[webdev] Web Design Update: December 18, 2010

Sat Dec 18 04:55:59 CST 2010

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 25, December 18, 2010.

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/itss/training/online/webdesign/
New links in these categories:

01: ACCESSIBILITY.
02: BOOKS.
03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
04: DREAMWEAVER.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: EVENTS.
07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
08: JAVASCRIPT.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: PHP.
11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
12: TOOLS.
13: TYPOGRAPHY.
14: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online
By Marc Parry.
"...Colleges that wouldn't dare put up a new building without
wheelchair access now routinely roll out digital services that, for
blind people, are the Internet equivalent of impassable stairs..."
http://chronicle.com/article/Blind-Students-Demand-Access/125695/

Chronicle of Higher Education Article "Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online"
WebAIM discussion of the article.
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=4499

Cal State's Strong Push for Accessible Technology Gets Results
By Josh Keller.
"...Over the past five years, Cal State has waged one of higher
education's most aggressive campaigns for accessible technology. It
has adopted stringent standards for vendors and employees..."
http://chronicle.com/article/Cal-States-Strong-Push-for/125683/

Text Alternatives For Images: A Decision Tree
By Dey Alexander.
"To help you write better text alternatives for images, I've produced
this decision tree.  It asks three key questions. 1. What is the role
of the image?...2. Does the image present new information?...3. What
type of information is presented in the image?..."
http://www.deyalexander.com.au/blog/2010/12/text-alternatives-for-images-a-decision-tree/

The French Chef Still Waits for The Annoying Orange: Making Online
Programming Accessible to People with Disabilities
By Suzanne Robitaille and Michael Janger.
"The new Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility
Act will make it easier for people with disabilities to access TV
programs over the Internet. While the law is a tremendous step in the
right direction, a surge in new types of online programming, such as
Webisodes and streaming movies, are still not captioned for the deaf
and hard of hearing. This issue has drawn the attention of federal law
enforcers, including the Department of Justice, which is considering
the possibility of revising the Americans with Disabilities Act to
address accessible web information and services, movie captioning and
video descriptions. This white paper lays out the current online
programming landscape and attempts to analyze..."
http://abledbody.com/online-video-captions/

Cognitive Disabilities and the Web: Where Accessibility and Usability Meet?
By Heather Mariger.
"...Usability and accessibility, while in the same general family, are
distinctive concepts - cousins in the world of User Centered Design.
However, when it comes to cognitive disabilities, the lines blur. Can
usability principles be used to help increase the accessibility of the
web to persons with cognitive disabilities?..."
http://ncdae.org/tools/cognitive/

Thinking Through Accessibility
By John Foliot.
"It's a question I hear frequently - not every day, but often enough
that it sticks with me: Why do drive-through ATMs have Braille
keyboards?..."
http://john.foliot.ca/thinking-through-accessibility/

+02: BOOKS.

Layon, Kristofer. The Web Designer's Guide to iOS Apps: Create iPhone,
iPod touch, and iPad apps with Web Standards (HTML5, CSS3, and
JavaScript), New Riders, 2010.

+03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

How to Create a 3-Column Layout with CSS
By Roger Johansson.
"One of the most visited pages on this site is the Simple 2 column CSS
layout tutorial, where I explain how to create a basic 2-column CSS
layout with floats. Many readers have asked for a similar tutorial on
how to create a three-column layout, and I've been meaning to write
one for a few years..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201012/how_to_create_a_3-column_layout_with_css/

CSS Defaults, Part 2 - The Dirt
By Niels Matthijs.
"...if anything, this is just another lesson that front-end
development is never easy, not even the simple parts. Somehow,
somewhere, something has to go wrong. It makes are job what it is, so
all you can do is sigh, file a bug report and go on to fix the next
issue on your way."
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/css-defaults-pt2-the-dirt

Examples of Flexible Layouts with CSS3 Media Queries
By Zoe Gillenwater.
"In my CSS3 presentation that I've given several times over the past
year, the part that seems to impress the audience the most is my
demonstrations of media queries..."
http://zomigi.com/blog/examples-of-flexible-layouts-with-css3-media-queries/

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Video and HTML5 - Part 1: Understanding HTML5
By Stephanie Sullivan Rewis.
"Get a crash course on how to think about HTML5 when delivering video
and dynamic content for the web." (7:18 Adobe TV Video)
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adc-presents/videoandhtml5part1understandinghtml5/

