+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 16, Issue 34, February 15, 2018. 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: HTML. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. 11: XML. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility vs. Inclusive Design: My Point of View By Dennis Deacon. "…Rather than focusing on providing remediation steps, teach accessible considerations when designing or coding upfront. You-ll reduce the time and resources needed to repeatedly remediate websites and apps. And that is better for all." https://www.lireo.com/accessibility-vs-inclusive-design-my-point-of-view/ Accessibility: Review of 2017 and Outlook for 2018 By Shadi Abou-Zahra. "2017 was another busy year for the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)…" https://www.w3.org/blog/2018/02/accessibility-review-of-2017-and-outlook-for-2018/ CAPTCHA Accessibility By Orange. "A CAPTCHA ('Completely Automated Public Turing-test to tell Computers and Humans Apart') is an automated test aimed at telling apart a human user from a software program…" http://a11y-guidelines.orange.com/web_EN/captcha.html Personalization Semantics Content Module First Public Working Draft, and Personalization Semantics Explainer By Michael Cooper. "The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Personalization Semantics Content Module 1.0 as well as an updated draft of Personalization Semantics Explainer 1.0…" https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2018JanMar/0148.html What's in Your Toolbox? Accessibility Tips for Developers (Video) By Paul J. Adam. "Learn about tools & techniques for developers for accessibility testing…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kQbRKcRfHo How To Meet the Needs of Older Internet Users By Rakesh Paladugula. "People who were in in their 40s during the internet boom of the late 90s will now be coming into retirement, suggesting a new wave of tech savvy seniors. There are increasing numbers of tech startups aimed at the elderly, but those aged 55+ are still only 3% of total internet users. In a world increasingly dependent…" http://www.maxability.co.in/2018/02/meet-needs-older-internet-users/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Basics: The Syntax That Matters & The Syntax That Doesn't By Chris Coyier. "When you're starting to play around with CSS at the very beginning, like any other language, you have to get used to the syntax…" https://css-tricks.com/css-basics-syntax-matters-syntax-doesnt/ Basics of CSS Grid: The Big Picture (Video) By Jen Simmons. "Jen Simmons describes the overall big picture of CSS Grid…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEnRpy9Xfes Into the Weeds of CSS Layout (Video) By Rachel Andrew. "There are lots of reasons to get excited about new layout methods in CSS, but what impact does moving to Flexbox and Grid have on performance…" https://vimeo.com/254679499 How I Design with CSS Grid By Chen Hui Jing. After a couple of rounds of introducing CSS grid to people who haven't tried it before, I found it wasn't the implementation of grid that people asked questions about, rather, it was the bit before that. https://www.chenhuijing.com/blog/how-i-design-with-css-grid/ Pour Holy Web Compatibility in Your CSS Font By Karl Dubost. "Yet another Webcompat issue with the characters being cut in the bottom, this will join the other ones, such as cross characters not well centered in a rounded box and many other cases…" http://www.otsukare.info/2018/02/09/android-font-css Modern CSS Explained For Dinosaurs By Peter Jang. "CSS is strangely considered both one of the easiest and one of the hardest languages to learn as a web developer…" https://medium.com/actualize-network/modern-css-explained-for-dinosaurs-5226febe3525 +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. The 9 Rules of Design Research By Erika Hall. "Lately, I've noticed a lot more ambient enthusiasm for research among both early stage start-ups and established organizations…" https://medium.com/mule-design/the-9-rules-of-design-research-1a273fdd1d3b Beyond the NPS: Measuring Perceived Usability with the SUS, NASA-TLX, and the Single Ease Question After Tasks and Usability Tests By Page Laubheimer. "Post-test questionnaires like the SUS measure perceived usability of an entire system; post-task scales suggest of problematic parts of a design." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/measuring-perceived-usability/ The User Experience of Flower Websites By Jeff Sauro. "…A two-part UX benchmark (retrospective and task-based) analysis of flower websites was conducted in 2018 using 320 participants. The overall user experience of the industry was slightly above average compared to the websites in the SUPR-Q database and similar to the 2017 data. The biggest driver of both poor SUPR-Q scores and low task completion rates are the hidden fees and lack of price transparency. What consumers see as estimated totals in their shopping carts on average increased by 50% or in some cases, even doubled, by the time they checked out." https://measuringu.com/flower-ux/ Talk is Cheap: The Myth of the Focus Group By Liza Featherstone. "Focus groups make us feel our views matter - but no one with power cares what we think." https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/06/talk-is-cheap-the-myth-of-the-focus-group +04: EVENTS. a11yMTL Annual Conference February 24, 2018. Montreal, Quebec, Canada https://www.meetup.com/a11yMTL/events/247721624/ ACT Rules for Manual Web Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies March 14, 2018. Online https://www.w3.org/WAI/Tools/webinar1 Confab Central 2018 May 21-23, 2018. