. This post is for them first, then you!" https://medium.com/@cwodtke/five-models-for-making-sense-of-complex-systems-134be897b6b3 Using Swipe to Trigger Contextual Actions By Angie Li. "Implementations of Swipe-to-delete or swipe to reveal contextual actions often suffer from usability problems." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/contextual-swipe/ Resources for Eliminating Bias in Design By Benjamin Evans. "In this article, Benjamin Evans explains why our brains are built to be biased, different types of bias, how bias can negatively impact UX design, and how UX designers can overcome their own unconscious biases in order to create meaningful experiences for their users." http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/resources-for-eliminating-bias-in-design/ Definitive Advice on Forms: An Interview with Jessica Enders (Podcast with transcript) By Gerry Gaffney. "Today's guest is a longtime friend and colleague. She is a forms tragic. Her business is called Formulate Information Design, with the tagline 'We Fix Forms'. She's worked for PayPal and the Mayo Clinic..." http://uxpod.com/definitive-advice-on-forms-an-interview-with-jessica-enders/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +17: 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.]