[webdev] Web Design Update: September 13, 2012

Thu Sep 13 06:53:39 CDT 2012

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 12, September 13, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 12 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: TYPOGRAPHY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Mobile Accessibility
By W3C WAI Education and Outreach Working Group.
"This page summarizes existing and developing resources related to
mobile accessibility..."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/Overview.html

HTML5 Accessibility - September 2012
By Steve Faulkner.
"HTML5Accessibility.com has been updated to reflect HTML5
accessibility support in the latest browser versions."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2012/09/html5-accessibility-september-2012/

Section 508 Report to the President and Congress:  Accessibility of
Federal Electronic and Information Technology
By The U.S. Department of Justice.
http://www.ada.gov/508/508_Report.htm

Captioning YouTube Video and Providing Accessible Controls
By Ohio State University.
"With a little bit of work, some free online tools, and code and
utilities available from this web page, you can provide your students,
staff, and other users within and outside the university access to web
video that is usable by everyone, including people with
disabilities..."
http://wac.osu.edu/examples/youtube-player-controls/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Five Steps to Gettin' Flexy in Responsive Web Design
By Dave Rupert.
"Dave Rupert, lead developer at Paravel, gives essential tips and
tricks on becoming flexible in responsive web design."
http://www.netmagazine.com/features/five-steps-gettin-flexy-responsive-web-design

Coming Soon: Native CSS Variables
By Craig Buckler.
"Name one feature you'd love to see in CSS. Hands up those who want
variables… (I'm sure some of you are desperate for parent selectors
but you're in the minority!)..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/native-css-variables/

Introducing: CSSValues.com
By Louis Lazaris.
"There are quite a few references online for finding detailed info on
CSS properties. I find, however, that most of them usually have more
than what I'm looking for - and don't even get me started on the
overly-convoluted CSS specs. Truth is, sometimes I just want to know
which values are valid for a particular property, and nothing more. So
I built a quick-reference site that does just that..."
http://www.impressivewebs.com/introducing-css-values/

+03: COLOR.

Accessible Use of Colour in Web Design
By Gosia Mlynarczyk.
"...remember that whenever you assign special meanings to colours, you
also need to provide other means of conveying the information. By
doing that you ensure that your pages comply with the WCAG success
criterion 1.4.1 - Use of colour."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2012/accessible-use-of-colour-in-web-design/

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

How Effective are Heuristic Evaluations?
By Jeff Sauro.
"...So how effective are heuristic evaluations? While the question
will and should continue to be debated and researched, I like to think
of heuristic evaluations like sugary cereal. They provide a quick jolt
of insight but should be part of a 'balanced' breakfast of usability
evaluation methods."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/effective-he.php

Testing Websites in Game Console Browsers
By Anna Debenham.
"Today's game consoles may offer subpar web experiences with little
browser choice, but that doesn't mean we can ignore them. More than
one in eight internet users in the UK, US, and France-and nearly one
in four American teens-uses a game console to get online. As more
console makers offer internet-capable devices-and as smart TVs
continue to enter the market-now is the time to plan how our sites
will adapt to these new contexts. Learn how to test your web content
on phone consoles; handheld consoles like Sony PSP and Nintendo DS;
and TV consoles like Nintendo Wii, Sony PS3, and Microsoft Xbox 360."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/testing-websites-in-game-console-browsers/

+05: EVENTS.

Accessibility Camp Toronto
November 17, 2012.
Toronto, Canada
http://www.accessibilitycampto.org/

Easy-to-Read on the Web, Online Symposium
December 3, 2012.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/easy-to-read/

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

ARIA Widgets and Focus/Forms Mode Support in JAWS and NVDA
By Jason Kiss.
"When using ARIA composite application widgets, e.g., combobox,
menubar, tree, authors are expected to implement appropriate keyboard
interaction and focus management. Where screen readers that use
virtual buffers are concerned, notably JAWS, NVDA, and Window-Eyes,
this means invoking their special passthrough mode referred to as
forms mode, focus mode, or sometimes application mode. VoiceOver on
the Mac doesn't use virtual buffers, and the current version of
Window-Eyes really doesn't support ARIA (although its anxiously
awaited next version will). As such, what follows deals exclusively
with JAWS and NVDA..."
http://www.accessibleculture.org/articles/2012/09/aria-widgets-and-focus-forms-mode-support/

OnChange Event on a Select Input/Jump Menu Accessibility Problems
Paul J. Adams.
"WCAG 2.0 On input Success Criterion statee '3.2.2 On Input: Changing
the setting of any user interface component does not automatically
cause a change of context unless the user has been advised of the
behavior before using the component. (Level A)'... "
http://pauljadam.com/blog/javascript/onchange-event-on-a-select-inputjump-menu-accessibility-problems/

