+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 18, Issue 32, February 4, 2020. 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? https://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: HTML. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: TOOLS. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. 5 Tips for Making Your App Accessible By Ted Drake. "…In this post, we'll look at 5 tips developers can use to build accessible apps…" https://blogs.intuit.com/blog/2020/01/28/5-tips-for-making-your-app-accessible/ PowerPoint Accessibility Checklist By Minnesota IT Services. "Do you have an accessible PowerPoint template? If so, be sure to use it. If not, you can still create an accessible PowerPoint. Learn how…" http://mn.gov/mnit/media/blog/index.jsp?id=38-417349 Accessible Presentations By Minnesota IT Services. "You may have heard that making accessible presentations is hard or it will make your presentation boring. This doesn't have to be true. Learn more…" https://mn.gov/mnit/media/blog/#/detail/appId/1/id/417339 Shifting Faculty Perspectives to Embrace Accessibility By Jaclyn Leduc. "In the webinar, Motivating Faculty to Embrace Accessibility, Jennifer Pedersen, Ph.D., shares the University of Alaska Anchorage's accessibility journey and gives insight into faculty perspectives on accessibility, what worked well, and what areas were challenging…" https://www.3playmedia.com/2020/01/29/shifting-faculty-perspectives-to-embrace-accessibility/ Could Browsers Fix More Accessibility Problems Automatically? By Hidde de Vries. "…when websites ship with accessibility problems, browsers could fix some. They could automatically 'fix' zoomability, readability, colour contrast, focus indication, autoplay and block navigation. If they did, users need to rely less on what websites provide them." https://hiddedevries.nl/en/blog/2020-02-04-could-browsers-fix-more-accessibility-problems-automatically Accessibility: Why You Should Get On Board By Richard Morton. "…Make sure the accessibility train doesn't leave without you. It won't wait." https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2020/01/28/accessibility-why-you-should-get-on-board/ Haro Bicycle and Plaintiff Agree to Settle Class-action Lawsuit over Website By Bicycle Retailer. "Valentin Reid, who is legally blind, had charged that Haro violated the American Disabilities Act, saying one of its websites, ridedelsol.com, was not accessible to the blind…" https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2020/01/28/haro-bicycle-and-plaintiff-agree-settle-class-action-lawsuit-over-website +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Resize None on textarea is Bad for UX By Cătălin Roșu. "…Sometimes you need to type a long reply that consists of many paragraphs and wrapping that text within a tiny textarea box makes it hard to understand and to follow as you type…" https://catalin.red/css-resize-none-is-bad-for-ux/ How Do You Do max-font-size in CSS? By Chris Coyier. "CSS doesn't have max-font-size, so if we need something that does something along those lines, we have to get tricky…" https://css-tricks.com/how-do-you-do-max-font-size-in-css/ Here's What I Didn't Know About list-style-type By Manuel Matuzovic. "At the CSS-in-Vienna meet-up last week Ulrich told me that starting with Chrome 79 it's possible to define a string value for the list-style-type property. I was surprised because I thought ::marker was supposed to solve that. That's why I did some research, here's what I learned…" https://www.matuzo.at/blog/heres-what-i-didnt-know-about-list-style-type/ What Does 'revert' Do in CSS? By Chris Coyier. "Miriam Suzanne explains in a Mozilla Developer video on the subject…" https://css-tricks.com/what-does-revert-do-in-css/ +03: COLOR. Dark Mode vs. Light Mode: Which Is Better? By Raluca Budiu. "In people with normal vision (or corrected-to-normal vision), visual performance tends to be better with light mode, whereas some people with cataract and related disorders may perform better with dark mode. On the flip side, long-term reading in light mode may be associated with myopia." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dark-mode/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Don't Report Numbers from Small UX Studies By Raluca Budiu. "Testing a small number of participants gives qualitative insights, which are great. But if 4 out of 5 test users do something, don't conclude that 80% of all users will do the same." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/numbers-small-ux-studies/ A Very Handy Guide to Moderated and Unmoderated Testing By Christopher Ratcliff. "When you have the full blessing of your stakeholders to run some user research on your product, and you know the areas in which you want to test and/or improve (all fully aligned to business goals, of course) you'll then have to decide whether to run your chosen studies moderated or unmoderated…" https://www.userzoom.com/blog/a-very-handy-guide-to-moderated-and-unmoderated-testing/ Which Usability Testing Method Should I Choose? (Video) By David Travis. "Pop-up testing, lab testing, remote testing, oh my! Which one am I meant to choose?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbZah_lflfs Survey Response Biases in User Research (Video) By Alita Joyce. "Users' answers to survey questions are often biased and not the literal truth. Examples include acquiescence bias, social desirability bias, and recency bias. Knowing about response biases will help you interpret survey data with more validity for any design decisions based on the findings." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/survey-response-biases/ Testing Assumptions in User Research (Video) By David Travis. "Could you give a more detailed explanation of 'assumptions' in user research and how to identify them?