+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 42, April 16, 2011.

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

++ISSUE 42 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: JAVASCRIPT.
06: SITES & BLOGS.
07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
08: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Keyboard Accessibility (again)
By Roger Johansson.
"I feel like a broken record (you know, the really old ones made of vinyl) repeating myself over and over about keyboard accessibility, but unfortunately things don't really seem like they're getting better. There are so many places on the Web that are annoying, difficult or plain impossible to use without a mouse. And it really shouldn't be that way..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201104/keyboard_accessibility_again/

Getting Accessibility Testing Right
By Leonie Watson.
"When it comes to accessibility testing, there are three approaches. Automated testing, manual testing and user centred testing. All three have their uses, and all three have their limitations. Understanding how they fit together is the key to successful accessibility testing..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2011/getting-accessibility-testing-right/

The Art of Accessibility
By James Edwards.
"Some designers and developers object to having to cater for accessibility. The argument I've heard most often is that the demands of accessibility are too restrictive, limit creativity, or undermine design aesthetics. In other words, accessibility limits artistic freedom, and that's unacceptable. I could try to refute that on the grounds of practical ethics - the aesthetic preferences of one are simply not important, when stacked up against the functional needs of another. But there's another way of looking at it, less likely to be seen as an accusation, and perhaps more strongly resonant with the nature of the creative mind; and it's this - a restriction is also an inspiration; an issue is an idea..."
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/the-art-of-accessibility/

As Schools Shift to Google Apps, Blind Students Object
By Mark Jaycox.
"Universities increasingly outsource e-mail and other services to companies like Google-but if Google's software isn't usable by all students, are the schools breaking the law?..."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/as-schools-shift-to-google-apps-blind-students-object.ars

Web Accessibility - 10 Common Developer Mistakes
By Joseph C. Dolson.
"The most common mistakes made in web accessibility have more to do with a failure to understand what constitutes accessible content than with a failure to understand the technology. In order to avoid gross web accessibility errors, understand one fundamental concept of web accessibility: What you see is not what you get. "
http://developer.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2711-Web-Accessibility-10-Common-Developer-Mistakes

Caption It Yourself - Basic Guidelines for Busy Teachers, Families, and Others Who Shoot Their Own Video 
By Bill Stark.
"Captions (sometimes called 'subtitles') are the textual representation of a video's soundtrack. They are critical for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, and they are also a great tool for improving the reading and listening skills of others. If you upload video to the Web, and that video includes sound, you should always include a text alternative, such as captions. As an added bonus, since most captioning for the Web relies on text, providing captions for your videos will ensure that they are indexed by search engines more quickly and accurately, meaning your video will reach more people."
http://www.dcmp.org/ciy/

How Blind People See the Internet
By John Herrman.
"Your eyes are absorbing this Web page. They're passing over this, this, then this word, right now... But for millions of others - those who are unable to see - the Web is a wildly different place. Characters become sounds. Layouts are meaningless. Images are, at best, words and, at worst, blank spaces. And yet the blind browse the same Internet as everyone else, every day. They use the same gadgets the sighted do, and happily. But how?..."
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/01/6390761-how-blind-people-see-the-internet


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Attribute Selectors - They're Unicorns and Rainbows
By Virginia DeBolt.
There are many types of selectors in CSS. If you're still making your way through the darkness with nothing more than a few element selectors, a few classes, some ids, and the occasional pseudo selector, you need to find your way into the light with attribute selectors.
http://www.webteacher.ws/2011/04/14/attribute-selectors-theyre-unicorns-and-rainbows/

Seeing the Matrix()
by Eric A. Meyer.
"Over the weekend, Aaron Gustafson and I created a tool for anyone who wants to resolve a series of CSS transforms into a matrix() value representing the same end state. Behold: The Matrix Resolutions. (You knew that was coming, right?) It should work fine in various browsers, though due to the gratuitous use of keyframe animations on the html element's multiple background images it looks best in WebKit browsers..."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2011/04/12/seeing-the-matrix/

Safe CSS Defaults
By Divya Manian.
"You know those nights when you race towards a deadline, banging out the CSS as fast as you can, there comes a moment when you pauseÉwondering what keyword would get rid of that z-index on that anchor, then you make the best guess you can, and type..."
http://nimbupani.com/safe-css-defaults.html


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Why Not Use Personas?
By David Anderson.
"I'm a big fan of Indi Young's Mental Models. Once you've seen and actually held in your hands one of the diagrams that comes out of her process, you'll realize just how flawed personas are..."
http://www.attentionmessageaction.com/content/why-not-use-personas


+04: EVENTS.

