[webdev] Web Design Update: December 17, 2009

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Dec 17 06:29:46 CST 2009 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 25, December 17, 2009.

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/goto/webdesign/
New links in these categories:

01: ACCESSIBILITY.
02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
03: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: EVENTS.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
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.

Resources for Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your 
Organization
By The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
This Resource links to statistics, case studies, articles supporting 
the business case for web accessibility.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/resources.html

Share Resources Supporting the Web Accessibility Business Case
By Shawn Henry.
"...We would like to add relevant, strong resources to this page. We 
are particularly looking for case studies where the main changes to the 
website were accessibility improvements. If you have made accessibility 
improvements to your website in the last three years, we may be able to 
help you gather data and develop a case study. Would your organization 
be willing to share your case study to support the business case for 
web accessibility?..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2009/12/share_resources_supporting_the.html

WCAG Tutorial
By Tom Babinszki.
"The WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is a set of guidelines 
which is used more and more often around the world to regulate web 
accessibility. While originally it has started out as a set of 
recommendations, several countries have adopted it as their web 
accessibility standards, and it has been made part of different 
legislations to follow..."
http://www.evengrounds.com/wcag-tutorial

The Accessibility Verdict: DC.gov
By Jim Thatcher.
"...How about a grade for basic accessibility for the DC.gov home page? 
Clearly the page gets an F for in-page navigation. For forms I give a C 
for effort, because the at least developers knew something was supposed 
to be done. For alt-text, B, because most images do in fact have 
adequate alt-text, though repetitive. The overall grade is C- Which is 
a shame for the city that is the center of President Obama's Open 
Government. Unfortunately this seems to be typical of government 
sites..."
http://dotgov.com/2009/12/the-accessibility-verdict-dc-gov/

Web Accessibility No Longer an Afterthought
By Tom Krazit.
"Yahoo's Victor Tsaran knows how much time Web designers spend 
agonizing over color and font-width choices when laying out an 
application. So when he started Yahoo's accessibility push two years 
ago, he had a tough time arousing sympathy for engineers grousing about 
how much extra time was needed to create accessibility features..."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10414041-265.html

Mapping Section 508 1194.22 to WCAG 2.0 Level A
By Wayne Dick.
"This document maps Section 508 Standards for Electronic and 
Information Technology, Subpart B - Technical Standards, Section 
1194.22 (Web Criteria) into the Success Criteria and Sufficient 
Techniques for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. The basic 
factor that links the two standards is user need..."
http://www.csulb.edu/~wed/public/EqEffAcc/508toWCAG2.html

Definitions of Digital Inclusion
By Accessibility News International.
"...Definitions of Digital Inclusion are important for both practice 
and research. If digital inclusion is understood as multi-faceted then 
digital inclusion practices will probably need to reflect this in order 
to be successful and digital inclusion research will also need to 
develop sophisticated measurements of the relative success of digital 
inclusion initiatives that can cater for a wide range of influencing 
factors..."
http://www.accessibilitynewsinternational.com/?p=1079

Why Web Accessibility is More Than a Legal Obligation
By Glenda Watson Hyatt.
"...For a society that values independence and freedom, web 
accessibility is more than Section 508. Creating accessible websites 
enables and empowers those individuals who otherwise would be dependent 
on others for assistance with yet another task. Accessible websites at 
the local, state and federal levels enable American citizens with a 
variety of disabilities to access, interact, and participate in 
e-government."
http://tinyurl.com/ya9htyf


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Styling HTML Lists With CSS: Techniques and Resources
By Louis Lazaris.
"In an online world now dominated by CSS layouts, CSS-styled HTML lists 
have become invaluable tools in a CSS developer's toolbox, due to the 
HTML lists versatile and graphically flexible nature. All this despite 
some of the obvious browser inconsistencies that can affect the styling 
of the different types of lists available in HTML coding..."
http://tinyurl.com/yew2upq

Introduction to CSS3 - Part 1: What Is It?
By David Appleyard.
"This article marks the first of several, providing an introduction to 
the new CSS3 standard which is set to take over from CSS2..."
http://tinyurl.com/6n6wbq

A Look at Some of the New Selectors Introduced in CSS3
By Tom Kenny.
"...It's clear to see that CSS3 selectors are going to make our lives 
easier as well as give us interesting new ways of looking at things in 
web design. Because CSS3 isn't actually finalized and the lack of 
support from Microsoft, we haven't really seen how CSS3 can change 
things but as more and more browsers support them and more and more 
users upgrade those browsers the more we'll see CSS3 selectors in the 
wild. For now though, it is certainly feasible to start using them but 
not in a way that the design is so dependent on them that it will break 
in unsupported browsers..."
http://tinyurl.com/mcy4o6

