[webdev] Web Design Update: September 11, 2010

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 11, September 11, 2010.

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

++ISSUE 11 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: PHP.
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.

What Are Captions?
By Leonie Watson.
"...Knowing about audio description, captions and transcripts, is the
way to reach an even wider audience. In the third of a series of
articles on multimedia accessibility, we take a look at captions..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2010/what-are-captions/

Congress Makes Captioning a Requirement for Online Video with Passing
of Equal Access to 21st Century Communications Act and 21st Century
Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009
By Jenna Britton.
"New legislation increases access to Internet video content as
Americans with Disabilities Act marks its 20th Anniversary..."
http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=121118

Media Accessibility User Requirements
By HTML5 Accessibilty Task Force.
"This document aggregates the requirements of an accessibility user
that the W3C HTML5 Accessibility Task Force has collected with respect
to audio and video on the Web..."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Media_Accessibility_Requirements

You Can't Reliably Detect Screen Readers
By Roger Johansson.
"When I hold workshops on accessibility I am often asked how to detect
screen readers. The answer is that you can't, at least not in a
reliable way. The main reason is that screen readers run alongside (or
on top of, if you prefer) regular web browsers and do not have a user
agent string of their own that you can sniff."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201009/you_cant_reliably_detect_screen_readers/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

12 Common CSS Mistakes Web Developers Make
Max Luzuriaga.
"It's easy to get tripped up with CSS. Here are some common CSS
mistakes we all make..."
http://sixrevisions.com/css/12-common-css-mistakes-web-developers-make/

Contiguous Sibling Selector
By James Edwards.
"Every now and then I have an idea for a new CSS selector, which
solves a particular problem but doesn't already exist. A while ago I
thought of the Regex-Matching Attribute Selector, that matches
attribute values according to a regular-expression..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/09/07/contiguous-sibling-selector/

WebKit HTML5 Search Inputs
By Chris Coyier.
"One of the new types of inputs in HTML5 is search. It does absolutely
nothing in most browsers. It just behaves like a text input. This
isn't a problem. The spec doesn't require it to do anything special.
WebKit browsers do treat it a bit differently though, primarily with
styling..."
http://css-tricks.com/webkit-html5-search-inputs/

Styling HTML Lists with CSS: Changing the Appearance of Bulleted Items
By Alejandro Gervasio.
"n this fourth part of the series, I show how easy it is to assign
different styles to the bullets of an HTML list with CSS. While the
examples only demonstrate how to create square and circle bullets in a
snap, it's feasible to create a few additional styles by assigning
other values to the corresponding 'list-style' property."
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Style-Sheets/Styling-HTML-Lists-with-CSS-Changing-the-Appearance-of-Bulleted-Items/

Styling HTML Lists with CSS: Replacing Bullets with Background Images
By Alejandro Gervasio.
"In this fifth part of a series I discuss a couple of basic methods
that permit you to replace the default bullets of an unordered HTML
list with a custom background image..."
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Style-Sheets/Styling-HTML-Lists-with-CSS-Replacing-Bullets-with-Background-Images/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Recruiting Participants for Unmoderated, Remote User Research
By Jim Ross.
"This column explores the differences between recruiting for moderated
and unmoderated user research. It discusses the three primary
techniques for recruiting participants for unmoderated, remote user
research and helps you decide which technique to choose, based on your
study's needs..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/09/recruiting-participants-for-unmoderated-remote-user-research.php


+04: EVENTS.

Intro to SVG
5 week online course
Registration available until October 1, 2010.
http://www.w3.org/2010/09/intro_svg_course_description.php


+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

There is No Management of Knowledge Except Through a Management of Information
By William Jones.
"...What are we doing when we manage information? What must we do to
manage knowledge? These questions are each considered in turn..."
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3062/2600#p3

Classification Schemes - and When to Use Them
By Donna Spencer.
"In this article, I'll talk about a few different classification
schemes you can use to organize your content and offer tips on when
and how to use each..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/classification_schemes


+06: NAVIGATION.

When Search Results Mislead
By Gerry McGovern.
"Large numbers of visitors for a particular search term is not in
itself a positive thing. We always have to ask the question why?..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2010/nt-2010-09-06-Search-mislead.htm


+07: PHP.

You Want To Do WHAT with PHP? Chapter 5
By Kevin Schroeder.
"Kevin Schroeder has the latest excerpt from his book posted ("You
Want to Do WHAT with PHP?") with a focus on the SPL - Standard PHP
Library. He specifically takes a quick look at Iterators."
http://www.eschrade.com/page/want-what-with-chapter-4c7fada0

An Introduction to PHP's Static Scoping
By Josh Duck.
"...PHP actually has two distinct uses for the static keyword. The
first and most common usage is related class method and property
scoping, the second to variable scoping within in a single
function..."
http://joshduck.com/blog/2010/07/29/an-introduction-to-phps-static-scoping/

Includes are Not Functions
By Josh Duck.
"Over the last week I've been working with a commercial PHP eCommerce
package. Amongst some shockingly bad code one of the patterns that has
stood out has been the use of includes a kind of pseudo-function.
Dozens of files in the application are in the following format..."
http://joshduck.com/blog/2010/07/28/includes-are-not-functions/

A PHP Snipped for Pluralizing Strings
By Josh Duck.
"...The function takes a string with string fragments marked up inline
as its main argument. It then formats the output based on the count
passed into the function..."
http://joshduck.com/blog/2010/08/13/a-php-snipped-for-pluralizing-strings/


+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 - Getting to Last Call
By Philippe Le Hegaret.
"...All new bugs related to the HTML5 specification received after the
first of October 2010 will be treated as Last Call comments, with
possible exceptions granted by the Chairs. The intention is to get to
the initial Last Call and have a feature-complete document..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2010/09/html5_getting_to_last_call.html

Periodic Table of the Elements
By Josh Duck.
"A table of all HTML5 elements arranged by type."
http://joshduck.com/periodic-table.html


+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

The Look That Says Book
By Richard Fink.
"Hyphenation and justification: It's not just for print any more.
Armed with good taste, a special unicode font character called the
soft hyphen, and a bit o' JavaScript jiggery, you can justify and
hyphenate web pages with the best of them. Master the zero width
space. Use the Hyphenator.js library to bottle fame, brew glory, and
put a stopper in death. Create web pages that hyphenate and justify on
the fly, even when the layout reflows in response to changes in
viewport size..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-look-that-says-book/


+10: USABILITY.

3 Things Steve Krug Didn't Tell You About Usability Testing
By George Saines.
"1) Never present a page as 'redesigned' or 'new'. 2) Pointedly ignore
social cues for help. 3) People are often willing to do a usability
test for a lot less than $50."
http://georgesaines.com/2010/08/26/3-things-steve-krug-didnt-tell-you-about-usability-testing/


[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
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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 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.]