+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 35, February 23, 2012. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 35 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: PHP. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Mozilla Leads in HTML5 Accessibility Support By Craig Grannell. "According to the HTML5 accessibility website, Firefox for Windows has zoomed ahead of its rivals regarding support for HTML5 accessibility. In the site's tests, the browser scores an impressive 92/100. All other browsers score 24/100 or less, bar Safari for Mac, with a credible 74/100..." http://www.netmagazine.com/news/mozilla-leads-html5-accessibility-support-121765 Is PDF Accessible in Australia? By Roger Hudson. "More than two years ago I wrote about WCAG 2.0 and Accessibility Supported, and my fear that, 'the concept of 'accessibility supported' is not fully understood'. I believe that this 'could put at risk the whole move to improve the accessibility of the web.' I am concerned that mixed-messages relating to the status of PDF as a 'web content technology' is still causing problems within Australia at least..." http://www.dingoaccess.com/accessibility/is-pdf-accessible-in-australia/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. A Simple Image Gallery Using Only CSS and the :target Selector By Chris Heilmann. "Back in the old days of web development and when CSS2 got support I always cringed at 'CSS only' demos as a lot of them were hacky to say the least. With CSS growing up and having real interaction features it seems to me though that it is time to reconsider as - when you think about it - visual effects and interactivity should be maintained in the CSS rather than in JavaScript and CSS..." http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/02/a-simple-image-gallery-using-only-css-and-the-target-selector/ Responsive Design: Why You're Doing It Wrong By Joshua Johnson. "...media queries and responsive design provide us with an incredibly powerful tool to account for the fact that websites are being viewed by all manner of screens and viewport sizes. However, once we start pegging our designs to a handful of devices, we're right back where we started. Your goal instead should be to build a layout that's so versatile that it can handle almost any viewport size thrown at it. This is all nice in theory, but where's the example?..." http://designshack.net/articles/css/responsive-design-why-youre-doing-it-wrong/ Understanding CSS Shorthand By Louis Lazaris. "...Let's look at how shorthand works with some common examples, and I'll try to explain some of the quirks associated with CSS shorthand..." http://www.impressivewebs.com/understanding-css-shorthand/ Thoughts on the CSS Prefix Situation By Robert Nyman. "The last week I've been contemplating whether to write anything or not about the situation with web browser vendor prefixes in CSS. I decided to share my thoughts on the problem and possible solutions..." http://robertnyman.com/2012/02/16/thoughts-on-the-css-prefix-situation/ 7 Solutions to the CSS3 Vendor Prefix Crisis By Craig Buckler. "...While this is largely a marketing decision, it's a real problem. The solution appalls many web developers but we deserve our share of the blame. In this article we'll discuss the options, pros and cons..." http://www.sitepoint.com/css3-vendor-prefix-crisis-solutions/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Using jQuery Mobile in Dreamweaver CS 5.5 By Virginia DeBolt. "Dreamweaver CS 5.5 has some built-in jQuery mobile functions that can help you design a mobile site. Going this route means one of two things..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2012/02/21/using-jquery-mobile-in-dreamweaver-cs-5-5/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Why Personas are Critical for Content Strategy By Kristina Mausser. "The most popular content strategy tools borrow from the discipline of information architecture, but there is one invaluable tool that is imperative to the process of strategy and implementation of tactics that we can thank our user experience cousins for: personas." http://johnnyholland.org/2012/02/why-personas-are-critical-for-content-strategy/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. Essential JavaScript Design Patterns for Beginners By Addy Osmani. Addy Osmani has released an updated version of this resource. http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/ Debugging JavaScript By Panagiotis Astithas. "Debugging is always hard, especially when debugging other people's code. Adding a bunch of console.log() statements, becomes tedious after a while and that's assuming that you are familiar enough with the code in question to know where to place them. Tools like Firebug are a tremendous help in this case. Having the ability to pause the execution at any point or inspect variables and stack frames, provides valuable insights into the runtime behavior of a program..." http://blog.astithas.com/2012/02/debugging-javascript.html HTML5 Accessibility: aria-hidden and role="presentation" By John Foliot. "It's a common design pattern, seen multiple times a day: a thumbnail image and Headline, both linked to the same URL. We've seen this pattern for so long now that most sighted users know, instinctively, that clicking on either the thumbnail or the Headline takes them to the same location..." http://john.foliot.ca/aria-hidden/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. The 2012 State of the Mobile Web in Higher Ed Survey Report By Karine Joly. "A few weeks ago I conducted the second survey about the State of Mobile Web in Higher Ed to provide the community with some insights on the mobile web in our industry. The first survey was run last year at about the same time. This year again, this online survey was a big success as a total of 281 professionals working mainly in the marketing, communication and web offices of 267 institutions of higher education completed it from January 9, 2012 to February 13, 2012. You'll find details about the following survey findings..." http://collegewebeditor.com/blog/index.php/archives/2012/02/21/the-2012-state-of-the-mobile-web-in-highered-survey-report/ Why Mobile Matters By Luke Wroblewski. "When I initially proposed the idea of Mobile First over three years ago, there were a lot of skeptics. The situation today has a lot more people convinced that taking mobile seriously matters. But just in case some people remain unconvinced, here's a really vivid way of explaining the situation..." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1506 Graphic Designers are Ruining the Web By John Naughton. "What happens when you click on a weblink? Here's one answer: a request goes from your computer to a server identified by the URL of the desired link. The server then locates the webpage in its files and sends it back to your browser, which then displays it on your screen. Simple. Well, the process was indeed like that once - a very long time ago..." http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/19/john-naughton-webpage-obesity +07: PHP. Device-Aware Mobile Sites Using PHP, JavaScript, and WURFL, Part 1: Get Sarted Using the WURFL PHP API By Chad Russell. "With a rapidly growing mobile Web, if you haven't already started working on a PHP-driven mobile site or application, you soon will be. Detecting the capability of one mobile device among the thousands of offerings is nearly impossible with PHP alone. But with the Wireless Universal Resource FiLe (WURFL), this once daunting task becomes as simple as a few API calls to retrieve the device data you need and can use with your PHP site or application." http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/mo-wurfl-1/ +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The HTML5 Time Element Is Back and Better Than Ever By Scott Gilbertson. "The HTML5 time element pulled a disappearing act last year. HTML5 editor Ian Hickson deleted it from the specification, but then the W3C, the group that oversees HTML5, stepped in to override Hickson's decision, adding time back to HTML5. Now you see it, now you don't, now you do again. The W3C didn't just add time back though; they've improved it considerably..." http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/02/the-html5-time-element-is-back-and-better-than-ever/ Marking up a Bibliography with HTML5 By Ian Devlin. "After reading this recent post on the new and improved time element, it got me thinking about a rather specific issue and how the