[webdev] Web Design Update: June 10, 2011

Fri Jun 10 06:45:06 CDT 2011

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 50, June 10, 2011.

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

++ISSUE 50 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: DREAMWEAVER.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
11: TYPOGRAPHY.
12: USABILITY.

SECTION TWO:
13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

3 Questions to Determine Whether Your Blog Theme Designer Gives a Rip
About Accessibility
By Glenda Watson Hyatt.
"...Here are three questions to ask when searching for a theme
designer with knowledge and experience with web accessibility..."
http://blogaccessibility.com/3-questions-to-determine-whether-your-blog-theme-designer-gives-a-rip-about-accessibility/

Text Descriptions and Emotion Rich Images
By Leonie Watson.
"This article was first posted in 2007 on the eAccess blog. Three
years later and I still believe that emotion rich images are important
to blind people, particularly those who once had sight (and that's
most of us). Results from the third WebAIM screen reader survey
suggest I'm not alone, so I'm reposting the article here to encourage
the debate to continue..."
http://tink.co.uk/2011/06/text-descriptions-emotion-rich-images/

Introducing The ChromeVox Blog
By Google.
ChromeVox represents the next step in leveraging Web technology for
improving the state of universal information access. This blog will
cover the history and evolution of such solutions and lay out the
long-term vision for access technologies built on the Web..."
http://chromevox.blogspot.com/2011/05/introducing-chromevox-blog.html?spref=tw

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Fluid Images
By Ethan Marcotte.
"We are pleased to present a portion of Chapter 3 of Responsive Web
Design by Ethan Marcotte (A Book Apart, 2011). This chapter follows a
previous chapter on fluid grids, expanding upon that grid with fluid
images..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fluid-images/

Where are the Poster Children for Responsive Design?
By Andy Budd.
"In my previous post I stated that while I didn't think responsive
design was the right approach for every mobile experience, it was
appropriate for 90% of cases and should become the natural default
option..."
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2011/06/where_are_the_poster_children_for_respon/

Spinning the Web
By Eric A. Meyer.
"Can CSS create art? That's a question I set out to explore recently,
and I like to think that the answer is yes. You can judge for
yourself: Spinning the Web, a photo set on Flickr..."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2011/06/03/spinning-the-web/

Cascading Style Sheets Standard Boasts Unprecedented Interoperability
By W3C.
"W3C announced new levels of support today for Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS), the language for adding style to Web content. W3C released an
update to the core CSS standard, CSS 2.1, to reflect the current state
of support for CSS features, and to serve as the stable foundation for
future extensions..."
http://www.w3.org/News/2011.html#entry-9116

CSS 2.1 is Finally Final
By Adrian A. Roselli.
"W3C It's only been 13 years, but CSS version 2.1 is now officially a
W3C Recommendation - essentially meaning the specification is final.
Which of course means you are now all free to use it in your web
pages..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2011/06/css-21-is-finally-final.html

CSS Mask-Image and Text
By Trent Walton.
"I recently wrote about Controlling Web Typography and focused on CSS
pseudo selectors & down-to-the-letter control. As a web designer, I
want the same level of control over type that print designers have,
including texture. There are currently 2 webkit CSS properties that
I've grown to love and hope gain more traction & browser support. My
favorite would have to be background-clip:text, but it currently
degrades poorly. A close second is mask-image, which you can apply to
text..."
http://trentwalton.com/2011/05/19/mask-image-text/

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

New Dreamweaver Feature: W3C Validator Integration
By Greg Rewis.
"...When you're ready to validate your page, simply click the W3C
Validator button and choose whether you want the local page on your
computer validated or a page on a server. If you have any errors, they
will appear in the W3C Validation panel..."
http://blog.assortedgarbage.com/2011/06/new-dreamweaver-feature-w3c-validator-integration/

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

The Myth of the One-Way Mirror
By Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain.
"...There are many ways in which we can conduct user research-using a
one-way mirror is just one option. Although we do not think doing
research in a lab with a two-way mirror is always the best option in
all situations, we do think it can provide value in certain
situations-especially if you follow best practices and give the proper
attention to the needs of participants. But, in this column, we wanted
to point out that there are alternatives to using a lab with a one-way
mirror that have worked well for us over the years. Ultimately, our
goal is to ensure that participants are comfortable, understand their
role in our design projects, and provide the best product feedback
possible..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/06/the-myth-of-the-one-way-mirror.php

The Impact Number Formats Have on Judgment and Decision Making
By Colleen Roller.
"...People use data in decision making only when they can glean
meaning from it. They derive meaning through their ability to
visualize data or to judge the value of something by making a
comparison against a reference point or within the context of upper
and lower bounds. Even though we can't say people always understand
frequencies better than probabilities in percentage formats, we can
rely on the consistency of the process people use to derive value and
meaning-the process of comparison within the context that we provide.
UX designers can play a pivotal role in driving effective consumer
decision making by architecting decision making contexts that enable
people to easily derive meaning from numeric data. Remember, the ease
with which people can derive meaning dictates the extent to which they
will use data."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/06/the-impact-number-formats-have-on-judgment-and-decision-making.php

+05: EVENTS.

e-Access 11
June 28, 2011.
London, United Kingdom
http://www.headstar.com/eaccess11/

