[webdev] Web Design Update: March 4, 2011

Fri Mar 4 05:20:52 CST 2011

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 9, Issue 36, March 4, 2011.

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

++ISSUE 36 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: DREAMWEAVER.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: EVENTS.
07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
08: JAVASCRIPT.
09: MISCELLANEOUS.
10: NAVIGATION.
11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
12: TYPOGRAPHY.
13: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessibility for Web Writers, Part 3 - Information and Relationships
By Dey Alexander.
"Web writers need to use HTML tags to identify certain types of
information and relationships between information. For instance,
headings need the appropriate heading tag because font size increases
aren't visible to everyone. Some blind people use software that reads
out the headings. This gives them a sense of the document contents and
structure-but it only works if heading tags are used..."
http://www.deyalexander.com.au/blog/2011/02/accessibility-for-web-writers-part-3/

WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey Number 3 Results
By WebAIM.
"WebAIM has released the results of our most recent screen reader user
survey. These results provide informative and interesting data that
should drive accessible web development and practices."
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey3/

Web Accessibility and Human Rights: Is the Internet the Great Equaliser?
By Sandi Wassmer.
"...Web accessibility is a fundamental human right and if democratic
countries play their part in fulfilling their moral and legal
obligations to the surety of an accessible web, then we will be well
on our way. Even though there was no Internet back in 1948, the
articles within the Declaration are implicit, and when considered in
light of web accessibility, there is absolutely no ambiguity..."
http://www.actionforblindpeople.org.uk/your-community/blogs/sandi-wassmer/web-accessibility-and-human-rights-is-the-internet-the-great-equaliser/

How Usability Testing Adds Value to Accessibility Evaluations
By Mary Donnelly.
"Whenever I am presented with steps on how to conduct an accessibility
evaluation, user testing with real users is always listed as a step.
What I rarely see is information on why testing is so important, what
the benefits from testing real users are, and what you get by testing
with real users that you can't get by using accessibility tools or
testing with your own screen reader."
http://userexperience.evantageconsulting.com/2011/03/how-usability-testing-adds-value-to-accessibility-evaluations/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

W3C Validator Needs type='text/css' in Order to Find CSS Files
By Russ Weakley.
"...However, the W3C CSS validator seems to have some issues with
HTML5 documents that exclude type="text/css"..."
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2011/03/02/css-validator/

Show and Edit Style Element
By Chris Coyier.
"Kind of a classic little trick for ya'll today. You know the <style>
blocks you can put in the <head> of your HTML to do styling? You don't
actually have to put those in your head, they can be anywhere on the
page. It's not valid (or good practice) but it works..."
http://css-tricks.com/show-and-edit-style-element/

CSS Value Lengths, Times, Frequencies and Angles
By Estelle Weyl.
"Many of the property values are keywords unique to that property. But
for some properties, the values can include length, frequency or time
values or units. In this article we go over all the math type units
that can be applied as property values in CSS..."
http://www.standardista.com/css3/css-values-lengths-times-frequenc-angles

What Does a Blur Radius Mean?
By David Baron.
"A bunch of Web platform features involve blurring. For example, the
CSS text-shadow property lets a shadow be both positioned and blurred.
Each shadow is given with three numbers: the first two give the
position and the third gives the blur radius. For example..."
http://dbaron.org/log/20110225-blur-radius

Problems With the Sans-Serif Hack
By Harry Roberts.
Chris Coyier's sans-serif hack article has been doing its rounds
lately, however it isn't without its drawbacks… and it is a hack.
http://csswizardry.com/2011/03/problems-with-the-sans-serif-hack/

The No-Pressure Introduction to CSS3
By Kean Richmond.
"...Whether you call it Progressive Enhancement, Graceful Degradation
or Hardboiled it doesn't matter really, so long as you accept that a
website doesn't need to look the same in all browsers. If you can
accept this simple truth then you will see that CSS3 can be adopted
today without negatively affecting the user experience of those using
older browsers..."
http://www.onextrapixel.com/2011/02/14/the-no-pressure-introduction-to-css3/

To Reset or Not Reset - That's the CSS Question
By Craig Buckler.
"Every web browser uses a base stylesheet. It ensures HTML is rendered
reasonably well when you don't provide custom CSS. You know the kind
of thing: blue for unvisited links, purple for visited links, bold for
strong tags, larger text for h1 titles etc. Unfortunately, vendors
love making our lives complicated and each browser uses a different
base. So how can you ensure your custom CSS is not affected by a
default style implemented on a specific device?..."
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2011/03/03/css-resets-useful-or-useless/

+03: COLOR.

Eye Resources - Understanding Color Blindness
"Color blindness refers to the inability to see differences in certain
colors which can be discerned by others. Typically, people who suffer
from color blindness cannot tell red from green or the colors appear
somewhat differently to them. About 10 million men in America suffer
from color blindness. Color blindness affects a great number of people
across the world. With the right education and management, they can
learn to improve their color vision deficiency..."
http://lasiksurgerycost.net/articles/understanding-color-blindness.html

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 with PHP -  Why PHP and Why Dreamweaver CS5?
By David Powers.
Book excerpt.
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1681082

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Anecdotes Persuade More Than Data
By Susan Weinschenk.
"Anecdotes are in story form. They will invoke empathy, which triggers
emotional reactions. With emotional reactions people will process the
data and the feelings. Emotions will also trigger the memory centers
in the brain."
http://www.whatmakesthemclick.net/2011/02/28/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-67-anecdotes-persuade-more-than-data/

+06: EVENTS.

