[webdev] Web Design Update: August 7, 2010

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 06, August 7, 2010.

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

++ISSUE 06 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: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessibility - WCAG20 Validation Rules
>From Open Ajax Wiki.
"The accessibility validation rules enumerated in this document
directly support WCAG 2.0, some with reference to the Document Object
Model (DOM) and some with reference to the WAI-ARIA specification and
WAI-ARIA best practices..."
http://openajax.org/member/wiki/Accessibility_-_WCAG20_Validation_Rules

The ADA and the Web: Concerns and Misconceptions
By Jared Smith.
"WebAIM is often approached by individuals and organizations concerned
about 'ADA compliance' of their web site. This is a bit of a misnomer.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 pre-dates and does not
address web accessibility at all. That may soon be changing..."
http://www.badeyes.com/?p=236

Dept. of Justice Considers Web for ADA
By Cyndi Rowland.
"Department of Justice seeks public comment on making the web part of
covered regulations within the ADA..."
http://webaim.org/blog/dept-of-justice-considers-web-for-ada/

Web Accessibility for Cognitive Disabilities and Learning Difficulties
By Ian Pouncey.
"In this article we will cover a few of the problems users with
cognitive disabilities may have that can affect their ability to use
the Web, as well as the things that developers can do to alleviate
these problems and things they should avoid. A lot of what is covered
will be well known and common sense to many, but is here for
completeness."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/cognitive-disability-learning-difficulty/

Problems with Dynamically Assigned Accesskeys
By Terrill Thompson.
"In HTML, the accesskey attribute serves as a hotkey for triggering or
giving focus to an element on a web page. Typically it's used in
combination with one or more additional keys, and each browser defines
those differently..."
http://terrillthompson.blogspot.com/2010/08/problems-with-dynamically-assigned.html

What Should be the Minimum / Maximum Length of Alternate Text?
By Vlad Alexander.
"Different guidelines recommend different maximum lengths for
alternate text. Some recommend 80, 100, or 150 characters. Some have
even calculated different maximum lengths based on language (e.g. 100
for English versus 115 for German). Some accessibility checkers also
raise warnings if alternate text is too short. So what should be the
minimum and maximum lengths for alternate text?"
http://rebuildingtheweb.com/en/min-max-alt-text-length/

Ten Common Accessibility Problems
By Roger Hudson. (Mis-attributed last week. Apologies to Roger. Hat
tip to Russ Weakley.)
"This document outlines ten common accessibility issues I have
encountered which could result in a site's failure to fully comply
with WCAG 2.0. The document includes links to some of the WCAG 2
advisory Sufficient Techniques provided by the W3C for addressing each
issue..."
http://www.dingoaccess.com/accessibility/ten-common-accessibility-problems/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Getting Vertical With CSS
By Kyle Weems.
"On Monday I discussed over at CSSquirrel my annoyance with vertically
centering text with CSS. Any of you that have tackled this task have
likely realized the chore that it is. For those of you who aren't
aware, it's not as easy as it seems. Today, I'll help show you how we
can make it happen, despite CSS's shortcomings..."
http://www.mindfly.com/blog/post/2010/07/28/Getting-Vertical-With-CSS.aspx

The Perfect 'Left Menu' 2 Column Liquid Layout (Percentage widths)
By Matthew James Taylor.
"No CSS hacks. SEO friendly. No Images. No JavaScript. Cross-browser &
iPhone compatible."
http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/perfect-2-column-left-menu.htm


+03: EVENTS.

Refresh Bellingham
August 18, 2010.
Bellingham,  Washington, U.S.A.
http://refreshbellingham.org/

UX Brighton 2010
September 13, 2010.
Brighton, United Kingdom.
http://2010.uxbrighton.org.uk/

WebAIM Training
September 22-23, 2010.
Logan, Utah, U.S.A.
http://webaim.org/training/

Information Architecture Summit
September 24-25, 2010.
Paris, France
http://www.euroia.org/

IDEA 2010
September 30-October 2, 2010.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
http://ideaconference.org/2010/promo

AEGIS International Conference
October 6-9, 2010.
Seville, Spain
http://www.aegis-conference.eu/index.html

Full Frontal JavaScript Conference
November 12, 2010.
Brighton, United Kingdom
http://2010.full-frontal.org/


+04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Do You Know The Way to Good IA
By Kim Krause Berg.
"...You can spot a web site that has not had a proper information
architecture prepared for it. The homepage shows everything at
once..."
http://cre8pc.com/2010/08/03/good-ia/


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

ARIA Examples
By Illinois Center for Information Technology and Web Accessibility (iCITA).
"The ARIA examples on the CITA website have been updated to use JQuery
for abstracting browser dependencies. The overviews now provide
information on browser compatibility for each example."
http://test.cita.illinois.edu/aria/

ARIA Live Regions Screen Reader Demo
By Aaron Cannon.
"Demonstrates ARIA live regions, including the aria-live and
aria-atomic attributes. Includes a demo of their effects with the Jaws
screen reader, version 11."
http://www.cannonaccess.com/2010/05/live-regions/

