+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 04, July 23, 2010.

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

++ISSUE 04 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: EVENTS.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: PHP.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
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.

Designing Accessible Icons (Part 1 of 2) 
By Tom Waterhouse.
"...these are a few key items to be aware of from an accessibility point of view. In the next section we'll be covering off the actual designing of an accessible and useful icon."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2010/designing-accessible-icons-part-1-of-2/

Long Text Alternative: Why Describe a Graph?
By Rachel McAlpine.
"...The WCAG 2.0 guidelines are flexible, and you'll see there are numerous ways to meet the requirements..."
http://contented.com/contented/?p=1477


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

How to Use CSS3 Media Queries to Create a Mobile Version of Your Website
By Rachel Andrew.
"CSS3 continues to both excite and frustrate web designers and developers. We are excited about the possibilities that CSS3 brings, and the problems it will solve, but also frustrated by the lack of support in Internet Explorer 8. This article will demonstrate a technique that uses part of CSS3 that is also unsupported by Internet Explorer 8. However, it doesn't matter as one of the most useful places for this module is somewhere that does have a lot of support - small devices such as the iPhone, and Android devices..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/19/how-to-use-css3-media-queries-to-create-a-mobile-version-of-your-website/

Bulletproof CSS3 Media Queries
By Vladimir Carrer.
"...CSS3 Media Queries are cheap and easy way to optimize your web site for various devices. With this solution you can safely cover 99% of PC browsers and the modern mobile browsers (iPhone, iPad, Android, new webkit BlackBerry and the new Opera Browsers)."
http://www.vcarrer.com/2010/07/bulletproof-css3-media-queries.html

My Thoughts on LESS
By Inayaili de Leon.
"I've started using LESS a few months ago on a few projects. LESS allows you to extend the way you write CSS, letting you use variables, nested selectors, operations and mixins. It sounds great - and it is great - but there are a few things that can make it work against you. These are some of my thoughts on LESS."
http://webdesignernotebook.com/css/my-thoughts-on-less/

Working Around CSS3 Hacks
By Adrian Roselli.
"Until CSS3 is a final specification, we can expect to see browser makers attempting to implement some of the ideas on their own, sometimes with a nod to the forthcoming spec and sometimes without a clear correlation...."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2010/07/working-around-css3-hacks.html


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Myth #22: Usability Testing is Expensive
By Zoltan Gocza.
"...usability tests can be both fast and relatively cheap. You don't need expensive prototypes; low-tech paper prototype tests can also bring valuable results. You don't need a lot of participants either, even 5 users can be enough to test for specific tasks, and the recruiting can also be done guerilla-style. For many projects, you can even use remote and unmoderated tests..."
http://uxmyths.com/post/831431504/myth-22-usability-testing-is-expensive

Groundhog Day, or, the Problem with A/B Testing
By Jeff Atwood.
"...That's the problem with A/B testing. It's empty. It has no feeling, no empathy, and at worst, it's dishonest..."
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/07/groundhog-day-or-the-problem-with-ab-testing.html


+04: EVENTS.

Learn HTML5 with John Allsopp
Starts July 26, 2010.
Online.
http://courses.sitepoint.com/html5-live

Learn CSS3 with John Allsopp
Starts August 16, 2010.
Online.
http://courses.sitepoint.com/css3-live

Accessibility London Unconference
September 21, 2010.
London, United Kingdom.
http://events.linkedin.com/Accessibility-London-Unconference/pub/374071


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

jQuery, A Designer's Perspective
By Emily Lewis.
"...This article only touches on the smallest bit of what jQuery can do for you. There is so much more than the pre-built jQuery UI widgets I've demonstrated. Not only are there interactions - such as resizing, draggability  and droppability  - that are easy for designers to use straight away, but once you get more proficient, you can modify and create your own custom functionality..."
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptjunkie/ff848255.aspx

JavaScript Minification Part II
By Nicholas C. Zakas.
"Variable naming can be a source of coding angst for humans trying to understand code. Once you're sure that a human doesn't need to interpret your JavaScript code, variables simply become generic placeholders for values. Nicholas C. Zakas shows us how to further minify JavaScript by replacing local variable names with the YUI Compressor."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/javascript-minification-part-II/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Design Is a Process, Not a Methodology
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit.
"...I'll provide an overview of a product design process, then discuss some indispensable activities that are part of an effective design process, with a particular focus on those activities that are essential for good interaction design. Although this column focuses primarily on activities that are typically the responsibility of interaction designers, this discussion of the product design process applies to all aspects of UX design."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/07/design-is-a-process-not-a-methodology.php


+07: NAVIGATION.