Going Nuts with CSS Transitions
By Natalie Downe.
"...CSS transitions and transforms are a great example of progressive 
enrichment, which means improving the experience for a portion of the 
audience without negatively affecting other users. They are also a lot 
of fun to play with..."
http://24ways.org/2009/going-nuts-with-css-transitions

CSS Animations
By Tim Van Damme.
"...It is now late 2009, close to Christmas. Things have changed. 
Browsers supporting these new toys are widely available left and right. 
Even non-techies are using these advanced browsers to surf the web on a 
daily basis! Epic win? Almost, but at least this gives us enough reason 
to start learning how we could use all this new CSS voodoo..."
http://24ways.org/2009/css-animations

How to Use CSS @font-face
By Tim Brown.
"Code up top for quick reference, details down below-we'll prepare 
typefaces for use on the web, go through @font-face CSS line-by-line, 
and get the experts' take on browser support."
http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2009/10/30/how-to-use-css-font-face/

Shadows and CSS3
By Meagan Fisher.
"I'm currently working on a design that uses text-shadow and 
box-shadow, with RGBA in place to create the shadow color. I wanted to 
tweet about this technique because it's simple and awesome, but to my 
surprise I couldn't find a good, quick tutorial that covered the use of 
both text and box-shadow, along with RGBA. So I decided to create 
one..."
http://owltastic.com/2009/12/shadows-and-css3/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Why Research-Directed Website Design Will Make Your Website Better
By Sarah Horton.
"Sarah Horton, author of Access by Design: A Guide to Universal 
Usability for Web Designers, presents a case for using design research 
to reach informed design decisions. It's not enough to rely on your own 
opinions or those of your clients; she posits that instead, decisions 
must be based on an understanding of real user needs..."
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1403982

Research-Directed Design Methods: Project Definition
By Sarah Horton.
"Sarah Horton, author of Access by Design: A Guide to Universal 
Usability for Web Designers, shows the importance of restraint in 
approaching a new website design project. Project success depends on 
defining the project purpose and goals before diving into wireframes, 
navigation, and especially visual design..."
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1405470

Technology First, Needs Last
By Don Norman.
"I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when 
it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially 
useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs."
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html

Usability Testing Toolkit: Resources, Articles, and Techniques
By Cameron Chapman.
"Usability is paramount in creating a good website or web app. If your 
site isn't user-friendly, the majority of visitors won't come back, 
regardless of how good your content is. You need to do everything in 
your power to make sure every website you design or web application you 
create is as user-friendly as it can be. So how do you do that, 
exactly? The answer is simple: you test the site for usability..."
http://tinyurl.com/yf5p5kr

Web Site User Experience Anatomy
By Craig Tomlin.
"...Over the past 13 or so years I've conduct user experience testing 
and optimization on hundreds of large and small web sites.  During this 
time, I've noted a pattern to the user experience of typical web site 
pages.  There seems to me to be what I call a “user experience page 
weight” and a resulting “user experience testing weight” that are 
fairly consistent across web sites..."
http://tinyurl.com/y8hvgoh


+04: EVENTS.

Multiple Facets of Accessible Design
January 18, 2010.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
http://www.milwauchi.org/

Designing Universally Accessible Web Resources
January 19, 2010.
Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A.
http://www.cita.illinois.edu/

Designing Accessible Web Forms
January 20, 2010.
Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A.
http://www.cita.illinois.edu/

In Control Orlando
February 22-23, 2010.
Orlando, Florida, U.S.A
http://2010.incontrolconference.com/

UX London
May 19-21, 2010.
London, United Kingdom
http://2010.uxlondon.com

UX Week
August 2-3, 2010.
San Francisco, California U.S.A.
http://www.uxweek.com/


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

For Review: WAI-ARIA Updated Working Drafts
By The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
"WAI has published updated Working Drafts of WAI-ARIA, the Accessible 
Rich Internet Applications technical specification, and two companion 
documents: WAI-ARIA User Agent Implementation Guide and WAI-ARIA 
Authoring Practices."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Overview.html#x20091215a

Variables, Functions, and Flow Control
By Danny Goodman.
"This two-part series offers a mix of JavaScript tricks to help you 
with your everyday projects. It is excerpted from chapter 4 of the 
'JavaScript DHTML Cookbook Second Edition."
http://tinyurl.com/ydgp3g8

More on Variables, Functions, and Flow Control
By Danny Goodman.
http://tinyurl.com/ydgp3g8

JSON Gotchas
By Christian Wenz.
"JSON is a subset of the JavaScript language. JavaScript itself is 
based on ECMAScript, which is standardized in the ECMA-262 standard..."
http://phpadvent.org/2009/json-gotchas-by-christian-wenz

Self-Testing Pages with JavaScript
By Ross Bruniges.
"In this article I will show you how you can create a JavaScript 
implementation checker and that will give you more time for drink based 
activity as your web site and apps are launched quicker and with less 
unwanted drama!"
http://24ways.org/2009/self-testing-pages-with-javascript