PHP and Javascript Video Tutorial - Form Validation, part 1
By Stefan Mischook.
In this series of video tutorials, we look at Javascript and PHP based
form validation by discussing what form validation is, why you should
use it and then build an example using PHP and JQuery.
http://www.killerphp.com/articles/php-javascript-form-validation-part-1-video-tutorial/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas
By Whitney Hess.
"You can't create what clients need when you're too busy saying yes to
everything they want. As a user experience designer, it's your job to
say no to bad ideas and pointless practices. But getting to no is
never easy. Proven techniques that can turn vocal negatives into
positive experiences for you, the client, and most importantly, the
end-user include citing best practices and simple but powerful
business cases; proving your point with numbers; shifting focus from
what to who; using the "positive no"; and, when necessary, pricing
yourself out."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/no-one-nos-learning-to-say-no-to-bad-ideas/

Beyond 'I Hate Green': Managing Productive Visual Design Reviews
by Kim Cullen.
"It's a common challenge in visual design: creating a feedback
structure that respects the subjective nature of visual design, yet
also generates actionable items for moving forward. In reviews,
clients need to know that their opinions are heard and the design team
needs to walk away confident that they have clear next steps. This can
be especially challenging when reviewing visual design comps, often
considered more subjective then the no-nonsense wireframe..."
http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2010/08/01/%E2%80%A8beyond-i-hate-green%E2%80%9D-managing-productive-visual-design-reviews/


+07: PHP.

OOP With PHP: Finishing Touches
By Lorna Jane Mitchell.
"This article is the last entry in the series of posts about using PHP
5 with object-oriented programming. The series began with an
introduction, followed by some more advanced concepts. We then looked
specifically at the magic methods in PHP and how Exceptions work."
http://thinkvitamin.com/dev/oop-with-php-finishing-touches/


+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5: The New hgroup Element
By Virginia DeBolt.
"In HTML5, the new hgroup element serves an interesting purpose. I
want to build you an example, starting with the hgroup element and
working outwards to show how it could be part of the new article
element."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/08/02/html5-the-new-hgroup-element/

Document Outlines in HTML5
By Virginia DeBolt.
"There was some discussion about HTML5 document outline in the
comments to my recent post HTML5: the new hgroup element. I thought
the topic deserved a post of its own..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/08/06/document-outlines-in-html5/

Dive Into HTML5 Video With The Masters - Webinar Replay Video
By Mark R. Robertson.
"Last week, we held our second ReelSEO webinar event titled, 'Dive
Into HTML5 Video - Learn From The Masters.' The webinar was a great
success and we had more than 1100 attendees join us for the first hour
with more than 500 remaining online past the hour as we extended the
Q&A session an additional 45 minutes. As promised, the following is a
complete video recording of the webinar for those who may have missed
it. 'd like to express my sincere thanks our presenters, Jeroen 'JW'
Wijering, Chief Video Deity at LongTailVideo and Philip Jagenstedt,
Core Developer at Opera, for offering up their time and expertise to
help educate ReelSEO readers on the subject of HTML5 video..."
http://www.reelseo.com/html5-video-webinar-replay/

An Introduction To The Canvas 2D API
By Remy Sharp.
"If the <video> element is the poster boy of HTML5, then <canvas> is
definitely Danny Zuko. The <canvas> element is (still) part of the
HTML5 specification, but the 2D drawing API has been moved into a
separate document (in case you go looking and can't find it). <canvas>
has a wealth of features, like..."
http://html5doctor.com/an-introduction-to-the-canvas-2d-api/

HTML5 Fuzzies
By Jeffery Zeldman.
"...To encourage what should be encouraged, yet not add confusion to
an already over-vague understanding, folks like us might want to say,
'HTML5 and related technologies,' or 'HTML5 and other new
technologies,' or something along those lines."
http://www.zeldman.com/2010/08/03/html5-fuzzies/

WebSRT and HTML5 Media Accessibility
By Silvia Pfeiffer.
"...What I want to do here is to summarize what was introduced,
together with the improvements that I and some others  have proposed
in follow-up  emails, and list some of the media accessibility needs
that we are not yet dealing with..."
http://blog.gingertech.net/2010/08/07/websrt-and-html5-media-accessibility/

HTML 5 Update
By Philippe Le Hegaret.
Philippe's July 15  presentation slides to the W3C advisory board.
http://www.w3.org/2010/Talks/0715-html-plh/Overview.html


+09: USABILITY.

No Laughing Matter
By Steve Kolowich.
"...one cartoon -- by Randall Munroe, whose popular Web comic is known
as xkcd -- has resonated so strongly in higher ed circles that it has
some marketing officials taking a hard look at what experts still
believe to be their strongest marketing asset: the institutional
website's home page. The cartoon shows a Venn diagram with two
overlapping circles -- one labeled 'Things On The Front Page Of a
University Website,' and the other labeled 'Things People Go To The
Site Looking For.' ...The punch line - that university website
designers have no idea what their visitors actually want front and
center..."
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/04/websites

Using the Goldilocks Principle to get Design "Just Right"
By John Sorflaten.
"...Remember what Goldilocks said after testing the extremes of hot
and cold, tall and short, soft and hard? She said: 'This is just
right'. How did she earn the right to say that? She tried different
things that made sense to her. This is the Goldilocks Principle. Go,
build, try, and see whether it is just right."
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/jul10.asp

Pagination, A Thing of the Past?
By James Mansfield.
"Pagination, those 1 2 3 .. Next page links at the bottom of a page of
search results or content. Are they dying a slow death? I think so and
when you step back and think about it, it makes perfect sense..."
http://www.jamesmansfield.id.au/pagination-a-thing-of-the-past/

The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
>From Wikipedia.
""The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our
Capacity for Processing Information" (Miller 1956) is one of the most
highly cited papers in psychology..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+10: 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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+ 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.]