+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 35, February 21, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 35 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: HTML5. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Text Alternatives for Images with Captions By Dey Alexander. "Web writers must provide a text alternative for informative or functional images they use in their content. But what should you do when the image also needs a caption? Three methods are commonly used, but none are ideal. In this article I'll explain why and suggest an alternative." http://www.4syllables.com.au/2013/02/text-alternatives-images-captions/ How Should You Markup the First Instance of an Acronym in Body Copy? By Derek Featherstone. "This week's Ask the Sherpas question comes from reader Trevor Brennan: How should someone markup the first instance of an acronym (within body copy) where its acronym directly proceeds its definition: eg. 'Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)'..." http://www.facebook.com/notes/web-standards-sherpa/how-should-you-markup-the-first-instance-of-an-acronym-in-body-copy/477296439004474 How Does Accessible Web Design Benefit All Web Users? By AccessibleTech. "There are many examples in society of innovations that were originally intended for people with disabilities but that have provided access benefits to all people (curb cuts and automatic door openers are two of the most common). Accessible web content is a similar innovation. Web content designed in a way that is accessible to people with disabilities additionally benefits many non disabled users and often benefits all users.Following are specific examples..." http://www.accessibletech.org/access_articles/webinfo/accessibleWebBenefit.php How to Future Proof Your Accessibility Efforts By A11Y Project. "Future proofing your accessibility work will help lower your development costs as well as support current and future user agents, such as assistive technologies (AT). WCAG has 2 guidelines, Parsing and Name, role, value, for futureproofing your website..." http://a11yproject.com/posts/future-proof-your-accessibility/ Web Accessibility Checklist By A11Y Project. "A handy HTML accessibility checklist..." http://a11yproject.com/checklist.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Using Flexbox - Mixing Old and New for the Best Browser Support By Chris Coyier. "Flexbox is pretty awesome and is certainly part of the future of layout. The syntax has changed quite a bit over the past few years, hence the 'Old' and 'New' syntax. But if we weave together the old, new, and in-between syntaxes, we can get decent browser support. Especially for a simple and probably the most common use case: order-controlled grids..." http://css-tricks.com/using-flexbox/ Flexbox Syntax for IE 10 By Zoe Mickley Gillenwater. "Yesterday in my presentation on CSS3 Layout I talked about the different syntaxes that the Flexible Box Layout module (Flexbox) has gone through on its journey to candidate recommendation. As I said in my talk, IE 10 didn't have time to update to the new syntax before it came out last fall, so it uses the syntax that first came out in 2011, with the -ms- prefix tacked on..." http://zomigi.com/blog/flexbox-syntax-for-ie-10/ New CSS Tests - Selectors and Columns By Peter-Paul Koch. "Over the weekend I finished the first two CSS compatibility tables new style: selectors and columns. These tests are almost complete (a few selectors are missing), and have been executed in 40 or so browsers, desktop and mobile." http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2013/02/new_css_tests_s.html Point Break By Ian Devlin. "If you've been working with responsive web design then you will be familiar with the term 'breakpoint' being used to define a media query with a browser width (usually although height can be used too) at which something in the website's layout or look should be changed. The name itself though has a negative connotation..." http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2013/02/opinion/point-break +03: COLOR. Color, Contrast and 1194.21 By Michael Adams. "I was recently asked about a software issue involving problems with color..." http://theaccesspond.com/2013/02/14/color-contrast-and-1194-21/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Overcoming Participants' Test Mentality - Qualitative Research Approaches for Web Sites By Steve Mellor. "User experience..., perhaps more than any other area of qualitative research, really requires some thought about the best approach for each brief. É Because doing face-to-face UX research has some disadvantages that can really impact the reliability of the research findings." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/overcoming-participants-test-mentality-qualitative-research-approaches-for-web-sites.php Hypothesis Testing in the User Experience By Jeff Sauro. "...While the process of subjecting data to statistical analysis intimidates many designers and researchers (recalling those school memories again), remember that the hardest and most important part is working with a good testable hypothesis. It takes practice to convert fuzzy business questions into testable hypotheses. Once you've got that down, the rest is mechanics..." