[webdev] Web Design Update: April 16, 2010

Fri Apr 16 06:42:28 CDT 2010

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 42, April 16, 2010.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design 
and development.

++ISSUE 42 CONTENTS.

SECTION ONE: New references.
What's new at the Web Design Reference site?
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
New links in these categories:

01: ACCESSIBILITY.
02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
03: COLOR.
04: DREAMWEAVER.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: FLASH.
07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TOOLS.
13: TYPOGRAPHY.
11: USABILITY.

SECTION TWO:
12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

How to Caption Videos in YouTube
Tom Babinszki.
"Captions in your YouTube video are very helpful to your viewers. This 
feature enables persons with hearing impairments to understand the 
spoken parts of your video. Captions also help hearing people who prefer 
reading content instead of listening to it, and those who wish to learn 
a new language..."
http://www.evengrounds.com/blog/how-to-caption-youtube-videos

Cognitive Web Accessibility Assessment, Second Attempt: Site Failure
By John Rochford.
"This post is my second structured assessment of cognitive Web 
accessibility.  I describe how it is performed in my assessment plan. It 
is less-detailed than my first assessment, but it again addresses every 
relevant guideline of WebAIM's Cognitive Web Accessibility Checklist..."
http://tinyurl.com/y3dxwm8

Cognitive Web Accessibility Assessments: Lessons Learned So Far
By John Rochford.
"This is a follow-up to my previous post that described my second 
structured assessment of cognitive Web accessibility.  The work's 
progression can be seen via this blog's Category of Cognitive Web 
Accessibility Assessments..."
http://tinyurl.com/y649ksb

Creating Accessible Links in PDFs
By Ted Page.
"Creating accessible links in PDFs is a basic accessibility requirement. 
This article looks at techniques for tagging links correctly to ensure 
that they are both keyboard operable and usable with a screen reader. It 
also looks at, amongst other things, how to make URLs more intelligible 
for screen reader users..."
http://www.pws-ltd.com/sections/articles/2010/pdf_links.html

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Why Containers Don't Clear Themselves
By Chris Coyier.
"One of the hurdles (and 'ah-ha' moments) in learning CSS is this 
business about clearing floats. If you have no idea what I'm talking 
about, check out the classic All About Floats..."
http://css-tricks.com/containers-dont-clear-floats/

Child and Sibling Selectors
By Chris Coyier.
"Do you know what the difference between these selectors are?..."
http://css-tricks.com/child-and-sibling-selectors/

A Simple CSS Drop-Cap
By James Edwards.
"...There are quite a few hacky methods for implementing this effect, 
but the cleanest and most maintainable is pure CSS, using the 
:first-letter and :first-line  pseudo-classes..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/04/15/a-simple-css-drop-cap/

+03: COLOR.

Accessibility Hack #3: Testing Colours to Enhance Readability
By Glenda Watson Hyatt.
"According to the University of Washington's Department of 
Ophthalmology, 2.8 million Americans have colour blindness, which can 
express itself in many variations and degrees of severity. Colour 
perception problems are important considerations when developing web 
sites to ensure that all users have access to the content and the 
functionality of sites..."
http://tinyurl.com/y6awm7y

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Dreamweaver CS5 Features Part 1: The All New CSS Starter Pages
By: Sheri German.
"The big launch has finally come, and now it's time to make a decision. 
Upgrade or skip this time around? Arm yourself with knowledge of the new 
features before you decide. Does CMS and Wordpress integration appeal to 
you? New CSS troubleshooting tools? How about new CSS Starter Pages? 
These features and many more are yours when you get a Suite or 
Dreamweaver CS5 by itself."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=62862

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Gathering Variables for A/B Split Testing
By Paras Chopra.
"A/B split testing is no longer an enigmatic term amongst web 
professionals; countless articles and books cover the basics. What more, 
access to tools such as Visual Website Optimizer (disclaimer: this is my 
startup)-which simplify the setup and maintenance of A/B tests have-have 
made the testing process itself as straightforward as possible. Despite 
this, though, A/B split testing isn't part and parcel for UX designers 
and internet marketers. The question then becomes: why not?..."
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/gathering-variables-for-ab-split-testing/

Debunking the Myths of Online Usability Testing
By Bill Albert.
"...The motivation for this article is to help UX researchers keep an 
open mind about online usability testing. There are some researchers who 
have been using this approach for years and find it useful (in certain 
situations). Others are new to it, and wanting to learn more about its 
strength and limitations. Finally, some UX researchers have already 
formed an opinion about online usability testing, and deemed it not 
useful for a variety of (unfounded) reasons. I hope by exposing these 
myths, we (as a UX community) can evaluate this tool based on its actual 
merits..."
http://tinyurl.com/y5gqopm

+06: FLASH.

