+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 22, November 29, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 22 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: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TYPOGRAPHY. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Heading Structure - Accessibility for Designers By Access iQ. "One useful way to help people with disabilities is to ensure that headings are organised into a logical, linear hierarchy..." http://www.accessiq.org/create/content/heading-structure-accessibility-for-designers Cognitive Accessibility User Research W3C Editor's Draft 29 November 2014 Lisa Seeman and Michael Cooper, editors. "This document provides background research about user groups with cognitive disabilities and the challenges that they face when using Web technologies. We aim to identify and describe the current situation so that, at a later stage, we will be able to contrast it to what we want to happen. This later work will include identifying gaps and potentials strategies for improving accessibility, suggesting authoring techniques and creating a road-map for improving accessibility for people with learning disabilities and cognitive disabilities..." https://rawgit.com/w3c/wcag/coga-gap-analysis-2014-fpwd/coga/user-research.html Web Accessibility and Dyslexia By Rakesh Paladugula. "Dyslexia is a language processing disorder or a learning difficulty. It is rather a processing and learning difficulty than a disability..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/11/web-accessibility-dyslexia/ Justice Department Further Delays Website Regulations By Minh Vu and Kristina Launey. "The Justice Department (DOJ) just officially announced in the federal government's Unified Regulatory Agenda that it is again pushing back the target date for publishing its proposed website regulations for state/local governments and public accommodations to December 2014 and June 2015, respectively..." http://www.adatitleiii.com/2014/11/justice-department-further-delays-website-regulations/ The ALTernative Debate By John Eric Brandt. "...I don't know if the new Google service will ever come to fruition, but like so many other things in the Googleverse, it is something we just will have to wait to see." http://jebswebs.net/blog/2014/11/alternative-debate/ Accessible Google Maps with Search Field By Dylan Barrell. "After a question by Dylan Nicholson, I decided to update the accessible google maps example to include a search field. I did not make any specific accessibility changes to the example, I simply wanted to allow Dylan to answer his question as to whether the search is usable for someone using a screen reader..." http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2014/11/accessible-google-maps-with-search-field.html How I Hear By Andrew Walker. Andrew Walker a developer at Made by Many made a prototype to demo his hearing loss. Press play on the clip and then toggle to configure severity. http://howihear.herokuapp.com/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS andĘSpecificity By Jens Meiert. "From using graphs for better understanding to confirming fundamentals for saner coding." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20141127/css-and-specificity/ Write CSS3 without Worrying about Prefixes By James Steinbach. "...CSS3 properties are awesome and you do not need to waste time writing prefixes for them. Whether a mixin library or a postprocessing tool fits your workflow better, you can automate this part of your coding and get more done." http://www.sitepoint.com/write-css3-without-worrying-prefixes/ Fix Your Flexbox Web Site By Karl Dubost. "Web compatibility issues takes many forms. Some are really hard to solve and there are sound business reasons behind them. On the other hand, some Web compatibility issues are really easy to fix with the benefits of allowing more potential market shares for the Web site. CSS Flexbox is one of those. I have written about it in the past. Let's make another practical demonstration on how to fix some of the flexbox issues..." http://www.otsukare.info/2014/11/26/howto-fix-flexbox-css +03: COLOR. Colour Blindness Accessibility Community Group By W3C. "The aim of our project is to build new HTML5 specifications that can be used later by developers who wish to create more accessible websites for colour-blind people. The goal is that the specifications, that we are going to suggest, will one day become a standard of HTML5." http://www.w3.org/community/colourblindness/ Colour and Colour Contrast - Accessibility for Designers By Access iQ. "Colour and colour contrast are some of the easier accessibility requirements to comply with, as elements have numeric targets that are easier to measure against..." http://www.accessiq.org/create/content/colour-and-colour-contrast-accessibility-for-designers +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Better User Research Through Surveys By Chris Gray. "...Surveys are increasingly becoming a more accepted tool for UX practitioners. Creating a great survey is like designing a great user experience-they are a waste of time and money if the audience, or user, is not at the centre of the process. Designing for your user leads to the gathering of more useful and reliable information..." http://uxmastery.com/better-user-research-through-surveys/ Easy Internet Explorer Testing with RemoteIE By Craig Buckler. "...Microsoft has created a faster, slicker option. RemoteIE allows you to run the latest version of Internet Explorer from the cloud on Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android without having to install or manage a virtual machine. The free service is currently in beta but it works and is technically stunning..." http://www.sitepoint.com/easy-internet-explorer-testing-remoteie/ +05: EVENTS. Web Accessibility Training April 14-15, 2015. Logan, Utah, U.S.A. http://webaim.org/training/ SmashingConf LA April 14-15, 2015. Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. http://smashingconf.com/la-2015/ +06: HTML5. 