+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 20, November 8, 2012. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 20 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: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: SITES. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: USABILITY. 12: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Bland Inclusive Design is Bland By David Sloan. "Recently, Jared Spool of UIE published a short post asking whether designing for everybody leads to bland results. He argued that in order to avoid acceptable, but anodyne and uninspiring design solutions, design teams need to focus on a given group at the expense of others. The analogy he used was a restaurant that focuses on a particular cuisine and concentrates on achieving excellence in that area rather than trying to cover all tastes. Does that mean he's suggesting there's a problem with inclusive design?..." http://58sound.com/2012/11/02/bland-inclusive-design-is-bland/ Campus Leaders Speak Out on Value of Keeping Tech Accessible By Alisha Azevedo. "Make sure campus technology is accessible to everyone who needs it before you adopt it. That's one of the takeaways from a video set to premiere today at the annual Educause higher-education technology conference..." http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/campus-leaders-speak-out-on-value-of-keeping-tech-accessible/40852 Getting Down and Dirty with Accessibility and Usability By Karen Mardahl. "These are the notes from my workshop on 2 October 2012 at the Technical Communication UK (TCUK) 2012 conference..." http://www.mardahl.dk/2012/11/02/getting-down-and-dirty-with-accessibility-usability-tcuk12-workshop/ Sliding Doors - Transformative Moment Inspires Accessibility Journey By Wendy Chisholm. The following post is authored by Wendy Chisholm - Senior Accessibility Strategist at Microsoft. She is co-author of 'Universal Design for Web Applications' (O'Reilly) and a former editor of W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 and 2.0. With 17 years of experience making web applications accessible, she helps teams across Microsoft understand and implement accessible web design." http://blogs.msdn.com/b/accessibility/archive/2012/11/07/sliding-doors-transformative-moment-inspires-accessibility-journey.aspx +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Dropdown Default Styling By Chris Coyier. "There has always been big differences across how different browsers handle form styling. There probably always will be - because UI design choices aren't described in the specs. Browser makers perhaps view this as one of the ways they can differentiate the user experience a bit. Select (dropdown) menus are one that is particularly weird..." http://css-tricks.com/dropdown-default-styling/ The CSS Physical Unit Problem By Peter-Paul Koch. "Now that we have the iPad Mini, web designers waste no time in wanting to distinguish between it and the iPad 2. Tough luck..." http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2012/11/the_css_physica.html display: none; By Laura Kalbag. "Or The things you think are common knowledge but really they aren't..." http://laurakalbag.com/display-none/ +03: COLOR. Color Blindness Simulation in Short Films By Daniel Fluck. "Carlos Hernandez Matas created in 2011 three short films demonstrating the three main forms of color blindness: Deuteranopia, Protanopia and Tritanopia." http://www.colblindor.com/2012/11/01/color-blindness-simulation-in-short-films/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. How to Ask About User Satisfaction in a Survey By Caroline Jarrett. "The state of satisfaction may include a variety of emotions and É their intensity may vary according to how much you careÉ.' Recently, Janet Six devoted the October edition of her Ask UXmatters column to customer feedback surveys. That column has inspired me to have a go at one particular aspect of customer feedback in more detail: asking about user satisfaction. That and the excerpt from an email message, shown in Figure 1, which I received after an encounter with a customer support facility, complete with its odd repetition of the question." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/11/how-to-ask-about-user-satisfaction-in-a-survey.php +05: EVENTS. IA Summit April 3-7, 2013. Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. http://2013.iasummit.org/ Breaking Development April 8-10, 2013. Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. http://bdconf.com/2013/orlando 6th Annual International Symposium for Emerging Technologies for Online Learning April 9-11, 2013. Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://sloanconsortium.org/conference/2013/et4online/welcome UX London April 10-12, 2013. London, England, United Kingdom http://2013.uxlondon.com/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Using JavaScript to Check If Images are Enabled By Roger Johansson. "Sometimes it's useful to know if images are enabled in the user's browser, so that you can adjust your CSS and/or JavaScript to make sure that important content is not hidden and that the page is still usable even if images aren't loaded..." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201211/using_javascript_to_check_if_images_are_enabled/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Uncle Sam Wants You (to Optimize Your Content for Mobile) By Karen McGrane. "Thirty-one percent of Americans who access the internet from a mobile device say that's the way they always or mostly go online. For this group, if your content doesn't exist on mobile, it doesn't exist at all. The U.S. government has responded with a broad initiative to make federal website content mobile-friendly. Karen McGrane explains why this matters-and what you can learn from it." