[webdev] Web Design Update: October 16, 2010

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Sat Oct 16 08:08:17 CDT 2010 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 16, October 16, 2010.

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

++ISSUE 16 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: COLOR.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: PHP.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TYPOGRAPHY.
11: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Updated WCAG 2.0 Techniques Published - You Can Help with More
By Shawn Henry.
"W3C WAI today published updates to two supporting documents for Web
Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) 2.0..."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2010OctDec/0017.html

Displaying and Optimizing ALT text in Popular email Clients
By Ros Hodgekiss.
Back in 2007 we did a bit of testing  regarding the display of ALT
text in the popular email clients. Flash forward to 2010 and we felt
it was about time to do a bit of a refresher. Not only are there new
email clients on the scene, but some of the existing clients have
changed their tune towards displaying ALT text when images are
blocked. Plus, we've got a couple of tips that we'd love to share
while we're at it.
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/3280/displaying-and-optimizing-alt-text-in-popular-email-clients/

Are These PDFs Accessible?
By Roger Hudson.
"The question of whether or not PDFs are sufficiently accessible to be
used on the Web has stimulated much debate over the years. There are
some who believe there is no place for PDF on the Web; while on the
other hand, some argue that PDF is an essential tool for communicating
via the Web..."
http://www.dingoaccess.com/accessibility/are-these-pdfs-accessible/

Accessibility Lawsuit Filed Against JetBlue Airways
By Lainey Feingold.
"The California Council of the Blind and three California residents
with visual impairments have filed a lawsuit against JetBlue Airways
in Federal Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit
alleges that JetBlue has violated California law by maintaining a
website and operating airport check-in kiosks that are inaccessible to
individuals with visual impairments..."
http://lflegal.com/2010/10/jet-blue/

Universal Subtitles
By Participatory Culture Foundation, et al.
"Universal Subtitles is an open source, non-profit project...The lack
of captions and subtitles on video is a major obstacle for people with
hearing disabilities and a huge language barrier for the whole world.
We want to give individuals and communities the power to overcome
these barriers. The tools we're building are free and open source and
will make the work of subtitling and translating video simpler, more
appealing, and, most of all, more collaborative..."
http://universalsubtitles.org/

Accessibility Initiative
State of Minnesota.
http://www.oet.state.mn.us/itproducts/program_information/AccessibilityInitiative.html


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

IE9 is the IE6 of CSS3
By Robert Biggs.
"...Because Microsoft has updated IE to support CSS3 selectors and
rounded corners, they want us to believe that somehow IE9 magically
supports the whole slew of CSS3 visual styling. I'm afraid it doesn't.
As a matter of fact, IE9's support for CSS3 visual styling is so poor
that the results are shocking. Firefox, Chrome and Safari can render
graphically rich interfaces using the sophisticated features of CSS3.
IE9 does, well, rounded corners. That's why I'm saying: IE9 is the IE6
of CSS3. Repeat that a few times until it sinks in because if you do
Web development, you're going to have to deal with it..."
http://css3wizardry.com/2010/08/14/ie9-is-the-ie6-of-css3/

Why We Don't Have a Parent Selector
By Jonathan Snook.
"On a seemingly regular basis, I see this discussion come up as to
whether CSS should have a particular feature like the parent selector
and while I haven't worked on a browser engine, I have my theories. In
short: performance..."
http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/css-parent-selectors

CSS Selector for :parent Targeting (Please)
By Remy Sharp.
"The what followed was some going back and forth with people who have
thought this properly through..."
http://remysharp.com/2010/10/11/css-parent-selector/

Is Hiding Text with CSS to Improve Accessibility Bad for SEO?
By Roger Johansson.
"Almost five years ago I posted an article titled Google, SEO and
using CSS to hide text. In the article I brought up the possibility of
getting in trouble with Google and other search engines for using CSS
to hide text for accessibility reasons..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201010/is_hiding_text_with_css_to_improve_accessibility_bad_for_seo/

Hardboiled CSS3 Media Queries
By Andy Clarke.
"Making layouts responsive using CSS3 Media Queries are a big part of
the work that I'm doing for the Hardboiled Web Design site in the run
up to the book's launch..."
http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/hardboiled_css3_media_queries/

Father of CSS plans for Web Publishing Future
By Stephen Shankland.
"Presenting a polished layout is crucial to newspapers and magazines
publishing on the Web. Opera CTO Hakon Wium Lie says the CSS Web
standard is adapting accordingly..."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20019705-264.html


+03: COLOR.

