+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 20, November 11, 2011. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 20 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: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Abbreviations - Accessibility for Web Writers, Part 14 By Dey Alexander. "We use abbreviations because they save time when talking and writing. However, some abbreviations are not widely used and may confuse users if you include them in your web content..." http://www.4syllables.com.au/2011/11/accessibility-web-writers-part-14/ Accessibility for Information Architects By Henny Swan. "Each member of a team plays a role in building a website or web app that is accessible ranging from the project manager, designer, developer, tester and Information Architect (IA). This article looks at a few key aspects of accessibility that if anticipated at IA stage go a long way to ensuring usable websites for people with access needs and safeguarding against costly fixes post launch...." http://www.spotlessinteractive.com/articles/accessibility/accessibility-for-information-architects.php Semantic Automation By Jared Smith. "Semantic automation is when user agents, such as browsers and screen readers, create meaning and relationships where the presented meaning and relationships are missing, ambiguous, or incorrect. In short, it's applying algorithms to try and fix things that are probably broken. It's computers guessing for good..." http://webaim.org/blog/semantic-automation/ A Common Accessibility Platform By Vlad Alexander. "...There needs to be more of a balance in favor of resources directed towards accessibility, and it is up to us in the community of web professionals to champion web accessibility to browser vendors. As web professionals it is up to us to help browser vendors prioritize features and make the kind of inclusive web we can be proud of." http://a11ybugs.org/article.php?id=1 Struggling with WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Guidelines for Content Authors By Rachel McAlpine. "...as you probably know, WCAG 2.0 has tried so hard to future-proof the guidelines that they are frequently incomprehensible. Slightly weird terms are used that are intended to cover all possible technologies. While this goal may be laudable, the resulting generic terms are not plain language. For example, maybe HTML will be dead in 10 years time, so WCAG 2.0 tries not to mention HTML or web pages..." http://contented.com/contented/2011/struggling-with-wcag-2-0-accessibility-guidelines-for-content-authors/ Not The Blog Post I Was Going To Write Today By John Foliot. "The user-pain inflicted by CAPTCHAs on persons with disabilities are well known and documented..." http://john.foliot.ca/not-the-blog-post-i-was-going-to-write-today/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Fixed Positioning in Mobile Browsers By Brad Frost. "...Ultimately, I think this little exercise is another example of why we need to consider diversity in our designs. Removing comfortable assumptions, even for something seemingly as harmless as a fixed header, can help us design better, more adaptive experiences. I believe that we can create great, innovative mobile experiences for best-of-breed devices without giving the middle finger to everything else." http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/mobile/fixed-position/ A Possible Future for CSS Selectors By Scott Gilbertson. "CSS has some great new tools like pseudo classes and pseudo elements for selecting things just by where they are in the DOM. For example, :first-child can select the first descendant of an element or ::first-letter can select the first letter of a sentence..." http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/11/the-possible-future-of-css-selectors/ CSS Transitions - A Simple Way To Delight Your Visitors By Steven Bradley. "CSS3 transitions are an easy way to begin creating that delightful experience..." http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/transitions/ CSS Vendor Prefixes, Again... By Daniel Glazman. "We still have a major problem in CSS wrt CSS vendor prefixes... We have -moz-*, -webkit-*, -ms-*, -o-* and more all over the place and we all agree that what we have is suboptimal. During W3C Plenary Meeting this week, we discussed CSS Gradients..." http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?post/2011/11/05/CSS-vendor-prefixes-again CSS3 Secrets - 10 Things You Might Not Know About CSS3 (Video) By Lea Verou. Lea Verou Fronteers 2011 presentation. http://fronteers.nl/congres/2011/sessions/css3-secrets-lea-verou The Future Of CSS - Embracing The Machine By Inayaili de Leon. "Designers hold CSS close to their hearts. It's just code, but it is also what makes our carefully crafted designs come to life. Thoughtful CSS is CSS that respects our designs, that is handcrafted with precision. The common conception among Web designers is that a good style sheet is created by hand, each curly bracket meticulously placed, each vendor prefix typed in manually..." http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/07/the-future-of-css-embracing-the-machine/ An Inside View of the CSS Working Group at W3C By Elika Etemad. "The CSS Working Group is tasked with maintaining the existing CSS standards and creating new ones. There have been many new people joining our group lately, in addition to more non-members interacting with us. Since it usually takes someone a year or so of participation to figure out how the CSS WG works, I thought I'd take a moment (well, a week; I write slowly) to explain everything." http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/weblog/2011/inside-csswg/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. What's New in Dreamweaver By Scott Fegette. "...Dreamweaver CS5.5 will help you use all the revolutionary new potential of HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery to deliver multiscreen-aware projects in a variety of new ways and with minimal impact to your evolutionary workflows..." http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/whats-new-dwcs55.html How Media Queries Can Make Designing for Mobile Devices Easier (Video) By Greg Rewis. Greg explains features in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium. http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs-55-web-premium-feature-tour-/how-media-queries-can-make-designing-for-mobile-devices-and-different-screens-easier/ Introduction to Media Queries, Part 1 By David Powers. "The rapid spread of mobile devices has turned the world of web design upside down. Users no longer view web content only on traditional desktop systems, but are increasingly using smartphones, tablets, and other devices with a wide range of dimensions. The challenge for web designers is to ensure that their websites look good not only on a big screen, but also on a tiny phone and everything in between..." http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/introducing-media-queries.html Introduction to Media Queries, Part 2 By David Powers. "In this second part of this two-part tutorial series, you'll put into practice the theory you learned