+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 12, September 13, 2012. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 12 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: COLOR. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: PHP. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Mobile Accessibility By W3C WAI Education and Outreach Working Group. "This page summarizes existing and developing resources related to mobile accessibility..." http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/Overview.html HTML5 Accessibility - September 2012 By Steve Faulkner. "HTML5Accessibility.com has been updated to reflect HTML5 accessibility support in the latest browser versions." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2012/09/html5-accessibility-september-2012/ Section 508 Report to the President and Congress: Accessibility of Federal Electronic and Information Technology By The U.S. Department of Justice. http://www.ada.gov/508/508_Report.htm Captioning YouTube Video and Providing Accessible Controls By Ohio State University. "With a little bit of work, some free online tools, and code and utilities available from this web page, you can provide your students, staff, and other users within and outside the university access to web video that is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities..." http://wac.osu.edu/examples/youtube-player-controls/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Five Steps to Gettin' Flexy in Responsive Web Design By Dave Rupert. "Dave Rupert, lead developer at Paravel, gives essential tips and tricks on becoming flexible in responsive web design." http://www.netmagazine.com/features/five-steps-gettin-flexy-responsive-web-design Coming Soon: Native CSS Variables By Craig Buckler. "Name one feature you'd love to see in CSS. Hands up those who want variablesÉ (I'm sure some of you are desperate for parent selectors but you're in the minority!)..." http://www.sitepoint.com/native-css-variables/ Introducing: CSSValues.com By Louis Lazaris. "There are quite a few references online for finding detailed info on CSS properties. I find, however, that most of them usually have more than what I'm looking for - and don't even get me started on the overly-convoluted CSS specs. Truth is, sometimes I just want to know which values are valid for a particular property, and nothing more. So I built a quick-reference site that does just that..." http://www.impressivewebs.com/introducing-css-values/ +03: COLOR. Accessible Use of Colour in Web Design By Gosia Mlynarczyk. "...remember that whenever you assign special meanings to colours, you also need to provide other means of conveying the information. By doing that you ensure that your pages comply with the WCAG success criterion 1.4.1 - Use of colour." http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2012/accessible-use-of-colour-in-web-design/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. How Effective are Heuristic Evaluations? By Jeff Sauro. "...So how effective are heuristic evaluations? While the question will and should continue to be debated and researched, I like to think of heuristic evaluations like sugary cereal. They provide a quick jolt of insight but should be part of a 'balanced' breakfast of usability evaluation methods." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/effective-he.php Testing Websites in Game Console Browsers By Anna Debenham. "Today's game consoles may offer subpar web experiences with little browser choice, but that doesn't mean we can ignore them. More than one in eight internet users in the UK, US, and France-and nearly one in four American teens-uses a game console to get online. As more console makers offer internet-capable devices-and as smart TVs continue to enter the market-now is the time to plan how our sites will adapt to these new contexts. Learn how to test your web content on phone consoles; handheld consoles like Sony PSP and Nintendo DS; and TV consoles like Nintendo Wii, Sony PS3, and Microsoft Xbox 360." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/testing-websites-in-game-console-browsers/ +05: EVENTS. Accessibility Camp Toronto November 17, 2012. Toronto, Canada http://www.accessibilitycampto.org/ Easy-to-Read on the Web, Online Symposium December 3, 2012. http://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/easy-to-read/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. ARIA Widgets and Focus/Forms Mode Support in JAWS and NVDA By Jason Kiss. "When using ARIA composite application widgets, e.g., combobox, menubar, tree, authors are expected to implement appropriate keyboard interaction and focus management. Where screen readers that use virtual buffers are concerned, notably JAWS, NVDA, and Window-Eyes, this means invoking their special passthrough mode referred to as forms mode, focus mode, or sometimes application mode. VoiceOver on the Mac doesn't use virtual buffers, and the current version of Window-Eyes really doesn't support ARIA (although its anxiously awaited next version will). As such, what follows deals exclusively with JAWS and NVDA..." http://www.accessibleculture.org/articles/2012/09/aria-widgets-and-focus-forms-mode-support/ OnChange Event on a Select Input/Jump Menu Accessibility Problems Paul J. Adams. "WCAG 2.0 On input Success Criterion statee '3.2.2 On Input: Changing the setting of any user interface component does not automatically cause a change of context unless the user has been advised of the behavior before using the component. (Level A)'... " http://pauljadam.com/blog/javascript/onchange-event-on-a-select-inputjump-menu-accessibility-problems/ JavaScript Tricks You May Not Know By Michael Dorf. Basic JavaScript tricks. http://www.learncomputer.com/javascript-tricks-you-may-not-know/ JavaScript Basics By Bocoup. "jQuery is built on top of JavaScript, a rich and expressive language in its own right. This section covers the basic concepts of JavaScript, as well as some frequent pitfalls for people who have not used JavaScript before. While it will be of particular value to people with no programming experience, even people who have used other programming languages may benefit from learning about some of the peculiarities of JavaScript. " http://jqfundamentals.com/chapter/javascript-basics A Guide to the Basics of jQuery By Bocoup. "Query Fundamentals is designed to get you comfortable working through common problems you'll be called upon to solve using jQuery. To get the most out of this site, you'll want to read the content and try the various interactive examples. Each chapter will cover a concept and give you a chance to try example code related to the concept..." http://jqfundamentals.com/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. This Is Responsive By Brad Frost. Easily the most frequently asked question I get regarding responsive web design is 'Where do I go to learn about this stuff?'. Of course I ask if they've read the wonderful book on the subject and follow Ethan's excellent @rwd Twitter account. The answer is usually, 'Yeah yeah yeah, I got that. Where do I go next?' So I've been chipping away at some stuff that can hopefully help answer these questions. Introducing This Is Responsive, a collection of patterns, resources and news related to responsive design." http://bradfrost.github.com/this-is-responsive/index.html 2 More Reasons Why the Responsive Web Design Approach Makes Sense for Higher Ed [STUDY] By Karine Joly. "...This 46-page report was designed like a collection of infographics. And, I even found the single infographics above highlighting some findings. There's been a series of posts presenting the main findings of this report (on Google Mobile Ads blog, TechCrunch, etc.), so I've chosen to focus on only the 2 points that are relevant to responsive web design and higher education..." http://collegewebeditor.com/blog/index.php/archives/2012/09/11/2-more-reasons-why-the-responsive-web-design-approach-makes-sense-for-highered/ Opt-Out Responsive Design? By Chris Coyier. "Reader Glynn writes in: 'I'm wondering if you'd ever seen a responsive web design in which a 'see full site' link was included. I know that when developing a responsive design we should stay away from hiding content completely, however some users may actually prefer pinching and zooming and using good old fashioned horizontal menus on their devices. Have you seen an example of this and how do you think it could be approached?' I think this is a pretty darn interesting question." http://css-tricks.com/user-opt-out-responsive-design/ Beyond Mobile: Making Sense of a Post-PC World By Scott Jenson. Audo from Scott Jenson's dConstuct presentartion: "Native applications are a remnant of the Jurassic period of computer history. We will look back on these past 10 years as the time we finally grew out of our desktop mindset and started down the path of writing apps for an infinite number of platforms. As the cost of computation and connectivity plummets, manufacturers are going to put 'interactivity' into every device. Some of this will be trivial: my power adaptor knows it's charging history. Some of it will be control related: my television will be grand central for my smart home. But at it's heart, we'll be swimming in world where every device will have 'an app'. What will it take for us to get here, what technologies will it take to make this happen? This talk will discuss how the principles of the open web must apply not only to prototocols but to hardware as well. How can we build a 'DNS for hardware' so the menagerie of devices has a chance for working together?" http://archive.dconstruct.org/2012/beyondmobile +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Maincontent Element Steve Faulkner, Editor. "Unofficial Draft 9 September 2012" http://www.html5accessibility.com/tests/maincontent.html Scooby Doo and the Proposed HTML5 Element By Bruce Lawson. "Trigger warning: contains disagreement about accessibility. I've been vacillating (ooh err, missus) for two weeks from one opinion to the other regarding a proposed (and rejected) element. This weekend, The Mighty Steve Faulkner wrote an unofficial draft of a element..." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2012/scooby-doo-content-element/ The Business Case for HTML5 By Leonie Watson. "HTML5 has been in development since 2004, but it was thrust into the limelight when Steve Jobs aired his views on open standards in 2010. HTML5 (and its associated technologies) has now reached a level of maturity that has encouraged organisations to begin adopting it as the basis for key development projects. There are several business benefits of moving towards a web-platform solution. How much you benefit will depend on the nature of your organisation, but there are several different advantages that may apply..." http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2012/the-business-case-for-html5/ +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Your Most Important Typographic Choices By Steven Bradley. "How do you choose a typeface and another to pair with it? What size should your copy and headings be? How do you determine line-height and line-length so text is both readable and legible? These were some of the questions I set out to answer when making the typographic decisions that became part of this design..." http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/typographic-choices/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +10: 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.]