[webdev] Web Design Update: December 13, 2012

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 25, December 13, 2012.

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

++ISSUE 25 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: EVENTS.
04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Access Denied
By David Raths.
"Making university websites and course content accessible may be the
law, but many institutions have a long way to go toward compliance.
(Campus Technology) CT looks at three key elements of a more proactive
approach to accessibility on campus..."
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2012/12/04/access-denied.aspx

How Blind People Use The iPhone 4S - Accessibility, Twitter, You Tube, Siri
By Tommy Edison.
YouTube Video: "Today I want to show you how an iphone works..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0nvdiRdehw

Crossing Over - Bringing Mobile Innovations to Accessibility
By Derek Featherstone.
Derek Featherstone's a11yMTL presentation. "In this talk, Derek
Featherstone looks at what drives innovation in mobile, and how we can
take these ideas and bring them the other way - let mobile innovations
influence the solutions that we employ in the name of accessibility."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW0j7ehtw2Q

Why Do Native Mobile Apps Seem to Win All the Time?
By Marco Zehe.
"...The theme of too much clutter impacts a big range of people, not
only visually impaired ones. People with cognitive disabilities, for
example, are also often frustrated and confused by too much navigation
or other 'webby' stuff on small mobile screens. 'Regular' sighted
people I talked to prefer native apps for the same reason..."
http://www.marcozehe.de/2012/12/10/why-do-native-mobile-apps-seem-to-win-all-the-time/

Facebook Mobile Site Using Metadata for Photo Alt Text
By Clint Andrew Hall.
"This change collects the metadata already published about a photo and
constructs an easily read sentence about it."
https://www.facebook.com/clint.hall/posts/101005573402988

Accessibility Responsibility Breakdown (WCAG 2.0)
By Canada.gc.ca.
"All of the WCAG 2.0 success criteria can be found under the twelve
(12) accessibility guidelines. They have been allocated to the nine
(9) generally accepted links in a Web page production chain. These
traditional links are:"
http://wet-boew.github.com/wet-boew/demos/arb-rra/arb-rra-eng.html

Web Accessibility - A Catalyst to Greatness
By Shawn Lawton Henry.
Shawn Lawton Henry's a11yMTL presentation. "In this session Shawn
Lawton Henry explains how accessibility overlaps with usability,
mobile web, and innovation. You'll get practical guidance on taking
your web design and development to the next level by including
accessibility. Bottom line: Improve everyone's user experience with
your website, and reap the benefits for your organization and for you
personally..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuzpB8BTsGA

Accessibility as Innovation
By Elle Waters.
Elle Waters' a11yMTL presentation. "Inclusive design and responsive
web design as complimentary concepts can inspire your UX team and
empower the end-user. Elle Waters discusses the paradigm shift from
compliance to cutting-edge in an large scale web project, and she
demonstrates these principles using three examples from
not-yet-published solutions for an upcoming enterprise redesign."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiM5T4BL2MM


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Media Queries - You're Doing It Wrong
By Niels Matthijs.
"...Stop worrying about the width of your device or browser and simply
base the behavior of a component on the available space its given.
After that you still need to combine your width-based setup with the
million other differentiators out there (of course)..."
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/media-queries-based-on-elements

Should You Hyphenate?
By Eric A. Meyer.
"...Thus my recommendation of the moment: if you're going to use CSS
hyphenation, turn it on for mobile contexts. For desktop-well, that's
a much murkier call. It may well depend on your font family, layout,
default language, and so on. If you do turn them on, just make sure
you have that lang attribute (I put mine on the html element) so your
hyphens will persist."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2012/12/10/should-you-hyphenate/

JSCamp: CSS Next
By Divya Manian.
"I talked at JSCamp on 28th November 2012, on some of the newer
features of CSS. I gave the talk without slides, so here is a
description of all that I covered..."
http://nimbupani.com/jscamp-css-next.html


+03: EVENTS.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day
May 9, 2013.
Online
http://www.mysqltalk.com/gaad.html

Mobilism
May 16-17, 2013.
The Netherlands
http://mobilism.nl/

An Event Apart San Diego
May 20-22, 2013.
San Diego, Califorina, U.S.A.
http://aneventapart.com/event/san-diego-2013?/2013/sandiego/


+04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Designing For the Right Amount of Information
By Gerry McGovern.
"There is a growing need for a much more professional and scientific
approach to the management of information..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/designing-right-amount-information