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/uncle-sam-wants-you-to-optimize-your-content-for-mobile/ Your Content, Now Mobile By Karen McGrane. "Making your content mobile-ready isn't easy, but if you take the time now to examine your content and structure it for maximum flexibility and reuse, you'll have stripped away all the bad, irrelevant bits, and be better prepared the next time a new gadget rolls around. This excerpt from Karen McGrane's new book, Content Strategy for Mobile, will help you get started." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/your-content-now-mobile/ Mobile Input Methods By Steven Hoober. "One key area that surprises a lot of designers and developers that I have worked with is input methods. Yes, they know that users don't have a mouse, but there's still an unstated assumption that all desktop Web input widgets will work. Perhaps more troubling is that their personal preferences and rumors sometimes supplant data regarding the kinds of actual experiences that exist out in the world..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/11/mobile-input-methods.php Do You Wanna Touch By Jeff Atwood. "Traditional laptops may have reached an evolutionary dead-end (or, more charitably, a plateau), but it is an amazing time for things that É aren't quite traditional laptops..." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/11/do-you-wanna-touch.html +09: NAVIGATION. Responsive Navigation: Optimizing for Touch Across Devices By Luke Wroblewski. "As more diverse devices embrace touch as a primary input method, it may be time to revisit navigation standards on the Web. How can a navigation menu be designed to work across a wide range of touch screen sizes?" http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1649 Navigation Patterns: Exploration Of Single-Page Websites By Steven Bradley. "...The websites in this article let you scroll, but they also provide alternative ways of finding cues and means for getting around. In several cases the designs encourage exploration, which is both more engaging and also teaches you how to navigate at the same time..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/11/05/navigation-patterns-in-single-page-websites/ +10: SITES. A11ybuzz By Karl Groves et al. "Users of the site submit links of interest for inclusion on the site. During the submission process, the links are validated to ensure uniqueness and triaged." http://www.a11ybuzz.com/ +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML5 Mythbusting By Chris Heilmann. "The ongoing discussion about the 'readiness' of HTML5 is based on a lot of false assumptions. These lead to myths about HTML5 that get uttered once and then continuously repeated - a lot of times without checking their validity at all..." https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/11/html5-mythbusting/ +14: USABILITY. 5 Perspectives On The Future Of The Human Interface By Alex Williams. "The next generation of apps will require developers to think more of the human as the user interface. It will become more about the need to know how an app works while a person stands up or with their arms in the air more so than if they're sitting down and pressing keys with their fingers..." http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/04/5-perspectives-on-the-future-of-the-human-interface/ New Rule - Every Desktop Design Has To Go Finger-Friendly By Josh Clark. "Touch has landed on the desktop. A whole new category of touch devices is flooding the consumer market in coordination with the release of Windows 8: touchscreen laptops and tablet/keyboard combos. These new hybrid combinations of touch and keyboard create a new ergonomic environment... and fresh demands on designers..." http://globalmoxie.com/blog/desktop-touch-design.shtml Mobile Design Details - Just in Time Actions By Luke Wroblewski. "On mobile devices, there simply isn't room for a lot of user interface elements -even when they're useful. But while there may not be enough space to include everything up front, we can reveal relevant features only when they are needed. In other words, we can surface them just in time..." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1648 Mobile Design Details - Hide/Show Passwords By Luke Wroblewski. "Passwords on the Web have long been riddled with usability issues. From overly complex security requirements to difficult to use input fields, passwords frequently result in frustrated customers and lost business. The situation is even worse on mobile where small screens and imprecise fingers are the norm. But what can we do?..." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1653 Hardware Specs vs. User Experience By Jakob Nielsen. "Product quality has to be judged in the context of human tasks, and reviews should emphasize real use-not raw numbers." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/specifications-vs-ux.html +15: XML. Have You Considered Polyglot Markup? By Albert Wiersch. "Nowadays, many web developers have moved toward HTML5 over XHTML. But did you know web documents can be both HTML and XML-based at the same time? This is what's known as polyglot markup: HTML documents that can correctly be served as either text/html or as an XML MIME-type-like application/xml or application/xhtml+xml. Like a polyglot person, who speaks more than one language, a polyglot document 'speaks' both HTML and XML..." http://www.sitepoint.com/have-you-considered-polyglot-markup/ Polyglot Markup Formal Objection Rationale By Lachlan Hunt. "At the HTML F2F, I was asked to provide rationale for my previously filed formal objection to the Polyglot Markup specification..." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Nov/0021.html [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +16: 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.]