Flash Now Importable to HTML5 Canvas
By Curt Hopkins.
"Adobe will soon introduce its Creative Suite 5 to the public. A tool in 
the new suite will allow for easy import of Flash animations into HTML5 
Canvas code..."
http://tinyurl.com/ybc79at

+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Coloring Outside the Wireframe: 3 Tips to Integrating Visual Design in 
the UX Field
By Kim Cullen.
"When I interviewed at Adaptive Path a few months ago I was asked a 
barrage of tough questions. But when the tables turned and I got to ask 
AP-ers my questions I was interested in one thing in particular: 'What 
do you see as the role of a visual designer at a UX company?'  I got a 
variety of answers and a few very long pauses..."
http://tinyurl.com/y4udawl

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Wendy Chisholm: MinneWebCon Afternoon Keynote
"Wendy Chisholm is a Web developer and human factors engineer who lives 
in Seattle, and is the co-author of Universal Design for Web 
Applications. She was a staff person for the World Wide Web Consortium 
(W3C) for 6 years where she focused on Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines. Chisholm's afternoon keynote for MinneWebCon 2010 emphasizes 
how good accessibility leads to good universal design, or design that 
benefits everyone. She also provides some great history about how many 
of today's most popular technology products and features were originally 
designed as disability accommodations." (Video not captioned.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MQW5b7q1aA

Interview with Don Norman
By designresearchconference.
"Don Norman, author of many books, including the acclaimed Design of 
Everyday Things, and co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group, caused a stir 
earlier this year with an article best summarized by this controversial 
statement: 'design research is great when it comes to improving existing 
product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, 
innovative breakthroughs'..."
http://www.designresearchconference.org/index.php

+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Introducing Media Accessibility Into HTML5
By Silvia Pfeiffer.
"In recent months, people in the W3C HTML5 Accessibility Task Force 
developed two proposals for introducing caption, subtitle, and more 
generally time-aligned text support into HTML5 audio and video..."
http://tinyurl.com/y4k8y3a

Captioning Markup
By Anne van Kesteren.
Now that HTML5 media elements have somewhat reasonable implementations 
in browsers, time has come to take the next step. You may not be aware 
of this but lots of features in HTML5 have been incrementally developed, 
within HTML5 itself. E.g. the 2D graphics API for the canvas element has 
gained several new features over time, as older features became more 
widely implemented. I.e. transformations, pixel manipulation, drawing 
video elements, and focus management have all been added over time. This 
was - and still is - done this way to ensure that implementations mature 
in a similar way. And that more attention is paid to the individual 
features which hopefully leads to better and more consistent.."
http://annevankesteren.nl/2010/04/captioning-markup

Accessibility is Not About Numbers
Alastair Campbell.
"There are several reasons why WAI-ARIAis needed...It should help 
simplify the HTML5 spec...Should HTML5 cover all the elements in 
WAI-ARIA? For example, should there be a 'tab' element that HTML authors 
need to know about? There isn't, and I think that's ok."
http://alastairc.ac/2010/04/accessibility-and-html5/

HTML5 Input Types
By Roger Johansson.
"It is a rare day at work when I don't do anything related to forms. Be 
it creating forms from scratch, modifying existing forms, handling user 
interaction with them, whatever. I work with forms a lot. So that's why 
one of the things in HTML5 I'm looking forward to the most is the 
overhaul of the elements and attributes used to create forms. Among 
other form-related things, HTML5 adds a whole bunch of new values for 
the input element's type attribute..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201004/html5_input_types/

