[webdev] Web Design Update: February 7, 2013

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Feb 7 06:15:12 CST 2013 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 33, February 7, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 33 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: FLASH.
05: EVENTS.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: NAVIGATION.
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.

What is the Current Recommendation for Providing Long Descriptions for
Complex Graphics?
By University of Washington.
"...Since longdesc is now supported by screen readers, it is the
recommended technique for providing long descriptions of images..."
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?1258

Communities of Practice in Penn State's Web Accessibility Initiative
By Christian Johansen.
"This article is a case study of Penn State's ongoing response to the
complaint filed against it regarding the accessibility of its
websites, applications and services. Our focus is: how communities of
practice change in response to institutional challenges, the
observation that the leadership to address challenges emerges from
within these communities, and that the social learning processes that
allow communities of practice to adapt to new challenges also support
the sustainability of new technology and practice..."
http://www.cjohansen.org/2012/11/communities-of-practice-in-penn-states.html

Mobile Accessibility - Indie UI, New Resources and Exciting Times Ahead
By Scott Hollier.
While individual operating systems will continue to deliver their own
take on accessibility features, some help is on the way when it comes
to how to make the web application elements work consistently across
different platforms..."
http://www.accessiq.org/news/w3c-column/2013/02/mobile-accessibility-indie-ui-new-resources-and-exciting-times-ahead

What Accessibility Standards Apply to Mobile Applications?
By Jonathan Avila.
"Mobile Apps (including mobile web apps) are generally covered by the
same standards for access by people with disabilities that apply to
non-mobile software and web applications..."
https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2013/01/11/what-accessibility-standards-apply-to-mobile-phone-applications/

Mobile Accessibility Survey
By The Paciello Group.
"Survey complete: Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the
mobile accessibility survey. Your responses will help mobile authors
and accessibility professionals better serve the mobile accessibility
community. A detailed analysis of the responses will be published
soon, but the following is a preliminary view of the responses to the
survey questions."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/mobile/

WCAG 2.0 AA: A More Practical Approach to Web Accessibility
By Ken Nakata.
"We all know that W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG
2.0) is a great accomplishment..."
http://blog.hisoftware.com/2013/accessibility/wcag-2-0-aa-a-more-practical-approach-to-web-accessibility

Still Guessing on Accessibility
By Adrian Roselli.
"I have no illusions that accessibility on the web can be tricky. It's
primarily tricky because of the way developers choose to implement it.
Web Axe nicely sums it up..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2013/01/still-guessing-on-accessibility.html

Leave Accessibility to the Experts Please
By Dennis E. Lembree.
"Web celebs have created confusion when the answer was already agreed
upon by most web accessibility professionals...."
http://www.webaxe.org/leave-accessibility-to-experts-please/

On Alt Text
By Jeffrey Zeldman.
"Any web designer or developer with her heart in the right place knows
that, to be accessible, every image requires an alt text..."
http://alistapart.com/blog/post/on-alt-text
Comments:
http://alistapart.com/comments/on-alt-text



+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Quick Tip - Never Remove CSS Outlines
By The Accessibility Project.
"Use of the rule :focus { outline: none; } to remove an outline
results in the link or control being focusable but with no visible
indication of focus for keyboard users. Even worse, methods to remove
it such as onfocus="blur()" result in keyboard users being unable to
interact with the link or control..."
http://a11yproject.com/posts/never-remove-css-outlines/

Flexbox - CSS Flexible Box Layout
By Christian Krammer.
"Do you remember when tables were the only layout method for a
website? At least until people realized that it's a semantic nightmare
to misuse something that's actually reserved to display tabular data
for the structure of an internet site. So a new 'tool' needed to be
found and soon floats and absolute positioning were discovered as a
'proper' replacement..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/flexbox-css-flexible-box-layout/

CSS Background-Position and Percent
By Roger Johansson.
"I was working on making an existing client site responsive recently
and encountered a CSS problem I am unable to find a good cross-browser
solution to. The problem involves CSS background images and seemed
simple at first, but it turned out otherwise..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201302/css_background-position_and_percent/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Responsive Web Design - Real User Testing
By Russ Weakley.
"Have you ever tried testing your Responsive Website with real users?
If not, it is definitely worth considering. You may be surprised by
the results..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/responsive-web-design-real-user-testing/

Search Engine Findability Studies
By Toby Biddle.
"One important aspect of user experience that traditional testing does
not address is assessing the path to a Web site."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/search-engine-findability-studies.php

Browser Testing Becomes Easier with modern.IE
By Craig Buckler.
"Internet Explorer development has always been tougher than it should be..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/modern-ie-browser-testing/


+04: EVENTS.

WebAIM Accessibility Training
May 21-22, 2013.
Logan, Utah, U.S.A.
http://webaim.org/services/training/

Breaking Development
July 22-24, 2013.
San Diego, California, U.S.A.
http://bdconf.com/2013/san-diego

OSCON 2013
July 22-26, 2013.
Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2013/

HighEdWeb Arkansas
July 25-26, 2013.
Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S.A.
http://ar.highedweb.org/

eduWeb 2013
July 29-31, 2013.
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
http://www.eduwebconference.com/


+05: FLASH.

