+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 39, March 21, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 39 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: DRUPAL. 04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 05: MISCELLANEOUS. 06: NAVIGATION. 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. Handling Erratic Behaviour With AT By Gez Lemon. "Most of us have come across scenarios where web accessibility testing with assistive technologies produces unexpected results, when we know the underlying structure of the web page is correct. Assistive technologies are complex, so it's not surprising they sometimes go wrong, but we need to know how to recover when they're being unresponsive or providing incorrect information. My colleague, Hans Hillen, sent an email internally at TPG about handling erratic behaviour with JAWS, and has kindly allowed me to post it here, as this is useful information..." http://juicystudio.com/article/handling-erratic-behaviour-at.php Requirements for an Accessible PDF By Denis Boudreau. "When asked what the most important PDF accessibility requirements are, most people will tell you that in order to be considered accessible, PDF documents need to..." http://www.deque.com/requirements-accessible-pdf The CSUN 2013 Web Track Mega Post By Paul Schantz. "...As you may have gathered if you followed my live blog posts a couple weeks ago, my interest in attending the CSUN 2013 conference was almost exclusively web-related. Now that it's been a couple weeks and I've had some time to reflect, I figured it would be a good idea if I consolidated everything into one mega-list..." http://paulschantz.com/2013/03/15/the-csun-2013-web-track-mega-post/ Better, But... By John Foliot. "Roughly 3 years ago (late April, 2010) I wrote a Rant entitled A Letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary where I got all hissy about the fact that the transcripts of the invited experts were posted in inaccessible PDF files: big giant pictures (the most evil of PDFs)! I got all righteous and took it upon myself to convert those PDFs to HTML and mirrored them from my site, freely knowing that I might just get into a bit of trouble over that decision. I never heard a word, and after a while life moved on..." http://john.foliot.ca/better-but/ 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Defining Breakpoints By Nicolas Torres. "To set up a responsive strategy on one's Web design implies an important prior reflection. Responsive Web design is much more than percentage units: it consists in a real rearrangement of the containers, and sometimes of content, according to the device in order to privilege the readability and legibility of the information. With a concrete and standard example, Nicolas Torres teaches you how to set clever responsive breakpoints." http://openweb.eu.org/articles/defining-breakpoints Pseudo or Not-So-Pseudo Click Mobile Events By Estelle Weyl. "When you 'click' with your finger there is no 'right click' event. Because of this, mobile devices react when you hold and click instead. Because there is no keyboard, mouse or right click, mobile browsers have some built in behaviors." http://www.standardista.com/pseudo-or-not-so-pseudo-click-mobile-events/ Unstoppable Promises By Eric A. Meyer. "Over the past year and a half, the CSS Working Group has been working on a CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3 module. Now, don't get overexcited: this is not a proposal to add generalized, formal if/then/else or switch statements to CSS-though in a very limited way, it does just that. This is the home of the @media rule, which lets you create if/then conditions with regard to the media environment. It's also the home of the @supports rule, which lets youÉwell, that's actually more complicated than you might think." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2013/03/19/unsupportable-promises/ 03: DRUPAL. Accessibility Tag in Drupal 7 Issue Queue By Drupal.org. http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?version[]=8.x&issue_tags=accessibility Accessibility Tag in Drupal 8 Issue Queue By Drupal.org. http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?version[]=8.x&issue_tags=accessibility Drupal API Extension for Dreamweaver By Chris Charlton. "XTND.US releases early preview download of their Drupal API extension for Dreamweaver. Reduce typing and get past plain text editing of Drupal files in Dreamweaver. If you are into Drupal and use, or want to use, Dreamweaver then you really need this extension. Let us save you tons of time by reducing keystrokes with our Drupal API code hints integration for Dreamweaver (API versions 5 & 6). The extension provides code hints and code coloring for every Drupal API method in Drupal 5 & 6." http://groups.drupal.org/node/10783 Drupal Glossary http://drupal.org/glossary +04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Web Organization is Not Like Book Organization By Mark Baker. "One of the most difficult aspects of moving content to the Web is that webs are not organized like other things - books in particular. And the difference is not small. It is not that web organization is somewhat different from book organization. It is so different that you can't even look at web organization the way you look at book organization." http://everypageispageone.com/2013/03/19/web-organization-is-not-like-book-organization/ How to Organize Page-Level Content By Tom Johnson. "One of the topics I haven't covered is how to organize content within the same page. If your topics become long and look more like Wikipedia pages, you will have a lot of content to organize - potentially twenty different sections on the page, including both tasks and concepts. What's the best way to organize all your page-level content?" http://idratherbewriting.com/2013/03/16/how-to-organize-page-level-content/ +05: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview With Steve Faulkner: HTML5 Editor and New Doctor By Bruce Lawson. "Steve Faulkner - invariably prefixed by the honorific 'The Mighty' by those who know him - is Australian living in London with his wife and two kids. He works for The Paciello Group, a well-known web accessibility consultancy, and is a co-editor of the HTML5 spec at W3C Today, we're pleased to announce that he's joining the HTML5 Doctor team, with special focus on accessibility and didgeridoo..." http://html5doctor.com/interview-steve-faulkner-html5-editor-new-doctor/ +06: NAVIGATION. Quality Search Requires Quality People By Gerry McGovern. "On its own, search technology will not help us find the right things quickly. We need human expertise and human management." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/quality-search-requires-quality-people Converting Search into Navigation By Jakob Nielsen. Most users are unable to solve even halfway complicated problems with search. Better to redirect their efforts into more supportive user interfaces when possible." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-navigation/ +07: PHP. Object-Oriented PHP By Ricky Onsman. "Are you sick of unravelling unmaintainable spaghetti code? We have a new Learnable course that will help you learn to write more readable, more sharable and more maintainable PHP code: Learn Object-oriented PHP..." http://www.sitepoint.com/object-oriented-php-2/ +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Can Object Oriented Principles Be Applied To Web Design? By Steven Bradley. "When Nicole Sullivan coined the phrase object oriented css a lot of programmers reacted against it and understandably so. CSS is not an object oriented language. It's not even a programming language. At the same time I can understand why Nicole chose the name..." http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/object-oriented-principles/ The Web on Mobile and Beyond By Dominique Hazael-Massieux. "People used to stare at me and laugh, back in 2005 when W3C launched its Mobile Web Initiative to advocate the importance of the web to the mobile world. Now I am the one smiling much of the time, as I did most recently during the 2013 edition of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, one of the largest events to focus on mobile devices and networks..." http://alistapart.com/column/the-web-on-mobile-and-beyond +09: USABILITY. Common Misconceptions About Touch By Steven Hoober. "44 pixels is not a physical size....We cannot even translate 44 pixels, or points, to a single actual size." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/03/common-misconceptions-about-touch.php What a CMS Won't Do for You By Marli Mesibov. "...There is no one-size-fits-all CMS. For every team that needs pages with three custom images across the top there is another team that needs 2px borders surrounding every third block of text. The frustrations that content creators face have more to do with nuance than with any particular flaw in the options available today. The solution is forward thinking. Content isn't meant to be perfected for one page, where it will live forever untouched; it's meant to appear on Jonathan's desktop, Lisa's mobile phone, Sarah's RSS feed, and Tom's email. That level of detail and flexibility means content creators need to work harder and smarter..." http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/what-a-cms-wont-do-for-you/ [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.]