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Think First, Code Later
By Stephen Fulljames.
"Stephen Fulljames places the reindeers of thought before the sleigh
of action, encouraging coders everywhere to plan ahead when
implementing JavaScript libraries."
http://24ways.org/2012/think-first-code-later/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Are Walled Gardens Actually Helping Anyone?
By Virginia DeBolt.
"...Just when we think we've removed one set of barriers between
people and content, up pops another one..."
http://www.blogher.com/are-walled-gardens-actually-helping-anyone

Responsive Images -  What We Thought We Needed
By Paul Robert Lloyd.
"...So here is my proposal. Instead of spending the next year worrying
about responsive images, let's embrace the constraints of the medium,
and seek out new solutions that can work within them."
http://24ways.org/2012/responsive-images-what-we-thought-we-needed/


+07: PHP.

More Code, More Problems
By Ed Finkler.
"About a year ago, I wrote out some principles for web programming in
PHP. I called it the MicroPHP Manifesto. The thing is, what I talked
about wasn't really specific to PHP. So, I've decided to explore the
concepts again in the context of the other languages I work with. What
follows are some principles I try to keep in mind..."
http://webadvent.org/2012/more-code-more-problems-by-ed-finkler


+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Proposed 'Main' Element Would Help Your HTML Get to the Point
By Scott Gilbertson.
"The W3C's HTML Working Group, which is charged with creating HTML,
has accepted a proposal to add a draft specification for the <main>
tag to HTML..."
http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/12/proposed-main-element-would-help-html-get-to-the-point/

Designing Ebooks with Web Standards
By Kristofer Layon.
"Slides and notes from Kristofer's CSS Dev 2012 presentation about how
standards-based web designers can leverage their HTML, CSS, and
JavaScript skills to deliver content via channels in addition to web
browsers."
http://kristoferlayon.com/2012/12/05/designing-ebooks-with-web-standards/

HTML5 Spellcheck Attribute
By David Walsh.
"Many useful new attributes have been provided to web developers
recently:  download, placeholder, autofocus, and more.  Another
helpful new attribute is the spellcheck attribute which allows
developers to  control an elements ability to be spellchecked or
subject to grammar checks.  Simple enough, right?  Let's take a look
at how it's used..."
http://davidwalsh.name/spellcheck

HTML5 Video for Retina Displays
By Ian Devlin.
"Recently I came across a question on Stack Overflow where a user
wanted to serve a high resolution video to devices that supported
retina displays. I had half a solution."
http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2012/12/html5/html5-video-for-retina-displays


+09: USABILITY.

3 Idioms Reveal the Truth about University Websites
By Dey Alexander.
"I've worked on Australian university websites for the past 18 years,
in a range of internal technical, design and content-related roles,
and as an external consultant. I've met some great people and seen the
potential to do great work. But I've also seen some problems again and
again. They are aptly explained using three simple idioms..."
http://www.4syllables.com.au/2012/12/university-websites/

Redesign Trend in Tech News Sites - Big, Responsive and Content Heavy
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"There's a new trend in the redesign of technology news sites, which
has emerged with the move towards responsive designs. The new wave of
redesigns sees the old blog format being transformed into a
full-screen, app-like experience, with multiple columns, fixed
position elements and a global navigation bar at the top of the
page..."
http://www.usabilitypost.com/2012/12/05/news-sites-redesign-trend/

Watching Them Struggle
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"...Recognizing that we're probably grossly underestimating our
experience makes watching somebody struggle with a 'simple' interface
a lot less excruciating and a lot more sense."
http://www.usabilitypost.com/2012/12/06/watching-them-struggle/

5 Huge Misconceptions About Your Average User
By Kevin Purdy.
"Forget social media management apps. How many people know how to
search text on a web page? And how many people still need computers
with DVD drives?"
http://www.fastcompany.com/3003458/5-huge-misconceptions-about-your-average-user

Designing for Users and Their Devices
By Steven Hoober.
"People use smaller tablets and eReaders in somewhat different ways:
Their usage rates are different. Their use outside the home is more
prevalent. And their users hold them differently.
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/12/designing-for-users-and-their-devices.php

Nine Ways to Improve User Experience in Mobile Design
By Ben Terrill.
"The following is a guest post by Ben Terrill. Ben works for Mobify
and leads the team that helps their huge customers like Starbucks,
Bose and Threadless have excellent mobile and tablet experiences. Ben
is co-author of the e-book 50 Ways to Please Your Customers: A guide
to mobile web design best practices."
http://css-tricks.com/nine-ways-to-improve-user-experience-in-mobile-design/


[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.]