[webdev] Web Design Update: December 20, 2012

Thu Dec 20 06:28:22 CST 2012

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 26, December 20, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 26 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: EVENTS.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
08: TOOLS.
09: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

A Personal Look at Accessibility in Higher Education (Video)
By Gaining Online Accessible Learning through Self-study (GOALS).
This video highlights the experiences of students and faculty with
disabilities in higher education.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQGFshzLPXE

Looking to the Work of Others as You Create Your Institution's Web
Accessibility Policy
By National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE).
"This post provides examples of web accessibility policies in higher education."
http://ncdae.org/blog/web-accessibility-policy/

'Does He Take Sugar?': The Risks of Standardising Easy-to-read Language
By Brian Kelly.
"Back in September 2012 in a post entitled 'John hit the ball': Should
Simple Language Be Mandatory for Web Accessibility? I described the
W3C WAI's Easy to Read activity and the online symposium on 'Easy to
Read' (e2r) language in Web Pages/Applications' The article
highlighted the risks of mandating easy-to-read language and,
following subsequent discussions with Alastair McNaught of JISC
TechDis, led to a submission to the online symposium..."
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/does-he-take-sugar-the-risks-of-standardising-easy-to-read-language/

Developer's Guide to WebAIM Screenreader Survey
By Bruce Lawson.
"...Here's a brief summary of the results to help web developers who
care about accessibility (that is, professional-standard web
developers)..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2012/developers-guide-to-webaim-screenreader-survey/

Accessibility for Intranets
By James Robertson.
"...In this article we focus on the three tiers of action necessary to
provide broader accessibility for intranets..."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/accessibility-for-intranets/

Response to MSDN Article Designing Accessibility with HTML5
By Dennis E. Lembree.
"This is a review/response to the recent MSDN Article Designing
Accessibility with HTML5 by Rajesh Lal..."
http://www.webaxe.org/response-msdn-article-designing-accessibility-html5/

Renowned Futurist Ray Kurzweil Joins Google to Work on Machine
Learning and Language Processing
By thenextweb.com.
"Renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil joins Google to work on machine
learning and language processing: Author, inventor, and pioneer in the
field of human-computer engineering, Ray Kurzweil joins Google to work
on new projects involving machine learning and language processing.
Kurzweil is the inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine
for the blind and the first text-to-speech synthesizer, as well as
many other inventions..."
http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/12/15/ray-kurzweil-joins-google/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Getting to Know CSS3 Selectors: Structural Pseudo-Classes
By Emily Lewis.
"Today's front-end developers don't just need to understand how to
write CSS, we need to know how to write it efficiently. What
'efficiently' means can depend on your project and environment..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/getting-to-know-css3-selectors-structural-pseudo-classes/

A Harder-Working Class
By Nathan Ford.
"Nathan Ford delves deep into the sack of CSS goodies and rewards our
attention with a clever object-oriented, scalable and modular approach
to attribute selectors. Old wine in new bottles."
http://24ways.org/2012/a-harder-working-class/

Why You Should Say HTML Classes, CSS Class Selectors, or CSS
Pseudo-Classes, but not CSS Classes
By Tantek Celik.
"Search the web for 'CSS classes' and you'll find numerous well
intentioned references which are imprecise at best, and misleading or
incorrect at worst. There are no such things as 'CSS classes'. Here's
why you should refer to HTML classes, CSS class selectors, or even CSS
pseudo-classes, but not 'CSS classes'..."
http://tantek.com/2012/353/b1/why-html-classes-css-class-selectors

Where to Avoid CSS Hyphenation
By Eric A. Meyer.
"Last week, I asked 'Should You Hyphenate?' This week, I'm going to
assume that you decided to answer in the affirmative and talk about
some good practices..."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2012/12/17/where-to-avoid-css-hyphenation/

Giving Content Priority with CSS3 Grid Layout
By Rachel Andrew.
"...his article comprises a practical demonstration of the basics of
grid layout, and also a discussion of one way in which we can start
thinking of content in a more adaptive way..."
http://24ways.org/2012/css3-grid-layout/

iOS WebKit Browsers and Auto-Zooming Form Controls
By Roger Johansson.
One thing about iOS browsers that can be pretty frustrating, both as a
developer and as a user, is when you open a site on an iPhone or iPod
Touch (not iPad) and want to enter some text in a text field or pick
an option from a select menu. Very often the browser will
automatically zoom in on the entire page a little when you tap the
form control.
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201212/ios_webkit_browsers_and_auto-zooming_form_controls/

