[webdev] Web Design Update: October 11, 2012

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Oct 11 06:28:54 CDT 2012 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 16, October 11, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 16 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
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.

Models of Disability and their Relation to Accessibility
By Martyn Cooper.
"Our models of disability are important, they shape our attitudes and
impact on how effectively the needs and preferences  of disabled
people are met in design. The medical model is now widely seen as
outmoded and a perpetuator of  discriminatory attitudes. The social
model has had widespread influence. It is important in accessibility
considerations because it recognises the importance of the context of
the users and supports the view of accessibility as a relationship
property; in the case of web accessibility the relationship being
between the diversity of users and the web resource or application.
Functional models have been asserted as the most useful in design and
development and the potential of these for personalisation and
analytics highlighted."
http://martyncooper.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/models-of-disability-and-accessibility/

Notes on Accessibility of Microsoft.coms New Home Page
By Steve Faulkner.
"Microsoft.com has a new home page. It uses HTML5 and ARIA. I have
done a quick review of their usage. There are a few issues..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2012/10/notes-on-accessibility-of-microsoft-coms-new-home-page/

Mobile Accessibility (podcast)
By Tim Kadlec.
"This week, Henny Swan joins us to talk about mobile accessibility. We
talk about why accessibility matters, the current state of
accessibility on mobile devices and what steps to take to ensure
you're site or application is accessible by as many people as
possible..."
http://fsm.bdconf.com/podcast/mobile-accessibility

Mobile Accessibilty
By Ted Drake.
"I gave this presentation at the Silicon Valley Code Camp about mobile
accessibility. I tried to reach all audiences by showing what can be
done with mobile technology for accessibility, how the operating
systems stack up, and the common problems with solutions. I also
included instructions on enabling the screen reader for iOS and
Android..."
http://www.last-child.com/mobile-accessibilty/

HTML5 Image Description Extension
Charles McCathie Nevile, Editor.
"This specification defines a longdesc attribute to extended
descriptions to images in HTML5-based content."
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-proposals/raw-file/b63325998cc1/longdesc1/longdesc.html

Netflix and the National Association of the Deaf Reach Historic
Agreement to Provide 100% Closed Captions in On-Demand Streaming
Content Within Two Years
By National Association of the Deaf.
Netflix Inc. and the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), a
non-profit organization, have submitted a joint Consent Decree to a
federal court in Springfield, Mass., ensuring closed captions in 100%
of Netflix streaming content within two years."
http://www.nad.org/news/2012/10/netflix-and-national-association-deaf-reach-historic-agreement-provide-100-closed-capti


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

What the Heck Is CSS Specificity?
By Joshua Johnson.
"...Specificity is an essential concept that you need to grasp to be
an effective developer. Today I'll walk you through the concepts of
specificity in a simple and easy to understand manner. It's easier
than you think..."
http://designshack.net/articles/css/what-the-heck-is-css-specificity/

How To Vertically Center Unknown Rows Of Content Inside A Fixed Container
By Steven Bradley.
"One task css doesn't make easy is centering objects vertically within
their containers. Last summer I offered 6 methods for vertical
centering to address that difficulty. The methods generally require
knowing in advance the heights of the parent and child elements. What
do you do when the child element's height isn't known?..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/dynamic-vertical-centering/

Flexbox - Fast Track to Layout Nirvana?
By Chris Mills.
"Flexbox, as it's commonly called, is designed to allow us to easily
manipulate the layout of a series of child elements in ways that were
previously difficult..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/flexbox-basics/

Blame the Implementation, Not the Technique
By Tim Kadlec.
"...Building great experiences on the web isnt getting any easier. We
need all the tools we can get. Dont discredit them simply because
someone uses them poorly."
http://timkadlec.com/2012/10/blame-the-implementation-not-the-technique/

Stop Using the Viewport Meta Tag (Until You Know How to Use It)
By Javier Usobiaga.
"In the early years, when the smartphones came to Earth, they knew the
Internet wasn't prepared for them… so they expected every website to
be around 1000px width (980px on the iPhone) and zoom out the website
to fit into the screen. And so the <meta name="viewport"> was created,
basically to tell those smart dudes that your website was prepared for
them..."
http://blog.javierusobiaga.com/stop-using-the-viewport-tag-until-you-know-ho

box-shadow vs filter: drop-shadow
By Lennart Schoors.
"This post is the first topic I discussed in my jam session
presentation at Fronteers 2012. It's about the drop-shadow filter. You
may have looked at it and thought 'this is pretty much the same thing
as a box-shadow' right? Well, not exactly. The big advantage of the
drop-shadow filter is that it acknowledges the outline and
transparency of an element..."
http://bricss.net/post/33158273857/box-shadow-vs-filter-drop-shadow


+03: COLOR.

