[webdev] Web Design Update: October 9, 2014

Thu Oct 9 06:33:14 CDT 2014

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 15, October 9, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 15 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: DRUPAL.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Notes on Fixing Incorrect Table Structure Using ARIA
By Steve Faulkner.
"Use with caution for static table fixes..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/10/notes-on-fixing-incorrect-table-structure-using-aria/

Joining Accessibility and UX for Accessible UX
By David Sloan and Sarah Horton.
David and Sarah's Webvisions conference presentation slides.
http://www.slideshare.net/sloandr/joining-accessibility-and-ux-for-accessible-ux

Accessibility in Higher Education - The TEACH Act
By Jenny Davis.
"Let me start by saying, accessibility is a human rights issue, not an
afterthought..."
http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2014/10/02/accessibility-in-higher-education-the-teach-act/

Future of Accessibility and Video Captions According to Google, Dell,
T-Mobile (Video)
By 3Play Media.
"Published on Feb 10, 2014 - In this session recorded at the Streaming
Media West conference, panelists from Google, Dell, and T-Mobile USA
discuss captioning and transcription best practices, costs and
benefits derived, and tips for implementing accessibility
technologies..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DFKl3MNUHs

Implementation Report
W3C HTML5 Image Description Extension (longdesc)
By Charles McCathie Nevile and Liam R. E. Quin, editors.
"This document is a collection of test results that show the longdesc
attribute as described in the HTML Image Description Extension
(longdesc) specification is implementable, and that independent
implementations are highly interoperable, as required for a W3C
specification to proceed beyond Candidate Recommendation."
http://w3c.github.io/test-results/html-longdesc/cr-report.html

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

16 CSS3 Selectors You Should Know
By Syed Fazle Rahman.
"A selector is the most basic component in the CSS. It determines
which element to match in the DOM and then apply a corresponding set
of styling properties. Here's a definition of the selector from W3C
documentation..."
http://www.htmlxprs.com/post/25/16-css3-selectors-you-should-know

Beware of Selector Nesting in Sass
By Hugo Giraudel.
"Selector nesting is a feature of CSS preprocessors, allowing authors
to nest selectors within selectors in order to create shortcuts. For
instance:..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/beware-selector-nesting-sass/

+03: DRUPAL.

Training the CMS
By Eileen Webb.
"Nothing brings content modeling to life like launching a shiny new
site: teasers fit neatly without any awkward ellipses, images are
cropped perfectly for different screen sizes, related content is
wonderfully relevant. The content strategy comes to life, and all is
right with the world. But for years, my joy was short lived--because it
would only take a couple weeks for things to begin to fall apart..."
http://alistapart.com/article/training-the-cms

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Collaborative User Testing: Less Bias, Better Research
By Alla Kholmatova.
"...Actively engaging in user testing is the most effective way of
learning I know. It's also a great way to avoid arrogance and relate
to the people we are building for. Minimizing bias takes practice,
honesty, and collaboration. But it's worth it."
http://alistapart.com/article/collaborative-user-testing-less-bias-better-research

How Can You Measure UX without Observing Users?
By Jeff Sauro.
"So can you evaluate the user experience without observing users? The
answer is a qualified yes. Under certain circumstances you can get
useful data if you use suitable proxies for direct observation of user
behavior: retrospective accounts, heuristic evaluation, and
keystroke-level modeling (KLM)."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/no-users.php

+05: EVENTS.

Web Directions South
October 30-31, 2014.
Sydney, Australia
http://webdirections.org/wds14/

ConveyUX
January 22-24, 2015.
Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.
http://conveyux.com

Web Accessibility Training
January 27-28, 2015.
Logan, Utah, U.S.A.
http://webaim.org/training/

ConFoo Conference
February 16-20, 2015.
Montreal, Canada
http://confoo.ca/en

Webstock 2015
February 16-20 2015.
Wellington, New Zealand
http://www.webstock.org.nz/

SITE Conference
March 2-6, 2015.
Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
http://site.aace.org/conf/

+06: HTML5.

Why is Viewport in a Meta Tag?
By Bruce Lawson.
"Adam Bradley asked, '@brucel meta is data about data right, so why is
viewport in a meta tag, since they're instructing the browser what to
do & not desc itself?'"
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2014/why-is-viewport-in-a-meta-tag/

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Lazyload (Asynchronous Loading) Your Javascript Files
By Chris Lu.
"An alternative to putting scripts on the bottom, is to lazyload your
scripts. To lazyload your scripts there are three ways i want to show
you..."
https://chris.lu/article/read/506de698268c420f0d000004

5 Array Methods That You Should Be Using Now
By Colin Toh.
"When ECMAScript 5 was published in 3rd Dec' 2009, it brought in
additional new set of Array methods that seeks to improve upon the
existing one..."
http://colintoh.com/blog/5-array-methods-that-you-should-use-today

On Progressive Enhancement
By Lara Schenck.
"This post was originally going to be a summary of themes from
Artifact Conf but, inspired by Jeremy Keith's presentation, I got
preoccupied with progressive enhancement. I also wanted to make this
picture of cookies..."
http://notlaura.com/progressive-enhancement/

EpicFEL: Making Custom Widgets Accessible with ARIA
By Leonie Watson.
"EpicFEL (FrontEnd London) is a conference from Made By Many,
organisers of the monthly FEL meetup. My talk was about making custom
widgets accessible with ARIA..." (Presentation slides)
http://tink.co.uk/2014/10/epicfel-making-custom-widgets-accessible-with-aria/

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Conducting an Effective Stakeholder Interview
By Philip Hodgson.
"There are few things more likely to make your design or UX project
difficult than a poorly conducted stakeholder meeting. Structuring
your stakeholder interview around a few simple techniques will ensure
you get off to a good start and set you up for success."
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/conducting-an-effective-stakeholder-interview.html

+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Decision by Consensus or by Informed Editor; Which is Better?
By Jeff Jaffe.
"There has been discussion in the Web standards community about which
is the better way to advance technical specifications: by a formal
consensus process or by having all decisions made by informed editors
as they informally gather a consensus. After all, the W3C has long
considered consensus a core value of W3C. On the other hand, the
WHATWG describes a process whereby the relevant editor makes the
decisions by trying to see where the consensus is, and is explicit
about eschewing formal consensus. Which approach is better?..."
http://www.w3.org/blog/2014/10/decision-by-consensus-or-by-informed-editor-which-is-better/

+10: USABILITY.

Why Automatic Carousels Suck And Must Be Eliminated From Your Homepage
By Eduardo Esparza.
"The idea of an automatic carrousel is fundamentally flawed for the
following reasons..."
http://blog.market8.net/b2b-web-design-and-inbound-marketing-blog/why-automatic-carousels-suck-and-must-be-eliminated-from-your-homepage

Do You Really Want to do Content Fake Marketing?
By Gerry McGovern.
"...Less clutter, more simplicity. A telco removed 80% of its content
and saw an 80% increase in sales. Think about it: all this content
marketing you're producing could actually be damaging your ability to
do business."
http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/do-you-really-want-do-content-fake-marketing

Related Content Boosts Pageviews, When Done Right
By Hoa Loranger.
"Links that follow up on the user's current interest encourage site
exploration and reduce bounce rates. With the proper invitation,
people will stay longer on your site."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/related-content-pageviews/

Myth #33: Mobile Users Are Distracted
By Zoltan Gocza.
"When thinking of mobile users, many have a stereotypical image of
people on the go, people with the attention span of a goat and
suffering from Mobile User Attention Deficit Disorder..."
http://uxmyths.com/post/99302792550/myth-33-mobile-users-are-distracted

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.

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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.]