10 Typical HTML Interview Exercises By Aurelio De Rosa. "...In this article I've discussed ten potential interview questions that you can use to test your knowledge of HTML. The questions you may be asked in your next interview may include one or more of these..." http://www.sitepoint.com/10-typical-html-interview-exercises/ Accessibility of Web Components By Marcy Sutton. "A Marklar walks into a Marklar. Marklar asks the marklar, 'do you have any Marklar?' The Marklar shakes his Marklar and says 'No, we only have Marklar'..." http://marcysutton.github.io/accessibility-of-web-components/slides.html Terms Defined in the W3C HTML5 Recommendation By Webplatform.org. "This document contains the full list of documents being managed as 'Web Platform Specs', each with a minimal abstract and links to their variants. " https://specs.webplatform.org/html-aria/webspecs/master/examples/html5definitions.html +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. How to Plan Site Architecture, The Right Way By Ryan Gittings. "If making a website is like building a house, then planning the content is like laying the foundations. You may end up with a beautiful, desirable house in the short term, but if you've cut corners, or failed to plan your foundations properly, your building is at risk of falling down. And so it is with your website. If you don't spend time planning how your audience will interact with your content in the most intuitive possible way, you're not going to benefit from the best possible sales or conversions. Worse still, if you get it really wrong, you could alienate a large portion of your audience..." http://www.onextrapixel.com/2014/11/27/how-to-plan-site-architecture-the-right-way/ +08: JAVASCRIPT. ARIA-haspopup (property) By Rakesh Paladugula. "ARIA-haspopup is used to indicate the presence of submenus and context menus on the web page. In general aria-haspopup property is used with links and buttons. Though it sounds like haspopup need to be used for dialog boxes, popup windows, ARIA 1.0 specification recommends use of aria-haspopup property for submenus and context menus. Different assistive technologies react differently with the use of aria-haspopup property..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/11/aria-haspopup-property/ Using the aria-controls Attribute By Leone Watson. "There are a handful of ARIA1.0 attributes that can be used to indicate relationships between elements, when those relationships can't be ascertained easily from the DOM. One such attribute is aria-controls..." http://tink.co.uk/2014/11/using-the-aria-controls-attribute/ Ridiculously Easy Trick for Keyboard Accessibility By Karl Groves. "One of the more frustrating things about accessibility is how ridiculously easy most things are to do. While most developers tend to see accessibility as nebulous and time consuming, the truth is some of the most impactful issues are actually easy to deal with..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2014/11/24/ridiculously-easy-trick-for-keyboard-accessibility/ Using ngAria: The Accessibility Module in Angular 1.3 By Marcy Sutton. "...A new feature released in Angular 1.3.0 is the accessibility module, ngAria. As someone involved in delivering this community-driven effort, I thought it might be helpful to introduce ngAria, a module which can improve the user experience for many people with disabilities." http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2014/11/using-ngaria.html Understanding ECMAScript 6 By Nicholas C Zakas. Online book: "The JavaScript core language features are defined in a standard called ECMA-262. The language defined in this standard is called ECMAScript, of which the JavaScript in the browser and Node.js environments are a superset. While browsers and Node.js may add more capabilities through additional objects and methods, the core of the language remains as defined in ECMAScript, which is why the ongoing development of ECMA-262 is vital to the success of JavaScript as a whole..." https://leanpub.com/understandinges6/read +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Device Detection vs Responsive Web Design By Bruce Lawson. "..I'd like to see proper A/B testing: a well-made responsive version of a site versus its 'm-dot' equivalent, redirected from its canonical URL and assembled after a device look-up, across a variety of devices and network conditions. If we're going to argue, it might as well be about data." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2014/device-detection-responsive-web-design/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. WHATWG/W3C Collaboration By Sam Ruby. "I've been having fun working on the URL Living Standard. The first change I landed was to convert the spec from Anolis to Bikeshed. Here's the before and after after. And just for fun, here is the beginning on 2014 and beginning of 2013. The point being that arbitrary snapshots of living standards do exist." http://intertwingly.net/blog/2014/11/20/WHATWG-W3C-Collaboration +11: TYPOGRAPHY. Typographer's Typefaces By Jamie Clarke. "The 25 most admired typefaces by typographers, type designers and letterers." http://blog.8faces.com/post/103548341771/typographers-typefaces +12: USABILITY. The 'Liking' Principle in User Interface Design By Jennifer Cardello. "People prefer to say 'yes' to individuals and organizations they know and like. Same goes for websites and other user interfaces." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/liking-principle-ui-design/ User Involvement for User Adoption: An Intranet Strategy By Amy Schade. "Involving employees early and often in intranet design projects can not only improve usability, but also encourage user adoption." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/intranet-user-involvement/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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 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 HTML Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.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.]