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/hypothesis-ux.php +05: EVENTS. Breaking Development October 21-23, 2013. Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A. http://bdconf.com/2013/nashville edUi November 4-6, 2013. Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A. http://eduiconf.org/ Confab Higher Ed November 11-12, 2013. Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. http://confabevents.com/events/higher-ed-2013 +06: HTML5. Screen Reader Support for HTML5 Sections By Leonie Watson. "HTML5 includes a handful of section elements that give documents a robust semantic structure. The header, footer, nav, article, section and aside elements give different regions of a document meaning. Amongst other things, that meaning can be understood by screen readers, and the information used to help blind and partially sighted people orient themselves and navigate around the page..." http://tink.co.uk/2013/02/screen-reader-support-for-html5-sections/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Web Accessibility for Information Architects - Part I By Glenda Sims. "This post is the first in a two-part series about Accessibility and Information Architecture by Deque Director of Consulting Methodology & Quality, Glenda Sims..." http://www.deque.com/web-accessibility-information-architects-part-one Web Prototyping for Touch Gestures By Sanjay Raval. "In this article, you'll learn how to create a web prototype with touch gestures using simple and easy HTML, CSS and jQuery..." http://www.sitepoint.com/web-prototyping-for-touch-gestures/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview - Lea Verou on Why Web Standards Matter and How You Can Help By Webmonkey. "This is the first in a coming series of interviews with web developers. We're excited to start with Lea Verou, a front-end web developer from Greece who has not only made lots of cool stuff we've linked to, but also recently joined the W3C to help work on web standards." http://www.webmonkey.com/2013/02/developer-lea-verou-on-why-web-standards-matter/ Responsive Web Design - Planning For The Future By Drew Thomas. "When considering a mobile Web strategy and weighing responsive Web design against a separate mobile website, the most important metric is how functional the website is for the user. This goes beyond better content organization for smaller screens. Mobile (and desktop) websites should be easily found, easily shared, fast loading, easy to maintain and easy to build on..." http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2013/02/14/responsive-web-design-planning-future/ +09: NAVIGATION. Video - How ARIA's Landmark Roles Work By Scott Gilbertson. "We've written a lot about how you can make your website more accessible with WAI ARIA roles, particularly ARIA's Landmark roles. As a bonus you can also use the roles to style elements..." http://www.webmonkey.com/2013/02/video-how-arias-landmark-roles-work/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. These Apples Don't Taste Like Oranges - Let's Burn Down the Orchard By Christian Heilmann. "When I see comparisons of HTML5 to native apps I get the feeling that the way we measure failure and success could give statisticians a heart attack..." http://christianheilmann.com/2013/02/19/these-apples-dont-taste-like-oranges-lets-burn-down-the-orchard/ +11: USABILITY. 10 Web Usability Tips By Alex Caldwell. "Usability is the most important function of every website. It doesn't matter how attractive your site is. If it isn't easy to use, it won't engage your audience. While the following tips are the best practices that I've developed over several years, they're open to interpretation and are simply what I believe is generally important. As technology continues to evolve, these tips will evolve as well, but the main concepts and principles will stay the same." http://brolik.com/blog/10-web-usability-tips/ How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices? By Steven Hoober. "Everything changes with touchscreens. On today's smartphones, almost the entire front surface is a screen. Users need to be able to see the whole screen, and may also need to touch any part of it to provide input. Since my old data was mostly from observations of users in the lab-using keyboard-centric devices in too many cases - I needed to do some new research on current devices. My data needed to be more unimpeachable, both in terms of its scale and the testing environment of my research." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/how-do-users-really-hold-mobile-devices.php QA and UX By Jakob Nielsen. "Quality assurance impacts the user experience: when things don't work, users question their understanding and develop superstitions and inefficient workarounds." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/quality-assurance-ux/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: 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 Drupal Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.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 HTML5 Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html5.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.]