Checking Colour Contrast
By Leonie Watson.
"Consider the links, headings and other text content on your website.
Do you think the colours you've chosen contrast well against their
background? More to the point, how can you tell?..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2010/checking-colour-contrast/


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Exciting Usability Testing Technique
By John A. Vieth.
John A. Vieth presentation's on testing using Camtasia Studio 7.
http://www.viethfamily.com/testing/

Can Users Self-Report Usability Problems?
By Jeff Sauro.
"Having users self-report problems is different than having users
complete usability tests remotely. In a typical unmoderated remote
test using a popular service like usertesting.com, users are asked to
attempt tasks and provide feedback..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/self-reporting.php

Eye Tracking vs. Mouse Tracking
By ClickTale.
"Usability studies have been and continue to be a key method for
testing and optimizing website usability.  Both laboratory eye
tracking and remote mouse tracking studies offer businesses accurate
and actionable results. Eye tracking, as used by top enterprises such
as Google, uses cameras and specialist software to track where the
eyes of internet users land on a webpage. Mouse tracking follows the
mouse movements of an internet user to simulate eye movement on a
webpage.  Over the last few years, mouse tracking has greatly matured,
developing features and achieving accuracy that make it a credible
alternative to eye tracking..."
http://blog.clicktale.com/2010/10/14/eye-tracking-vs-mouse-tracking/


+05: EVENTS.

Web Typography
October 25 2010.
Online Conference
http://thinkvitamin.com/online-conferences/web-typography/

W3C TPAC 2010
November 1-5, 2010.
Lyon, France
http://www.w3.org/2010/11/TPAC/

Writing for the Web Workshop
November 9, 2010
Melbourne, Australia
http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=190

Web Directions East
November 13-16, 2010.
Tokyo, Japan
http://east.webdirections.org/2010/

Demystifying Accessibility
November 22, 2010 in London, United Kingdom.
December 13, 2010 in Liverpool, United Kingdom.
http://edit.rnib.org.uk/professionals/solutionsforbusiness/trainingandconferences/webaccessibility/demystifyingaccessibility

The A Team - ARIA and HTML5
November 23, 2010 in Sydney, Australia.
November 24, 2010 in Canberra, Australia.
November 25, 2010 in Melbourne, Australia.
December 1, 2010 in Brisbane, Australia.
http://wipa.org.au/html5/

AccessU West 2011
January 10-12, 2011.
San Jose State, California, U.S.A.
http://www.knowbility.org/accessu-west/

26th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference
March 14-19, 2011.
Northridge, Califorinia, U.S.A.
http://csunconference.org/cfp.cfm?EID=80000300


+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Research and Practice in IA
By Andrea Resmini and Keith Instone.
"Research and practice in IA are fractured, with very weak connections
in between (and this gap is not unique: many disciplines face this
challenge)."
http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Aug-10/AugSep10_Resmini_Instone.html


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

OpenAjax Examples
By Jon Gunderson.
Example markup.
http://www.oaa-accessibility.org/examples/

ARIA Roles 101
By Virginia DeBolt.
"As part of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), the Accessible
Rich Internet Applications Suite (ARIA), defines a way to make Web
content and Web applications more accessible. It is used to improve
the accessibility of dynamic content and advanced user interface
controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related
technologies..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/10/14/aria-roles-101/

ARIA States 101
By Virginia DeBolt.
http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/10/15/aria-states-101/


+08: PHP.

Should You Close Your PHP Code Tags?
By Craig Buckler.
"Even those with a modest grasp of PHP know that code must be enclosed
within special <?php and ?> tags..."
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/09/18/should-you-close-your-php-code-tags/

Should You Close PHP Tags? The Debate Continues...
By Craig Buckler.
"I was amazed at the response to my recent article, Should You Close
Your PHP Code Tags? I didn't think it would be controversial or cause
so much debate among developers..."
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/10/15/closing-php-tags-debate/


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 Simplequiz #3: How to Mute a Video
By Bruce Lawson.
"This is a bit of a special Simplequiz this week. Simon Pieters
(@zcorpan), who works on multimedia QA for Opera and is one of those
working on the HTML5 spec, asked us to run a quiz that would help the
spec writers decide on a new aspect of the language. What power you
wield, gentle reader! Over to Simon..."
http://html5doctor.com/html5-simplequiz-3-how-to-mute-a-video


+10: TYPOGRAPHY.

Using Pixels for Text
WebAIM Thread.
"...what's the latest for using pixels to size text. i'm
doing some work for someone and she wants me to use pixels and i really
feel adverse to it - rather use 'em' or '%'..."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=4402

Justified Text
By Steve Grobschmidt.
"...For people with cognitive disabilities as well as those with
dyslexia, these uneven spaces can be distracting. It can disrupt their
ability to follow the flow of words and make reading and understanding
the content difficult, if not hopeless. Whatever the perceived
aesthetic value, it just isn't worth it to me. Big deal that my right
margin is jagged and uneven..."
http://www.theaccessibility.com/2010/10/justified-text-accessibility/


+11: USABILITY.

Top Five Usability Myths Demolished
By Tom Stewart.
"I guess it's grumpy old man time but I am really beginning to get
hacked off with general ignorance (with apologies to Stephen Fry)
about usability..."
http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/6662-the-top-five-usability-myths-demolished


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+12: 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.]

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