[webdev] Web Design Update: April 3, 2015

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Fri Apr 3 06:04:47 CDT 2015 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 41, April 3, 2015.

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

++ISSUE 41 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: JAVASCRIPT.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: PHP.
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.

I Turned Off Email Images for a Month...and Here's What I Saw
By Kirsti Scott.
"About 30% of email clients, as a default, do not download images. If
you don't change the default settings and look at an email with images
in these programs, all you'll see are text and ALT tags, the
alternative text that shows if an image isn't displayed..."
https://www.hotdesign.com/marketing/i-turned-off-email-images/

Improving Online Accessibility for Students a Major Issue for Schools
By Bridget McCrea.
"...'A lot of people just don't think about it and they don't realize
that it's our legal obligation,' says Burgstahler. 'It's also our
ethical obligation to include students with disabilities in the
[conversation] when we decide to give people access to educational
content'..."
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/03/27/online-accessibility-520/

Accessibility Wins Launches - Share Your Accessible User Interfaces
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"When I talk with fellow web designers and developers about user
interfaces and accessibility, they want to learn more..."
http://www.lireo.com/accessibility-wins-launches-share-your-accessible-user-interfaces/

Accessibility Wins
By Marcy Sutton.
"Showcasing accessible user interfaces..."
http://a11ywins.tumblr.com/

Web Accessibility: Is Your Content Ready for Everyone?
By Mindy Charski.
"Amy Ruell has been blind since birth, but software programs called
screen readers help her read web content-that is, if websites are
created in a way that makes their information accessible and usable
for her, which is not always the case..."
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/Web-Accessibility-Is-Your-Content-Ready-for-Everyone-102447.htm

MOOCs for Everyone, but the Deaf
By Howard A. Rosenblum.
"As a deaf person, these videos are not accessible because not all the
videos have captions. Of the very few videos that have captions, many
have errors and are not of the appropriate quality. Thousands of
videos have no captions at all. As head of a national advocacy
organization for deaf and hard of hearing people, I'm astounded that
these prestigious schools are not providing equal access. If a small
non-profit organization like the NAD can caption its videos, then why
can't everyone else? There's nothing really fancy about it. Television
shows are broadcast with captions that anyone can turn on..."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-mooc-access-20150321-story.html

Accessibility Roles - Role and Gender Identity
By Dylan Barrell.
"In accessibility, the user interface development best practice is: if
it is a button, just use a button, if its a link, just use a link.
This sometimes invokes the question, "What is a link and what is a
button?"..."
http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2015/03/accessibility-roles-role-and-gender.html

Scribd Must Comply With The Americans With Disabilities Act
By Eric Goldman.
"...Such activism has a steep cost. The court's conclusion seems to
apply equally to all other online content retailers-a universe of tens
of thousands of sites-and could extend to every online retailer. That
makes the opinion's potential reach breathtaking, with enormous
financial implications..."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2015/03/26/scribd-must-comply-with-the-americans-with-disabilities-act/

Scribd Opinion and Order
By Judge William K. Sessions III.
"...Scribd's motion to dismiss is denied..."
http://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/vermont/vtdce/2:2014cv00162/24384/30/0.pdf

The Low-Vision Experience with an iPad
By Ted Drake.
"I've met many small business owners with low vision that love using
an iPad, or other tablet, as their key device. "
http://www.last-child.com/the-low-vision-experience-with-an-ipad/

GOALS Web Accessibility Cost Case Study
By Gaining Online Accessible Learning through Self-Study (GOALS).
"This report provides the experiences of 6 institutions of higher
education and some of the costs they incurred as they worked to
improve accessibility on their campus. So what did we learn by these
case studies?..."
http://www.ncdae.org/goals/costcase/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Accessibility Support for CSS Generated Content
By Leonie Watson.
"The CSS before/after pseudo-selectors can be used to insert content
into a page. In some situations this technique is a useful thing to
do, but how do browsers and screen readers handle the generated
content?
http://tink.uk/accessibility-support-for-css-generated-content/

Test CSS Background Images
By David MacDonald.
"Here are some examples of CSS background and inline CSS Content
images. I've added an aria-label for alternate text and role="img". At
the bottom of the page there is a results table with testing on
assitive technology for reverse video modes, and screen readers."
http://davidmacd.com/blog/css-background-images.html

An Introduction to the CSS will-change Property
By Nick Salloum.
"In this article, we're going to take a look at the CSS will-change
property, what it is, when and how to use it, and how not to use
it..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/introduction-css-will-change-property/

Understanding Flex Direction
By Estelle Weyl.
"If you need help understanding the main axis versus the cross axis in
terms of flex direction, hopefully this helps..."
http://www.standardista.com/understanding-flex-direction/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

If Everything is Urgent, Nothing is Urgent
By Jason Megginson.
"AT CSUN 2015 I had the pleasure of attending many great sessions. As
an Accessibility Consultant myself, a quote from the session titled
'Targeting an Exceptional Online Shopping Experience' really resonated
with me; 'if everything is urgent, nothing is urgent'..."
http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/everything-urgent-nothing-urgent/

Moderated vs. Unmoderated Usability Testing: Which is Better?
By Jerry Cao.
"When it comes to usability testing, one of the most important
decisions you'll make is whether someone should moderate the
session..."
http://blog.uxpin.com/6342/moderated-vs-unmoderated-usability-testing-better/

10 Threats to the Quality Of Online Research
By Jeff Sauro.
"...But just because it's easier to collect data, doesn't mean it's
easier to generate high-quality findings..."
http://www.measuringu.com/blog/ten-threats.php


+04: EVENTS.