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://confabevents.com/events/central-2018 International PHP Conference June 4-8, 2018. Berlin, Germany https://phpconference.com/ The CSS & SVG Power Combo June 25, 2018. Toronto, Canada https://www.smashingmagazine.com/workshops/css-svg-combo-toronto/ SmashingConf Toronto 2018 June 26-27, 2018. Toronto, Canada https://www.smashingmagazine.com/events/toronto-2018/ +05: HTML. Title Texts Suck By Hampus Sethfors. "Many people I meet think title texts, also known as tooltips, improve both the accessibility and usability of their sites. They don't. In fact, they can even cause problems. Let's see why…" https://axesslab.com/title-texts-suck/ HTML, CSS, and Dependency Direction By Jens Oliver Meiert. "…What I wish to do here is not critique the ending of this otherwise instructive article, but to look at one great aspect, dependency direction…" https://meiert.com/en/blog/dependency-direction/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. The JavaScript Supply Chain Paradox: SRI, CSP and Trust in Third Party Libraries By Troy Hunt. "A couple of years back as the US presidential campaign was ramping up, the Trump camp did something stupid. I know, we're all shocked but bear with me because it's an important part of the narrative of this post. One of their developers embedded this code in the campaign's donation website…" https://www.troyhunt.com/the-javascript-supply-chain-paradox-sri-csp-and-trust-in-third-party-libraries/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. The History of the Web By Jay Hoffmann. "The history of the World Wide Web absolutely fascinates me. So much so, that I've decided to create a more or less definitive timeline of events…" https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/ The (Mostly) Complete History of Layout on the Web Part 1: Liquid Cool By Jay Hoffmann. "…As far as I can tell the first liquid layout was used on ProjectCool in 1996…" https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/mostly-complete-history-layout-web-part-1-liquid-cool/ A Letter About Google AMP By 21 Original signatories plus supporting signatories and organizations. "We are a community of individuals who have a significant interest in the development and health of the World Wide Web ('the Web'), and we are deeply concerned about Accelerated Mobile Pages ('AMP'), a Google project that purportedly seeks to improve the user experience of the Web…" http://ampletter.org/ The Two Faces of AMP By Tim Kadlec. "…Look, AMP, you-re either a tool for the open web, or you-re a tool for Google search. I don-t mind if you-re the latter, but please stop pretending you-re something else." https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2018-02-14-the-two-faces-of-amp/ +08: NAVIGATION. Creating Accessible Menus and Mega Menus By Bryan Garaventa. "The meaning of the word 'menu' within web technologies is variable and encompasses many different types of functionality…" https://www.levelaccess.com/challenges-mega-menus-standard-menus-make-accessible/ +09: TYPOGRAPHY. When East Meets West: Web Typography and How It Can Inspire (Video) By Chen Hui Jing. "This talk traces the parallel history of western and eastern typography from handwriting to the internet age, setting the context for how the web is a brand new medium for typesetting…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqxo269aORM +10: USABILITY. Inverted Pyramid: Writing for Comprehension By Amy Schade. "The inverted-pyramid style of writing refers to starting an article with the most important piece of information so readers can get the main point, regardless of how much they read. This style of writing is perfectly suited to writing for the web." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/inverted-pyramid/ Research Review Finds Most Readability Formulas Outdated and Overrated By Karen Schriver. "…A research review by Dr. Karen A. Schriver-'Plain Language in the United States Gains Momentum: 1940-2015'-takes a hard look at readability formulas…" http://centerforplainlanguage.org/most-readability-formulas-outdated/ 10 UX Challenges for the Next 25 Years (Video) By Jakob Nielsen. "Jakob Nielsen presents his UX directions for the future: How UX roles will evolve, and how UX involvement can solve major challenges for the world." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/10-ux-challenges-next-25-years-jakob-nielsen-keynote/ +11: XML. XML is 20 By Tim Bray. "'It was twenty years ago today/Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play…' Actually, it was 21½ years ago today that Jon Bosak pulled together the original XML Working Group. But yes, it was on February 10, 1998 that XML 1.0 was released to the world. Which is worth talking about…" https://www.xml.com/articles/2018/02/10/xml-20/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: 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.]