+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 06, August 2, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 06 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
05: JAVASCRIPT. 
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: TOOLS.
10: USABILITY.


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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Selling Accessibility - Negative Factors
By Karl Groves.
"This is the second post in a series of posts on Selling Accessibility. If you haven't already, head on over to Selling Accessibility - An Introduction to get caught up..."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2012/07/26/selling-accessibility-negative-factors/

7 Web Accessibility Myths
By Gosia Mlynarczyk.
"Web accessibility is not a new concept. The Web Accessibility Initiative was launched back in 1997, and yet 15 years later it is still a widely ignored and neglected aspect of web development. There are many deep-rooted misconceptions about accessibility which prevent people from making a conscious effort to incorporate it into their websites. Let's take a closer look at the top 7 web accessibility myths..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2012/7-web-accessibility-myths-2/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

A Case for Some Accessibility in Our CSS
By Stuart Robson.
"...As I pointed out, if developers are lazy enough to not include all the relevant prefixes, they'd probably not include this either (which is quite sad, really). There was discussion that CSS is for presentation only, but i think with the onset of CSS3 animation whizz-bangs etc. we can adapt..."
http://alwaystwisted.com/post.php?s=2012-07-21-a-case-for-some-accessibility-in-our-css

Thoughts on Accessible CSS
By Jamie Knight.
"...after mulling it over lunch i think i would come down on the 'lets not' side of the dicussion. I have two reasons, document semantics and code clarity..."
http://jkg3.com/Journal/thoughts-on-accessible-css

W3C Looks to Improve Responsive Design With New Media Queries
By Scott Gilbertson.
"The W3C, the group charged with overseeing the creation of web standards like HTML and CSS, recently gave its official blessing to one of the cornerstones of responsive web design - CSS Media Queries..."
http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/07/w3c-looking-to-improve-responsive-design-with-new-media-queries/

Creeps and Weirdos in the CSS Spec
By Louis Lazaris.
"...in this post, I'll run through a bunch of things from the CSS specifications that you might not have heard of yet. None of this is even close to ready to use (unless it degrades really gracefully), but it will serve to get you familiar with some of the rounded corners and drop shadows of the future..."
http://www.impressivewebs.com/creeps-weirdos-css-spec/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Beyond Usability Testing
By Devan Goldstein.
"To be sure we're designing the right experience for the right audience, there's no substitute for research conducted with actual users. Like any research method, though, usability testing has its drawbacks. Most importantly, it isn't cheap. Fortunately, there are other usability research methods at our disposal. The standouts, expert review and heuristic evaluation, are easy to add to a design and development process almost regardless of budget or resource concerns. Explore these techniques, learn their advantages and disadvantages, and get the low-down on how to include them in your projects."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/beyond-usability-testing/

Modifying Your Usability Testing Methods to Get Early-Stage Design Feedback
By Michael Hawley.
"When you're designing something new, it's desirable to seek feedback on your design direction from potential users early in the design lifecycle. To elicit this feedback, you may set up sessions that look a lot like qualitative usability tests..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/07/modifying-your-usability-testing-methods-to-get-early-stage-design-feedback.php


+04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Paper Prototyping As A Usability Testing Technique
By Justin Mifsud.
"Paper Prototyping is a technique that consists of creating hand drawings of user interfaces in order to enable them to be rapidly designed, simulated and tested. As simple as this technique may look like, it has been effectively used since the 1980s and is likely to continue to be used with a guaranteed degree of success for many more years to come. The objective of this article is to define paper prototyping and explain how this technique can be used for usability testing. I opted to write the article mostly in bullet form so that it can act as a quick reference..."
http://usabilitygeek.com/paper-prototyping-as-a-usability-testing-technique/


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Managing JavaScript on Responsive Websites
By Jeremy Fields.
"...On a recent responsive project, I quickly ran into a new challenge: how to manage JavaScript on a site where the interface and functionality changes at different breakpoints. For example, an image carousel might need to be animated at one breakpoint but turn into a simple image grid at the next; you don't want that JavaScript to still be functioning if someone crosses between them..."
http://viget.com/inspire/managing-javascript-on-responsive-websites


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Product Management for the Web
By Kristofer Layon.
"Whether we prototype, write, design, develop, or test as part of building the web, we're creating something hundreds, thousands, or maybe even millions of people will use. But how do we know that we're creating the right enhancements for the web, at the right time, and for the right customers? Because our client or boss asked us to? And how do they know? Enter product management for the web-bridging the gap between leadership and customers on one side, and the user experience, content strategy, design, and development team on the other. Learn to set priorities that gradually but steadily make your product (and the web) better."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/product-management-for-the-web/