The Code Side Of Color // Hex Colors
By Ben Gremillion.
"The trouble with a colors name is that it never really is perceived
as the exact same color to two different individuals - especially if
they have a stake in a websites emotional impact. Name a color, and
youre most likely to give a misleading impression. Even something like
blue is uncertain. To be more precise, it could be sky blue, ocean
blue, jeans blue or even arc welder blue..."
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/10/04/the-code-side-of-color/


+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Working with Smart Objects in Dreamweaver and Photoshop
By Tom Negrino.
"If your websites use a lot of images, you've probably spent plenty of
time jumping between Dreamweaver and Photoshop to make changes, and
then trying to keep track of which files are current and which need to
be synched. Now you can cross that nightmare off your task list. Tom
Negrino, coauthor of Dreamweaver CS6: Visual QuickStart Guide, shows
how using Smart Objects in Dreamweaver CS6 can keep your images in
sync automatically."
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1930035


+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Tips on Prototyping for Usability Testing
By Jim Ross.
"...there are some differences between testing a prototype and testing
a fully functional Web site or application. In this column, I'll
provide some tips that can make your usability studies more successful
and help you to avoid problems when testing prototypes..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/10/tips-on-prototyping-for-usability-testing.php

User Satisfaction vs. Performance Metrics
By Jakob Nielsen.
Users generally prefer designs that are fast and easy to use, but
satisfaction isn't 100% correlated with objective usability metrics."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/satisfaction-vs-performance.html


+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Information Architecture in the Age of Complexity
By Andrea Resmini.
"If modeling is the act of establishing congruence between the
elements and entailment structures of two systems, the object and its
model, complexity is simply what belies modeling. Behavior in a simple
model (and hence in a simple system) can always be correctly
predicted: not so in complex systems."
http://asist.org/Bulletin/Oct-12/OctNov12_Resmini.html


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Giving Our Clients The Best Deal In Mobile
By Paul Boag.
"Are we cheating our clients when it comes to mobile? More precisely,
are we allowing our desire for mobile work to get in the way of
providing our clients with the best solution for their business
needs?..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/10/05/give-clients-best-deal-mobile/

Design is the Big Opportunity For Enterprise Mobility
By James Robertson.
"Enterprise software applications aren't 'designed'. At best, they're
'developed', but often they're just 'built'..."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/design-is-the-big-opportunity-for-enterprise-mobility/

Responsive Enhancement (Video)
Jeremy Keith's Webdagene 2012 presentation.
http://vimeo.com/50745034

Responsive Web Design is bad for performance. There, I said it.
By Guy Podjarny.
"I'm not saying you can't write a high performance responsive website.
I'm not saying you shouldn't use RWD (Responsive Web Design) - I would
actually recommend it to most organizations. However, RWD makes pages
inherently more complicated, and all in all would make the mobile web
slower."
http://www.guypo.com/technical/responsive-web-design-is-bad-for-performance-there-i-said-it/

Webplatform
"We are an open community of developers building resources for a
better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform. Anyone can
contribute and each person who does makes us stronger. Together we can
continue to drive innovation on the Web to serve the greater good. It
starts here, with you..."
http://www.webplatform.org/


+08: TOOLS.

Specificity Calculator
By Keegan Street.
"A visual way to understand CSS specificity."
http://specificity.keegan.st/


+09: USABILITY.

Writing for Cognitive Ease
By Tim Minor.
"...By keeping abreast of the latest research in psychology and brain
systems, we can effectively increase the feeling of ease in our
products and thereby reduce cognitive strain. Some simple suggestions
to implement today include..."
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/writing-for-cognitive-ease/

Remembering Home Page Buttons
By Gary Barber.
"The home button is very important for the navigation of any large
website (discounting blogs here)..."
http://manwithnoblog.com/2012/10/08/remembering-home-page-buttons/


[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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