[webdev] Web Design Update: March 2, 2012

Fri Mar 2 06:20:09 CST 2012

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 36, March 2, 2012.

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: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: PHP.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Assistive Technology Experiment - High Contrast
By Jon Whiting.
"Several months ago I decided to spend some time using a few common,
but often overlooked, assistive technologies and then report on my
experiences and insights. The first two posts of this series presented
my recommendations on designing for users of ZoomText and Dragon
NaturallySpeaking. As the final part of this series, I will cover the
High Contrast options in Windows 7..."
http://webaim.org/blog/high-contrast/

Accessibility Needs to be Understood as an Equally Necessary partner
to any Marketing Efforts
By Joe Dolson.
"...An aspect of the problem for many web sites has to do with
long-term business development. A business may hire an accessibility
expert to review their web sites, make suggestions, or re-work their
web site, but when they hire a marketing firm for long-term web site
development, they can lose their accessibility very quickly if that
marketing company doesn't also have a firm grasp on accessibility..."
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2012/03/we-need-to-have-a-talk-with-marketing/

Mind Map of WCAG 2.0
By Gregg Vanderheiden.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2012JanMar/0065.html

Is There a Need for a Professional Accessibility Society?
By Leonie Watson.
"Is there a need for a professional accessibility society? This is the
question being discussed by the accessibility cognoscenti..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2012/is-there-a-need-for-a-professional-accessibility-society/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Places It's Tempting To Use Display: None; But Don't
By Chris Coyier.
"By applying that class to an element you've immediately made that
content 'inaccessible' by screen readers. You've probably known this
forever, but still the poison apple sneaks into our code once in a
while..."
http://css-tricks.com/places-its-tempting-to-use-display-none-but-dont/

CSS: From Screen to Print and Beyond
By Molly Holzschlag.
"Revolutionary for Web design, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) have
solved and continue to solve numerous challenges in designing for the
continuous media of the Web. But what of paged media, as we want with
our digital readers and printed collateral? Making websites and
applications attractive and logical in paged media has been at best
poorly achieved without the use of additional scripts and
programming..."
http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/CSS-From-Screen-to-Print-and-Beyond/ba-p/1752

Mastering Box Shadows
By Konstantin Kichinsky.
"Today we will study the art of mastering shadows with CSS3. There are
two types: box-shadow and text-shadow, defined respectively in the
modules and CSS3 Text..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/mastering-box-shadows/

Is It Time To Change Our CSS Practices?
By Steven Bradley.
"We've been using css as the presentation layer of web pages for quite
some time. I've personally been using it for about 10 years and like
many, much of my css practices were developed nearly as long ago. Is
it time to change those practices?..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/flawed-practices/

Vendor Prefix Practicalities
By Peter-Paul Koch.
"I've been going through my CSS tests last week, and thought I'd jot
down some notes on how the browser treat vendor prefixes. It'll bring
some much-needed practicality into the discussion..."
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2012/02/vendor_prefix_p.html

***What's the Deal With Display: Inline-Block?
By Joshua Johnson.
"...One interesting alternative to floats that people are turning to
more and more lately is to set the display value of an element to
inline-block. What does this do exactly? How is it like a float? How
is it different? Let's dive in and see what we can discover..."
http://designshack.net/articles/css/whats-the-deal-with-display-inline-block/

+03: COLOR.

Color Contrast and Accessibility
By Mike Adams.
"I recently came across a tool I hadn't used before and wanted to
share it and another resource for analyzing color contrasts. If we
look at 1.4.3 within WCAG 2.0 it lays out the groundwork but having a
tool to use is such a nice resource to have..."
http://theaccesspond.com/2012/02/23/color-contrast-and-accessibility/

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Finding the CSS3 Possibilities in Dreamweaver 5.5
By Virginia DeBolt.
"A brilliant examples of interface design that Dreamweaver designers
use with some regularity is the CSS rule definition dialog window in
Dreamweaver. This window has been approximately the same since the
days of Macromedia when it was first instituted..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2012/03/01/finding-the-css3-possibilities-in-dreamweaver-5-5/

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Valid JavaScript Variable Names
By Mathias Bynens.
"...I decided to look into which Unicode glyphs are allowed in
JavaScript variable names, or identifiers as the ECMAScript
specification calls them..."
http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript-identifiers

Accessibility of HTML5 and Rich Internet Applications - CSUN 2012
Workshop Material
By Hans Hillen and Steve Faulkner.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/573324/CSUN2012/index.html

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Future-Ready Content
By Sara Wachter-Boettcher.
"The future is flexible, and we're bending with it. From responsive
web design to futurefriend.ly thinking, we're moving quickly toward a
web that's more fluid, less fixed, and more easily accessed on a
multitude of devices. As we embrace this shift, we need to relinquish
control of our content as well, setting it free from the boundaries of
a traditional web page to flow as needed through varied displays and
contexts. Most conversations about structured content dive headfirst
into the technical bits: XML, DITA, microdata, RDF. But structure
isn't just about metadata and markup; it's what that metadata and
markup mean. Sara Wachter-Boettcher shares a framework for making
smart decisions about our content's structure..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/future-ready-content/

