[webdev] Web Design Update: October 2, 2010

Sat Oct 2 05:16:54 CDT 2010

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 14, October 2, 2010.

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

++ISSUE 14 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: 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 for Web Writers, Part 1: Introduction
By Dey Alexander.
"...This is the introduction to a series of articles on accessibility
for web writers. I’ll be using the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines 2.0 as the basis of these articles, since they are the
standards Australian websites must meet..."
http://www.deyalexander.com.au/blog/2010/09/accessibility-for-web-writers-introduction/

Accessibility Testing Tools
By Steve Faulkner.
"Here at The Paciello Group (TPG) we have a technical accessibility
testing process which does not involve the use of automated tools. The
technical audit results we provide to our clients are based solely on
manual testing of a web site, web application or desktop
application..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=680

An Offer to the HTML5 Team to Save longdesc
By Vlad Alexander.
"To the dismay of many accessibility experts and advocates, the
longdesc attribute has been dropped from the HTML5 spec because this
feature is not popular. Despite its lack of use, this feature has the
potential to improve Web accessibility if used and used correctly. So
in the interest of making the Web more accessible, I would like to
make an offer to the HTML5 team to save longdesc..."
http://rebuildingtheweb.com/en/offer-to-save-longdesc/

WCAG 2.0 AAA - A Journey Not a Destination
By Mike Gifford.
"It is great when folks are aware enough about accessibility issues
that they can state of of their goals is to achieve the highest level
of accessibility for their site. Really, who wouldn't want to have
their website be universally accessible to their users? However, it
isn't an achievable goal for the majority of websites. Nobody should
be claiming WCAG 2.0 AAA..."
http://openconcept.ca/blog/mgifford/wcag_20_aaa_a_journey_not_a_destination

A Super Simple Way to Make Images Accessible: Alt Text versus Title Explained
By Glenda Watson Hyatt.
"What does a photo of my cat have to do with blog accessibility? More
than you might expect. Allow me to explain..."
http://blogaccessibility.com/a-super-simple-way-to-make-images-accessible-alt-text-versus-title-explained/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

An (Almost) Complete Guide to CSS3 Multi-column Layouts
By Joshua Kelly.
"One of the defining features of print design is the ubiquity of
multi-column layouts. And there are a couple of good reasons why this
is the case..."
http://www.kmsm.ca/2010/an-almost-complete-guide-to-css3-multi-column-layouts/

CSS3 and HTML5 are Awesomazing - Part One
By Kevin DuCommun.
"...I wanted to take some time in this post to go into more detail
about what CSS3 elements we have been using, what browsers support
them, and how we plan to take advantage of these web specs in future
projects..."
http://www.rockettheme.com/blog/coding/903-css-and-html5-are-awesomazing-part-one

clearfix Reloaded + overflow:hidden Demystified
By Thierry Koblentz.
"...This short article is about enhancing the first method and
shedding some light on the real meaning of the second..."
http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/09/27/clearfix-reloaded-overflowhidden-demystified/

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING..

User Testing Can Save Your Life
By 52 Weeks of UX.
"Okay, so maybe it won’t save your life. But it certainly can keep you
out of the ER due to the stress-induced heart attack you were about to
have because you have no idea whether or not your customers can
actually  use the thing you just poured your life into building.
Usability testing is one of the best things you can do to understand
whether or not people can use the product as you intended, and from
there make informed iterative improvements."
http://52weeksofux.com/post/1166915234/user-testing-can-save-your-life

+04: EVENTS.