Video: John Resig - Testing, Performance Analysis, and jQuery 1.4
By Eric Miraglia.
"In the first part of the talk, John reviewed the range of tools 
available to frontend engineers for unit testing and for analyzing the 
performance of code...In the second part of the talk (beginning at 
49:20 in the video), John reviews some of those jQuery 1.4 changes. In 
the short third section (beginning at 1:03:15), he looks at some 
interesting trends he’s noticed in the practical application of new 
HTML 5 elements - especially in older browsers."
http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2009/12/16/video-resig-testing-and-jquery/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Telling Clients They Are Wrong
By Adrian Roselli.
"If you have spent time as a solo web jockey or your job has you 
interacting directly with clients, you've probably been faced with the 
client who asks for something you feel is wrong. If you're new to this, 
it may seem like a dangerous situation to be in, when in reality it's a 
great opportunity to establish yourself as an expert and demonstrate 
you considerable knowledge with well-formed arguments and supporting 
data/examples. Sometimes the client just isn't quite getting it and it 
gets a bit adversarial..."
http://tinyurl.com/yckeaoy


+07: NAVIGATION.

Three Perils with Search Landing Pages.
By Jared M. Spool.
"...Any decent analytics program will tell you the queries that are 
coming into your site. The best teams regularly inspect the top 
queries, determine what those users are seeking, then check their 
landing pages to ensure they're delivering it...."
http://www.uie.com/articles/three_perils_search


+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Why is Valid HTML Important to Everyone?
By Vlad Alexander.
"The Web works with valid and invalid HTML. So why is valid HTML 
important? And how does invalid HTML affect everyone who uses the 
Web?..."
http://rebuildingtheweb.com/en/why-is-valid-html-important/

Incite A Riot
By Jeremy Keith.
"...Join me in a campaign of civil disobedience against the 
unnecessarily restrictive, backwards-incompatible change to the cite 
element. Start using HTML5 but start using it sensibly. Let's ensure 
that bad advice remains fictitious..."
http://24ways.org/2009/incite-a-riot

HTML5 Watch
By Jeremy Keith.
"Keeping up with HTML5 can seem like a full-time job if you're 
subscribed to both the W3C public-html list and the WHATWG mailing 
list..."
http://adactio.com/journal/1632/


+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

How to Use CSS @font-face
By Tim Brown.
"Code up top for quick reference, details down below-we'll prepare 
typefaces for use on the web, go through @font-face CSS line-by-line, 
and get the experts' take on browser support."
http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2009/10/30/how-to-use-css-font-face/


+10: USABILITY.

Don't Fear the Fold - People Do Scroll
By Roger Johansson.
"Sometimes (too often) you get to hear “all content has to be 'above 
the fold' or people will miss it'. I have always been very skeptical of 
this, especially when applied dogmatically. I'm convinced that most 
people who use the Web know how to scroll and will do so when 
necessary..."
http://tinyurl.com/ye3sza8

Writing User Friendly Content
By Matthew Kammerer.
"Why is content king? We hear about it all the time. The answer is 
simple, content is a vital part of your website. If your content is not 
easy to understand and interpret, then you may easily lose your reader. 
The content of your website will make or break the experience, no 
matter how easy to use your website may be..."
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/writing-user-friendly-content/

Why Don't We Actually Read Anymore?
By Denise Pires.
"...Taking in account the way the Internet reprograms us may help e.g. 
webdesigners and web writers understand better the importance of how we 
must write for the web. We have been saturated with the inheritance the 
WWW has given us. And due to this inheritance we have to be aware of 
how we make information available for the 'Google Generation'."
http://dancinguphill.com/2009/11/why-dont-we-actually-read-anymore/

Remember Your Web Content is Data
By Rachel McAlpine.
"Your web content (and everything else you write for business) is 
treated as data. Therefore: Write headlines and page titles that 
describe the document or give its key message. Write a summary of the 
document straight after the headline. In link-text, put key information 
about the page people will jump to (not 'Click here')..."
http://tinyurl.com/ycabadp

The Importance of Getting to the Point
By Gerry McGovern.
"In an age when time is the most valuable resource of all, it is vital 
to lead with the need, to answer the question as quickly and concisely 
as possible..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2009/nt-2009-12-14-Get-to-point.htm

Landline Phone Numbers in Electronic Forms
By Formulate Information Design.
"To allow for the diversity of use a landline text field should accept 
at least 12 characters (10 digits plus 2 spaces) but is best kept as a 
single text field, rather than being chunked. The form should also: 
give an example of formats that will be accepted; and make it clear 
whether country code is needed."
http://formulate.com.au/research/landline-phone-numbers/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.

WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how 
to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit:
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 
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 at d.umn.edu


[Issue ends.]

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