MERLOT/Sloan-C Conference Emerging Technologies Conference
July 11- 13, 2011.
San Jose, California, U.S.A.
http://sloanconsortium.org/et4online

CSS Summit 2011
July 26-27, 2011.
Online Conference.
http://environmentsforhumans.com/2011/css-summit/

+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Comparing User Research Methods for Information Architecture
By Jim Ross.
"...Nowadays, there are multiple techniques and tools, both online and
offline, for generative and evaluative user research for information
architecture (IA), which provide greater insights on organizing and
labeling information..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/06/comparing-user-research-methods-for-information-architecture.php

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Why a JavaScript Hater Thinks Everyone Needs to Learn JavaScript in
the Next Year
By Mike Loukides.
"...Recently, we've seen some extremely important game-changers:
jQuery, JSON, Node.js, and HTML5. JavaScript may have been a perfectly
adequate language in the past, but these changes (and a few others
that I'll point out) have made JavaScript a language that is essential
for every developer to know. If there's one language you need to learn
in the next year, it's JavaScript..."
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/time-to-learn-javascript.html

Modern Debugging Tips and Tricks
By Tiffany B. Brown.
"Making sure that your site works as expected in different browsers
and devices can challenge even the most savvy web worker. Join Tiffany
B. Brown as she explains error throwing and handling, code injection,
and mobile debugging using JavaScript."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/modern-debugging-tips-and-tricks/

Ten Oddities And Secrets About JavaScript
By Andy Croxall.
"This article is aimed at intermediate developers who are curious
about more advanced JavaScript. It is a collection of JavaScript's
oddities and well-kept secrets. Some sections will hopefully give you
insight into how these curiosities can be useful to your code, while
other sections are pure WTF material. So, let's get started..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/30/10-oddities-and-secrets-about-javascript/

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Knowledge / Importance Matrix for Wiki Project Coordination
By Mike Myles and Karen Smith.
"...a K/I Matrix is a relatively simple tool that you can add to any
development process's set of tracking tools to gain new insights and
recognize opportunities you might otherwise overlook."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/06/knowledge-importance-matrix-for-wiki-project-coordination.php

+09: NAVIGATION.

Planning And Implementing Website Navigation
By Kayla Knight.
"...Designing navigation is an art in itself, and designers become
better at it with experience. It's all about using good information
architecture: 'the art of expressing a model or concept of information
used in activities that require explicit details of complex
systems.'..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/06/planning-and-implementing-website-navigation/

+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Schema.org and Pre-Existing Communities
By Henri Sivonen.
"I have been reading tweets and blog posts expressing various levels
of disappointment and unhappiness about schema.org not using RDFa, not
using Microformats or not having been developed in the open with the
community. Since other people's perspectives differ from mine, I feel
compelled to write down my take.."
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/schema-org-and-communities/

HTML5 Data- Attribute - Feed Content to Scripts
By Niels Matthijs.
"For most of you the new html5 data- attribute should be quite
familiar by now. It was one of the first additions of html5 to become
available right away. No problems with backwards compatibility, no
browsers/browser versions being a pain in the ass, just clear and easy
to use..."
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/html5-data-attribute-scripts-content-feeder

+11: TYPOGRAPHY.

Fonts, Typography, And How We Read Online
By Susan Weinschenk.
"I've been a fan of Kevin Larson's writing about fonts, typography and
online reading for some time. I mention him in my latest book, 100
Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People. Kevin is a reading
psychologist that works with typographers at Microsoft. He's part of a
team at Microsoft with a goal to make reading online as easy and
enjoyable as reading from paper. I recently interviewed Kevin for a
podcast."
http://www.whatmakesthemclick.net/2011/06/03/first-podcast-kevin-larson-2/

Effective Use of Typography in Applications for Children
By Catalina Naranjo-Bock.
"...The key thing to appreciate about designing applications for
children is that it offers the perfect chance for freedom of
exploration in the use of digital typography, in combination with
other visual and new media elements such as color, graphics, video,
and animation. However, it is equally important to draw a distinction
between this exploration and the user experience that we seek to
provide. It is vital always to ensure, through user research and
usability testing, that our visual design decisions support optimal
usability and are in accordance with children's developmental stages."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/06/effective-use-of-typography-in-applications-for-children-3.php

+12: USABILITY.

Does (screen) Size Really Matter?
By Andy Budd.
"There's an interesting debate happening in the world of mobile design
at the moment. In one camp we have the 'nativists' who believe that
the best mobile experiences are tailored to a particular device. These
are the people focused on creating platform specific mobile apps and
mobile websites. Then we have the 'universalists' who believe in the
'one web', a place where all content and services can be delivered to
multiple devices through the same URL..."
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2011/06/does_screen_size_really_matter/

International Usability: Big Stuff the Same, Details Differ
By Jakob Nielsen.
"User testing on 3 continents confirmed that the main usability
guidelines hold worldwide, but many other considerations exist to
better support international users."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/international-sites.html

A User-Centred Approach
By Gez Lemon.
"A sensible user-centred approach to inclusive web design is essential
for a successful website and to build trust from your
visitors/clients. Sandi's article outlines 10 basic principles that
all web developers, designers and marketing people should consider
essential reading. The 10 principles are summarised below..."
http://juicystudio.com/article/principles_inclusive_web_design.php

[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

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.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

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.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.

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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.]