Responsive Design's Dirty Little Secret
By John Albin Wilkins.
"The truth is that fluid grids are broken. WellÉ perhaps just cracked a bit. Responsive Web design, as Ethan Marcotte defines it, is simply a fluid grid, fluid images and media queries. But fluid grids have a dirty little secret: rounding errors. As we lay out our columns in percentages, browsers have to translate that into actual device pixels to fit in the viewport. And Chrome, Safari, other WebKit browsers, Opera, and the usual suspects (IE 6 and 7) all produce 'errors'..."
http://palantir.net/blog/responsive-design-s-dirty-little-secret

Adaptive Images - Solving the Responsive Image Problem
By Dain Miller.
"...Responsive images have been a tough topic for years now, as there have typically been more than one 'hack-around' way to make your images responsive. Let's go through this topic from the ground up, starting with how we used to do it..."
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/07/adaptive-images-solving-the-responsive-image-problem/


+07: PHP.

PHP Error Checking
By Gerald Hanks.
"... When the user takes an unanticipated course of action and 'breaks' the application, the software needs to catch them before they fall..."
http://www.developerdrive.com/2012/07/php-error-checking/


+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 and HTML.next
By Jeff Jaffe.
"HTML5 is the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform that the web community is building. This week saw two significant events in W3C that bolster our efforts. I wanted to share these with the broader web community, and in the process give an update on HTML..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2012/07/html5_and_htmlnext.html

W3C's Ian Jacobs on the Future of HTML5
By Craig Grannell.
"We recently reported on the split between the WHATWG HTML 'living standard' and the W3C HTML5 snapshot-oriented specification, while WHATWG spec editor Ian Hickson gave us his thoughts regarding the technology's future. In this interview, W3C head of communications Ian Jacobs (IJ) talks to .net about the split, forking issues, processes, and what sponsorship from Adobe, Microsoft and Google will mean for the W3C."
http://www.netmagazine.com/interviews/w3cs-ian-jacobs-future-html5

OAuth 2.0 and the Road to Hell
By Eran Hammer.
"...Our standards making process is broken beyond repair. This outcome is the direct result of the nature of the IETF, and the particular personalities overseeing this work. To be clear, these are not bad or incompetent individuals. On the contrary - they are all very capable, bright, and otherwise pleasant. But most of them show up to serve their corporate overlords, and it's practically impossible for the rest of us to compete..."
http://hueniverse.com/2012/07/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-hell/

What's New in HTML5: The Track Element
By Pablo Schklowsky.
"One of the more exciting developments in HTML5 video is the inclusion of the track element in the newest versions of the desktop browsers. In addition to bringing captioning and subtitle support to HTML5 video, the invisible track element allows publishers to attach a rich array of textual metadata to their videos. In this blog post, we'll look at ..."
http://www.longtailvideo.com/blog/27621/whats-new-in-html5-the-track-element


+09: TOOLS.

Convert Word Documents to Clean HTML
By Olly Cope.
"Word2cleanhtml cleans up HTML pasted from Word documents. It applies filters to fix various things that Microsoft Office puts in its HTML and gives you a well formatted result that you can paste directly into a web page or content editing system..."
http://word2cleanhtml.com/


+10: USABILITY.

Failing Gracefully - Handling User Errors
By Ted O'Meara.
"...When users do encounter errors (which they inevitably will), make sure the error handling isn't as painfully delivered as an ill-placed sharp note from a novice piano player..."
http://uxmag.com/articles/failing-gracefully

Writing for the Web Versus Writing For Print
By Dey Alexander.
"In my web writing workshops, I'm often asked about the differences between writing for the web and writing for print. Writers are aware that they need to take a different approach, and most understand they're writing for an audience that may be scan-reading and task-focused. They know they need to be more concise, and take care with content layout.  But they have a sense that there's more they need to know..."
http://www.4syllables.com.au/2012/07/web-writing-versus-print/

Plain Language - A Paradox for Technical Communicators
By Rachel McAlpine.
"...When users do encounter errors (which they inevitably will), make sure the error handling isn't as painfully delivered as an ill-placed sharp note from a novice piano player..."
http://contented.com/contented/2012/plain-language-a-paradox-for-technical-communicators/

Multiple Device Users
By Luke Wroblewski.
"As the diversity and quantity of networked consumer products continues to grow, more people are becoming multi-device users. That is, they switch between or simultaneously use more than one device through their daily lives..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1596


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.


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+ 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.]