+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 32, February 5, 2015. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 32 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: HTML5. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: USABILITY. 10: XML. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Setting an Example By Ian Pouncey. "All of us who build websites or application have at one time or another copied example or demo code and used it in our own work. Heck, a large number of us learnt our craft this way..." http://ianpouncey.com/weblog/2015/01/setting-an-example/ Accessible PDFs and the Potential of PDF/UA By Tim Lohman. "Media Access Australia spoke with Accessibil-IT’s Karen McCall (M.Ed.) about the importance of PDF accessibility and the PDF/UA (Portable Document Format/Universal Access) standard...PDF/UA is a technical standard for developers to implement so that PDF documents are accessible to people who are using adaptive technology..." http://www.accessiq.org/news/features/2015/02/accessible-pdfs-and-the-potential-of-pdfua Justice Department Reaches Agreement with Nueces County, Texas, to Improve Accessibility of Services and Programs By The US Department of Justice. "...One of the hallmarks of the agreement is the requirement that the county will assess all existing web content and online services for conformance with industry guidelines-the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0-for making web content accessible..." http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-reaches-agreement-nueces-county-texas-improve-accessibility-services-and Settlement Agreement: http://www.ada.gov/nueces_co_tx_pca/nueces_co_tx_sa.html As the ADA Turns 25, Website Accessibility Issues Pose Legitimate Risks for the Financial Services Industry By Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. "..over the past year, both DOJ and advocacy groups, such as the National Federation of the Blind and the American Counsel for the Blind, have continued to press the issue, utilizing the threat of litigation and/or investigation to prompt website accessibility agreements with notable entities in a variety of industries. These agreements involved, among others, H&R Block, Peapod, Safeway, eBay, multiple colleges and universities (e.g., Florida State University, the University of Montana, and the University of Cincinnati), and other facilities, including hospitals and fashion retailers. In recent years certain Offices of the State Attorney General (e.g., New York State) have also pursued settlement agreements involving website accessibility in industries including financial services..." http://www.aoda.ca/as-the-ada-turns-25-website-accessibility-issues-pose-legitimate-risks-for-the-financial-services-industry/#post-3441 Reframing Accessibility for the Web By Anne Gibson. "We need to change the way we talk about accessibility..." http://alistapart.com/article/reframing-accessibility-for-the-web WP Accessibility By Joe Dolson. "Updated WP Accessibility - now it knows if you have an accessibility-ready theme..." https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-accessibility/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. SASS CSS Frameworks - Everything You Need to Get Started By Sunil Arora. "Web design is not so plain anymore and authoring CSS is increasingly becoming complex and time consuming. CSS of course is evolving with the web but still lacks way behind and it is getting difficult to manage CSS in large projects. SASS is the CSS preprocessor language that extends CSS capabilities and makes CSS authoring and management much easier, structured and cleaner..." http://noeticforce.com/sass-css-preprocessor-framework-getting-started-guide +03: EVENTS. The Web and Mobile Development Process February 19, 2015. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-web-and-mobile-development-process-tickets-15303783027 Responsive Web Design (RWD) Summit 2015 March 10, 2015. Online http://environmentsforhumans.com/2015/responsive-web-design-summit/ Respond March 19-20, 2015. Sydney, Australia http://www.webdirections.org/respond15/ Lone Star PHP April 16-8, 2015. Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. http://lonestarphp.com/ Frontend Design Conference May 21-22, 2015. St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A. http://frontenddesignconference.com/ International PHP Conference June 7, 2015. Berlin Germany https://phpconference.com/2015se/en Web Design Day June 12, 2015. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. http://webdesignday.com/ +04: HTML5. Emulating Failure By Steve Faulkner. "HTML has a problem. As implemented in browsers many interactive elements cannot be styled as desired by web developers, or developers as directed by designers, marketing or any of the numerous others whose wishes code cutters must abide by..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/02/emulating-failure/ YouTube Fired Flash, Clearing HTML5's Last Obstacle For World Domination By Adriana Lee. "It's official: Flash has lost its groove. There's no stopping HTML5 now..." http://readwrite.com/2015/01/30/youtube-flash-html5-online-videos YouTube Embraces HTML5 By Tim Lohman. "The accessibility of Google's YouTube video service looks set to improve thanks to the recent decision by the internet giant to abandon Adobe’s Flash technology in favour of the fifth and final version of the Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML5." http://www.accessiq.org/news/news/2015/02/youtube-embraces-html5 Extensibility By Jeremey Keith. "I've said it before, but I'm going to reiterate my conflicted feelings about Web Components: I have conflicting feelings about Web Components. I am simultaneously very excited and very nervous..." https://adactio.com/journal/8276 The Long Web - An Event Apart Video By Jeremy Keith. "IN THIS 60-minute video caught live at An Event Apart Austin, Jeremy Keith bets on HTML for the long haul: 'The pace of change in our industry is relentless. New frameworks, processes, and technologies are popping up daily. If you're feeling overwhelmed, you are not alone. Let's take a step back and look at the over-arching trajectory of web design. Instead of focusing all our attention on the real-time web, let's see which design principles and development approaches have stood the test of the time. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, but those who can learn from the past will create a future-friendly web'." http://www.zeldman.com/2015/01/31/the-long-web-an-event-apart-video/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. WAI-ARIA - An Introduction to Accessible Rich Internet Applications By Patrick H Lauke. Patrick's WAI-ARIA's presentation slides. https://patrickhlauke.github.io/aria/presentation/ New String Features in ECMAScript 6 By Dr. Axel Rauschmayer. "The blog post covers new features of strings in ECMAScript 6 (ES6)..." http://www.2ality.com/2015/01/es6-strings.html Angular Accessibility Issues - Dynamic Content Update Announcements By Dylan Barrell. "This is part two in a series of posts on Angular.js accessibility..." http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2015/01/angular-accessibility-issues-dynamic.html Angular.js Accessibility - The Woeful TodoMVC Application By Dylan Barrell. This is part three in a series of posts on Angular.js accessibility... http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2015/02/angularjs-accessibility-woeful-todomvc.html +06: MISCELLANEOUS. One of W3C WAI's Finest - An Interview with Shawn Henry By Scott Hollier. "It's my great pleasure to introduce someone whose work is vital to the running of W3C WAI, Shawn Henry. Shawn very kindly took some time out of her incredibly busy schedule with various working groups and the WAI-IG mailing list for an interview." http://www.accessiq.org/news/w3c-column/2015/02/one-of-w3c-wais-finest-an-interview-with-shawn-henry Web Design and Principles By Jens Meiert. "Web design has become complex. More people, more ideas, more use cases, more technical innovations, more design variations, &c. pp. More makes for more complex. The developers of us have already observed that with our standards..." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20150130/web-design-and-principles/ Strategy Versus Tactics By Liam Friedland. "I wanted to document a handful of key UX concepts... [and] hit upon the idea of using 3 x 5-inch note cards and simple, hand-drawn visualizations as an expressive medium for this content" http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/02/strategy-versus-tactics.php +07: NAVIGATION. Block Level Links and Screen Reader Support By Ted Drake. "Daniel Goransson introduced VoiceOver's contradictory support for block level links on a mailing list for Apple accessibility. Specifically, Safari + VoiceOver on OSX allows the link to be announced as a single object, whereas on iOS, the link is announced as individual element..." http://www.last-child.com/block-level-links-and-screen-reader-support/ +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Standards for Web Applications on Mobile - Current State and Roadmap By W3C. "This document is the 16th edition of this overview of mobile Web applications technologies. The previous edition was released in October 2014. A live version of this document accepts contributions on the W3C Web and Mobile Interest Group Github repository." http://www.w3.org/2015/01/mobile-web-app-state/ +09: USABILITY. The Fold Manifesto - Why the Page Fold Still Matters By Amy Schade. "What appears at the top of the page vs. what's hidden will always influence the user experience-regardless of screen size. The average difference in how users treat info above vs. below the fold is 84%..." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/ Why You Should Avoid Using Modal Windows on Mobile By uxmovement. "One of the most frustrating things users experience on mobile sites is a modal window. On desktop, modal windows display without issue because of the large screen size. But on mobile, modal windows get cut off because of the small screen size. Users only see part of the modal window and can't exit nor view it with ease." http://uxmovement.com/mobile/why-you-should-avoid-using-modal-windows-on-mobile/ Bad User Interface Design is Death by a Thousand Cuts By Paul Boag. "Too often we excuse small usability issues by saying it is only a minor inconvenience. But small things add up..." https://boagworld.com/usability/bad-user-interface-design-is-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/ When to Override Native UI Components By Jamie Appleseed. "During our usability tests, we generally find the default native UI components to be very user-friendly. Meanwhile, custom designed UI components tend to be a lot more hit and miss. In fact, our testing often finds custom UI components to be poor for usability. In the worst cases, we have found them to be outright harmful to the user experience and be the direct cause for site abandonments. Luckily, there is a brighter side to the world of custom UI components too..." http://baymard.com/blog/custom-vs-native-ui How to Do Pair Writing Well By Gerry McGovern. "...Pair writing is a process, not one workshop. What you want to encourage is that the organization integrating this into the way they work, the way they create content. This is happening, according to Bjorn. On an ongoing basis you might consider using remote meeting software like GoToMeeting or Webex to continue the collaborative process." http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/how-do-pair-writing-well +10: XML. SVG Basics-Creating Paths With Curve Commands By Steven Bradley. "Last week I began a discussion about paths, mainly focusing on the different line commands you can use to draw lines and shapes. Today I want to continue the path discussion and talk about the different curve commands at your disposal..." http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-paths-curve-commands/ SVG Accessibility API Mappings By Richard Schwerdtfeger, Editor. "This document, the SVG Accessibility API Mappings [SVG-AAM] specification, defines how user agents map Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) markup to platform accessibility application programming interfaces (APIs). It is intended for SVG user agent developers responsible for SVG accessibility in their user agent..." http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/svg-aam/svg-aam.html [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: 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.]