Good Experience Live (GEL) Conference
April 28-29, 2011.
New York, New York, U.S.A.
http://gelconference.com/11/

Two Apps Per Day: iOS App Design Workshop For Web Designers
April 30, 2011.
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
http://www.twoappsperday.com/

Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) Conference
May 26, 2011.
Missoula, Montana, U.S.A.
http://ahead.org/affiliates/nrahead/conference


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

JavaScript Garden
By Ivo Wetzel and Zhang Yi Jiang.
"JavaScript Garden is a growing collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language. It gives advice to avoid common mistakes, subtle bugs, as well as performance issues and bad practices that non-expert JavaScript programmers may encounter on their endeavors into the depths of the language..."
http://bonsaiden.github.com/JavaScript-Garden/


+06: SITES & BLOGS.

Attention, Message, Action
By David Anderson.
A blog about content strategy in higher ed.
http://www.attentionmessageaction.com


+07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS

HTML5 Document Outline Revisited
By Roger Johansson.
"Since posting HTML5 sectioning elements, headings, and document outlines I've received a fair amount of feedback about my reasoning. None of the feedback I got has made me change my mind about how to use the sectioning elements in HTML5. So going forward, these are my conclusions..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201104/html5_document_outline_revisited/

The Ultimate HTML5 Tutorials and Useful Techniques
By Dzine Press.
"We always prefer new technology and techniques for make better performance in our work, we're talking about new new fundamental markup language for the web - HTML5 that you all love so much. HTML5 is giving web designers and developers new capabilities in the world of web development. With the presence of HTML5, web application development will be more fun..."
http://www.dzinepress.com/2011/04/the-ultimate-html5-tutorials-and-useful-techniques/

Are Doctypes the New Lunch Tables?
By Jrffery Zeldman.
"Viewing source has gotten pretty rad these days! Looking around the web, a good command + u (yes, I use Firefox/Mac) can provide an afternoon of exciting show and tell. One thing I like to look into is at which DTD table everyone is sitting these days. When the HTML5 doctype was introduced, some folks grabbed it and never looked back to the land of system identifiers again; others were cool with rocking a doctype that has been working for them for the last decade or so. This has caused some separation between those who see the choice as the past versus those who see it as the future. The cool table versus the lame table..."
http://cognition.happycog.com/article/are-doctypes-the-new-lunch-tables


+08: USABILITY.

Information Production Explodes, Consumption Stagnates
By Gerry McGovern.
"...In modern societies, the challenge is not freedom of information but rather freedom from the unimaginable quantities of low level, useless, distracting and confusing information that is being produced at ever increasing speeds. As the long tail grows it becomes harder and harder to find the long neck."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2011/nt-2011-04-11-Information-production.htm

Incompetent Research Skills Curb Users' Problem Solving
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Users increasingly rely on individual pages listed by search engines instead of finding better ways to tackle problems." 
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search-skills.html

The New 'Redesign Must Die' Talk
By Louis Rosenfeld.
"This presentation is an updated version of my old Redesign Must Die talk, given a few years back. I think that the only slide to survive this redesign... (cough) new version is the infamous one featuring the kittens. If you care nothing for redesign and only for kittens, jump ahead to slide #5."
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/2011/04/the_new_redesign_must_die_talk.html

Less is Not Always More
By Gary Barber.
"...I have been noticing a very frightening tread. In an effort to make things more usable, we are designing interfaces without the very functions used to support usability in the first place..."
http://manwithnoblog.com/2011/04/13/less-is-not-always-more/

What's Left?
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"...HereÕs a quick test you can do on a web design to see whether it may have these problems: take the content out and see whatÕs left. This will expose all the interface 'chrome' as it wereÑthe interface that lives outside of content rather than being derived from content. Here are a couple, somewhat extreme, examples..."
http://www.usabilitypost.com/2011/04/15/whats-left/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+09: 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.]