in Part 1, Using media queries, to deliver different styles to mobile phones, tablets, and desktop computers..." http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/introducing-media-queries-pt2.html Mastering Media Queries (Video) By David Powers. "Take a deep dive into using CSS3 media queries to create websites that look good and work well on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones regardless of screen size. In this session, bestselling author and trainer David Powers explores how to optimize style rules for each type of device depending on its features, such as width, height, aspect ratio, and orientation. You'll also learn how to cope with older browsers that don't support media queries and how to avoid wasting mobile users' valuable data allowance by forcing them to download assets intended only for larger screen sizes." http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2011-design/mastering-media-queries/ CSS3 Media Queries with Dreamweaver (Video) By Ryan Stewart. "Developer Evangelist Ryan Stewart explains how the functionality of media queries in Dreamweaver allows designers and developers to easily create custom web experiences across different devices..." http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adc-presents/css3-media-queries-with-dreamweaver/ +04: EVENTS. How to Build an Accessible Web Application November 15, 2011. Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.A. http://accessibilitydcnov11.eventbrite.com/ W3Conf: Practical Standards for Web Professionals November 15-16, 2011. Redmond, Washington, U.S.A. http://www.w3.org/conf/ Videos of the presentations will be streamed live. http://www.w3.org/conf/live.html +05: FLASH. What the Death of Mobile Flash Means for the Web By Scott Gilbertson. "Adobe Software has let slip that it plans to abandon its Flash Player for mobile web browsers. Instead, the company will refocus its mobile efforts on web standards like HTML5, along with tools like Adobe AIR, which allows developers to convert Flash content into native mobile applications..." http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/11/what-the-death-of-mobile-flash-means-for-the-web/ Flash Isn't Going Away, Except from Your Mobile By Adrian A. Roselli. "You may have heard some rumors that Flash is going away. You may read it as vindication for Steve Jobs. You may have decided web development will now change. You may be under the impression that HTML5 can do all the things Flash can. You can be excused when you read much of they hype, including such link-baiting headlines as Jobs Was Right: Adobe Abandons Mobile Flash Development, Report Says, clearly intended to draw Apple fanboys..." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2011/11/flash-isnt-going-away-except-from-your.html Flash Splash Pages By Paul Boag. "Jared really does have the most amazing way with words: 'When we have clients who are thinking about Flash splash pages, we tell them to go to their local supermarket and bring a mime with them. Have the mime stand in front of the supermarket, and, as each customer tries to enter, do a little show that lasts two minutes, welcoming them to the supermarket and trying to explain the bread is on aisle six and milk is on sale today. Then stand back and count how many people watch the mime, how many people get past the mime as quickly as possible, and how many people punch the mime out. That should give you a good idea as to how well their splash page will be received'." http://boagworld.com/tumblog/flash-splash-pages/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript-Created Markup Also Needs to be Semantic and Accessible By Roger Johansson. "Back in the day you used to be able to view source on a web page to see the markup used to create it. These days, on many sites, a large portion of the markup is not visible when you view source because it is inserted by JavaScript functions..." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201111/javascript-created_markup_also_needs_to_be_semantic_and_accessible/ Terse JavaScript 101 (Part 2) By James Padolsey. "Some developers don't like the idea of using a language's more idiosyncratic features because it does, potentially, make your code less readable in the eyes of those who haven't learned the language properly. I think it's still up for debate. While you're pondering that, part II awaits..." http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/terse-javascript-101-part-2/ Exploring JavaScript's Logical OR Operator By Addy Osmani & Andree Hansson. "In JavaScript, logical operators are used for boolean logic where a boolean value may be returned depending on the outcome of an expression. With the || (OR) operator, since values don't need to be explicitly true or false (they can be truthy or falsy), the operator can return non-boolean results when evaluated..." http://addyosmani.com/blog/exploring-javascripts-logical-or-operator/ +07: NAVIGATION. The Vital Importance of the First Click By Gerry McGovern. "If customers get the first click right they have twice as much of a chance of completing their task than if they get it wrong." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2011/nt-2011-11-07-Getting-right.htm One Thing I Don't Like About Drop-Down Menus By Louis Lazaris. "I don't mind drop-down menus. They give designers and information architects options for using screen space wisely. But I think many sites do themselves a disfavour by using them in an inconsistent manner. http://www.impressivewebs.com/drop-down-menu-pet-peeve/ +08: PHP. Error Handling in PHP By Sneha Heda. "Errors are the most common event a developer faces when programming. Errors can be categorized as syntactical, run-time, or logical: missing the semicolon at the end of a statement is an example of a syntax error; trying to connect to a database when the server is down is an example of a run-time error; providing incorrect data to a variable is an example of a logic error. To help reduce the number of errors in your code, and to mitigate their effects, proper error handling is essential in your web application. This article is a crash course in PHP error handling." http://phpmaster.com/error-handling-in-php/ +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Standards, Innovation, Flash, Ownership and All That By John Allsopp. "It's often argued (well, asserted might be a better way of putting it) that standards are an anathema to innovation, or at the very least a significant impediment to it..." http://www.webdirections.org/blog/standards-innovation-flash-ownership-and-all-that/ HTML WG Update By Sam Ruby, Paul Cotton, and Maciej Stachowiak. The HTML Chair November 3, 2011 TPAC presenation. http://www.w3.org/2011/Talks/TPAC/HTML5/ HTML5, So What? (Video) By Pei Riesling. "After a few months of waiting, we can finally hear some insights of HTML5 from Bruce Lawson and Zi Bin Cheah at Opear Tech Break! How does HTML5 ensures interoperability in different browsers? How is the future of native apps vs web apps? What else cool stuff can HTML5 do? Check out this Opera Tech Break episode!" http://my.opera.com/techbreak/blog/2011/11/04/html5-so-what The