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Top-Box Scoring of Rating Scale Data View More Blog Posts
By Jeff Sauro.
"...Top-box scoring has is its place for quickly assessing results and
especially for stand-alone studies when there's no meaningful
comparison or benchmark. If the results ever get compared though,
you'll want  a more precise scoring system to have a good chance of
detecting any differences in attitudes from design changes."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/top-box.php

Testing Content
By Angela Colter.
"Whether the purpose of your site is to convince people to do
something, to buy something, or simply to inform, testing only whether
they can find information or complete transactions is a missed
opportunity: Is the content appropriate for the audience? Can they
read and understand what you've written? Angela Colter shows how to
predict whether your content will work (without users) and test
whether it does work (with users). While you can't test every sentence
on your site, you don't need to. Focus on tasks that are critical to
your users and your business. Learn how to test the content to find
out if and where your site falls short."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/testing-content/

We Manage What We Can Easily Measure
By Gerry McGovern.
"HITS is a totally and utterly useless metric. For the vast majority
of websites, volume-based metrics are useless, counter-productive and
encourage the worst possible practice when it comes to web
management...The proper way to manage a website is to measure whether
people are able to complete their top tasks..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2010/nt-2010-12-13-EASILY.htm

How Many People Cheat in Online Surveys?
By Jeff Sauro.
"...Detecting cheaters is best done with a simple "Select this
response" or a conflicting question. Using responses to
semi-conflicting items like those in the SUS, are detecting only a
fraction of the cheaters. Unfortunately, cheaters either answer too
haphazardly or have caught on to this detection method and avoid
picking the same response to all items. Conflicting questions are also
viable but be careful how you word the item. You may inadvertently
trip up users who didn't see the "NOT" or just misinterpreted the
item..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/cheat-survey.php

+06: EVENTS.

Two Apps Per Day Workshop: Design Native iOS apps with Web Standards
January 22, 2011.
New York, New York U.S.A.
http://www.twoappsperday.com/

MinneWebCon: Minnesota's Web Conference
April 11, 2011.
Saint Paul, Minnesota U.S.A.
http://www.minnewebcon.umn.edu/

Mobilism
May 12-13, 2011.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://mobilism.nl/2011

+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

7 Myths About Paper Prototyping
By David Travis.
"Paper prototyping is probably the best tool we have to design great
user experiences. It allows you to involve users early in the design
process, shows you how people will use your system before you've
written any code, and supports iterative design. So why are some
design teams still resistant to using it? Here are 7 objections I've
heard to paper prototyping and why each one is mistaken..."
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/paperprototyping.html

+08: JAVASCRIPT.

Accessibility and JavaScript Drag and Drop
By Gabriele Romanato.
"The point of all JavaScript coding is to enrich the user experience
without burdening the user with a cognitive and physical overload. The
problem with JavaScript drag and drop is that it forces the user to
perform additional gestures to get the desired result (moving an item
to the shopping cart, moving it again to the trash and so on). For
users with physical disabilities this can actually turn out to be very
stressing and frustrating..."
http://networkedblogs.com/bMX4N

+09: NAVIGATION.

Trends For University Web Site Search Engines
By Brian Kelly.
"What search engines are Universities using on their Web sites?..."
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/trends-for-university-web-site-search-engines/

+10: PHP.

Everyone Loves PHP
By Scott MacVicar.
"...Take a look at the top hundred sites by traffic, size, or whatever
other metric you fancy, and there is a high chance that they're using
PHP. One of the main reasons I think PHP has become so popular is the
critical mass that it acquired while it was growing up, but what was
the original cause of that? It all comes down to its simplicity and
the other options that were available at the time..."
http://phpadvent.org/2010/everyone-loves-php-by-scott-macvicar

+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Postcards From TPAC
By Bruce Lawson.
"Every year, the top Standardistas of the world jet off to TPAC...Anne
van Kesteren attended on Opera's behalf. Accessibility...The a11y Task
Force made a list of user requirements (about 100). During the meeting
Frank Olivier from Microsoft went through the requirements with the
HTML WG and we organized them. It turns out about 10 of them are
applicable to the HTML5 specification and are not addressed yet. The
HTML WG Co-Chairs as well as the W3C Interaction Domain Lead put their
foot down with respect to accessibility potentially delaying the HTML5
Last Call. It was made clear that HTML5 is time driven, not feature
driven. So if the work on these requirements is not complete by May
next year, it will not happen..."
http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/show.dml/22020902

