+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 9, Issue 34, February 19, 2011. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 34 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: COLOR. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 08: TYPOGRAPHY. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Personalisation for Accessibility By Martyn Cooper. "...The rationale for personalisation for accessibility is clear. Accessibility is essentially dealing with diversity - personalisation avoids the always flawed attempt of doing so by a 'one size fits all' solution..." http://martyncooper.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/personalisation-for-accessibility/ Class Action Lawsuit Against Disney Alleges Inaccessible Websites and Failure to Accommodate Blind Persons in Violation of ADA "Three visually impaired women filed a class action complaint against two Walt Disney companies alleging that Disney's websites relating to its theme parks, hotels and restaurants are inaccessible to the visually impaired, in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act..." http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/02/prweb5073794.htm +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The Bright (Near) Future of CSS By Eric A. Meyer. "This article is an excerpt from Eric Meyer's recent book..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/02/11/the-bright-near-future-of-css/ CSS3 Tests By Eric A. Meyer. "Over the past couple of months, I've been hacking together some CSS3 tests. I did this to try to figure out what should be included in the upcoming fourth edition of the CSS Pocket Reference (and thereafter CSS: The Definitive Guide) and didn't plan to do anything public with them, but at this point, I figure what the heck. Maybe they'll be of interest to others..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2011/02/11/css3-tests/ border-radius Support and the CSS 3 Backgrounds and Borders Module By Tiffany B. Brown. "Last week, the CSS 3 Backgrounds and Borders module became a Candidate Recommendation. That means the specification is stable. Browser vendors can implement these features without a vendor prefix if they haven't already..." http://tiffanybbrown.com/2011/02/12/border-radius-support-and-the-css-3-backgrounds-and-borders-module/ Media Queries 101 By Virginia DeBolt. "Media queries are part of the CSS 3 recommendations that worked beginning with HTML 4 and CSS 2. Lately they have been touted as a solution to designing for mobile devices. The trend has earned the label 'responsive web design.' I thought it was time to look at the basics of media queries..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2011/02/17/media-queries-101/ +03: COLOR. Hue, Saturation, Lightness By Jon Hicks. "I've met quite a few designers who are colourblind, but personally it affects my ability to distinguish between green and brown, or blue and purple. Tones and colour strength I can see, but certain colours are hard to tell apart..." http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/hue-saturation-lightness +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 10 Tips for Benchmark Usability Tests By Jeff Sauro. "To know if design changes improved the usability of an application, you first need a baseline measure of usability from a benchmark test. Here are 10 tips to use when planning your next benchmark test..." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/benchmark-tips.com +05: EVENTS. MIX April 12-14, 2011. Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://live.visitmix.com/ WebDU April 12-14, 2011. Sydney, Australia http://www.webdu.com.au/ Google I/O Developer Conference May 10-11, 2011. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/ Web Directions Unplugged May 12-13 2011. Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. http://unplugged11.webdirections.org/ Future of Web Design May 17-18, 2011. London, United Kingdom. http://futureofwebdesign.com/london-2011/ WebVisions May 25-27, 2011. Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. http://www.webvisionsevent.com/ International PHP Conference May 29-June 11, 2011. Berlin, Germany http://phpconference.com/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Video: Rich Ziade and Jeffrey Zeldman Discuss Readability at School of Visual Arts By Jeffrey Zeldman. http://www.zeldman.com/2011/02/11/video-rich-ziade-jeffrey-zeldman-discuss-readability-at-school-of-visual-arts/ +07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML5 Accessibility Chops: The placeholder Attribute By Steve Faulkner "The placeholder attribute can be used to place text inside an empty input type="text" or textarea, the text is removed when the element receives focus." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=751 W3C Confirms May 2011 for HTML5 Last Call, Targets 2014 for HTML5 Standard By W3C. "W3C today extended the charter of the HTML Working Group with clear milestones for HTML5, the cornerstone of W3C's Open Web Platform for application development. In May 2011, the Working Group will advance HTML5 to "Last Call," an invitation to communities inside and outside W3C to confirm the technical soundness of the specification. The group will then shift focus to gathering implementation experience. W3C is developing a comprehensive test suite to achieve broad interoperability for the full specification by 2014, the target date for Recommendation..." http://www.w3.org/2011/02/htmlwg-pr.html.en HTML5 Will Be Done in 2014, What Comes Next? By Scott Gilbertson. "...Whether it's in the spec or separate APIs, both Jacobs and Le Hegaret believe that at least some of the features in future versions of HTML may well involve the collision of the web and television. Netflix, Sony and LG all recently joined the W3C and are interested in what will happen as more televisions begin to connect directly to the web. Television on the web will likely bring a new set of requirements - possibly new tags, new APIs and a whole new platform looking to implement them. Le Hegaret says that there have already been proposals for features in HTML.next, though nothing is official just yet...." http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/02/html5-will-be-done-in-2014-what-comes-next/ A Few HTML5 Questions That Need Answering By Christian Heilmann. "I just released the notes of my 'Using HTML5 sensibly' talk over on the Mozilla hacks blog and there are a few questions that need answering by anyone who wants to be part of publishing on the web in the future..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/2011/02/14/a-few-html5-questions-that-need-answering/ Conformance, Tests and Specifications - a Tabloid Life By Karl Dubost. "At a regular pace in a tabloid fashion, we can see different people throwing at the face of each people their table of numbers, of greens and reds. Each of these tables showing percentages, scores and used as a flag for claiming a virtue of conformance to the specification. 'We are a modern browser', 'We have a score of 100% for HTML5', etc. Let's make it clear. These are wrong assessments of Conformance..." http://my.opera.com/karlcow/blog/2011/02/15/conformance-specifications +08: TYPOGRAPHY. Type Study: An All CSS Button By Dan Cederholm. "This is part of a series of guest posts covering tips and tricks for working with fonts on the web. Today's post was written by Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits..." http://blog.typekit.com/2011/02/10/type-study-an-all-css-button/ +09: USABILITY. Why Whitespace Matters By Paul Boag. "In this post I aim to explain why whitespace matters and how to keep whitespace in a design without compromising business objectives. However, before I can do that we need to be clear what we mean by whitespace..." http://boagworld.com/design/why-whitespace-matters/ Are Marketing Images Damaging Your Website? By Gerry McGovern. "There is growing evidence that traditional marketing imagery reduces the credibility and trustworthiness of a website..." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2011/nt-2011-02-14-Marketing-images.htm Non-Profit Organization Websites: Increasing Donations and Volunteering By Jakob Nielsen. "Giving money on charity websites is 7% harder than spending money on e-commerce sites. Donating physical items is even harder. For non-profit websites, social media is secondary; the top priority is to write clearer content. " http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nonprofit-donations.html [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +10: 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. + SUBSCRIPTION INFO. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webdev_listserv.html 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.]