An Event Apart Minneapolis
August 8-10, 2011.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.
http://www.aneventapart.com/2011/minneapolis/

UX Australia
August 22-26, 2011.
Sydney, Australia
http://www.uxaustralia.com.au/

UX Week
August 23-26, 2011.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
http://www.uxweek.com/

Web Directions South
October 11-14, 2011.
Sydney, Australia
http://south11.webdirections.org/

+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Open vs. Closed Prototypes
By Tom Maiorana.
"An open prototype is one that involves the user in a direct way. It
is typically something you could hand over to a user...A closed
prototype is an experience that users watch, but won't interact with
directly. The lack of direct user interaction can make it harder to
learn from a closed prototype."
http://dschool.typepad.com/news/2011/02/open-vs-closed-prototypes-1.html

+08: JAVASCRIPT.

JavaScript and Screenreaders
By Bruce Lawson.
"For three years Jared Smith and his lovable chums at WebAIM have
conducted a survey of screenreader users, analysed the result and
posted them. This year's results are out. Let's take a minute to give
them a round of applause. There is much to digest, but one figure
really caught my attention: only 1.6% of respondents had JavaScript
disabled. Turning that round, 98.4% of screenreader users had
JavaScript enabled..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/javascript-and-screenreaders/

+09: MISCELLANEOUS.

Creating Great Design Principles - 6 Counter-intuitive Tests
By Jared M. Spool.
"...Great design principles help designers learn more about their
design and make critical decisions about what they're building..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/creating-design-principles

Testing Your Design Principles
By Ted Boren.
"...Here are his six tests, with a little elaboration on how our
design principles fared when put up to these standards..."
http://northtemple.com/2011/03/02/testing-your-design-princi

+10: NAVIGATION.

Skip Navigation
By John Eric Brandt.
"As the years have gone by, screen reader technology has changed
dramatically, and there are now methods built into all of the major
screen readers that allow the user to move about the web page more
readily ostensibly allowing the user to 'browse' the content without
having to read every word...I suspect that when Section 508 is revise
the 'skip navigation' requirement itself will be…skipped!"
http://jebswebs.net/blog/2011/02/skip-navigation/

+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 sectioning elements, headings, and document outlines
By Roger Johansson.
"Recently I've been taking a closer look at how HTML5 changes the way
document outlines are created. I'm not entirely sure that I have
understood the specification fully, but if I have, I think the new
outline algorithm requires you to think carefully when using the new
sectioning elements (article, section, nav, and aside) if you also
want a coherent document outline without untitled sections..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201103/html5_sectioning_elements_headings_and_document_outlines/

Tweaking HTML5 - Edition For Web Authors
By Steve Faulkner.
"In mid 2010 Anthony Kolber and Ben Schwarz started a discussion about
the usability of W3C specifications, this resulted in Ben and
Anthony's initial restyled version of the W3C HTML5 - Edition for Web
Authors. Tweaks needed..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2011/03/tweaking-html5-edition-for-web-authors/

Your Questions Number 16
By Richard Clark.
"The clinic is getting busy with more HTML5 ailments! This week, we'll
cover the separation of formatting and content, custom elements, using
<aside> for social links, sections with no visible titles, and
<canvas> in the DOM..."
http://html5doctor.com/your-questions-16/

+12: TYPOGRAPHY.

CSS Typography: The Basics
Kayla Knight.
"...How can we use CSS for great typography in our web designs? This
is a question we'll try to answer..."
http://via.pulsene.ws/13W2C

Sans-Serif
By Chris Coyier.
"Macs will get awesome Helvetica by default. On PC's, even if they
have Helvetica it can look worse that Arial for whatever reason, so
this way they get Arial by default. And you're still covered by the
generic keyword. Shorter, easier, yay..."
http://css-tricks.com/sans-serif/

What's So Smart About Those Quotes
By Jennifer Farley.
"Amongst typographers and type-lovers it is often considered to be a
type faux pas to use the wrong type of quotes. Did you know there is a
wrong type of quote, a quote from the wrong side of the tracks? Well
there are such things known as smart quotes and dumb quotes. Smart
quotes (sometimes known as book quotes) are the curly or curved style
of quote. The have an opening and closing style. Dumb or straight
quotes are straight up and down, sometimes tapered vertical marks. So
what's the big deal? It really depends on how pedantic you want to be
with your web or print typography..."
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2011/02/28/whats-so-smart-about-those-quotes/

The @Font-Face Rule and Useful Web Font Tricks
By Ralf Hermann.
"The possibility of embedding any font you like into websites via
@font-face is an additional stylistic device which promises to abolish
the monotony of the usual system fonts. It surely would be all too
easy if there was only one Web font format out there. Instead, there's
quite a variety, as you will get to know in this article..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/03/02/the-font-face-rule-revisited-and-useful-tricks/

+13: USABILITY.

Mobile Content Is Twice as Difficult
By Jakob Nielsen.
"When reading from an iPhone-sized screen, comprehension scores for
complex Web content were 48% of desktop monitor scores."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-content-comprehension.html

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+14: 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.]