+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 16, October 11, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 16 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: DREAMWEAVER.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: TOOLS.
09: USABILITY.


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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Models of Disability and their Relation to Accessibility 
By Martyn Cooper.
"Our models of disability are important, they shape our attitudes and impact on how effectively the needs and preferences  of disabled people are met in design. The medical model is now widely seen as outmoded and a perpetuator of  discriminatory attitudes. The social model has had widespread influence. It is important in accessibility considerations because it recognises the importance of the context of the users and supports the view of accessibility as a relationship property; in the case of web accessibility the relationship being between the diversity of users and the web resource or application. Functional models have been asserted as the most useful in design and development and the potential of these for personalisation and analytics highlighted."
http://martyncooper.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/models-of-disability-and-accessibility/

Notes on Accessibility of Microsoft.coms New Home Page
By Steve Faulkner.
"Microsoft.com has a new home page. It uses HTML5 and ARIA. I have done a quick review of their usage. There are a few issues..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2012/10/notes-on-accessibility-of-microsoft-coms-new-home-page/	

Mobile Accessibility (podcast)
By Tim Kadlec.
"This week, Henny Swan joins us to talk about mobile accessibility. We talk about why accessibility matters, the current state of accessibility on mobile devices and what steps to take to ensure you're site or application is accessible by as many people as possible..."
http://fsm.bdconf.com/podcast/mobile-accessibility

Mobile Accessibilty
By Ted Drake.
"I gave this presentation at the Silicon Valley Code Camp about mobile accessibility. I tried to reach all audiences by showing what can be done with mobile technology for accessibility, how the operating systems stack up, and the common problems with solutions. I also included instructions on enabling the screen reader for iOS and Android..."
http://www.last-child.com/mobile-accessibilty/

HTML5 Image Description Extension
Charles McCathie Nevile, Editor.
"This specification defines a longdesc attribute to extended descriptions to images in HTML5-based content."
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-proposals/raw-file/b63325998cc1/longdesc1/longdesc.html

Netflix and the National Association of the Deaf Reach Historic Agreement to Provide 100% Closed Captions in On-Demand Streaming Content Within Two Years
By National Association of the Deaf.
Netflix Inc. and the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), a non-profit organization, have submitted a joint Consent Decree to a federal court in Springfield, Mass., ensuring closed captions in 100% of Netflix streaming content within two years."
http://www.nad.org/news/2012/10/netflix-and-national-association-deaf-reach-historic-agreement-provide-100-closed-capti


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

What the Heck Is CSS Specificity?
By Joshua Johnson. 
"...Specificity is an essential concept that you need to grasp to be an effective developer. Today I'll walk you through the concepts of specificity in a simple and easy to understand manner. It's easier than you think..."
http://designshack.net/articles/css/what-the-heck-is-css-specificity/

How To Vertically Center Unknown Rows Of Content Inside A Fixed Container
By Steven Bradley.
"One task css doesn't make easy is centering objects vertically within their containers. Last summer I offered 6 methods for vertical centering to address that difficulty. The methods generally require knowing in advance the heights of the parent and child elements. What do you do when the child element's height isn't known?..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/dynamic-vertical-centering/

Flexbox - Fast Track to Layout Nirvana?
By Chris Mills.
"Flexbox, as it's commonly called, is designed to allow us to easily manipulate the layout of a series of child elements in ways that were previously difficult..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/flexbox-basics/

Blame the Implementation, Not the Technique
By Tim Kadlec.
"...Building great experiences on the web isnt getting any easier. We need all the tools we can get. Dont discredit them simply because someone uses them poorly."
http://timkadlec.com/2012/10/blame-the-implementation-not-the-technique/

Stop Using the Viewport Meta Tag (Until You Know How to Use It)
By Javier Usobiaga.
"In the early years, when the smartphones came to Earth, they knew the Internet wasn't prepared for themÉ so they expected every website to be around 1000px width (980px on the iPhone) and zoom out the website to fit into the screen. And so the <meta name="viewport"> was created, basically to tell those smart dudes that your website was prepared for them..."
http://blog.javierusobiaga.com/stop-using-the-viewport-tag-until-you-know-ho

box-shadow vs filter: drop-shadow
By Lennart Schoors.
"This post is the first topic I discussed in my jam session presentation at Fronteers 2012. It's about the drop-shadow filter. You may have looked at it and thought 'this is pretty much the same thing as a box-shadow' right? Well, not exactly. The big advantage of the drop-shadow filter is that it acknowledges the outline and transparency of an element..."
http://bricss.net/post/33158273857/box-shadow-vs-filter-drop-shadow


+03: COLOR.

