+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 46, May 7, 2015. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 46 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: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML5. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: TYPOGRAPHY. 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. Notes On Client-Rendered Accessibility By Marcy Sutton. "As creators of the web, we bring innovative, well-designed interfaces to life. We find satisfaction in improving our craft with each design or line of code. But this push to elevate our skills can be self-serving: Does a new CSS framework or JavaScript abstraction pattern serve our users or us as developers?..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/05/06/client-rendered-accessibility/ 8 Reasons to Embrace Website Accessibility By Emma Grant. "...Accessibility carries with it an economic benefit, it has social and PR benefits, it avoids potential litigation issues, and it will help you sleep that little bit better. Implementation is simple in a new site, which should be using semantic markup anyway..." http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2015/04/8-reasons-to-embrace-website-accessibility/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Form Styling Module Level 1 By Tab Atkins. "A Collection of Interesting Ideas..." http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-forms/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Suggestions from a Web Educator for the Dreamweaver Folks at Adobe By Virginia DeBolt. "I've been teaching Dreamweaver again. Yeah, I do it all the time, I know. I have some ideas about what Dreamweaver needs to do to make life easier for newbies who haven't been using the product forever like I have..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2015/04/30/suggestions-dreamweaver-folks-adobe/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. How to Find the Sample Size for 8 Common Research Designs By Jeff Sauro. "It takes time to determine the right sample size, so, before you start, be sure you know which type of computation your research design falls into: 1) uncovering problems or insights 2) estimating a parameter 3) making a comparison." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/sample-size-designs.php +05: EVENTS. Midwest UX Design October 1-3, 2015. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. http://2015.midwestuxconference.com/ +06: HTML5. Custom Elements: is="" By Anne van Kesteren. "I think we reached rough consensus at the Extensible Web Summit that is="" does not do much, even for accessibility. Accessibility is something we need to tackle low-level by figuring out how builtin elements work..." https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2015AprJun/0515.html HTML 5.1 Placeholder Attribute By W3C. "Warning: Use of the placeholder attribute as a replacement for a label can reduce the accessibility and usability of the control for a range of users including older users and users with cognitive, mobility, fine motor skill or vision impairments. While the hint given by the control's label is shown at all times, the short hint given in the placeholder attribute is only shown before the user enters a value. Furthermore, placeholder text may be mistaken for a pre-filled value, and as commonly implemented the default color of the placeholder text provides insufficient contrast and the lack of a separate visible label reduces the size of the hit region available for setting focus on the control..." http://www.w3.org/TR/html51/semantics.html#the-placeholder-attribute Using WAI-ARIA in HTML - First Rule of ARIA Use Steve Faulkner, Hans Hillen, and David MacDonald, editors. "If you can use a native HTML element [HTML5] or attribute with the semantics and behaviour you require already built in, instead of re-purposing an element and adding an ARIA role, state or property to make it accessible, then do so..." http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-in-html/#first-rule-of-aria-use Form Inputs - The Browser Support Issue You Didn't Know You Had By Aaron Ladage. "The lowly form input. It's been a part of HTML for as long as HTML has had a formal specification; but before HTML5, developers were hamstrung by its limited types and attributes. As the use of smartphones and their on-screen keyboards has flourished, however, inputs have taken on a new and incredibly important role - but they're also riddled with browser and device inconsistencies..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/05/05/form-inputs-browser-support-issue/ +07: NAVIGATION. Building Nonlinear Narratives for the Web By Senongo Akpem. "The web operates in ways that can conflict with our traditional view of what a 'story' is. Content is chunked, mixed, and spread across channels, devices, and formats. How do we understand story lines, characters, interactions, and the role of the audience, given this information sprawl? Cue nonlinear narratives-Senongo Akpem guides us past basic 'scrolly-telling' to immersive, sometimes surprising experiences." http://alistapart.com/article/building-nonlinear-narratives-for-the-web Why It's Totally Okay to Use a Hamburger Icon By Steven Hoober. "...The menu icon has a long and storied history that long predates mobile devices..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/05/why-its-totally-okay-to-use-a-hamburger-icon.php +08: USABILITY. Infinite Scrolling - Impact on Assistive Technologies Series - #1 Common Issues By Heidi Jungel. "This blog is the first of three in the 'Infinite Scrolling- Impact on Accessibility' series. Before examining the common issues, it is important to know the definition of infinite scrolling and the Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 standards that may impact users..." http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/infinite-scrolling-impact-on-assistive-technologies-series-1/ Large Touchscreens - What's Different? By Amy Schade. "Designing for larger-scale touchscreens requires particular attention to input, screen focus, and privacy..." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/large-touchscreens/ Putting the Customer First is the Best Business Case By Gerry McGovern. "...Giving people the answers to their most important questions quickly and easily is what Top Tasks Management is all about." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/putting-customer-first-best-business-case Why I Changed my Mind About UX Certification By David Travis. "I'll admit it: when I used to hear people advocate professional certification in user experience, I was dismissive. Since we can't even agree on what 'UX' is, how can we certify it? I wondered. I saw certification as a way of creating a closed shop to exclude dissenting voices. This is the story of why I changed my mind." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/why_i_changed_my_mind_about_ux_certification.html Youtube's 'Big Bad Bubby' UX Bug! By Michael Lockrey. "This is a short summary of what appears to be a huge bug on Youtube that makes it almost impossible to use Youtube effectively if you are a Deaf or hard of hearing user (or someone who speaks a language other than English) and you are reliant upon good quality captioning for accessibility and inclusion..." https://medium.com/@mlockrey/youtube-s-big-bad-bubby-ux-bug-4e71e32b0d24 +09: XML. A Complete Guide to SVG Fallbacks By Chris Coyier and Amelia Bellamy-Royds. "The following is a guest post by Amelia Bellamy-Royds and me. Amelia and I recently presented at the same conference together. We both covered SVG, yet neither of us SVG fallbacks comprehensively. It's such a huge topic, after all. While I've covered SVG fallbacks before, it's been a few years and we figured we could do that subject better justice now. Here we go!..." https://css-tricks.com/a-complete-guide-to-svg-fallbacks/ How To Create SVG Arrowheads and Polymarkers - The marker Element By Steven Bradley. "A common graphic element drawn with SVG are arrowheads. You could create a new one for each line, but that duplicates code. You could reuse a graphic you defined in or elements, but then you have to move and rotate your arrowhead with each new line. Better would be to make things easy on yourself and use a element..." http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-markers/ [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 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.]