Learn HTML5 from W3C
Starts June 1, 2015.
Online.
https://www.edx.org/course/learn-html5-w3c-w3cx-html5-1x

OpenWebCamp
August 1, 2015.
San Jose, California, U.S.A.
http://openwebcamp.com/


+05: HTML5.

No More Excuses - a 'HTML5 Now' Talk at Codemotion Rome
By Christian Heilmann.
"Yesterday I closed up the 'inspiration' track of Codemotion Rome with
a talk about the state of browsers and how we as developers make it
much too hard for ourselves. You can see the slides on Slideshare and
watch a screencast on YouTube..."
http://christianheilmann.com/2015/03/29/no-more-excuses-an-html5-now-talk-at-codemotion-rome/


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

ES6 Generators in Depth
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Generators, a new feature of ECMAScript 6 [4], are functions that can
be paused and resumed. This helps with many applications: iterators,
asynchronous programming, etc. This blog post explains how generators
work and gives an overview of their applications..."
http://www.2ality.com/2015/03/es6-generators.html

Let Links Be Links
By  Ross Penman.
"...It doesn't matter if somebody visits a website on a $2,000 iMac,
or a $50 Android tablet, or the $5 web client of a future we can't
even imagine yet-in theory, at least. In practice, it's important to
make sure that we don't sacrifice the experiences of a small number of
users just so we can slightly improve the experiences of the rest,
damaging the universal nature of the web in the process."
http://alistapart.com/article/let-links-be-links


+07: NAVIGATION.

How to Check Broken Links on Your Website
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"Broken links on websites. Nobody wants them..."
http://www.lireo.com/check-broken-links-on-your-website/

3.2.3 Consistent Navigation
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"Navigational mechanisms that are repeated on multiple Web pages
within a set of Web pages occur in the same relative order each time
they are repeated, unless a change is initiated by the user. (Level
AA)..."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2015/03/3-2-3-consistent-navigation/


+08: PHP.

PHP Renewed - The New Face of PHP
By Eli White.
"PHP has evolved significantly since its early days as a templating
language. In the first installment of a four-part series on modern-day
PHP programming, PHP expert Eli White examines some of the
advancements in PHP 5.3 and higher. Get up to speed on namespaces,
traits, closures, generators, and more..."
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-php-renewed_1/index.html


+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

(Font Awesome) Your Icon Fonts are Not Accessible...
By Dylan Barrell.
"Please do two things: 1) Remove the mis-representation from your web
site until you have properly fixed the problem, so that you do not
continue to make the web a worse place for people with disabilities,
2) Fix the accessibility problems properly..."
https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/6133


+10: USABILITY.

The Best Icon is a Text Label
By Thomas Byttebier.
"...So let me repeat: don't use an icon if its meaning isn't a 100%
clear to everyone. When in doubt, skip the icon. Reside to simple
copy. A text label is always clearer..."
http://thomasbyttebier.be/blog/the-best-icon-is-a-text-label

Simplicity Must be the Mantra of the Digital Workplace
By Gerry McGovern.
"Employees are reaching a breaking point. They are exhausted and
overwhelmed, alienated and disengaged. They are cynical and
distrustful..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/simplicity-must-be-mantra-digital-workplace

Making Simple Ideas Simpler
By Jenny Reeve.
"Simplicity, or the lack thereof, is one of the first things users
notice as they acquaint themselves with a new interface. To make that
first impression positive, UX designers should strive to further
simplify even their most seemingly simple designs, not only for the
sake of creating a delightful user experience, but also to give their
digital product a competitive edge..."
http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/making-simple-ideas-simpler/

Native Scrolling
By Anselm Hannemann.
"...For altering the default scroll speed I honestly couldn't come up
with a valid use-case. ..."
https://helloanselm.com/2015/altering-scroll-behavior/

Change Blindness: Why People Don't See What Designers Expect Them To See
By Kathryn Whitenton.
"People often overlook new visual details added to an existing image.
This change blindness can affect critical information such as error
messages and navigation menus, leading to user confusion and task
failure. Luckily, with the right visual presentation you can
dramatically reduce the likelihood of change blindness..."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/change-blindness/


+11: XML.

The SVG Canvas, Coordinate System, And Viewport
By Steven Bradley.
"When you see SVG images on the screen you're viewing only part of the
canvas on which they're drawn and you view the canvas through the SVG
viewport. Canvas and viewport are both independent and connected and
their relationship can be confusing and lead to unexpected results at
times. That is until you understand the relationship and how to
control the connection..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-viewport/

Diving into the Deep End - A Discussion on SVG, Angular, and Accessibility
By Sam Joehl.
"The first session I attended was entitled Diving into the Deep End: A
Discussion on SVG, Angular, and Accessibility, presented by the fine
Simply Accessible team..."
http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/diving-deep-end-discussion-svg-angular-accessibility/


[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.


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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.]

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