+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 28, January 5, 2012. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 28 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: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Updated Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 By W3C. "The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group today published updates of two Notes that accompany WCAG 2.0: Techniques for WCAG 2.0 and Understanding WCAG 2.0. (This is not an update to WCAG 2.0, which is a stable document.) To learn more about WCAG Techniques and about contributing to future updates, see the WCAG Techniques Updated - Learn about the informative guidance blog post. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)..." http://www.w3.org/News/2012.html#entry-9309 First Draft of Media Accessibility User Requirements Published By W3C. "The Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) today published a First Public Working Draft of Media Accessibility User Requirements that describes the accessibility requirements of people with disabilities with respect to audio and video on the Web, particularly in the context of HTML5. Learn more from the call for review email and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)." http://www.w3.org/News/2012.html#entry-9308 The POUR Principles: The Starting Point for Creating Accessible Blogs By Glenda Watson Hyatt. 'What is an accessible website or blog? I want to do the right thing but where do I even start? Is there a framework or something to gain an overall understanding?' Yes, there is!..." http://blogaccessibility.com/the-pour-principles-the-starting-point-for-creating-accessible-blogs/ Let's Talk and Teach, Not Fight, About Accessibility By Karen Mardahl. "...I want to make a constructive call to action. Let's work on constructive and positive approaches to spreading accessibility awareness everywhere..." http://www.mardahl.dk/2011/12/30/lets-talk-and-teach-not-fight-about-accessibility/ WCAG 2.0 Techniques for PDF By Andrew Kirkpatrick. "Authors looking for additional guidance on how to meet the W3C WCAG 2.0 for PDF documents can now look to the W3C techniques repository for additional guidance. Techniques for PDF authored over the past two years since the release of the last update to the WCAG techniques (which included techniques for Flash) are now part of the larger collection of techniques. View the full set of WCAG 2.0 techniques or view PDF techniques on their own..." http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2012/01/wcag-2-0-techniques-for-pdf.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. A Responsive Design Approach for Complex, Multicolumn Data Tables By Maggie Wachs. "In responsive web design, one of the toughest design problems to solve is how format complex tabular data for display on smaller screens. In this post, we'll explore an experimental approach to rendering a complex table, using progressive enhancement and responsive design methods, that displays comfortably at a wide range of screen sizes, provides quick access to the data, and preserves the table structure so that data can still be compared across columns..." http://filamentgroup.com/lab/responsive_design_approach_for_complex_multicolumn_data_tables/ Leavin Old Interenet Explorer Behind By Joini Kopi. "Using media queries to make a clean break from legacy browsers..." http://jonikorpi.com/leaving-old-IE-behind/ CSS Selector Performance Has Changed! (For the better) By Nicole Sullivan. "Great articles, like Dave Hyatt's Writing Efficient CSS, helped developers adapt to a nascent selector matching landscape. We learned from Steve Souders (and others) that selectors match from right to left, and that certain selectors were particularly arduous to match and should best be avoided. For example, we were told that descendant selectors were slow, especially when the right-most selector matched many elements on the page. All this was fantastic information when we had none, but as it turns out, times have changed! Thanks to some amazing work by Antti Koivisto there are many selectors we don't need to worry about anymore..." http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2011/css-selector-performance-has-changed-for-the-better/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. The True Costs of No-Shows By Dana Chisnell. "One of the first things people say when they call up looking for help with recruiting is that they want to recruit '12 for 8' or '20 for 15'. They know what they want to end up with. They've got to get data. Managers are showing up to observe. They've gone through a lot to get a study to happen at all. They don't want to risk putting a study together only to get less data than they need. So, compensating for a show rate of between 60% and 80% means over-recruiting..." http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/2012/01/true-costs-of-no-shows.html +04: EVENTS. 27th International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference CSUN 2012 February 27 - March 3, 2012. San Diego, California, U.S.A. http://www.csun.edu/cod/conference/index.php Progressive Enhancement March 25-30, 2012. Clark, Colorado, U.S.A. http://retreats4geeks.com/events/2012/progressive-enhancement/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. The Rise and Rise of JavaScript By Dan North. "Õve been using JavaScript for a while now, but only really programming in anger with it during the last year. IÕve found it in turns frustrating and enlightening, ridiculous and brilliant. I have never felt so empowered by a language and its ecosystem, so I thought IÕd take some time to write about why that is. IÕm starting with a ramble through the history of JavaScript, or rather my undoubtedly inaccurate understanding of it, to provide some context for where and how IÕve been using it..." http://dannorth.net/2011/12/19/the-rise-and-rise-of-javascript/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. How to Move from Mobile-Friendly to Mobile-First By Tom Wentworth. "...As mobile browsing eclipses desktop browsing, organizations need to ensure they are thinking with mobile in mind first and providing a consistent experience to their site users when and where they want to access it." http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/11811.html On Designing Content-Out (a Response to Zeldman and others) By Stephanie Rieger. "...There IS a lot to think about and designing content-out is quite liberating, but it's also important to remember why we're doing this. Designing content-out works quite well. We've used this approach for a while now and have found that if there are wonky/awkward spots when you test by resizing the screen on the desktop, they will in most cases end up just as wonky on devices. An approach that is working quite well for us at the moment is to design using major and minor breakpoints..." http://stephanierieger.com/on-designing-content-out-a-response-to-zeldman-and-others/ +07: NAVIGATION. Videos of Screen Readers with Basic HTML5 and ARIA Landmarks By Jason Kiss. "With the rapid development in certain user agents (take that, Firefox!), I'm a little late in getting these up, but I figure some of them are still useful to share. In any case, I posted to YouTube five videos of various screen readers interacting with basic HTML5 section elements and ARIA landmarks. These are videos I presented at the 2011 Accessibility Summit and OZeWAI 2011 conferences..." http://www.accessibleculture.org/articles/2012/01/videos-of-screen-readers-html5-and-aria-landmarks/ A Plea for Progressive Enhancement By Stephanie Rieger. "This is vitally important people so listen up. The web now connects a third of our planet. Over 1.2 billion people [1] use the web on devices, and this number is rising fast. Mobile already amounts to close to 6.5% of web traffic worldwide, and large sites such as Facebook and YouTube routinely report mobile traffic of at least 30%. By 2015, the ITU predicts mobile traffic will exceed desktop traffic and the 'mobile-mostly' group already make up a staggering 20% of users in the US and UK..." http://stephanierieger.com/a-plea-for-progressive-enhancement/ +08: USABILITY. Common Web Site Usability Mistakes By Kim Krause Berg. "...The biggest mistake is to believe that web site appearance matters the most. How it looks is only one part of the process. How it performs is another. What it can give back to site visitors and how effectively it conveys that information will matter even more." http://cre8pc.com/2012/01/03/common-web-site-usability-mistakes/ 10 Guidelines for Writing Usable and SEO Friendly Content By Alexsey Donets. "...In this article I will be outlining 10 recommendations, which will help make your web project really successful..." http://usabilitygeek.com/10-guidelines-for-writing-usable-and-seo-friendly-content/ [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.]