Vexing Viewports
By Peter-Paul Koch, Luke Wroblewski, Stephanie Rieger, Lyza Danger Gardner.
"Each week, new devices appear with varying screen sizes, pixel
densities, input types, and more. As developers and designers, we
agree to use standards to mark up, style, and program what we create.
Browser makers in turn agree to support those standards and set
defaults appropriately, so we can hold up our end of the deal. This
agreement has never been more important. That's why it hurts when a
device or browser maker does something that goes against our
agreement-especially when they're a very visible and trusted friend of
the web like Apple. Peter-Paul Koch, Lyza Danger Gardner, Luke
Wroblewski, and Stephanie Rieger explain why Apple's newest tablet,
the iPad Mini, creates a vexing situation for people who are trying to
do the right thing and build flexible, multi-device experiences."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/vexing-viewports/

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Using Questionnaires for Design Research
By Emma Boulton.
"Emma Boulton doesn't let a good question about designing and using
surveys as part of a project's research activities go unanswered. Q:
Have you been good this year? A: Yes|No. Think carefully. Santa knows
the answer..."
http://24ways.org/2012/using-questionnaires-for-design-research/

+04: EVENTS.

Confab Minneapolis
June 3-5, 2013.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.
http://confabevents.com/events/minneapolis-2013

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Use ARIA To Define Invalid Responses For Form Inputs
By Ted Drake.
"he most difficult part of building web page forms is validation. It's
best to have some form of instant validation via CSS and/or
JavaScript. You also need to validate the responses at the server
level for security..."
http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2012/12/use-aria-to-define-invalid-responses-for-form-inputs/

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

The Web We Lost
By Anil Dash.
"...This isn't some standard polemic about 'those stupid walled-garden
networks are bad!' I know that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and
LinkedIn and the rest are great sites, and they give their users a lot
of value. They're amazing achievements, from a pure software
perspective. But they're based on a few assumptions that aren't
necessarily correct. The primary fallacy that underpins many of their
mistakes is that user flexibility and control necessarily lead to a
user experience complexity that hurts growth. And the second, more
grave fallacy, is the thinking that exerting extreme control over
users is the best way to maximize the profitability and sustainability
of their networks..."
http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-we-lost.html

Retina Ready
By Jackie Balzer.
"When you get your shiny new retina device this holiday season, will
the Internet be ready for you to see all its content in twice the
pixel density glory? Probably not. But, this handy guide will help get
your site 'retina ready' in no time..."
http://webadvent.org/2012/retina-ready-by-jackie-balzer

+07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 Bones
By Ian Devlin.
"Yesterday I released HTML5 Bones, a downloadable basic HTML5
template. Let's talk about that..."
http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2012/12/html5/html5-bones

Why I Changed My Mind About the <main> Element
By Bruce Lawson.
"Congratulations to The Mighty Steve Faulkner, whose proposal for an
HTML5 <main> element was published yesterday by the W3C. I'm delighted
to see one of the code examples features 'The Lawson Academy'. Academy
of what is left unknown..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2012/why-changed-mind-about-main-element/

The Making of Fastbook: An HTML5 Love Story
By Jamie Avins and Jacky Nguyen.
"When we started what became Sencha, we made a bet on the web: a bet
that modern application development didn't need anything except the
browser, a great set of frameworks and a great set of tools. With
those three weapons in hand, we knew developers could build
applications that would delight users. The advent of HTML5 upped the
game and it gave developers even more tools to let them treat the
browser as an application development platform and not a page
rendering engine..."
http://www.sencha.com/blog/the-making-of-fastbook-an-html5-love-story

Create Accessible Videos With HTML5
By Leonie Watson.
"Leonie Watson of Nomensa examines developments pointing the way
towards genuinely inclusive HTML5 video experiences "
http://www.netmagazine.com/tutorials/create-accessible-videos-html5

HTML Tutorials
By Webplatform.
"HTML is a markup language, used to give content structure and
meaning. This page lists all of our HTML tutorials - perfect for
learning HTML from scratch, or diving into learning more complex HTML
topics..."
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/tutorials

+08: TOOLS.

Viewport Resizer - a Better Responsive Web Design Bookmarklet
By Craig Buckler.
"If you're manually resizing your browser window to test responsive
designs, you're making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself! A
Responsive Design View tool appeared in Firefox 15 and there's a
Responsive Web Design Bookmarklet which works in most browsers."
http://www.sitepoint.com/viewport-resizer-bookmarklet/

+09: USABILITY.

Trends in User Experience
By Janet M. Six.
"In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss emerging trends
in user experience. As 2012 ends, it's a good time to consider what
the future of user experience might bring-in terms of both cultural
shifts that impact UX professionals and UX design trends..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/12/trends-in-user-experience.php

[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

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.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

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.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.

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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.]