The Code Side Of Color // Hex Colors
By Ben Gremillion.
"The trouble with a colors name is that it never really is perceived as the exact same color to two different individuals - especially if they have a stake in a websites emotional impact. Name a color, and youre most likely to give a misleading impression. Even something like blue is uncertain. To be more precise, it could be sky blue, ocean blue, jeans blue or even arc welder blue..."
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/10/04/the-code-side-of-color/


+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Working with Smart Objects in Dreamweaver and Photoshop
By Tom Negrino.
"If your websites use a lot of images, you've probably spent plenty of time jumping between Dreamweaver and Photoshop to make changes, and then trying to keep track of which files are current and which need to be synched. Now you can cross that nightmare off your task list. Tom Negrino, coauthor of Dreamweaver CS6: Visual QuickStart Guide, shows how using Smart Objects in Dreamweaver CS6 can keep your images in sync automatically."
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1930035


+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Tips on Prototyping for Usability Testing
By Jim Ross.
"...there are some differences between testing a prototype and testing a fully functional Web site or application. In this column, I'll provide some tips that can make your usability studies more successful and help you to avoid problems when testing prototypes..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/10/tips-on-prototyping-for-usability-testing.php

User Satisfaction vs. Performance Metrics
By Jakob Nielsen.
Users generally prefer designs that are fast and easy to use, but satisfaction isn't 100% correlated with objective usability metrics."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/satisfaction-vs-performance.html


+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Information Architecture in the Age of Complexity
By Andrea Resmini.
"If modeling is the act of establishing congruence between the elements and entailment structures of two systems, the object and its model, complexity is simply what belies modeling. Behavior in a simple model (and hence in a simple system) can always be correctly predicted: not so in complex systems." 
http://asist.org/Bulletin/Oct-12/OctNov12_Resmini.html


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Giving Our Clients The Best Deal In Mobile
By Paul Boag.
"Are we cheating our clients when it comes to mobile? More precisely, are we allowing our desire for mobile work to get in the way of providing our clients with the best solution for their business needs?..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/10/05/give-clients-best-deal-mobile/

Design is the Big Opportunity For Enterprise Mobility
By James Robertson.
"Enterprise software applications aren't 'designed'. At best, they're 'developed', but often they're just 'built'..."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/design-is-the-big-opportunity-for-enterprise-mobility/

Responsive Enhancement (Video)
Jeremy Keith's Webdagene 2012 presentation.
http://vimeo.com/50745034

Responsive Web Design is bad for performance. There, I said it.
By Guy Podjarny.
"I'm not saying you can't write a high performance responsive website. I'm not saying you shouldn't use RWD (Responsive Web Design) - I would actually recommend it to most organizations. However, RWD makes pages inherently more complicated, and all in all would make the mobile web slower."
http://www.guypo.com/technical/responsive-web-design-is-bad-for-performance-there-i-said-it/

Webplatform
"We are an open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform. Anyone can contribute and each person who does makes us stronger. Together we can continue to drive innovation on the Web to serve the greater good. It starts here, with you..."
http://www.webplatform.org/


+08: TOOLS.

Specificity Calculator
By Keegan Street. 
"A visual way to understand CSS specificity."
http://specificity.keegan.st/


+09: USABILITY.

Writing for Cognitive Ease
By Tim Minor.
"...By keeping abreast of the latest research in psychology and brain systems, we can effectively increase the feeling of ease in our products and thereby reduce cognitive strain. Some simple suggestions to implement today include..."
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/writing-for-cognitive-ease/

Remembering Home Page Buttons
By Gary Barber.
"The home button is very important for the navigation of any large website (discounting blogs here)..."
http://manwithnoblog.com/2012/10/08/remembering-home-page-buttons/


[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.]