[webdev] Web Design Update: April 25, 2013

Thu Apr 25 06:49:28 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 44, April 25, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 44 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: HTML5.
04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Responsive Web Design and Accessibility
By Janet M. Six.
"In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss how responsive
Web design and accessibility fit together..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/04/responsive-web-design-and-accessibility.php

The Difficulty of Finding out How to use WAI-ARIA Correctly
By Detlev Fischer.
"Even with the best of intentions and diligent searching it is still
rather difficult to work out how to correctly use WAI-ARIA ' even for
rather simple use cases..."
http://www.bitvtest.eu/articles/article/lesen/aria-confusion.html

Screen Readers, ARIA and HTML5 (Too Much Information)
By Leonie Watson.
"Most current screen readers support ARIA to one extent or another,
and many now support some features of HTML5 as well. With ARIA and
HTML5 making increasing amounts of semantic data available to screen
reader users, it's really easy to inadvertently overload people with
too much information."
http://tink.co.uk/2013/04/screen-readers-aria-html5-too-much-information/

ARIA's Application Role
By Leonie Watson.
"Leonie Watson introduces ARIA's application role, and explains how it
works and under what circumstances it's appropriate to use it..."
http://www.netmagazine.com/features/aria-s-application-role

Easy ARIA Tip Number 6 - Making Clickables Accessible
By Marco Zehe.
"It often happens that designers and web developers agree on the fact
that they do not like the standard buttons or the styling capabilities
of buttons in browsers. To work around this, they then resort to
what's called clickable text. It is in many cases a simple span or div
element with some funky styling that makes it look like a button with
some fancy twists. A JavaScript click handler then does the magic
behind the scenes that happens if the user clicks on that particular
styled text with the mouse..."
http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/04/24/easy-aria-tip-6-making-clickables-accessible/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

How to Create a Responsive Centered Image in CSS3
By Craig Buckler.
"...Until recently, image lightboxes would need to implement several
equations to determine the viewport and image dimensions then size and
center accordingly. Fortunately, we can now rely on CSS3 media queries
and transforms to do the hard work for us...."
http://www.sitepoint.com/css3-responsive-centered-image/

+03: HTML5.

Showing Multimedia Fallback Content When no Supported Source is Found
By Christian Heilmann.
"There is nothing more frustrating than things going wrong without you
knowing what happened. Things breaking with a very obvious reason are
not as bad. Say you drop your phone and you see the display smashed '
there is no question why the touch interface doesn't work any more.
But when nothing happens and everything should be OK, we get very
cross very fast..."
http://christianheilmann.com/2013/04/21/showing-multimedia-fallback-content-when-no-supported-source-is-found/

Making Your HTML5 Efforts Worthwhile
By Chris Heilmann.
"Today I gave a talk at the State of the browser 3 event in London,
England. The Slides are here, a screencast (with bad audio) is on
YouTube and here are the notes."
http://christianheilmann.com/2013/04/20/making-your-html5-efforts-worthwhile-notes-of-the-sotb3-talk/

+04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Getting Your Web Site's Structure Right
By Nathaniel Davis.
"The majority of people still don't understand information
architecture and the value that it brings to Web sites and other
information-technology experiences."
http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/04/getting-your-web-sites-structure-right.php

The Benefits of a Train Wreck
By Louis Rosenfeld.
"Want to make an information architect squirm? Just ask this simple
question: 'Show me an example of good information architecture.'
Chances are we'll stammer, mumble something about good IA being
invisible IA, and slink away..."
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/2013/04/the_benefits_of_a_train_wreck.html

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

MYTH: Screen Readers Don't Use JavaScript
By a11yproject.
"A common misconception among web developers is that screen readers
only read the non-JavaScript page. Due to this misconception, we
sometimes assume it's unnecessary to make JavaScript apps and other
functionality accessible. This is categorically false..."
http://a11yproject.com/posts/myth-screen-readers-dont-use-javascript/

3 Neat Tricks with Regular Expressions
By James Edwards.
"I'd like to show you three cunning things you can do with regular
expressions, that provide neat solutions to some very sticky
problems..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/3-neat-tricks-with-regular-expressions/

Understanding JavaScript Inheritance
By Alex Sexton.
"So someone shoulder-taps you and asks you to explain the concepts
behind JavaScript Inheritance to them. In my eyes you've got a few
options."
http://alexsexton.com/blog/2013/04/understanding-javascript-inheritance/

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

An Interview with Lainey Feingold
By Elle Waters.
"As part of Knowbility's 2013 John Slatin AccessU, we are proud to
present our first speaker interview with Lainey Feingold, a lawyer
that focuses on accessibility. Our own Derek Featherstone speaks with
her about her session at the upcoming AccessU conference."
http://simplyaccessible.com/article/lainey/

The Five Most Dangerous Ideas
By Tim Murtaugh.
"In this 60-minute video from An Event Apart Boston, Scott Berkun
tackles designer disempowerment. He discusses how power actually works
and why developing salesmanship skills is a must, even if your job
isn't public-facing."
http://alistapart.com/blog/post/scott-berkun-speaking-at-aea-the-five-most-dangerous-ideas

+07: NAVIGATION.

To Underline or Not to Underline
By Virginia DeBolt.	
"...When you have links in the context of a paragraph, heading, list
or anywhere outside an obvious nav bar, use the underline. But don't
underline anything that is not a link."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2013/04/18/to-underline-or-not-to-underline/

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Getting Agreements is Hard (some thoughts on Matthew Butterick's 'The
Bomb in the Garden' talk at TYPO San Francisco)
By Michael[tm] Smith.
"These are some personal thoughts on Matthew Butterick's 'The BOMB in
the GARDEN' talk at TYPO San Francisco'. They do not represent an
official W3C position..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2013/04/getting_agreements_is_hard_som.html

+09: USABILITY.

Getting Creative with Usability
By Luke Clum.
"When it comes to designing a truly intuitive, responsive, and
coherent website that's also unique and interesting, it often feels
like it's difficult to reconcile the two sets of priorities. But in
fact, nothing is further from the truth: there are only a few
fundamental ideas that need to be employed in order to easily make the
best choices in your designs..."
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/04/getting-creative-with-usability/

[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

Drupal Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.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

HTML5 Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.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.

+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how
to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit:
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webdev_listserv.html
The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates.

+ TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN).

As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to
the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines.  Please let me
know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier.
For TEN guideline information please visit:
http://www.headstar.com/ten

+ 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.]