+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 9, Issue 47, May 20, 2011. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 47 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: BOOKS. 03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 04: COLOR. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: NAVIGATION. 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. Accessibility Checklists Can be Helpful if Used Right By Roger Johansson. "It is sometimes argued that using checklists when implementing or evaluating accessibility will lead to 'checklist accessibility', where developers blindly follow a checklist and do what they have to do to be able to check each item off the list without understanding why..." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201105/accessibility_checklists_can_be_helpful_if_used_right/ Keyboard Accessible YouTube Controls By Derek Featherstone. "Full keyboard functionality is a must-have for accessibility. Here's how we solve one of the problems with keyboard access for embedded YouTube videos..." http://simplyaccessible.com/article/keyboard-accessible-youtube-controls/ No One Ever Asks Us For Accessibility By Catherine Roy. "...How do we ensure clients, big and small, get what they need and what they pay for, all the while contributing to make the Web a more accessible space, whether they do business with you or not?..." http://www.catherine-roy.net/blog/2011/05/16/no-one-ever-asks-us-for-accessibility/ Federal Government Not Complying with Web Site Accessibility Requirements, Study Indicates By yahoo.com. "...of one-hundred Web sites operated by federal government agencies, over 90 percent do not comply with government accessibility guidelines and likely cannot be used by people who are blind or have other perceptual or motor disabilities..." http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/Federal-Government-Not-bw-792316812.html?x=0 Accessibility Glossary By Glenda Watson Hyatt. Glenda has added a glossary to her Blog Accessibility. http://blogaccessibility.com/glossary/ How Do You Detect a Screen Reader? By Leonie Watson. "The short answer is that you can't. At the time of writing there isn't a way to reliably detect whether someone visiting your site is using a screen reader (or screen magnifier). You might have heard that Flash will do the trick, but that might not be quite the solution you're expecting..." http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2011/how-do-you-detect-a-screen-reader/ +02: BOOKS. Powers, Shelley. HTML5 Media Integrating audio and video with the Web, O'Reilly, 2011. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. New Properties and Values in Backgrounds with CSS3 By Russ Weakley. "There are a lot of articles that have appeared over the last few years, showing us all sorts of cool things that can be done with CSS3. However, one aspect of CSS3 that is often overlooked is CSS3 backgrounds. With CSS3, we have a range of new properties and values to give us more control over our background images. However, before we talk about these new properties and values, we need to understand three important boxes..." http://blogs.sitepoint.com/new-properties-and-values-in-backgrounds-with-css3/ Getting Unspecific With CSS By Jonathan Nicol. "Anyone who writes CSS will have encountered the concept of specificity, a nifty mechanism that allows web browsers to resolve conflicts between CSS declarations. In a nutshell, specificity ensures that whenever two rules try to set the same property of the same element, the one with the greatest weight will take precedence..." http://f6design.com/journal/2011/05/19/being-unspecific-with-css WYSIWYG Is Hard #4, Editing StyleSheets... By Daniel Glazman. "Editing stylesheets in a wysiwyg editor can be hard. For multiple reasons..." http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?post/2011/05/18/Wysiwig-is-hard-4-editing-StyleSheets CSS Sprite or Accessibility? ALT or TITLE By quora. "Engineers likes to use CSS sprites to enhancement web page performance, they like to migrate every picture into one piece, include company logo. I defined 'alt' attribute for company logo, but they said they are using css sprites, so can not add "alt" attribute, they suggest to use 'title' attribute to instead of every pic which are using css sprites to implemented. Does it make sense?" http://www.quora.com/Web-Accessibility/CSS-sprite-or-Accessibility-ALT-or-TITLE?srid=Wz5 Full Browser Width Bars By Chris Coyier. "Block level elements are naturally as wide as their parent element. So let's say you put an

in your (and you've used reset CSS so there is no padding on the body) that

is automatically the full width of the browser window. It doesn't need any help..." http://css-tricks.com/full-browser-width-bars/ +04: COLOR. Does Stripping Your Blog of Colour Leave It Readable? By Glenda Watson Hyatt. "Digging into my Web Accessibility Toolbox, the grayscale conversion accessibility tool GrayBit converts a webpage into grayscale to ensure there is sufficient visual contrast between elements. Sufficient colour contrast is essential for improving readability..." http://blogaccessibility.com/does-stripping-your-blog-of-colour-leave-it-readable/ +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Science Behind User Experience UX Design and Usability Testing By Charles L. Mauro. "A recorded interview with Charles Mauro CHFP conducted by Robynn McCarthy..." http://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/2011/03/the-science-behind-user-experience-ux-design-and-usability-testing/ How much does the usability test affect perceptions of usability? By Jeff Sauro. "It is one of the most important questions to ask when measuring usability. Just how much does the process of measuring impact the metrics we collect? In measuring perceived usability of five popular websites, I found that a single difficult task lowered post-test usability scores by 8%..." http://www.measuringusability.com/task-effect.php +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. How to Choose a UX Prototyping Tool By Design for Use. "A feel of the real is very important in User Experience Design and we often find clients asking for prototypes (proof-of-concept) during the design process. Prototypes better communicate the interactions and navigation of the proposed design than static wireframes and mockups. Prototypes can be created at various stages of the design process (Analysis, Design or actual Test), for an informed user and client feedback to reduce number of design iterations. There is a broad array of prototyping applications available to suit the purpose, skill set and the fidelity required of a deliverable. In this blog we present a brief survey of common prototyping tools." http://designforuse.net/?p=722 +07: JAVASCRIPT. Javascript Mistakes You Must Avoid By iFadey. "If you are new to javascript and you write raw javascript or use any framework (jQuery, Mootools, Dojo, YUI) with it, you must avoid few mistakes. Actually these are my experiences when I was learning javascript..." http://www.ifadey.com/2011/05/javascript-mistakes-you-must-avoid Writing Maintainable JavaScript (Video) By Andrew Dupont. Andrew Dupont's Mix11 presentation. http://channel9.msdn.com/events/mix/mix11/EXT23 +08: NAVIGATION. Should I Create a Sitemap or HTML Site Map? By S.R. Emerson. "There seems to be a big confusion between Sitemaps and a HTML site map for those new to websites. We are going to run through what each is and what they are used for today to try and undo the confusion..." http://www.webpagemistakes.ca/create-sitemap-or-html-site-map/ +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML Working Group Update By Paul Cotton and Sam Ruby. Paul and Sam's HTML WG status report to the W3C Advisory Committee. http://www.w3.org/2011/Talks/0516-htmlupdate/ Unlocking the power of HTML5 audio By Giorgio Sardo. "Sounds form the background of our life. Today the HTML5