[webdev] Web Design Update: September 17, 2009

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 12, September 17, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 12 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: EVENTS.
07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: PHP.
11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

The Caption Conundrum: Problem and Solution
By deaftechnyc.
"...With the explosion of video content on the internet, many have 
posted university lectures for all to see. Sites like iTunesU make it 
possible to learn about everything from Anthropology to Zoology. 
Without captioning this content is not accessible to the Deaf. An 
updated law would change that..."
http://tinyurl.com/mynlnt

Captioning Videos Does Matter
By Meryl Evans.
"Jen Rohrig and I have something in common. We just avoid videos online 
because we know the chances of them having captions are slim..."
http://meryl.net/ci/2009/09/captioning_vide.html

Accessibility Changes Lives
By Ricky Buchanan.
"This is the first post in a series about assistive technology. I want 
to show you why accessibility, adaptive technology, assistive 
technology, and other disability-friendly practices matter. Really 
matter..."
http://atmac.org/accessibility-changes-lives/

Accessibility Testing PDF Creation Tools
By Ted Page.
"It's clear that, if the production of fully accessible documents is 
the objective, some care needs to be taken in choosing the right PDF 
creation tool. To date, despite the number of options available, only 
the established names (Adobe, Microsoft, OpenOffice) provide the 
means..."
http://www.pws-ltd.com/sections/articles/2009/pdf_conversion_tools.html

Keyboard Accessibility Presentation at Future of Web Design Tour 2009 
in Glasgow
By Patrick H. Lauke.
Patrick HTML5 presentation materials.
http://tinyurl.com/nnwtfl

Google Acquires reCAPTCHA: Potential Boost for Web Accessibility
By Lainey Feingold.
"Web Accessibility activists take note: Google has just purchased 
reCAPTCHA, the most widely used audio CAPTCHA on the internet...."
http://lflegal.com/2009/09/google-recaptcha/

Accessimobility
By Jeremy Keith.
"...That’s quite a design challenge: an accessible touch-screen device! 
I doff my hat in the general direction of the Apple engineers who rose 
to this challenge..."
http://adactio.com/journal/1610/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS Wishlist: New Ideas, Debates and Solutions
By Kayla Knight.
"...CSS will get a number of new changes. Among them are alternative 
syntaxes, CSS programming concepts and the ability to allow more common 
design techniques without using images. In this article, we'll go over 
some current solutions, what we'd like to see in the future and the 
pros and cons of them all..."
http://tinyurl.com/n2mwkk

11 Classic CSS Techniques Made Simple with CSS3
By Vasili.
"We've all had to achieve some effect that required an extra handful of 
divs or PNGs. We shouldn't be limited to these old techniques when 
there's a new age coming. This new age includes the use of CSS3. In 
today's tutorial, I'll show you eleven different time-consuming effects 
that can be achieved quite easily with CSS3..."
http://tinyurl.com/lmal7m


+03: COLOR.

Accessible Colour Combinations
By Roger Johansson.
"Different people have different needs when it comes to the colour 
combinations that they can read comfortably (or at all) on screen. But 
what colour combinations are actually preferred by people with dyslexia 
or vision impairment?..."
http://tinyurl.com/m88t4g

Accessibility vs. Alpha Transparency
By Ben Buchanan.
"...Using transparency has the side effect of reducing contrast; and 
for some reason it just feels like low-contrast thresholds kick in a 
little earlier than they do with straight colours. I'm sure it's just 
the "I wanna use the new toy!" factor, but there it is all the same..."
http://tinyurl.com/oz3f7c

How Colour Communicates Meaning
By Rob Mills.
"...Colour is a complex subject with many strands and it has the power 
to subliminally convey values and stories..."
http://tinyurl.com/pnjf9s


+04: DREAMWEAVER.

(HTML5) Dreamweaver Compatibility
By html5tutorial.
"...Dreamweaver will not need a core update (this could be a 
possibility down the track and could be released as a simple update 
rather than a code update) if you are wondering how to implement HTML5 
into your Dreamweaver or other HTML editing application we have a 
simple solution..."
http://html5tutorial.net/examples/dreamweaver-compatibility.html


+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Effective A/B Testing
By Ben Tilly.
A/B testing presentation slides. Covers theory, practice, & stats 
analysis.
http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab-testing/

Discount Usability: 20 Years
By Jakob Nielsen.
Simple user testing with 5 participants, paper prototyping, and 
heuristi evaluation offer a cheap, fast, and early focus on usability, 
as well as many rounds of iterative design."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/discount-usability.html


+06: EVENTS.