Accessible Forms
October 26 to November 23, 2010.
Online Class.
http://formsonline.cita.illinois.edu/

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

An Introduction to Using WAI-ARIA to Enable Web 2.0 Accessibility
By Richard Schwerdtfegger and Becky Gibson.
"...This article explains how to use WAI-ARIA to overcome the
following accessibility issues for Web 2.0 applications..."
http://www-03.ibm.com/able/resources/wai_aria_intro.html

String Replace JavaScript Bad Design
By Gareth Heyes.
"After using JavaScript for a while one of the worst parts I found was
the String.replace function. When I realized it’s behaviour I thought
to myself someone is going to use this wrong. The function itself is
excellent, I use it all the time as you could probably tell with my
code. It is far better than some other languages with the ability to
use strings/regexes and provide a function callback for the
replacement..."
http://www.thespanner.co.uk/2010/09/27/string-replace-javascript-bad-design/

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Molly Holzschlag Interview (Video)
By Mehu.
"Mehul talks with Molly Holzschlag from the recent Heartland
Developer’s Conference 2010 in Omaha, Nebraska. Molly is a well-known
Web standards advocate, instructor, and author."
http://tv.devexpress.com/#MollyHolzschlag

+07: PHP.

Maintainable CSS3 Using PHP
By Louis Lazaris.
"Some of the maintenance issues that arise can be avoided if you use
PHP to generate your CSS, and use PHP’s capabilities to abstract
multiple lines of CSS3 into a single line."
http://www.impressivewebs.com/dynamic-css3/

+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5: The Facts And The Myths
By Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp.
"You can’t escape it. Everyone’s talking about HTML5. it’s perhaps the
most hyped technology since people started putting rounded corners on
everything and using unnecessary gradients. In fact, a lot of what
people call HTML5 is actually just old-fashioned DHTML or AJAX. Mixed
in with all the information is a lot of misinformation, so here,
JavaScript expert Remy Sharp and Opera’s Bruce Lawson look at some of
the myths and sort the truth from the common misconceptions."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/23/html5-the-facts-and-the-myths/

Your Questions #13
By Richard Clark.
"The clinic is getting busy with more HTML5 ailments. This week, we’ll
cover server-side validation, immutable images with <canvas>,
retrieving drawn objects from a <canvas>, creating custom tags, the
role attribute, and the effects of <hgroup> on SEO..."
http://html5doctor.com/your-questions-13/

Discoverer of JSON Recommends Suspension of HTML5
By Douglas Crockford.
"...HTML5 has a lot of momentum and appears to be doomed to succeed. I
think the wiser course is to get it right first. We have learned the
hard way that once an error gets into a web standard, it is really
hard to get it out."
http://security.sys-con.com/node/1544072

Validation Matters
By Roger Johansson.
"When I write HTML code I want to check if I made any mistakes. Same
thing if I use an application or a CMS that outputs HTML code. So I
use validation as a tool to check the HTML code for errors. If there
are any I want to find them and fix them if I can..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201009/validation_matters/

+09: USABILITY.

How Common are Usability Problems?
By Jeff Sauro.
"I wanted to get an idea of how likely a user is to encounter a
problem on completed software so I reviewed usability publications and
a collection of usability reports from companies.I only included tests
on completed applications and live websites and excluded those that
were in the design phase and didn't have current users at the time of
testing..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/problem-frequency.php

Perception and the Design of Forms - Part 6 Similarity
By Formulate.
"This is the sixth and final article in our series about visual
perception and the design of forms. In case you don't know these off
by heart yet, the six Gestalt principles particularly relevant to
forms are..."
http://formulate.com.au/articles/padf-part6-similarity/

Text is More Important Than Images on the Web 	
By Gerry McGovern.
"The Web is primarily a text-driven medium and will remain so despite
the rise of video."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2010/nt-2010-09-27-Text-images.htm

Why Users Fill Out Forms Faster with Top Aligned Labels
By Anthony Tseng.
"Imagine a user who is really excited about your product or service.
They're ready to sign up, so they go to your form page and start
filling out their information. The way you align your labels with your
form fields can affect how easy it is for users to fill out the form.
Do you want to give users a quick, easy and painless experience or do
you want to give them a hassle? If you want to make their experience
quick, easy and painless, consider using top aligned labels for your
form fields..."
http://uxmovement.com/design-articles/faster-with-top-aligned-labels

[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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+ 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.]