[webdev] Web Design Update: March 8, 2012

Thu Mar 8 06:20:35 CST 2012

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 37, March 8, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 37 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TOOLS.
11: TYPOGRAPHY.
12: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Google and Accessibility. What's the Plan?
By Joseph Dolson.
"At CSUN 12, I attended an interesting but somewhat disconcerting
demonstration of Google's progress on making their Google Docs suite
accessible. The presentation was by Anne Taylor from the National
Foundation for the Blind and Jeff Harris, the product manager for
Google Docs..."
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2012/03/google-and-accessibility-whats-the-plan/

5 Simple Guidelines To Improve Your Website's Accessibility
By Alexsey Donets.
"...When discussing accessibility, it is always worth remembering the
difference and
relationship between usability and accessibility. For a website to be
usable, it needs to be accessible. This is why, implementing
accessibility measures in your website such as the ones recommended in
this article will be beneficial to all your users, irrespective or not
they have special needs."
http://usabilitygeek.com/5-simple-guidelines-to-improve-your-websites-accessibility/

Mobile Accessibility Presentation at CSUN 2012
By Henny Swan.
"Last week I presented at CSUN 12 on Mobile Accessibility and Does
Accessibility have to be perfect. The wonderful Joe Dolson did an
amazing job capturing the panel discussion from Does Accessibility
Have to be perfect and below is my mobile presentation..."
http://www.iheni.com/mobile-accessibility-presentation-at-csun-2012/

Hot New iPhone Apps by Irresponsible Developers
By Joe Clark.
"How many hot-hot-hot! new iOS apps have impressed legions of fans
while demonstrating their developers are too irresponsible or
incompetent to make them accessible under VoiceOver? Shall we start a
list?..."
http://blog.fawny.org/2012/03/01/voiceoverless/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS Specificity Should Be Irrelevant
By Louis Lazaris.
"...I'm going to put forth an argument here that CSS specificity is
quite overrated and, in fact, learning about CSS specificity has the
potential to degrade the quality of your code..."
http://www.impressivewebs.com/css-specificity-irrelevant/

CSS3 Pseudo-Classes and HTML5 Forms
By Peter Gasston.
"Hello! I'm Doctor Peter and I'm here to treat you with a dose of
complementary CSS3. Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit."
http://html5doctor.com/css3-pseudo-classes-and-html5-forms/

Using CSS Background-Size Responsively
By Kean Richmond.
"...With responsive design the tried and tested processes we have
employed over the years are being rewritten to suit a new and
unfamiliar way of building websites. One such process that is being
put to the test is our implementation of imagery..."
http://www.onextrapixel.com/2012/03/02/using-css-background-size-responsively/

Vendor Prefixes are Not Developer-Friendly
By Paul Irish.
"In this proposal I hope to show that: 1. prefixes are not
developer-friendly; 2. recent features would have been in a much
better state without prefixes. 3. implementor maneuverability is not
hampered without prefixes."
http://paulirish.com/2012/vendor-prefixes-are-not-developer-friendly/

Is There Ever A Justification For Responsive Text?
By James Young.
"Depending on who you follow and what you read, you may have noticed
the concept of 'responsive text' being discussed in design circles
recently. It's not what you might imagine - resizing and altering the
typography to make it easier to read on a range of devices - but
rather delivering varying amounts of content to devices based on
screen size..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/02/27/ever-justification-for-responsive-text/

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

20 Questions Answered about Unmoderated Usability Testing
By Jeff Sauro.
"If you've considered using unmoderated remote usability testing with
video here are answers to several questions you might have..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/qa-urut.php

+04: EVENTS.

MinneWebCon
April 16-17, 2012.
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A.
http://minnewebcon.umn.edu/

+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

How to Assess the Maturity of Your Information Architecture
By Nathaniel Davis.
"These UX design practice verticals were the product of an IA exercise
that charted the primary activities of eight unique forms of practice
that play out in any comprehensive UX design project-large or small.
Information architecture is one of those practices. It's possible to
arrange the following six tiers of the IA practice vertical-which
together make up the primary areas of interest of information
architecture-in a way that permits the quick evaluation of a site's IA
maturity."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/03/how-to-assess-the-maturity-of-your-information-architecture.php