 Flash is Not the Enemy - Our Lack of Focus on What is Important Is
By Christian Heilmann.
"...Without Flash, the web as a content distribution platform wouldn't
be where it is..."
http://christianheilmann.com/2013/01/31/flash-is-not-the-enemy-our-lack-of-focus-on-what-is-important-is/


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Custom-Built Dialogs
By Gez Lemon.
"... The WAI-ARIA specification defines roles and attributes that help
ensure dialogs are announced correctly to assistive technology users,
and provides guidance on ensuring they are keyboard accessible..."
http://juicystudio.com/article/custom-built_dialogs.php

Advanced ARIA Tip #1: Tabs in Web Apps
By Marco Zehe.
"The following article will describe how to properly create accessible
tabs in web apps. This is important for both mobile and desktop web
applications..."
http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/02/02/advanced-aria-tip-1-tabs-in-web-apps/

You Can't Create a Button
By Nicholas C. Zakas.
"One of the most important aspects of accessibility is managing focus
and user interaction..."
http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2013/01/29/you-cant-create-a-button/

My Notes on JavaScript
By Tom Johnson.
"The past few days I've been diligently watching JavaScript tutorials
on Lynda.com and taking notes. I decided to formalize my notes into a
series of pages on my site. You can view the JavaScript notes here..."
http://idratherbewriting.com/2013/02/05/my-notes-on-javascript/


+07: NAVIGATION.

Why Are Links Blue?
By Jeffrey Zeldman.
"Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, is credited with making
hyperlinks blue, a decision he appears to have reached at random. But
although accessibility may not have been on Sir Tim's mind at the
time, the color choice was a happy one, according to Joe Clark..."
http://alistapart.com/blog/post/why-are-links-blue

Wrapup of Navigation in Lists
By Chris Coyier.
"The recent post about marking up navigation in lists (or not)
generated nearly 200 comments of mostly-great discussion on this
topic. I thought it would be of benefit to wrap up up the important
points...I think marking up navigation as lists seems to be the best
choice. You can look at the facts and decide for yourself though...."
http://css-tricks.com/wrapup-of-navigation-in-lists/

Bypass Blocks
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 SC 2.4.1 says: 'A
mechanism is available to bypass blocks of content that are repeated
on multiple Web pages.'"
http://maxability.co.in/2013/02/04/bypass-blocks/	


+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

'Main' Element Lands a Starring Role in HTML
By Scott Gilbertson.
"HTML5 introduces several new tags that give HTML more semantic
meaning. There's <nav> for navigation elements, <header> for headers,
<footer> for footers and now a new element has been added to the HTML
draft spec - <main>, to wrap around, well, the main content on a
page..."
http://www.webmonkey.com/2013/02/main-element-lands-a-starring-role-in-html/

The Main Issue
By Jeremy Keith.
The inclusion of a main element in HTML has been the subject of debate
for quite a while now. After Steve outlined the use cases, the element
has now landed in the draft of the W3C spec. It isn't in the WHATWG
spec yet, but seeing as it is being shipped in browsers, it's only a
matter of time..."
http://adactio.com/journal/6014/

Using the Main Element
By Bruce Lawson.
"I've just changed my site to use the new <main> element. It took
about 1 minute to work out what was wrong with my CSS, until I
realised that I hadn't defined main {display:block;} (the CSS spec
says that all elements are inline by default, unless over-ridden). I
expect that the HTML5 shiv will add this in, but I don't use the shiv
(it was written after I converted the site)..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2013/the-main-element/

HTML5 App Manifests - Are We Emulating Failure?
By Bruce Lawson.
"There's a good article by groovecoder called Packaged HTML5 Apps: Are
we emulating failure? which argues that 'URLs delivered a better
experience than native desktop apps; they can do the same for mobile
apps'. groovecoder shows the shortcomings of app stores and
installation processes, and suggests that a manifest/ packaging format
for HTML apps would be a better experience..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2013/html5-app-manifests-are-we-emulating-failure/

Video Conferencing in HTML5 - WebRTC via Socket.io
By Silvia Pfeiffe.
"Six months ago I experimented with Web sockets for WebRTC and the
early implementations of PeerConnection in Chrome. Last week I gave a
presentation about WebRTC at Linux.conf.au, so it was time to update
that codebase..."
http://blog.gingertech.net/2013/02/06/video-conferencing-in-html5-webrtc-via-socket-io/


+09: USABILITY.

Teenage Usability - Designing Teen-Targeted Websites
By Jakob Nielsen.
Teens are confident in their web abilities, but perform worse than
adults. Lower reading levels, undeveloped research skills, and a lack
of patience reduce task success and require sites to be simple and
relatable.
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-of-websites-for-teenagers/

Don't Put Labels Inside Text Boxes (Unless You're Luke W)
By Caroline Jarrett.
"If you're designing for a cramped mobile screen, space is at a premium..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/dont-put-labels-inside-text-boxes-unless-youre-luke-w.php

Design Dissonance - When Form and Function Collide
By Eric Reiss.
"Design dissonance occurs when a product or service sends out
cognitive signals that run counter to the desired effect.'
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/design-dissonance-when-form-and-function-collide.php

5 Problems With Simple
By Luke Forsythe.
"Simple yes, but for whom? The novice, the expert or for both? "If a
designer or product owner wants their service to be beautifully
simple, they must defend that principle through each stage of the
design process, and beyond."
http://conversations.fjordnet.com/2013/01/30/5-problems-with-simple/


[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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