[webdev] Web Design Update: January 5, 2012

Thu Jan 5 06:24:37 CST 2012

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 28, January 5, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 28 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: NAVIGATION.
08: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Updated Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
By W3C.
"The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group today
published updates of two Notes that accompany WCAG 2.0: Techniques for
WCAG 2.0 and Understanding WCAG 2.0. (This is not an update to WCAG
2.0, which is a stable document.) To learn more about WCAG Techniques
and about contributing to future updates, see the WCAG Techniques
Updated - Learn about the informative guidance blog post. Read about
the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)..."
http://www.w3.org/News/2012.html#entry-9309

First Draft of Media Accessibility User Requirements Published
By W3C.
"The Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) today published a
First Public Working Draft of Media Accessibility User Requirements
that describes the accessibility requirements of people with
disabilities with respect to audio and video on the Web, particularly
in the context of HTML5. Learn more from the call for review email and
about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)."
http://www.w3.org/News/2012.html#entry-9308

The POUR Principles: The Starting Point for Creating Accessible Blogs
By Glenda Watson Hyatt.
'What is an accessible website or blog? I want to do the right thing
but where do I even start? Is there a framework or something to gain
an overall understanding?' Yes, there is!..."
http://blogaccessibility.com/the-pour-principles-the-starting-point-for-creating-accessible-blogs/

Let's Talk and Teach, Not Fight, About Accessibility
By Karen Mardahl.
"...I want to make a constructive call to action. Let's work on
constructive and positive approaches to spreading accessibility
awareness everywhere..."
http://www.mardahl.dk/2011/12/30/lets-talk-and-teach-not-fight-about-accessibility/

WCAG 2.0 Techniques for PDF
By Andrew Kirkpatrick.
"Authors looking for additional guidance on how to meet the W3C WCAG
2.0 for PDF documents can now look to the W3C techniques repository
for additional guidance. Techniques for PDF authored over the past two
years since the release of the last update to the WCAG techniques
(which included techniques for Flash) are now part of the larger
collection of techniques. View the full set of WCAG 2.0 techniques or
view PDF techniques on their own..."
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2012/01/wcag-2-0-techniques-for-pdf.html

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

A Responsive Design Approach for Complex, Multicolumn Data Tables
By Maggie Wachs.
"In responsive web design, one of the toughest design problems to
solve is how format complex tabular data for display on smaller
screens. In this post, we'll explore an experimental approach to
rendering a complex table, using progressive enhancement and
responsive design methods, that displays comfortably at a wide range
of screen sizes, provides quick access to the data, and preserves the
table structure so that data can still be compared across columns..."
http://filamentgroup.com/lab/responsive_design_approach_for_complex_multicolumn_data_tables/

Leavin Old Interenet Explorer Behind
By Joini Kopi.
"Using media queries to make a clean break from legacy browsers..."
http://jonikorpi.com/leaving-old-IE-behind/

CSS Selector Performance Has Changed! (For the better)
By Nicole Sullivan.
"Great articles, like Dave Hyatt's Writing Efficient CSS, helped
developers adapt to a nascent selector matching landscape. We learned
from Steve Souders (and others) that selectors match from right to
left, and that certain selectors were particularly arduous to match
and should best be avoided. For example, we were told that descendant
selectors were slow, especially when the right-most selector matched
many elements on the page. All this was fantastic information when we
had none, but as it turns out, times have changed! Thanks to some
amazing work by Antti Koivisto there are many selectors we don't need
to worry about anymore..."
http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2011/css-selector-performance-has-changed-for-the-better/

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

The True Costs of No-Shows
By Dana Chisnell.
"One of the first things people say when they call up looking for help
with recruiting is that they want to recruit '12 for 8' or '20 for
15'. They know what they want to end up with. They've got to get data.
Managers are showing up to observe. They've gone through a lot to get
a study to happen at all. They don't want to risk putting a study
together only to get less data than they need. So, compensating for a
show rate of between 60% and 80% means over-recruiting..."
http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/2012/01/true-costs-of-no-shows.html

+04: EVENTS.

27th International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference
CSUN 2012
February 27 - March 3, 2012.
San Diego, California, U.S.A.
http://www.csun.edu/cod/conference/index.php

Progressive Enhancement
March 25-30, 2012.
Clark, Colorado, U.S.A.
http://retreats4geeks.com/events/2012/progressive-enhancement/

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

The Rise and Rise of JavaScript
By Dan North.
"’ve been using JavaScript for a while now, but only really
programming in anger with it during the last year. I’ve found it in
turns frustrating and enlightening, ridiculous and brilliant. I have
never felt so empowered by a language and its ecosystem, so I thought
I’d take some time to write about why that is. I’m starting with a
ramble through the history of JavaScript, or rather my undoubtedly
inaccurate understanding of it, to provide some context for where and
how I’ve been using it..."
http://dannorth.net/2011/12/19/the-rise-and-rise-of-javascript/

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

On Designing Content-Out (a Response to Zeldman and others)
By Stephanie Rieger.
"...There IS a lot to think about and designing content-out is quite
liberating, but it's also important to remember why we're doing this.
Designing content-out works quite well. We've used this approach for a
while now and have found that if there are wonky/awkward spots when
you test by resizing the screen on the desktop, they will in most
cases end up just as wonky on devices. An approach that is working
quite well for us at the moment is to design using major and minor
breakpoints..."
http://stephanierieger.com/on-designing-content-out-a-response-to-zeldman-and-others/

+07: NAVIGATION.

Videos of Screen Readers with Basic HTML5 and ARIA Landmarks
By Jason Kiss.
"With the rapid development in certain user agents (take that,
Firefox!), I'm a little late in getting these up, but I figure some of
them are still useful to share. In any case, I posted to YouTube five
videos of various screen readers interacting with basic HTML5 section
elements and ARIA landmarks. These are videos I presented at the 2011
Accessibility Summit and OZeWAI 2011 conferences..."
http://www.accessibleculture.org/articles/2012/01/videos-of-screen-readers-html5-and-aria-landmarks/

A Plea for Progressive Enhancement
By Stephanie Rieger.
"This is vitally important people so listen up. The web now connects a
third of our planet. Over 1.2 billion people [1] use the web on
devices, and this number is rising fast. Mobile already amounts to
close to 6.5% of web traffic worldwide, and large sites such as
Facebook and YouTube routinely report mobile traffic of at least 30%.
By 2015, the ITU predicts mobile traffic will exceed desktop traffic
and the 'mobile-mostly' group already make up a staggering 20% of
users in the US and UK..."
http://stephanierieger.com/a-plea-for-progressive-enhancement/

+08: USABILITY.

Common Web Site Usability Mistakes
By Kim Krause Berg.
"...The biggest mistake is to believe that web site appearance matters
the most. How it looks is only one part of the process. How it
performs is another. What it can give back to site visitors and how
effectively it conveys that information will matter even more."
http://cre8pc.com/2012/01/03/common-web-site-usability-mistakes/

10 Guidelines for Writing Usable and SEO Friendly Content
By Alexsey Donets.
"...In this article I will be outlining 10 recommendations, which will
help make your web project really successful..."
http://usabilitygeek.com/10-guidelines-for-writing-usable-and-seo-friendly-content/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+09: 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.]