Web Accessibility Day
September 22, 2009.
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A
http://www.nfb.org/nfb/web_accessibility_day.asp

Build
November 5, 2009.
Belfast, Northern Ireland
http://buildconference.com/

Future of Web Design
November 16-17, 2009.
New York, New York, U.S.A
http://events.carsonified.com/fowd/2009/nyc

Full-Frontal JavaScript
November 20, 2009.
Brighton, United Kingdom.
http://2009.full-frontal.org/

International Day of Disabled Persons
December 3, 2009.
Everywhere.
http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=109
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Disabled_Persons


+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

How I Draft an Information Architecture
By Donna Spencer.
"When I teach information architecture, the most common questions 
aren't about the principles, but about the process. Just how do you 
decide on a particular method, how do you choose categories, how do you 
know what you've come up with is right?..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/creating_ia


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

CSS with Rachel Andrew (podcast and transcript)
By Kevin Yank.
"This week, Kevin Yank (@sentience) has a one-on-one chat with Rachel 
Andrew, the author of SitePoint's best-selling CSS book, The CSS 
Anthology, 3rd Edition.
http://tinyurl.com/nj6gtq

An Interview with Jamie Knight: Autism and Accessible Web Design
By Henny Swan.
"...Over the last few months I've been lucky enough to get to know an 
amazing up and coming web designer called Jamie Knight and his trusted 
side-kick Lion. Jamie also happens to have autism and has a lot to say 
on the subject of accessible web design and what the web means to 
him..."
http://tinyurl.com/ry35c7


+09: NAVIGATION.

Principles of Effective Web Navigation
Zach Dunn.
"Good navigation gets you places. More importantly, good navigation 
gets you places without a headache..."
http://buildinternet.com/2009/09/principles-of-effective-web-navigation/

SlickMap CSS
By astuteo.
"SlickMap CSS is a simple stylesheet for displaying finished sitemaps 
directly from HTML unordered list navigation. It's suitable for most 
web sites - accommodating up to three levels of page navigation and 
additional utility links - and can easily be customized to meet your 
own individual needs, branding, or style preferences..."
http://astuteo.com/slickmap/


+10: PHP.

How to Debug in PHP
By Kieran Masterton.
"...This article breaks down the fundamentals of debugging in PHP, 
helps you understand PHP's error messages and introduces you to some 
useful tools to help make the process a little less painful..."
http://carsonified.com/blog/dev/how-to-debug-in-php/


+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

The Section Element
By Bruce Lawson.
"We doctors are a bunch of chums HTML5 and writing about how we do it. 
Apart from spurious requests for medical advice, the questions we 
receive most are about using the section element, and we realize that 
we've been using the section element incorrectly all this time..."
http://html5doctor.com/the-section-element/

Updated Video Accessibility Demo
By Silvia Pfeiffer.
"Just a brief note to share that I have updated the video accessibility 
demo..."
http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/09/14/updated-video-accessibility-demo/

Canvas Examples
By html5tutorial.
"One of the most talked about features of the upcoming HTML5 code is 
the <canvas> element / tag, some of you may be aware that the <canvas> 
was first developed by Apple for use in their Mac OS X Dashboard and 
also implemented at a later date by the Safari browser, Most Gecko 
based browsers such as FireFox have current support for the <canvas> 
tag...."
http://html5tutorial.net/examples/canvas-examples.html

Detecting HTML5 Features
By Mark Pilgrim.
"You may well ask: 'How can I start using HTML5 if older browsers don't 
support it?' But the question itself is misleading. HTML5 is not one 
big thing; it is a collection of individual features. So you can't 
detect 'HTML5 support,' because that doesn't make any sense. But you 
can detect support for individual features, like canvas, video, or 
geolocation."
http://diveintohtml5.org/detect.html

HTML5 Test Results
By Jeremy Keith.
"As promised, I've gathered the data from one of the exercises I 
administered at the dConstruct HTML5 and CSS3 workshop and totted the 
results up in a table."
http://adactio.com/journal/1607/

The Devil in the Details
By Jeremy Keith.
"...So how should we mark up conversations now? Here's what the spec 
now suggests: Authors who need to mark the speaker for styling purposes 
are encouraged to use span or b. Um... what? The b element? Really? You 
have got to be kidding..."
http://adactio.com/journal/1609/

Future of Web Design, Glasgow
By Bruce Lawson.
Bruce's HTML5 presentation materials.
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2009/future-of-web-design-glasgow/

This Week in HTML5 - Episode 35
By Mark Pilgrim.
"On August 7, 2009, Adrian Bateman did what no man or woman had ever 
done before: he gave substantive feedback on the current editor's draft 
of HTML5 on behalf of Microsoft..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html5-episode-35

HTML 5
By Arpan Dhandhania.
"...overview of what HTML 5 has to offer..."
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/html/HTML5/


[Section one ends.]


++ 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.


+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

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http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist
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 
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+ 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 at d.umn.edu


[Issue ends.]