JavaScript Tricks You May Not Know
By Michael Dorf.
Basic JavaScript tricks.
http://www.learncomputer.com/javascript-tricks-you-may-not-know/

JavaScript Basics
By Bocoup.
"jQuery is built on top of JavaScript, a rich and expressive language
in its own right. This section covers the basic concepts of
JavaScript, as well as some frequent pitfalls for people who have not
used JavaScript before. While it will be of particular value to people
with no programming experience, even people who have used other
programming languages may benefit from learning about some of the
peculiarities of JavaScript. "
http://jqfundamentals.com/chapter/javascript-basics

A Guide to the Basics of jQuery
By Bocoup.
"Query Fundamentals is designed to get you comfortable working through
common problems you'll be called upon to solve using jQuery. To get
the most out of this site, you'll want to read the content and try the
various interactive examples. Each chapter will cover a concept and
give you a chance to try example code related to the concept..."
http://jqfundamentals.com/

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

This Is Responsive
By Brad Frost.
Easily the most frequently asked question I get regarding responsive
web design is 'Where do I go to learn about this stuff?'. Of course I
ask if they've read the wonderful book on the subject and follow
Ethan's excellent @rwd Twitter account. The answer is usually, 'Yeah
yeah yeah, I got that. Where do I go next?' So I've been chipping away
at some stuff that can hopefully help answer these questions.
Introducing This Is Responsive, a collection of patterns, resources
and news related to responsive design."
http://bradfrost.github.com/this-is-responsive/index.html

2 More Reasons Why the Responsive Web Design Approach Makes Sense for
Higher Ed [STUDY]
By Karine Joly.
"...This 46-page report was designed like a collection of
infographics. And, I even found the single infographics above
highlighting some findings. There's been a series of posts presenting
the main findings of this report (on Google Mobile Ads blog,
TechCrunch, etc.), so I've chosen to focus on only the 2 points that
are relevant to responsive web design and higher education..."
http://collegewebeditor.com/blog/index.php/archives/2012/09/11/2-more-reasons-why-the-responsive-web-design-approach-makes-sense-for-highered/

Opt-Out Responsive Design?
By Chris Coyier.
"Reader Glynn writes in: 'I'm wondering if you'd ever seen a
responsive web design in which a 'see full site' link was included. I
know that when developing a responsive design we should stay away from
hiding content completely, however some users may actually prefer
pinching and zooming and using good old fashioned horizontal menus on
their devices. Have you seen an example of this and how do you think
it could be approached?' I think this is a pretty darn interesting
question."
http://css-tricks.com/user-opt-out-responsive-design/

Beyond Mobile: Making Sense of a Post-PC World
By Scott Jenson.
Audo from Scott Jenson's dConstuct presentartion: "Native applications
are a remnant of the Jurassic period of computer history. We will look
back on these past 10 years as the time we finally grew out of our
desktop mindset and started down the path of writing apps for an
infinite number of platforms. As the cost of computation and
connectivity plummets, manufacturers are going to put 'interactivity'
into every device. Some of this will be trivial: my power adaptor
knows it's charging history. Some of it will be control related: my
television will be grand central for my smart home. But at it's heart,
we'll be swimming in world where every device will have 'an app'. What
will it take for us to get here, what technologies will it take to
make this happen? This talk will discuss how the principles of the
open web must apply not only to prototocols but to hardware as well.
How can we build a 'DNS for hardware' so the menagerie of devices has
a chance for working together?"
http://archive.dconstruct.org/2012/beyondmobile

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Maincontent Element
Steve Faulkner, Editor.
"Unofficial Draft 9 September 2012"
http://www.html5accessibility.com/tests/maincontent.html

Scooby Doo and the Proposed HTML5 Element
By Bruce Lawson.
"Trigger warning: contains disagreement about accessibility. I've been
vacillating (ooh err, missus) for two weeks from one opinion to the
other regarding a proposed (and rejected) <content> element. This
weekend, The Mighty Steve Faulkner wrote an unofficial draft of a
<maincontent> element..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2012/scooby-doo-content-element/

The Business Case for HTML5
By Leonie Watson.
"HTML5 has been in development since 2004, but it was thrust into the
limelight when Steve Jobs aired his views on open standards in 2010.
HTML5 (and its associated technologies) has now reached a level of
maturity that has encouraged organisations to begin adopting it as the
basis for key development projects. There are several business
benefits of moving towards a web-platform solution. How much you
benefit will depend on the nature of your organisation, but there are
several different advantages that may apply..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2012/the-business-case-for-html5/

+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

Your Most Important Typographic Choices
By Steven Bradley.
"How do you choose a typeface and another to pair with it? What size
should your copy and headings be? How do you determine line-height and
line-length so text is both readable and legible? These were some of
the questions I set out to answer when making the typographic
decisions that became part of this design..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/typographic-choices/

[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.]