+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 15, Issue 25, December 15, 2016. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 25 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: BOOKS. 03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: PHP. 08: TOOLS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Writing HTML with Accessibility in Mind By Manuel Matuzovic. "An introduction to web accessibility. Tips on how to improve your markup and provide users with more and betters ways to navigate and interact with your site..." https://medium.com/@matuzo/writing-html-with-accessibility-in-mind-a62026493412 New Research Project to Interpret WCAG By Funka. "All regulations on web accessibility points to WCAG..." http://www.funka.com/en/our-assignments/research-and-innovation/archive---research-projects/new-research-project-to-interpret-wcag/ What's Happening With WCAG By Mark DuBois. "I had the opportunity to speak with Glenda Sims (Deque) about all the activities happening with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) these days..." http://webprofessionals.org/whats-happening-wcag/ The NoMouse Challenge to Raise Awareness About Accessible Web Design By Beatrice Credi. "The #NoMouse Challenge is a global effort to raise awareness about accessible web design..." http://www.west-info.eu/the-nomouse-challenge-to-raise-awareness-about-accessible-web-design/ Day 8: Testing Using a Screen Reader By Callum Macrae. "A screen reader is a piece of assistive technology used by people who may need help reading what is on the screen..." http://12devsofxmas.co.uk/2016/01/day-8-testing-using-a-screen-reader/ Patterns for Accessible Webchats By Theodor Vararu. "...These patterns will make your webchat more accessible, but these alone are not enough. Make sure that your visual design and content design are of a high standard. Crucially, test your implementation of these accessibility patterns with users who have access needs...." https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/12/09/patterns-for-accessible-webchats/ Technologic (Human Afterall): Accessibility Mix By Léonie Watson. Léonie's 2016 Fronteers presentation. https://vimeo.com/194964027 A Cautionary Tale: DOJ Intervenes in Another Web Accessibility Lawsuit By Kristina M. Launey. "...this case demonstrates that litigating a website accessibility case has broader implications than just winning or losing on the merits. Few businesses want the DOJ inquiring into their ADA Title III compliance practices, of which websites are only a part." http://www.adatitleiii.com/2016/12/a-cautionary-tale-doj-intervenes-in-another-web-accessibility-lawsuit/ Statement of Interest Filed by the United States Against Winn Dixie Stores (PDF) By ADA. "Plaintiff Juan Carlos Gil, who is blind, alleges he is a customer of Winn-Dixie Stores, a chain of grocery stores and pharmacies, and would like to access the information, goods, and services that Winn-Dixie Stores provides to customers via its website..." https://www.ada.gov/briefs/winn_dixie_soi.pdf Digital Access Legal Update - December 2016 By Lainey Feingold. "This post includes legal developments about digital accessibility between May 8, 2016 and December 12, 2016..." http://www.lflegal.com/2016/12/legal-update-december16/ +02: BOOKS. Keith, Jeremy. Resilient Web Design, 2016. https://resilientwebdesign.com/ +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Windows High Contrast Mode: The Limited Utility of -ms-high-contrast By Patrick H. Lauke. "...The media feature supports three values that can be tested: active, black-on-white and white-on-black. While on the face this feature seems pretty useful, it arguably provides authors with very little actionable information..." https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2016/12/windows-high-contrast-mode-the-limited-utility-of-ms-high-contrast/ What Next for CSS Grid Layout? By Rachel Andrew. "Rachel Andrew opens the door on next generation CSS to bring us tidings of Grid joy. But rest not on your laurels, we must look to what comes next for the specification. Gold may be just around the corner, but whence will the frankincense and myrrh appear?" https://24ways.org/2016/what-next-for-css-grid-layout/ The Power of CSS Selectors and How to Use Them By Web Designer Wall. "...In this guide we've provided an overview of the most useful css selector techniques, with examples of what they do and how they look in CSS, along with some working demos of how you can put them into practice..." http://webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/the-power-of-css-selectors-and-how-to-use-them CSS Shorthand Syntax Considered an Anti-Pattern By Harry Roberts. "There's a very small but surprisingly significant (and even more surprisingly frequent) issue I spot a lot in other peoples' code, either when working directly with it, refactoring it, or auditing it: the use of shorthand syntax in CSS..." http://csswizardry.com/2016/12/css-shorthand-syntax-considered-an-anti-pattern/ Why I Don't Use CSS Preprocessors By Jens Oliver Meiert. "...CSS preprocessors are like a solution in need of a problem.." https://meiert.com/en/blog/20161214/no-css-preprocessors/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Learning by Involving People with Disabilities in User Research By David Sloan. "One of the most exciting things about 2016 has been the growth in number of user-research projects that we've worked on with our clients..." https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2016/12/learning-by-involving-people-with-disabilities-in-user-research/ Could You Hand Me the Dry Rub Please? By Grace G Lau. "Tree testing is an effective technique for evaluating navigation and taxonomy..." http://boxesandarrows.com/could-you-hand-me-the-dry-rub-please/ Essential Eye-Tracking Visualizations and Metrics By Jeff Sauro. "...Eye-tracking can't magically answer all UX research questions but knowing which elements are in participants' visual field gives you some idea about perception..