+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 26, December 20, 2012. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 26 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: EVENTS. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 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. A Personal Look at Accessibility in Higher Education (Video) By Gaining Online Accessible Learning through Self-study (GOALS). This video highlights the experiences of students and faculty with disabilities in higher education. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQGFshzLPXE Looking to the Work of Others as You Create Your Institution's Web Accessibility Policy By National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE). "This post provides examples of web accessibility policies in higher education." http://ncdae.org/blog/web-accessibility-policy/ 'Does He Take Sugar?': The Risks of Standardising Easy-to-read Language By Brian Kelly. "Back in September 2012 in a post entitled 'John hit the ball': Should Simple Language Be Mandatory for Web Accessibility? I described the W3C WAI's Easy to Read activity and the online symposium on 'Easy to Read' (e2r) language in Web Pages/Applications' The article highlighted the risks of mandating easy-to-read language and, following subsequent discussions with Alastair McNaught of JISC TechDis, led to a submission to the online symposium..." http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/does-he-take-sugar-the-risks-of-standardising-easy-to-read-language/ Developer's Guide to WebAIM Screenreader Survey By Bruce Lawson. "...Here's a brief summary of the results to help web developers who care about accessibility (that is, professional-standard web developers)..." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2012/developers-guide-to-webaim-screenreader-survey/ Accessibility for Intranets By James Robertson. "...In this article we focus on the three tiers of action necessary to provide broader accessibility for intranets..." http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/accessibility-for-intranets/ Response to MSDN Article Designing Accessibility with HTML5 By Dennis E. Lembree. "This is a review/response to the recent MSDN Article Designing Accessibility with HTML5 by Rajesh Lal..." http://www.webaxe.org/response-msdn-article-designing-accessibility-html5/ Renowned Futurist Ray Kurzweil Joins Google to Work on Machine Learning and Language Processing By thenextweb.com. "Renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil joins Google to work on machine learning and language processing: Author, inventor, and pioneer in the field of human-computer engineering, Ray Kurzweil joins Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing. Kurzweil is the inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and the first text-to-speech synthesizer, as well as many other inventions..." http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/12/15/ray-kurzweil-joins-google/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Getting to Know CSS3 Selectors: Structural Pseudo-Classes By Emily Lewis. "Today's front-end developers don't just need to understand how to write CSS, we need to know how to write it efficiently. What 'efficiently' means can depend on your project and environment..." http://www.sitepoint.com/getting-to-know-css3-selectors-structural-pseudo-classes/ A Harder-Working Class By Nathan Ford. "Nathan Ford delves deep into the sack of CSS goodies and rewards our attention with a clever object-oriented, scalable and modular approach to attribute selectors. Old wine in new bottles." http://24ways.org/2012/a-harder-working-class/ Why You Should Say HTML Classes, CSS Class Selectors, or CSS Pseudo-Classes, but not CSS Classes By Tantek Celik. "Search the web for 'CSS classes' and you'll find numerous well intentioned references which are imprecise at best, and misleading or incorrect at worst. There are no such things as 'CSS classes'. Here's why you should refer to HTML classes, CSS class selectors, or even CSS pseudo-classes, but not 'CSS classes'..." http://tantek.com/2012/353/b1/why-html-classes-css-class-selectors Where to Avoid CSS Hyphenation By Eric A. Meyer. "Last week, I asked 'Should You Hyphenate?' This week, I'm going to assume that you decided to answer in the affirmative and talk about some good practices..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2012/12/17/where-to-avoid-css-hyphenation/ Giving Content Priority with CSS3 Grid Layout By Rachel Andrew. "...his article comprises a practical demonstration of the basics of grid layout, and also a discussion of one way in which we can start thinking of content in a more adaptive way..." http://24ways.org/2012/css3-grid-layout/ iOS WebKit Browsers and Auto-Zooming Form Controls By Roger Johansson. One thing about iOS browsers that can be pretty frustrating, both as a developer and as a user, is when you open a site on an iPhone or iPod Touch (not iPad) and want to enter some text in a text field or pick an option from a select menu. Very often the browser will automatically zoom in on the entire page a little when you tap the form control. http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201212/ios_webkit_browsers_and_auto-zooming_form_controls/ Vexing Viewports By Peter-Paul Koch, Luke Wroblewski, Stephanie Rieger, Lyza Danger Gardner. "Each week, new devices appear with varying screen sizes, pixel densities, input types, and more. As developers and designers, we agree to use standards to mark up, style, and program what we create. Browser makers in turn agree to support those standards and set defaults appropriately, so we can hold up our end of the deal. This agreement has never been more important. That's why it hurts when a device or browser maker does something that goes against our agreement-especially when they're a very visible and trusted friend of the web like Apple. Peter-Paul Koch, Lyza Danger Gardner, Luke Wroblewski, and Stephanie Rieger explain why Apple's newest tablet, the iPad Mini, creates a vexing situation for people who are trying to do the right thing and build flexible, multi-device experiences." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/vexing-viewports/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Using Questionnaires for Design Research By Emma Boulton. "Emma Boulton doesn't let a good question about designing and using surveys as part of a project's research activities go unanswered. Q: Have you been good this year? A: Yes|No. Think carefully. Santa knows the answer..." http://24ways.org/2012/using-questionnaires-for-design-research/ +04: EVENTS. Confab Minneapolis June 3-5, 2013. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://confabevents.com/events/minneapolis-2013 +05: JAVASCRIPT. Use ARIA To Define Invalid Responses For Form Inputs By Ted Drake. "he most difficult part of building web page forms is validation. It's best to have some form of instant validation via CSS and/or JavaScript. You also need to validate the responses at the server level for security..." http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2012/12/use-aria-to-define-invalid-responses-for-form-inputs/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. The Web We Lost By Anil Dash. "...This isn't some standard polemic about 'those stupid walled-garden networks are bad!' I know that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and LinkedIn and the rest are great sites, and they give their users a lot of value. They're amazing achievements, from a pure software perspective. But they're based on a few assumptions that aren't necessarily correct. The primary fallacy that underpins many of their mistakes is that user flexibility and control necessarily lead to a user experience complexity that hurts growth. And the second, more grave fallacy, is the thinking that exerting extreme control over users is the best way to maximize the profitability and sustainability of their networks..." http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-we-lost.html Retina Ready By Jackie Balzer. "When you get your shiny new retina device this holiday season, will the Internet be ready for you to see all its content in twice the pixel density glory? Probably not. But, this handy guide will help get your site 'retina ready' in no time..." http://webadvent.org/2012/retina-ready-by-jackie-balzer +07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML5 Bones By Ian Devlin. "Yesterday I released HTML5 Bones, a downloadable basic HTML5 template. Let's talk about that..." http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2012/12/html5/html5-bones Why I Changed My Mind About the
Element By Bruce Lawson. "Congratulations to The Mighty Steve Faulkner, whose proposal for an HTML5
element was published yesterday by the W3C. I'm delighted to see one of the code examples features 'The Lawson Academy'. Academy of what is left unknown..." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2012/why-changed-mind-about-main-element/ The Making of Fastbook: An HTML5 Love Story By Jamie Avins and Jacky Nguyen. "When we started what became Sencha, we made a bet on the web: a bet that modern application development didn't need anything except the browser, a great set of frameworks and a great set of tools. With those three weapons in hand, we knew developers could build applications that would delight users. The advent of HTML5 upped the game and it gave developers even more tools to let them treat the browser as an application development platform and not a page rendering engine..." http://www.sencha.com/blog/the-making-of-fastbook-an-html5-love-story Create Accessible Videos With HTML5 By Leonie Watson. "Leonie Watson of Nomensa examines developments pointing the way towards genuinely inclusive HTML5 video experiences " http://www.netmagazine.com/tutorials/create-accessible-videos-html5 HTML Tutorials By Webplatform. "HTML is a markup language, used to give content structure and meaning. This page lists all of our HTML tutorials - perfect for learning HTML from scratch, or diving into learning more complex HTML topics..." http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/tutorials +08: TOOLS. Viewport Resizer - a Better Responsive Web Design Bookmarklet By Craig Buckler. "If you're manually resizing your browser window to test responsive designs, you're making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself! A Responsive Design View tool appeared in Firefox 15 and there's a Responsive Web Design Bookmarklet which works in most browsers." http://www.sitepoint.com/viewport-resizer-bookmarklet/ +09: USABILITY. Trends in User Experience By Janet M. Six. "In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss emerging trends in user experience. As 2012 ends, it's a good time to consider what the future of user experience might bring-in terms of both cultural shifts that impact UX professionals and UX design trends..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/12/trends-in-user-experience.php [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.]