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

JavaScript Object Creation - Learning to Live Without "new"
By Keith Peters.
"In this article, I'm going to discuss object creation in JavaScript
using prototypal inheritance as an alternative to the new operator..."
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/html5/articles/javascript-object-creation.html

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Mobile First: What Does It Mean?
By Riley Graham.
"Many companies caught on to the mobile-first trend awhile back.
Google surfaced their mobile-first strategy in 2010. As you've
probably guessed from the name of this approach to site design, mobile
first means designing an online experience for mobile before designing
it for the desktop Web-or any other device. In the past, when users'
focus was on the desktop Web, mobile design was an afterthought. But
today, more people are using their mobile devices for online shopping
and social networking than ever before, and most companies are
designing for mobile. Mobile first requires a new approach to
planning, UX design, and development that puts handheld devices at the
forefront of both strategy and implementation. The digital landscape
has changed, and companies have realized that consumers are now
accessing more content on their mobile devices than anywhere else."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/03/mobile-first-what-does-it-mean.php

On Strategy
By Brad Frost.
"...I'm not saying you can't gain anything from exploring all this new
stuff. But if you're distracting yourself from what really matters
then you should reconsider your strategy. There's lots more stuff out
there, but the amount of time to address it all doesn't change. So
take a step back and focus on what really matters."
http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/web/on-strategy/

Apps vs The Web
By Benjamin Sandofsky.
"...Apps and the web are complimentary mediums, and neither are going
away. As a company, rather than 'betting' on a particular platform,
start from the product and work backwards. As an engineer, rather than
define your career with a laundry list of technology, pursue the type
of product you're happiest creating."
http://sandofsky.com/blog/apps-vs-the-web.html

How Responsive Design is Like Water
By Jamal Jackson.
"...The responsive state of water is a very beautiful in form,
process, and identity. By taking a closer look at how it acts and
responds to different situations, can give quite the amount of good
insight into how to better a responsive website. The main thing to
take away from this article is that responsiveness is not the same as
being adaptable to certain screen resolutions. Being truly responsive
is about growing, shrinking, or whatever else to adjust to the screen
dimensions of the device that is doing the viewing."
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/responsive-design-like-water/

Responsive-Ready Content
By Sara Wachter-Boettcher.
Getting more and more towards the direction of virtual, computational
documents a.k.a. content.
"...to expand on the discussion around responsive design specifically,
demonstrating why we need a foundation of content types,
micro-structures, and business rules if we want to keep priority,
relationships, and meaning intact..."
http://sarawb.com/2012/03/07/content-strategy-responsive-design/

+08: NAVIGATION.

Writing Better Link Text
By Mich Walken.
"...link text serves two very important functions..."
http://michcommunication.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/writing-better-link-text/

+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 and Friends
By Mozilla.
"HTML5 is the set of technology standards that support the next phase
in the development of the Web..."
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/learn/html5

+10: TOOLS.

Adobe Shadow
By Adobe.
"Adobe Shadow is a new inspection and preview tool that allows
front-end web developers and designers to work faster and more
efficiently by streamlining the preview process, making it easier to
customize websites for mobile devices..."
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/shadow/

+11: TYPOGRAPHY.

Pragmatic, Practical Font Sizing in CSS
By Harry Roberts.
"...Nicole Sullivan-who totally rocks-has laid a lot of new
foundations for us in her work on OOCSS and her 'unconventional' but
absolutely spot-on approach to building websites. Gems like the media
object have seriously changed how I build websites and, if you take
the time to study it for yourself, I think it might just do the same
for you as well."
http://csswizardry.com/2012/02/pragmatic-practical-font-sizing-in-css/

+12: USABILITY.

Are You Saying 'No' When You Could Be Saying 'Yes' in Your Web Forms?
By John Ekman.
"Error messages seem like an unimportant and incredibly boring part of
crafting a user experience. But the tonality of error messages can
swing the experience around from an almost certain abandonment to a
conversion..."
http://uxmag.com/articles/are-you-saying-no-when-you-could-be-saying-yes-in-your-web-forms

Must read? Must go in Question!
By Jessica Enders.
"...To solve this problem - by drawing out the cost component - we
moved the cost information to the question itself..."
http://formulate.com.au/research/must-read-must-go-question/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+13: 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.]