[webdev] Web Design Update: January 19, 2012

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Jan 19 06:21:55 CST 2012 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 30, January 19, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 30 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: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
08: TOOLS.
09: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

NFB: Google Apps Accessibility Not There Yet
By Jarret Cummings.
"This last October, I wrote about comments made by the National
Federation of the Blind's legal counsel, Dan Goldstein, indicating
that Google appeared to be on track to resolve NFB concerns about
Google Apps accessibility for persons with visual disabilities by the
end of 2011 or early in January 2012...Unfortunately, those
expectations have not been realized—recent NFB testing has found that
Google Apps still exhibit substantial, and in some cases new,
accessibility problems..."
http://www.educause.edu/blog/jcummings/NFBGoogleAppsAccessibilityNotT/244755

Web Accessibility Myths 2011, Part 2
By Jonathan Hassell.
"...I'm going to cover ten more important myths, around audience,
personalisation, assistive technology use, and mobile website use,
which also need puncturing for us to be more effective..."
http://www.hassellinclusion.com/2012/01/web-accessibility-myths-2011-part2/

Zooming Bug in Webkit
By Alastair Campbell.
"I've noticed a bug in Webkit browsers (Chrome and Safari) that
impacts accessibility: Zooming in does not trigger media queries..."
http://alastairc.ac/2012/01/zooming-bug-in-webkit/

Are Delay Tactics Preventing Passage of New Section 508 Disability Law?
By Steve Faulkner.
"Brian Landrigan - Director of Sales & Marketing at The Paciello Group
made the following representation to the Public Hearing on the Draft
Update of ICT Requirements, January 11 2012..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2012/01/are-delay-tactics-preventing-passage-of-new-section-508-disability-law/

Inclusive Design
By Faruk Ates.
"...In the accessibility industry, the word 'inclusive' is relatively
commonplace; but inclusive design principles should not be reserved
for the realm of accessibility alone, because they apply to many more
people than 'just' the lesser-abled. Interface designers frequently
think in binary terms: either all of the interface is in front of you
or none of it is. But people are not binary. People aren't either
fully disabled or not at all, just like they aren't merely old or
young, dumb or smart, tall or short. People sit along a vast spectrum
of who they are and what they are like; the same is true when they use
interfaces, except that this spectrum is of expertise, familiarity,
skill, expectations and so on. So, why do we keep creating interfaces
that ignore all of this? It's time for us to get rid of these binary
propositions..."
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2012/01/12/inclusive-design/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Vertical Media Queries and Wide Sites
By Trent Walton.
"I've been tinkering with the font-size and the media queries that
trigger width-based changes for this site regularly over the past
month. I thought that maxing out at 20px for body copy at widths above
900px would be my final answer, but I decided to drop in one more
increase last week..."
http://trentwalton.com/2012/01/11/vertical-media-queries-wide-sites/

Media Queries and Multiple Columns
By Jeremy Keith.
"By far the most common use of media queries is to execute CSS based
on viewport width (using min-width or max-width). Lately there's been
more talk about using media queries based on height as well..."
http://adactio.com/journal/5147/

Responsive Data Table Roundup
By Chris Coyier.
"There has been a bunch of takes on responsive data tables since I
first published about it..."
http://css-tricks.com/responsive-data-table-roundup/

Beating Borders - The Bane of Responsive Layout
By Joshua Johnson.
"...Outline and box-sizing represent two possible solutions to our
problem of combining borders with percent based widths in CSS layouts.
Neither solution is perfect, but as long as you know what you're
doing, both can be used to successfully solve your layout woes..."
http://designshack.net/articles/css/beating-borders-the-bane-of-responsive-layout/

The All-New CSS3 Click Chart
By Louis Lazaris.
http://www.impressivewebs.com/new-css3-click-chart/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Thinking Aloud: The #1 Usability Tool
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Simple usability tests where users think out loud are cheap, robust,
flexible, and easy to learn. Thinking aloud should be the first tool
in your UX toolbox, even though it entails some risks and doesn't
solve all problems."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/thinking-aloud-tests.html


+04: EVENTS.

Knowbility's AccessU at CSUN 2012
February 27-28, 2012
San Diego, CA USA
http://www.csun.edu/cod/conference/sessions/index.php/public/website_pages/view/10

John Slatin Access U
May 15-17, 2012.
Austin, Texas, U.S.A.
http://www.knowbility.org/v/accessu/


+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

The Mobile-Only App Anti-Pattern: 'You Can't Serve Two Masters'
By Brian Kelly.
"In the anti-pattern Wikipedia article we learn that 'In software
engineering, an anti-pattern (or antipattern) is a pattern that may be
commonly used but is ineffective and/or counterproductive in
practice'. Reading the GigaOM article on 'Whip myself-and Path-into
fighting shape', which is the ninth in a series of 12 tech leaders'
resolutions for 2012, I fear that we may be seeing the development of
a mobile-only app anti-pattern..."
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/the-mobile-app-anti-pattern-you-cant-serve-two-masters/

One Web, Many Devices
By Jeremy Keith.
"A presentation from the Update conference held in Brighton in September 2011."
http://adactio.com/articles/5156

An Important Time for Design
By Cameron Koczon.
"It's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that design
has a massive role to play in the evolution of the web and the next
generation of web products."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/an-important-time-for-design/


+06: NAVIGATION.

The Art of Linking
By Gerry McGovern.
"Linking is the essence of the Web. Web professionals must focus
primarily on links, rather than the content or technology...
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2012/nt-2012-01-16-Art-linking.htm

Current Page Link Styles
By Louis Lazaris.
"One of the most common things you'll see on any website is a
navigation bar that has a different set of CSS styles applied to the
link that represents the current page the user is on. (Maybe I'll
actually get around to doing this on my own site!) There are a few
ways you can do this with HTML and CSS, which I'll outline here..."
http://www.impressivewebs.com/current-page-link-styles/


+07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 Video vs. HTML Video
By Victoria Kushner.
"Nowadays, designers and developers have several options for
integrating video into a web page..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/html5-video-vs-html-video/

Marking up a Postal Address with HTML
By Ian Devlin.
"The other day I was pondering on how one might go about marking up a
postal address (as well as phone and fax numbers etc.) in HTML. There
are a number of methods available, some of which I'm going to look at
here and give my take on them..."
http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2012/01/html/marking-up-a-postal-address-with-html

HTML5 Will Play Nice with Translation
By Adrian A. Roselli.
"...In the latest W3C Open Web Platform Weekly Summary, a new
attribute has been announced for HTML5 that will allow authors to
exclude specific content from being translated - for any service that
will honor it..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2012/01/html5-will-play-nice-with-translation.html


+08: TOOLS.

HandBrake Video Converter for Mac
http://handbrake.fr/

Freemake Video Converter 3.0 for Windows
http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/

Zamzar Online video converter.
You will get files by email.
http://zamzar.com/


+09: USABILITY.

A Pixel Identity Crisis
By Scott Kellum.
"The pixel has long been the atomic particle of screen based design: a
knowable, concrete unit of measurement. But layouts based on the
hardware pixel are fast becoming an endangered species. Even the
introduction of a new, W3C standard reference pixel, although it
promises stability in the long-term, can't help us navigate the
current chaos. Consider the two "standard" pixel definitions and 500
"standard" viewports your user's Android device may support. To create
designs that transcend platform differences-the promise of the web and
standards-you must normalize pixels across devices. Scott Kellum shows
how math and media queries can keep you sane and help you design
consistently across platforms."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/a-pixel-identity-crisis/


[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.]

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