[webdev] Web Design Update: January 15, 2010

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 29, January 15, 2010.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design 
and development.

++ISSUE 29 CONTENTS.

SECTION ONE: New references.
What's new at the Web Design Reference site?
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
New links in these categories:

01: ACCESSIBILITY.
02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
03: COLOR.
04: EVENTS.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
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.

A Behind-the-Scenes Peek at Automatic Captions on YouTube
By Terrill Thompson.
"On November 19, 2009 Google announced that it was launching automatic 
captions in YouTube. The University of Washington recently joined the 
list of early testers of this feature, so I thought I'd offer a sneak 
peek of how it works..."
http://terrillthompson.com/2010/01/behind-scenes-peak-at-automatic.html

Transcripts on the Web
By Shawn Lawton Henry.
"It's easy and relatively inexpensive for website developers to provide 
transcripts for multimedia. It many cases transcripts are required by 
law to provide access to information for people who are deaf or hard of 
hearing. Transcripts are an SEO silver bullet for audio and video, and 
bring more people to your podcast, videos, and website..."
http://www.uiaccess.com/transcripts/transcripts_on_the_web.html

Title Attributes
By Ian Pouncey.
In many articles and blog posts on web accessibility use of the title 
attribute is promoted. Unfortunately this isn't the magic bullet that 
many developers think it is, and I will argue for its use as a last 
resort..."
http://ianpouncey.com/weblog/2010/01/title-attributes/

Can Visual Art Be Made Accessible?
Tom Babinszki.
"...The World Wide Web provides new opportunities for visual artists to
promote their paintings and drawings. And it is nice to know that
somehow, the Internet can be used to help blind people understand a form
of art that is enjoyed by many."
http://www.evengrounds.com/blog/can-visual-art-be-made-accessible

Office 2010 - Accessibility Investments & Document Accessibility
By Larry Waldman.
"I'm going to focus today's discussion on Office 2010's new document
Accessibility Checker feature. I'll end the post with a few high level
bullets of other accessibility features that we might discuss in the
future..."
http://tinyurl.com/ybcpxlw


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS Background Transparency Without Affecting Child Elements, Through 
Rgba And Filters
By Robert Nyman.
"Looking at the design of most web pages today, almost exclusively all 
of them include some semi-transparency of elements. However, getting the 
desired effect in CSS is harder than one might think..."
http://tinyurl.com/yl9n2ew

The Missing CSS Combinator - A Plea for Help
By Niels Matthijs.
Sometimes a long-lasting, nagging problem can take concrete form in the 
weirdest of circumstances. Something that's been bothering you for a 
very long time at a rather subconscious level suddenly leaps forward and 
calls out for immediate attention. More concretely, this article will be 
about a css combinator oddly lacking from our list of options, not even 
mentioned in the latest css3 specs (as far as I know).
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/missing-css-combinator


+03: COLOR.

ColorAdd: A Color Coding System
By Daniel Fluck.
"Can this color coding system be an added value for color blind people? 
This is what the designer claims and what it is actually all about. I 
don't think so. Here are a few examples in my everyday life to support 
my point of view..."
http://www.colblindor.com/2010/01/13/coloradd-a-color-coding-system/


+04: EVENTS.

Designing for Mobile with CSS3 with Dan Rubin
April 1, 2010.
Birmingham, United Kingdom
http://forabeautifulweb.com/announcing/birmingham-010410

Portal 2010
June 8-11, 2010.
Gettysburg Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
http://cnav.gettysburg.edu/portal/portal10/

Hypertext 2010
June 16-21, 2010.
Toronto, Canada
http://www.ht2010.org/


+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

FluidIA
By Jakub Linowski, Alex Barger, and Chris Thatcher.
"fluidIA is an emerging agile design tool for prototyping rich user 
interfaces. The big idea behind this experiment is whether we as 
interaction designers, IA's, UX professionals and developers can create 
our own prototyping tool in an open way. Provided with access to an open 
design and open source process, this project kicks off with the 
following vision..."
http://www.fluidia.org/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Interview with Terrill Thompson
By Dennis Lembree.
"Dennis speaks with Terrill Thompson, technology accessibility 
specialist at DO-IT, a program at the University of Washington..."
http://tinyurl.com/yf6qf6y

W3C's Shawn Henry on Website Accessibility
By Freelance Review.
"Shawn Henry has honored us by answering a few questions regarding Web 
accessibility. When she's not busy answering interview questions for 
bloggers like us, she leads the worldwide education and outreach effort 
promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities at the W3C Web 
Accessibility Initiative..."
http://tinyurl.com/yamblv6


+07: NAVIGATION.