The figure and figcaption Elements
By Richard Clark.
"In traditional printed material like books and magazines, an image, 
chart, or code example would be accompanied by a caption. Before now, we 
didn't have a way of semantically marking up this sort of content 
directly in our HTML, instead resorting to CSS class names. HTML5 hopes 
to solve that problem by introducing the <figure> and <figcaption> 
elements. Let's explore..."
http://html5doctor.com/the-figure-figcaption-elements/

HTML5 Proposes figure and figcaption Elements
By Virgina DeBolt.
"The latest working draft of HTML5 proposes two new elements that seem 
particularly useful to me. These are the figure and figcaption elements. 
The element name's are fairly self explanatory-the new elements are 
meant to let you markup figures and captions included in your documents..."
http://ur1.ca/v9nz

Issue 90 Remove Figure Element (HTML5 Change Proposal)
By Shelley Powers.
"Based on the March 4th HTML5 specification, remove Section 4.5.12, on 
the figure element. Also remove any additional references to the figure 
element. In addition, remove Section 4.5.13, on the figcaption element, 
and any reference to it, too."
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/removefigure

+10: TOOLS.

Nu Markup Validation Service - W3C Pilot
By Michael(tm) Smith.
"An experimental implementation of missing-alt error-reporting in a 
pilot version a validator.nu-based next-generation W3C markup-validation 
service."
http://www.w3.org/html/check
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Apr/0165.html

The HTML5 test - how well does your browser support HTML5?
By Niels Leenheer.
"The HTML5 test score is only an indication of how well your browser 
supports the upcoming HTML5 standard. It does not try to test all of the 
new features offered by HTML5, nor does it try to test the functionality 
of each feature it does detect. Despite these shortcomings we hope that 
by quantifying the level of support users and web developers will get an 
idea of how hard the browser manufacturers work on improving their 
browsers and the web as a development platform..."
http://html5test.com/

+11: USABILITY.

Web Customers Care About Tasks, Not Goals
By Gerry McGovern.
"Talking about customer goals is the biggest mistake a website can make. 
That's how you lose the impatient customer."
http://tinyurl.com/yatm9ks

Our Users are Demanding Simplicity
By fwdmovement.
"There has been a lot of discussion around Apple's decisions to exclude 
Flash support from the iPhone and iPad devices, and their reasons for 
doing so. The ever-evolving nature of the web means that technologies 
will change, but in web design, the user experience should remain 
priority. It's not about which technology we choose, it's how well we 
deliver our content to the broadest audience possible."
http://blog.fwdmovement.com.au/?p=37

Natural User Interfaces Are Not Natural
By Don Norman.
"...All new technologies have their proper place. All new technologies 
will take a while for us to figure out the best manner of interaction as 
well as the standardization that removes one source of potential 
confusion. None of these systems is inherently more natural than the 
others. The mouse and keyboard are not natural. Speech utterances will 
have to be learned and gestures carefully developed and standardized 
through time. The standards don't have to be the best of all 
possibilities. The keyboard has standardized upon variations of qwerty 
and azerty throughout the world even though neither is 
optimal--standards are more important than optimization. Are natural 
user interfaces natural? No. But they will be useful."
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/natural_user_interfaces_are_not_natural.html

Designing for iPad: Reality Check
By informationarchitects.
"I cannot emphasize enough how radically different the frame set is, 
that  iPad interfaces are embedded in. The iPad brings hands and eyes 
back together. A complex matter that is best explained referring to 
actual examples. But you need to give me more time to understand the 
device and to test those apps accordingly..."
http://informationarchitects.jp/designing-for-ipad-reality-check/

++ SECTION TWO:

+12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

Accessibility Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility

Association Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/associations

Book Listings.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/books

Cascading Style Sheets Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/css

Color Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/color

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/dreamweaver

Evaluation & Testing Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/testing

Event Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/events

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/flash

Information Architecture Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/architecture

JavaScript Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/javascript

Miscellaneous Web Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/misc

Navigation Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/navigation

PHP Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/php

Sites & Blogs Listing.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/sites

Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/standards

Tool Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/tools

Typography Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/type

Usability Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/usability

XML Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/xml

[Section two ends.]

++END NOTES.

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Until next time,

Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009
mailto:lcarlson at d.umn.edu

[Issue ends.]