+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 25, December 13, 2012. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 25 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: EVENTS. 04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 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. Access Denied By David Raths. "Making university websites and course content accessible may be the law, but many institutions have a long way to go toward compliance. (Campus Technology) CT looks at three key elements of a more proactive approach to accessibility on campus..." http://campustechnology.com/articles/2012/12/04/access-denied.aspx How Blind People Use The iPhone 4S - Accessibility, Twitter, You Tube, Siri By Tommy Edison. YouTube Video: "Today I want to show you how an iphone works..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0nvdiRdehw Crossing Over - Bringing Mobile Innovations to Accessibility By Derek Featherstone. Derek Featherstone's a11yMTL presentation. "In this talk, Derek Featherstone looks at what drives innovation in mobile, and how we can take these ideas and bring them the other way - let mobile innovations influence the solutions that we employ in the name of accessibility." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW0j7ehtw2Q Why Do Native Mobile Apps Seem to Win All the Time? By Marco Zehe. "...The theme of too much clutter impacts a big range of people, not only visually impaired ones. People with cognitive disabilities, for example, are also often frustrated and confused by too much navigation or other 'webby' stuff on small mobile screens. 'Regular' sighted people I talked to prefer native apps for the same reason..." http://www.marcozehe.de/2012/12/10/why-do-native-mobile-apps-seem-to-win-all-the-time/ Facebook Mobile Site Using Metadata for Photo Alt Text By Clint Andrew Hall. "This change collects the metadata already published about a photo and constructs an easily read sentence about it." https://www.facebook.com/clint.hall/posts/101005573402988 Accessibility Responsibility Breakdown (WCAG 2.0) By Canada.gc.ca. "All of the WCAG 2.0 success criteria can be found under the twelve (12) accessibility guidelines. They have been allocated to the nine (9) generally accepted links in a Web page production chain. These traditional links are:" http://wet-boew.github.com/wet-boew/demos/arb-rra/arb-rra-eng.html Web Accessibility - A Catalyst to Greatness By Shawn Lawton Henry. Shawn Lawton Henry's a11yMTL presentation. "In this session Shawn Lawton Henry explains how accessibility overlaps with usability, mobile web, and innovation. You'll get practical guidance on taking your web design and development to the next level by including accessibility. Bottom line: Improve everyone's user experience with your website, and reap the benefits for your organization and for you personally..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuzpB8BTsGA Accessibility as Innovation By Elle Waters. Elle Waters' a11yMTL presentation. "Inclusive design and responsive web design as complimentary concepts can inspire your UX team and empower the end-user. Elle Waters discusses the paradigm shift from compliance to cutting-edge in an large scale web project, and she demonstrates these principles using three examples from not-yet-published solutions for an upcoming enterprise redesign." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiM5T4BL2MM +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Media Queries - You're Doing It Wrong By Niels Matthijs. "...Stop worrying about the width of your device or browser and simply base the behavior of a component on the available space its given. After that you still need to combine your width-based setup with the million other differentiators out there (of course)..." http://www.onderhond.com/blog/media-queries-based-on-elements Should You Hyphenate? By Eric A. Meyer. "...Thus my recommendation of the moment: if you're going to use CSS hyphenation, turn it on for mobile contexts. For desktop-well, that's a much murkier call. It may well depend on your font family, layout, default language, and so on. If you do turn them on, just make sure you have that lang attribute (I put mine on the html element) so your hyphens will persist." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2012/12/10/should-you-hyphenate/ JSCamp: CSS Next By Divya Manian. "I talked at JSCamp on 28th November 2012, on some of the newer features of CSS. I gave the talk without slides, so here is a description of all that I covered..." http://nimbupani.com/jscamp-css-next.html +03: EVENTS. Global Accessibility Awareness Day May 9, 2013. Online http://www.mysqltalk.com/gaad.html Mobilism May 16-17, 2013. The Netherlands http://mobilism.nl/ An Event Apart San Diego May 20-22, 2013. San Diego, Califorina, U.S.A. http://aneventapart.com/event/san-diego-2013?/2013/sandiego/ +04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Designing For the Right Amount of Information By Gerry McGovern. "There is a growing need for a much more professional and scientific approach to the management of information..." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/designing-right-amount-information +05: JAVASCRIPT. Think First, Code Later By Stephen Fulljames. "Stephen Fulljames places the reindeers of thought before the sleigh of action, encouraging coders everywhere to plan ahead when implementing JavaScript libraries." http://24ways.org/2012/think-first-code-later/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Are Walled Gardens Actually Helping Anyone? By Virginia DeBolt. "...Just when we think we've removed one set of barriers between people and content, up pops another one..." http://www.blogher.com/are-walled-gardens-actually-helping-anyone Responsive Images - What We Thought We Needed By Paul Robert Lloyd. "...So here is my proposal. Instead of spending the next year worrying about responsive images, let's embrace the constraints of the medium, and seek out new solutions that can work within them." http://24ways.org/2012/responsive-images-what-we-thought-we-needed/ +07: PHP. More Code, More Problems By Ed Finkler. "About a year ago, I wrote out some principles for web programming in PHP. I called it the MicroPHP Manifesto. The thing is, what I talked about wasn't really specific to PHP. So, I've decided to explore the concepts again in the context of the other languages I work with. What follows are some principles I try to keep in mind..." http://webadvent.org/2012/more-code-more-problems-by-ed-finkler +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Proposed 'Main' Element Would Help Your HTML Get to the Point By Scott Gilbertson. "The W3C's HTML Working Group, which is charged with creating HTML, has accepted a proposal to add a draft specification for the
tag to HTML..." http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/12/proposed-main-element-would-help-html-get-to-the-point/ Designing Ebooks with Web Standards By Kristofer Layon. "Slides and notes from Kristofer's CSS Dev 2012 presentation about how standards-based web designers can leverage their HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills to deliver content via channels in addition to web browsers." http://kristoferlayon.com/2012/12/05/designing-ebooks-with-web-standards/ HTML5 Spellcheck Attribute By David Walsh. "Many useful new attributes have been provided to web developers recently: download, placeholder, autofocus, and more. Another helpful new attribute is the spellcheck attribute which allows developers to control an elements ability to be spellchecked or subject to grammar checks. Simple enough, right? Let's take a look at how it's used..." http://davidwalsh.name/spellcheck HTML5 Video for Retina Displays By Ian Devlin. "Recently I came across a question on Stack Overflow where a user wanted to serve a high resolution video to devices that supported retina displays. I had half a solution." http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2012/12/html5/html5-video-for-retina-displays +09: USABILITY. 3 Idioms Reveal the Truth about University Websites By Dey Alexander. "I've worked on Australian university websites for the past 18 years, in a range of internal technical, design and content-related roles, and as an external consultant. I've met some great people and seen the potential to do great work. But I've also seen some problems again and again. They are aptly explained using three simple idioms..." http://www.4syllables.com.au/2012/12/university-websites/ Redesign Trend in Tech News Sites - Big, Responsive and Content Heavy By Dmitry Fadeyev. "There's a new trend in the redesign of technology news sites, which has emerged with the move towards responsive designs. The new wave of redesigns sees the old blog format being transformed into a full-screen, app-like experience, with multiple columns, fixed position elements and a global navigation bar at the top of the page..." http://www.usabilitypost.com/2012/12/05/news-sites-redesign-trend/ Watching Them Struggle By Dmitry Fadeyev. "...Recognizing that we're probably grossly underestimating our experience makes watching somebody struggle with a 'simple' interface a lot less excruciating and a lot more sense." http://www.usabilitypost.com/2012/12/06/watching-them-struggle/ 5 Huge Misconceptions About Your Average User By Kevin Purdy. "Forget social media management apps. How many people know how to search text on a web page? And how many people still need computers with DVD drives?" http://www.fastcompany.com/3003458/5-huge-misconceptions-about-your-average-user Designing for Users and Their Devices By Steven Hoober. "People use smaller tablets and eReaders in somewhat different ways: Their usage rates are different. Their use outside the home is more prevalent. And their users hold them differently. http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/12/designing-for-users-and-their-devices.php Nine Ways to Improve User Experience in Mobile Design By Ben Terrill. "The following is a guest post by Ben Terrill. Ben works for Mobify and leads the team that helps their huge customers like Starbucks, Bose and Threadless have excellent mobile and tablet experiences. Ben is co-author of the e-book 50 Ways to Please Your Customers: A guide to mobile web design best practices." http://css-tricks.com/nine-ways-to-improve-user-experience-in-mobile-design/ [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.]