The Case Against Vertical Navigation
By Louis Lazari.
"...Naturally there are exceptions to every rule, and I'll discuss those 
briefly at the end. But first I'm going to present five reasons why 
vertical navigation should not be used and why designers and architects 
should almost always construct their sites with horizontal navigation in 
mind..."
http://tinyurl.com/ybgljp9

Guideline 2.4: Focus on Information Architecture
By Olga Revilla.
"Provide ways to help users navigate, find content, and determine where 
they are..."
http://tinyurl.com/yc3cxax


+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Standards Are Not Just Stuff and Nonesense
By John Foliot.
"One thing that all the cutting edge designers and boutique shops keep 
forgetting is that this wonderful thing we know as the 'web' (complete 
with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and all the newly emerging goodies of HTML5) 
is also used in the most mundane of ways, on web sites that simply need 
to communicate information to the end user without being a showcase of 
CSS mastery, Ajaxian trickery or the cutting edge coding examples of 
<canvas>, <video>, etc., etc..."
http://john.foliot.ca/standards-are-not-just-stuff-and-nonesense/

HTML5 Business as Usual
By Jeremy Keith.
"It's been a strange week in HTML5. The web-and Twitter in 
particular-has been awash with wailing and gnashing of teeth as various 
people weigh in with their opinions on either the W3C or the 
WHATWG-depending on which camp they're in-being irreversibly broken 
…exactly the kind of ludicrous over-reaction at which the internet 
excels..."
http://adactio.com/journal/1638/

Keep Calm and Carry On (with HTML 5)
By Andy Clarke.
"...W3C Working Groups are battlegrounds where "Pay To Play' combatants 
fight war without end for their own or their employer's (those big 
business entities that fund the W3C) agendas to succeed. These 
mercenaries care little for the needs of web designers or developers. We 
are civilian populations caught up in the fighting..."
http://tinyurl.com/y8qockb

HTML5 Means Whatever You Want it to Mean
By Peter-Paul Koch.
"Last Friday I found evidence for increasing confusion about what the 
HTML5 spec actually is. I don't have any doubts on that score: HTML5 is 
anything you want it to be as long as it's new and cool..."
http://tinyurl.com/y9plg5p

Error Messages for Corrupt HTML
By Roger Johansson.
"...Many people who do not like the idea of browsers displaying error 
messages for corrupt/invalid HTML tend to equate error messages with the 
'Yellow screen of death' that Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers 
display when they encounter a non well-formed XHTML document served as 
application/xhtml+xml..."
http://tinyurl.com/y9kexec

The HTML5 Show (AKA, A Mess)
By Kyle Weems.
"...if people don't even know if HTML5 exists anymore, or the status of 
the organizations working on it seem to be out of whack, why would they 
bother using the <video> tag or exploring <canvas>? We need to give 
people something to work with. Which means we need to not have insane 
grandstanding by a single individual..."
http://tinyurl.com/yjswoxu

Accessible HTML5 Video with JavaScripted Captions
By Bruce Lawson.
"...The elephant in the corner regarding all video - whether it be HTML5 
or proprietary - is accessibility. What are conscientious developers to 
do to provide textual alternatives for those who can't access the 
contents of the video? In HTML5 there isn't an alt attribute on the 
video element as there is on img, but you can add "fallback content" 
between the tags like this..."
http://tinyurl.com/yb32sm3

W3C HTML Accessibility Task Force
By Roger Johansson.
"As a number of people have stated, there are some accessibility issues 
in HTML 5. Hopefully the HTML Accessibility Task Force will help 
straighten those out..."
http://tinyurl.com/yeftg74


+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

To Serif or Sans-Serif, That is The Question
By Amit Goyal.
"...The following tutorial guides you through the various font-choices 
available, anti-aliasing, and some general type-related tips that, I can 
assure, you'll consider in your next web project. If you're a complete 
virgin to typography, I suggest you flick through this one before 
continuing on..."
http://designora.com/tutorials/sans-serif-font/


+10: USABILITY.

The First Rule of UX
By Joshua Porter.
"'You cannot not communicate. Every behavior is a kind of communication. 
Because behavior does not have a counterpart (there is no 
anti-behavior), it is not possible not to communicate.' Paul 
Watzlawick's First Axiom of Communication. This is the first rule of UX. 
Everything a designer does affects the user experience."
http://52weeksofux.com/


+11: XML.

Accessible SVG is Closer Than You Think
By David Bolter.
"Sometime in early December, Aaron pinged me to discuss the topic of SVG 
accessibility..."
http://tinyurl.com/ya5plrd


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

Accessibility Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility

Association Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/associations

Book Listings.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/books

Cascading Style Sheets Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/css

Color Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/color

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/dreamweaver

Evaluation & Testing Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/testing

Event Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/events

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/flash

Information Architecture Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/architecture

JavaScript Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/javascript

Miscellaneous Web Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/misc

Navigation Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/navigation

PHP Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/php

Sites & Blogs Listing.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/sites

Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/standards

Tool Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/tools

Typography Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/type

Usability Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/usability

XML Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/xml

[Section two ends.]


++END NOTES.


+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how
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http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist
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
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if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN
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+ 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 at d.umn.edu

[Issue ends.]