+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 15, Issue 07, August 11, 2016. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 07 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 05: MISCELLANEOUS. 06: NAVIGATION. 07: USABILITY. 07: XML. SECTION TWO: 09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Start Building Accessible Web Applications (Videos) By Marcy Sutton. Subjects include "Accessible Icon Buttons", "Accessible Button Events", "Building Forms with Accessibility in Mind", "Headings and semantic structure for accessible web pages", and "Focus management using CSS, HTML". https://egghead.io/courses/start-building-accessible-web-applications-today Webinar - Web Accessibility 101 (Video) By Deque Systems. "I know website accessibility is important, but where do I begin?..." http://www.deque.com/blog/webinar-web-accessibility-101/ AXSchat with Lainey Feingold (Video) By AXSChat. "Lainey Feingold is a disability rights lawyer from Berkeley, California who works with the blind community on technology and information access issues..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp_JIlWq2t0 You Shouldn't Worry About Section 508 - It's Section 504 By Chip Cullen. "Section 504 states, in part, that: 'no qualified individual with a disability in the United States shall be excluded from, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity that … receives Federal financial assistance...'." http://chipcullen.com/you-shouldnt-worry-about-section-508-its-section-504/ Detecting Screen Readers in Analytics By Heather Burns. "...Identifying a screen reader user through analytics is, in most cases, identifying a previously anonymous individual as a person with a disability. That part of their identity, and whether they wish it to be detectable online, is and always should be a matter of their personal choice...Direct engagement with screen reader users forces us to confront their needs as individuals, not as aggregated data points, and we all will be better off for the experience..." http://www.powermapper.com/blog/accessibility-analytics/ Some Thoughts on Accessibility By Winston Hearn. "Recently I worked with some coworkers to write documentation on building accessibile web content (which we have since open-sourced as the Accessibility Guidelines) and then, building on that work, I gave a talk about accessibility as a practice rather than task or checklist. This post is a written version of that talk..." http://winstonhearn.com/thoughts-on-accessibility/ (Hat tip to Jennifer Sutton) +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Are You Writing Legacy CSS Code? By Jim Newbery. "I've created many terrible CSS code bases..." http://tinnedfruit.com/2016/07/25/are-you-writing-legacy-css-code.html How To Store Data In Sass Lists By Steven Bradley. "...Today I want to look at the list data type, which allows you to create flat data structures and later access the data point you want from within the structure..." http://vanseodesign.com/css/sass-lists/ +03: EVENTS. Fluxible September 19-25, 2016. Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada http://www.fluxible.ca/ National Association of Government Web Professionals Conference September 21-23, 2016. San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A. https://nagw.org/conference/2016 UCD Conference October 14-15, 2016. London, England, United Kingdom http://2016.ucduk.org/ Open Source Convention (OSCON) October 17-19, 2016. London, England, United Kingdom http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/open-source-eu Midwest UX Design October 20-22, 2016. Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A. http://2016.midwestuxconference.com/ EDUCAUSE Annual Conference October 25-28, 2016. Anaheim, California, U.S.A. https://events.educause.edu/annual-conference +04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Card Sorting The Fast Way By Andrew Coyle. "How to uncover hidden insights and informational structures before lunch time..." https://uxdesign.cc/card-sorting-the-fast-way-2c358a9af9ad +05: MISCELLANEOUS. 25 Years Ago the World Changed Forever By Amy van der Hiel. "Two years ago we celebrated the invention of the Web on the anniversary of the March 1989 memo written by Tim Berners-Lee outlining his proposal for the World Wide Web. On Saturday we celebrate not only the brilliance of the Web's conception but the world-changing point at which the Web was offered as a publicly available service..." https://www.w3.org/blog/2016/08/25-years-ago-the-world-changed-forever/ On Customer Service & Video Accessibility By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "...I know companies can't always move quickly to make changes to improve accessibility. It's wonderful to celebrate when they do!" https://www.lireo.com/on-customer-service-video-accessibility/ The 7 Questions For Any Technological Idea By Scott Berkun. "1. What is the problem that this new technology solves?..." http://scottberkun.com/2016/the-7-questions-for-any-technological-idea/ +06: NAVIGATION. Mobile DropDowns Revisited By Klaus Schaefers. "...Avoiding dropdowns improves execution times by 40%..." https://medium.com/theuxblog/mobile-dropdowns-revisited-17358ceb5340 Does Improving Website Navigation Pay Off? By Jeff Sauro. "...Here are five points backed by research to emphasize the importance of measuring and improving website findability..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/navigation-pays.php +07: USABILITY. How to Craft Effective Registration By Nick Babich. "Even though registration is so common thing, it's also one of the trickiest parts to design..." https://uxplanet.org/how-to-craft-effective-registration-f27caf633936 Designing Perfect Text Field: Clarity, Accessibility and User Effort By Nick Babich. "For any app or web application, nothing will ever happen without some initial and ongoing input from the user. It is, therefore, critical that product designers, developer and product managers understand the best ways to allow them to do so..." https://uxplanet.org/designing-perfect-text-field-clarity-accessibility-and-user-effort-d03c1e26004b The Impact of Tone of Voice on Users By Kate Meyer. "A two-part experiment found that different tones of voice in website content have measurable impacts on users' perceptions of a brand's friendliness, trustworthiness, and desirability. Casual, conversational, and enthusiastic tones performed best." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/tone-voice-users/ Visual Indicators to Differentiate Items in a List By Aurora Bedford. "Users are roughly 37% faster at finding items within a list when visual indicators vary both in color and icon compared to text alone. If choosing between using color or an icon, icons with strong information scent perform better than color alone." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/visual-indicators-differentiators/ Creating User-Friendly Documentation By Marie-Louise Flacke and Ferry G.A. Vermeulen. "Simplified Technical English (STE) and minimalism are of great importance in writing user-friendly documentation, particularly for user content such as maintenance manuals..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2016/08/creating-user-friendly-documentation.php +08: XML. Practical SVG By Chris Coyier. "'Sizing svg is more complicated than sizing an img,' writes Chris Coyier in this excerpt from his new A Book Apart title Practical SVG. But, he continues, it's complicated in a good way-it gives us more control and opens up some interesting new possibilities. Read on." http://alistapart.com/article/practical-svg [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +09: 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.]