The State of the Union Bog for Mobile Industry - All the Stats and
Facts for 2012
"The big statistics and numbers blog! Its that time of year, the start
of a new year, and we have to update and memorize new numbers. For me
this annual blog is a kind of honor, a bit like the US president who
gives his 'State of the Union' speech to Congress. (The state of our
industry is strong!) And the blog article will get very wide coverage
throughout the year as the definitive collection of the big numbers in
one place..."
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/02/the-state-of-the-union-blog-for-mobile-industry-all-the-stats-and-facts-for-2012.html

Responsive Images Community Group
W3C Group.
Our goal is a markup-based means of delivering alternate image sources
based on device capabilities, to prevent wasted bandwidth and optimize
display for both screen and print.
http://www.w3.org/community/respimg/

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Responsive Images
By Paul Robert Lloyd.
"Last week I was invited to Responsive Summit, a face-to-face
discussion about Responsive Web Design. We talked about what we've
learnt so far, the problems we're continuing to face and things we'd
like to change..."
http://paulrobertlloyd.com/2012/02/responsive_summit/

***Which One: Responsive Design, Device Experiences, or RESS?
By Luke Wroblewski.
"As more organizations realize they need to invest heavily in
multi-device Web designs, the inevitable question of 'how' comes up.
Responsive Web design, separate sites, or something in between? Here's
how I've tried to simplify this decision..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1509

+07: NAVIGATION.

Responsive Navigation Patterns
By Brad Frost.
"Top and left navigations are typical on large screens, but lack of
screen real estate on small screens makes for an interesting
challenge. As responsive design becomes more popular, it's worth
looking at the various ways of handling navigation for small screen
sizes. Mobile web navigation must strike a balance between quick
access to a site's information and unobtrusiveness. Here's some of the
more popular techniques for handling navigation in responsive
designs.."
http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/web/responsive-nav-patterns/

Thoughts on Responsive Navigation
By Alexis Fellenius Makrigianni.
"I've been thinking a lot about navigation in responsive designs
lately, so when Brad Frost wrote Responsive Navigation Patterns a few
days ago I thought I'd write down some thoughts on a couple of the
methods he talks about..."
http://lexi.se/post/18401593732/thoughts-on-responsive-navigation

Building Responsive Websites: How to Handle Navigation Menus
By Scott Gilbertson.
"The web is moving rapidly away from its fixed-layout past into what
it arguably should have been all along - a flexible medium that adapts
to any screen size. While there are many aspects to the move from
fixed to flexible, the overall process has been dubbed 'responsive
design.' That is, designing sites that respond to different screen
sizes, fluidly adapting to the wide array devices available today and
the myriad more coming tomorrow."
http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/02/building-responsive-websites-how-to-handle-navigation-menus/

+08: PHP.

Working with Dates and Times in PHP and MySQL
By Sean Hudgston.
"When working in any programming language, dealing with dates and time
is often a trivial and simple task. That is, until time zones have to
be supported. Fortunately, PHP has one of the most potent set of
date/time tools that help you deal with all sorts of time-related
issues..."
http://phpmaster.com/working-with-dates-and-times/

+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Standards Leader Blasts HTML5 Video Copy Protection
By Stephen Shankland.
"Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML standard, declares that a DRM Web
video from Microsoft, Google, and Netflix would be unethical and
ineffectual..."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57384129-264/standards-leader-blasts-html5-video-copy-protection/

'Unethical' HTML  Video Copy Protection Proposal Draws Criticism From W3C Reps.
By Ryan Paul.
"A new Web standard proposal authored by Google, Microsoft, and
Netflix seeks to bring copy protection mechanisms to the Web. The
Encrypted Media Extensions draft defines a framework for enabling the
playback of protected media content in the Web browser. The proposal
is controversial and has raised concern among some parties that are
participating in the standards process..."
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/02/unethical-html-video-copy-protection-proposal-criticized-by-standards-stakeholders.ars

+10: USABILITY.

Redefining Hick's Law
By Jason Gross.
"Hick's Law has always been a popular reference point for designers.
You'll find it cited in the endless lists of basic laws and principles
that all designers should be familiar with. Given our assumed comfort
level with this design cornerstone, I am surprised to see so many
people getting it wrong..."
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2012/02/23/redefining-hicks-law/

Finger-Friendly Design: Ideal Mobile Touch Target Sizes
By UX Movement.
"In darts, hitting the bulls-eye is harder to do than hitting any
other part of the dartboard. This is because the bullseye is the
smallest target. This same principle can also apply to touch targets
on mobile devices..."
http://uxmovement.com/buttons/finger-friendly-design-ideal-mobile-touch-target-sizes/

Audiences, Outcomes, and Determining User Needs
By Corey Vilhauer.
"Every website needs an audience. And every audience needs a goal.
Advocating for end-user needs is the very foundation of the user
experience disciplines. We make websites for real people. Those real
people are able to do real things. But how do we get to really know
our audience and find out what these mystery users really want from
our sites and applications? Learn to ensure that every piece of
content on your site relates back to a specific, desired outcome - one
that achieves business goals by serving the end user. Corey Vilhauer
explains the threads that bind UX research to content strategy and
project deliverables that deliver..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/audiences-outcomes-and-determining-user-needs/

Bylines for Web Articles?
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Should you say who wrote the content on your site? Sometimes yes (for
credibility), sometimes no (for brevity). And rarely in mobile."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/bylines.html

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.]