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/eye-tracking.php Semper Gumby: Embracing Flexibility in User Research By Steve Portigal. "...Here is a user research war story shared with me by Alicia Dornadic and her team, where they try-and fail-to plan for the most basic of human needs..." http://uxmas.com/2016/semper-gumby-embracing-flexibility-in-user-research +05: EVENTS. Rightsizing UX Research January 12, 2017. Bloomington, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://www.uxpamn.org/event-2405878 An Event Apart Washington D.C. July 10-12, 2017. Washington D.C., U.S.A. https://aneventapart.com/event/washington-dc-2017 HCI International 2017 July 9-14, 2017. Vancouver, Canada http://2017.hci.international/index.php +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Introducing Resilient Web Design By Jeremy Keith. "I wrote a thing...It turned out to be a bit of a history book: the history of design, the history of the web..." https://adactio.com/journal/11608 World-Wide Web, Not Wealthy Western Web (Video) By Bruce Lawson. Bruce's 2016 Fronteers presentation. https://vimeo.com/194968584 Why It's Okay to Reinvent the Wheel By Donna Spencer. "In project contexts we often hear people complaining that a team is wasting time reinventing the wheel, that they shouldn't be solving something that's already been solved, that they should instead focus on working faster or being more innovative." http://uxmas.com/2016/why-its-okay-to-reinvent-the-wheel/ +07: PHP. What's New and Exciting in PHP 7.1? By Younes Rafie. "The PHP community has gone viral with the latest PHP 7 announcement and all the goodies it brings to the language..." https://www.sitepoint.com/whats-new-and-exciting-in-php-7-1/ Developing for PHP Scalability using Web Application Performance Testing of a Load By Dave Smith. "...Read this article learn how to perform proper Web site load testing with the WAPT tool..." https://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/495-PHP-Scalability-and-Performance-Testing-of-Server-Load.html +08: TOOLS. Accessibility Metrics and JIRA By Ted Drake. "Many companies use JIRA for bug-tracking and JIRA's query language can help you pull out some great metrics for managing your company's product accessibility." http://www.last-child.com/accessibility-metrics-and-jira/ +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Get the Balance Right: Responsive Display Text By Richard Rutter. "Richard Rutter shepherds a tea towel onto our collective heads and describes a technique for responsively scaling display text to maintain a consistent feel in both landscape and portrait screen orientations. That should put things back into proportion." https://24ways.org/2016/responsive-display-text/ In Defense of Font Size Widgets By Jeffery Zeldman. "...Most of the sites we've designed in the past few years have not had a text size widget, but I believe this was due to our privileged assumptions and biases, and not to the reality of the needs of those we serve. Going forward on client projects at studio.zeldman, and in my publications like A List Apart, I hope to correct this-and I hope you will think about it, too." http://www.zeldman.com/2016/12/14/font-size-widgets/ +10: USABILITY. Reading Content on Mobile Devices By Kate Meyer. "Readers can understand short, simple text content on mobile devices just as well as on computers, but they slow down when reading difficult text on mobile." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mobile-content/ Information Literacy is a Design Problem By Lisa Maria Martin. "Information literacy, wrote Dr. Carol Kulthau in her 1987 paper 'Information Skills for an Information Society,' is 'the ability to read and to use information essential for everyday life'-that is, to effectively navigate a world built on 'complex masses of information generated by computers and mass media.'..." https://24ways.org/2016/information-literacy-is-a-design-problem/ Decision Frames: How Cognitive Biases Affect UX Practitioners By Kathryn Whitenton. "Designers are vulnerable to the same cognitive biases as users. The context in which you present a problem can bias your design choices." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/decision-framing-cognitive-bias-ux-pros/ How Not to Design Web Forms By John Moore Williams. "A somewhat-snarky look at mistakes web designers often make when building forms, with tips on building forms right." https://webflow.com/blog/how-not-to-design-web-forms Checkout Usability: Auto-Detect 'City' and 'State' Inputs Based on the User's Postal Code By Christian Holst. "Typing information in form fields is generally one of users' least favorite parts of online shopping..." http://baymard.com/blog/zip-code-auto-detection [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.]