Opera's TPAC Minutes
By Shelley Powers.
"...One area of major failing at the W3C is how accessibility has been
handled...The focus is on the 'cool' stuff, like HTML5 video and
captioning, at the expense of the more mundane, like alt, longdesc,
table summary-yet the majority of web pages will never use any of the
cool stuff, but will make use of the mundane..."
http://realtech.burningbird.net/web/html5/operas-tpac-minutes

HTML4, XHTML, HTML5 DOCTYPES: What's a Teacher To Do?
By Virginia DeBolt.
"...HTML5 hasn't been implemented fully enough to be mainstream at the
present time. Beginners trying to cope with new HTML5 elements with
spotty implementation would have more frustration than they need when
trying to learn the basics of web design. Learning something that is
currently best practice, and rigorous enough to work in any situation
seems like a better choice. However, using the HTML5 DOCTYPE is simply
easier and will work, even if the rest of the document is formatted as
HTML 4. And it eliminates the need for one of those long-winded
earlier DOCTYPES..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/12/13/html4-xhtml-html5-doctypes-whats-a-teacher-to-do/

Some Tests on the aside Element
By Virginia DeBolt.
"I built a page of HTML5 and tried a few CSS styling rules on it to
see what browsers do with rendering a page of HTML5. The tests I want
to talk about today involve an aside element. In this test, I used the
aside in the footer of an article element to display information about
the author of the article. (Note the use of an ARIA role in the aside
element.)..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/12/16/some-tests-on-the-aside-element/

Accessibility to Web Video for the Vision-Impaired
By Silvia Pfeiffer.
"In the past week, I was invited to an IBM workshop on audio/text
descriptions for video in Japan. Geoff Freed and Trisha O'Connell from
WGBH, and Michael Evans from BBC research were the other invited
experts to speak about the current state of video accessibility around
the world and where things are going in TV/digital TV and the Web..."
http://blog.gingertech.net/2010/12/12/accessibility-to-web-video-for-the-vision-impaired/

+12: TOOLS.

HTML Lint
By Marko Mrdjenovic et al.
"HTML Lint is a tool that makes sure your code looks good. While XHTML
was very strict with syntax HTML 5 is more lenient like previous
versions of HTML, which means keeping consistent code styles will
become more difficult. Validating is not good enough anymore..."
http://lint.brihten.com/html/

+13: TYPOGRAPHY.

Use Uppercase (Capitalised) Text Judiciously
By Roger Johansson.
"...I'm not saying that you should never use capitalised text, just
that it's good to be aware of and consider the potential drawbacks of
it before making an informed decision."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201012/use_uppercase_capitalised_text_judiciously/

+14: USABILITY.

College Students on the Web
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Students are multitaskers who move through websites rapidly, often
missing the item they come to find. They're enraptured by social media
but reserve it for private conversations and thus visit company sites
from search engines."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/students.html

Universal Design, Usability, and Accessibility
By George Williams.
"...Many (most?) college and university web sites are poorly designed
for any user, much less for users with disabilities...Many (most?)
college and university web sites are poorly designed for any user,
much less for users with disabilities..."
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/universal-design-usability-and-accessibility/29501

Universal Design for the Digital Environment: Transforming the Institution
By Cyndi Rowland, Heather Mariger, Peter M. Siegel, and Jonathan Whiting.
"A revolution is about to transform higher education.To participate in
this revolution, all of us in higher education need to explore a
critical concept: 'universal design'..."
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/UniversalDesignfortheDigitalEn/218700

Myth #28: White Space is Wasted Space
By Zoltan Kollin.
White space or "negative space", referring to the empty space between
and around elements of a design or page layout, is often overlooked
and neglected. Although many may consider it a waste of valuable
screen estate, white space is an essential element in web design and
'is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background,'
Jan Tschichold wrote in 1930. Not only is white space responsible for
readability and content prioritization, it also plays an important
role in the visual layout and brand positioning."
http://uxmyths.com/post/2059998441/myth-28-white-space-is-wasted-space

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+15: 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.

+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how
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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
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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.]