Faceted Navigation: Typical Structures for Values
By James Kalbach.
"Facets are categories that describe the properties of an object or collection of objects. Facet categories then have values. In faceted navigation schemes, the values are the things you click on to navigate to a set of items or to filter a list. The type of structure that those values have, however, can vary depending on the type of facet you are dealing with..."
http://experiencinginformation.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/faceted-navigation-typical-structures-for-values/

What's the Best Search Box Size?
By Christian Watson.
"...thought it would be interesting to review the search boxes of web retailers to see if there were any best practices that could be learned from them regarding search box size..."
http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/002015.php


+08: PHP.

Deciphering Magic Methods in PHP
By Steve Guidetti.
"PHP provides a number of 'magic' methods that allow you to do some pretty neat tricks in object oriented programming. These methods, identified by a two underscore prefix (__), function as interceptors that are automatically called when certain conditions are met. Magic methods provide some extremely useful functionality, and this tutorial will demonstrate each method's use..."
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/deciphering-magic-methods-in-php/

10 Easy Examples for Deciphering PHP Regular Expressions
By W. Jason Gilmore.
"Regular expressions are the PHP programmer's equivalent of being audited by the IRS. The mere thought of an encounter is enough to cause heart palpitations. This isn't entirely without reason; after all, regular expression syntax is almost as indecipherable as the United States tax code, resulting in an almost automatic need to consult a manual every time the programmer needs to perform a particularly complex parsing task..."
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/Regular-Expressions/Jason_Gilmore072010.php3


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

The Core Mission of W3C
By Jeff Jaffe.
"...Since HTML5 is core, it is important that we as a community get it 'right'. Since it is central to the next generation web, it evokes strong opinions about what it means to 'get it right'. And as I listened to the opinions they are all well reasoned and based on knowledgeable and sensible views of how the future web will evolve..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2010/07/the_core_mission_of_w3c.html

HTML5 in W3C Cheatsheet
By Dominique Hazael-Massieux. 
"From the very first release of the cheatsheet, I've received requests to include the various new elements and attributes of the HTML5 specification in the cheatsheet. As a reminder, the cheatsheet is a mobile-friendly Web application that provides a compilation of useful knowledge extracted from W3C specifications..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2010/07/html5_in_w3c_cheatsheet.html

HTML5 Change Proposal: Correct and Improve <img> Conformance Checker Guidance 
Editor Laura Carlson.
"The Web Initiative Accessibility Coordination Group (WAI CG) convened a special task force in 2009 to study HTML ISSUE-31 comprehensively. The group provided a holistic solution to the problem which contains a number of pieces that work together to enable automatic validators to programmatically detect the presence or absence of text alternatives on the <img> element in order for <img> to be considered valid. This proposal implements WAI CG's recommendation. It improves the current conformance checkers guidance for short text alternatives by..."
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126

5 Reasons Why You Can Use HTML5 Today
By Craig Buckler.
"In our recent poll, almost half the respondents stated it was too early to use HTML5, while 3% claimed they would never use it. While risks exist, there are several good reasons to invest in HTML5 today..." 
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/07/20/5-reasons-why-you-can-use-html5-today/ 
    

+10: USABILITY.

Achieving and Balancing Consistency in User Interface Design
By Michael Zuschlag.
"Consistency is a fundamental design principle for usable user interfaces." 
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/07/achieving-and-balancing-consistency-in-user-interface-design.php

Complete Beginner's Guide to Content Strategy
By Andrew Maier.
"A common occurrence: you or someone you know wants to create content and have it published online. A slightly less common occurrence? Having that same someone articulate high aspirations for their content. For those select few, instead of creating content destined for some digital landfill, their content is special; it's going places and it's taking them, their brand, and their experience with it..."
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/complete-beginners-guide-to-content-strategy/


+11: XML.

SVG with a Little Help from Raphael
By Brian Suda.
"Want to make fancy, interactive, scalable vector graphics (SVGs) that look beautiful at any resolution and degrade with grace? Brian Suda urges you to consider Raphael for your SVG heavy lifting."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/svg-with-a-little-help-from-raphael/


[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 to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit:
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 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.]