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKSTS_O9WAE&feature=youtu.be What's the Value of Prototyping in UX Design? By Oliver Rouse. "Prototypes are a versatile way of drafting a version of a product or design to allow you to explore, test hypotheses and iterate on ideas…" https://www.nomensa.com/blog/2020/whats-value-prototyping-ux-design User Research May Be the Most Important Role in Your Company By Jonathan Deesing. "…By researching users and testing your designs with them, you create a dialogue that fosters positive user experiences and saves your organization time and money down the road." https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/user-research-may-be-the-most-important-role-in-your-company/ +05: EVENTS. Toolkit for Live Captioning Events March 12, 2020. Online https://go.3playmedia.com/wbn-qslc Dev.Next March 24-27, 2020. Broomfield, Colorado, U.S.A. https://www.devdotnext.com/ HOW Design Live May 4-7, 2020. Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. https://www.howdesignlive.com/ Confab May 17-20, 2020. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. https://www.confabevents.com/ DesignThinkers May 26-27, 2020. Vancouver, Canada https://designthinkers.com/vancouver/ Markup UK 2020 June 4-6, 2020. London, England, United Kingdom https://markupuk.org/index.html Web Direction Code June 4-5, 2020. Melbourne, Australia https://www.webdirections.org/code/ +06: HTML. Placeholder By Steve Faulkner. "The reasons why use of the placeholder attribute as the only means of providing a user readable prompt for a form control is deficient UX, are voluminous…" https://codepen.io/stevef/post/placeholder-the-piss-take-label Building an Accessible Autocomplete Control By Adam Silver. "…Unfortunately, native HTML form controls just aren't good enough for this type of interaction. And so we need to build a custom autocomplete control from scratch. A word of warning though: this is one of the hardest UI components I've ever had to make-they're just way harder than they look…" https://adamsilver.io/articles/building-an-accessible-autocomplete-control/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Why Use a Form Element When Submitting Fields with JavaScript? By Chris Ferdinandi. "There are two reasons why you should still use a form element…" https://gomakethings.com/why-use-a-form-element-when-submitting-fields-with-javascript/ Understanding Immutability in JavaScript By Kingsley Silas. "If you haven't worked with immutability in JavaScript before, you might find it easy to confuse it with assigning a variable to a new value, or reassignment…" https://css-tricks.com/understanding-immutability-in-javascript/ Writing Dependency-Free JavaScript By Magnus Hovland Hoff. "Lately, I have been working on a web application, pixu.rs1, that, while small, includes an interactive form with image uploading and multiple phases…" https://magnushoff.com/blog/dependency-free-javascript/ Progressive Enhancement Doesn't Have to be Hard By Levi McGranahan. "As I made this somewhat un-related update to my code, I also took the opportunity to consider how I might progressively layer on the functionality that Themur provides…" https://levimcg.com/posts/progressive-enhancement-doesnt-have-to-be-hard/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. AI Is Changing Web Development By Gilad David Maayan. "…Ideally, the inclusion of AI in web development helps reduce mundane and tedious work. It can enable you to dedicate your efforts to higher-level development tasks while creating a more enjoyable and dynamic experience for your users." https://www.enterpriseai.news/2020/01/13/ai-is-changing-web-development/ Data Expands to Fill the Space Available, Part 2 By Gerry McGovern. "…The more data you collect, the more you strain your ability to organize and analyze it. We must control much better our data collection processes, because otherwise we will have all this data and we will end up less able to make timely, quality decisions." https://gerrymcgovern.com/data-expands-to-fill-the-space-available-part-2/ Old CSS, new CSS By Eevelyn Woods. "…Here's a history of CSS and web design, as I remember it…" https://eev.ee/blog/2020/02/01/old-css-new-css/ +09: NAVIGATION. Information Scent: How Users Decide Where to Go Next By Raluca Budiu. "When deciding which links to click on the web, users choose those with the highest information scent - which is a mix of cues that they get from the link label, the context in which the link is shown, and their prior experiences." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/information-scent/ +10: TOOLS. Eventbrite and Accessibility By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "For event planners and meetup organizers, Eventbrite is an option for a more usable and accessible experience." https://www.lireo.com/eventbrite-accessibility/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html Association Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html Book Listings. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html Cascading Style Sheets Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html Color Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html Drupal Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.html Evaluation & Testing Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html Event Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html HTML Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.html Information Architecture Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html JavaScript Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html Miscellaneous Web Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html Navigation Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html PHP Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html Sites & Blogs Listing. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html Tool Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html Typography Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html Usability Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html XML Information. https://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: https://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.]