[webdev] Web Design Update: May 23, 2013

Thu May 23 06:04:51 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 48, May 23, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 48 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.
03: JAVASCRIPT.
04: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: PHP.
07: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Locked Out (Video)
By Jonathan Lazar.
"In 'Locked Out: Investigating Societal Discrimination against People
with Disabilities Due to Inaccessible Websites,' Jonathan Lazar
discusses equal access to web-based information..."
https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/video/jonathan-lazar-locked-out

How is Accessibility Made?
By Vlad Alexander.
"Behind every accessibility achievement, there is usually a story of
perseverance, patience and tolerance. Rarely do we get to hear about
the people behind these achievements and rarer still do we hear why
perseverance, patience and tolerance were required. This is an update
on an ongoing advocacy effort to make images on the web more
accessible..."
http://rebuildingtheweb.com/en/how-is-accessibility-made/

The Gamification of Accessibility, Round 1 - Lessons Learned
By Greg Kraus.
"NC State held it's first ever Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Challenge to see which campus Web sites could correct the largest
number of accessibility errors. The challenge was based upon automated
scans of Web sites which evaluated for both Section 508 and WCAG 2
conformance. The winners were the sites which corrected the highest
percentage of errors. The challenge was just one part of the larger
accessibility scanning system we have set up..."
http://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/blog/2013/05/17/the-gamification-of-accessibility-round-1-lessons-learned/

Tutorial - Replacing Cynthia Says in the Web Developer Toolbar
By Karl Groves.
"HiSoftware issued a press release: "HiSoftware Gives the Cynthia Says
Web Accessibility Testing Tool a Makeover ". Eager to find out more
about this new version, I eagerly went to the site to check it out.
This is what I saw..."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/05/16/tutorial-replacing-cynthia-says-in-the-web-developer-toolbar/

Understanding WCAG Level
By Karl Groves.
"With the upcoming eventual issuance of a Final Rule for Section 508
Refresh and deadlines for compliance with the Accessibility for
Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), as well as increasing rate of
Web Accessibility-related lawsuits, I've become increasingly aware of
people's frequent misunderstanding of the purpose of what the term
'Level' represents in the… Continue Reading Understanding WCAG Level…"
http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/05/20/understanding-wcag-level/

A Comparison of Learning Management System Accessibility
By Hadi Rangin.
"Learning management systems have become the primary delivery platform
in most higher education systems for course-related activities such as
lecture presentations, readings and assignments, discussions, and
quizzes. Until a few years ago, access for learners and instructors
with disabilities was either poorly supported or not considered at all
in many popular tools. Due to lack of, or limited, accessibility in
learning management systems, students were not able to fully or
independently participate in key course activities..."
http://blog.bargirangin.com/2013/03/a-comparison-of-learning-management.html

AccessU - Mobile Accessibility Workshop
By Henny Swan.
Henny provides her "Mobile Accessibility Workshop" presentation slides.
http://www.iheni.com/accessu-mobile-accessibility-workshop/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Layout Optimization: Centering Elements With Flexbox Is As Easy As Pie
By David Storey.
"Flexible box layout (or flexbox) is a new box model optimized for UI
layout. As one of the first CSS modules designed for actual layout
(floats were really meant mostly for things such as wrapping text
around images), it makes a lot of tasks much easier, or even possible
at all..."
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/05/22/centering-elements-with-flexbox/

Flexbox Tutorials from Web Designer Depot (Video)
By Virginia DeBolt.
"I mentioned the first of these videos when it was first published at
Web Designer Depot. The second one has come out now and I wanted share
them both here, rather than just adding them as useful links. They are
good tutorials and I think the two of them together would make a nice
classroom experience and introduction to flexbox..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2013/05/20/flexbox-tutorials-from-web-designer-depot-video/

My Presentation Slides - Making Your Site Printable
By Adrian A. Roselli.
"As promised in the session, I have made my slides available online
via SlideShare and embedded them here"
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2013/05/my-presentation-slides-making-your-site.html

+03: COLOR.

The Fundamentals of Color: Hue, Saturation, And Lightness
By Steven Bradley.
"If you can remember as far back as January, one of my goals for 2013
was to learn more about color and share some of what I learn with you.
I've talked before about how I feel my skills working with color are
lacking and I said at some point this year I would grab a few books
about color with the hopes of changing that..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/hue-saturation-and-lightness/

+04: JAVASCRIPT.

The Design of Code - Organizing JavaScript
By Anthony Colangelo.
"Well-designed code is much easier to maintain, optimize, and extend,
making for more efficient developers. Three high-level,
language-agnostic aspects of code design are key to achieving this
nirvana: system architecture, maintainability, and reusability. All
three may be attained via the module pattern, whose extensible
structure lends itself to a solid system architecture and a
maintainable codebase. Anthony Colangelo shows how to craft our code
into well-organized components that can be reused in projects to
come."
http://alistapart.com/article/the-design-of-code-organizing-javascript

Writing Testable JavaScript
By Rebecca Murphey.
"As our JavaScript takes on more and more responsibilities, we need a
reliable codebase-one that is thoroughly tested. Integration tests
focus on how the pieces of an application work together, but don't
tell us whether individual units of functionality are behaving as
expected. That's where unit testing comes in. And we'll have a hard
time writing unit tests until we start writing testable JavaScript.
Rebecca Murphey explains how to save time in the long run by writing
cleaner application code and testing, testing, testing..."
http://alistapart.com/article/writing-testable-javascript

JavaScript Regular Expression Enlightenment
By Cody Lindley.
"... I hope to push you past the insurmountable learning curve that
stops most developers from knowing regular expression basics..."
http://tech.pro/tutorial/1214/javascript-regular-expression-enlightenment

JavaScript Quirk 6: The Scope of Variables
By Axel Rauschmaye.
"In most programming languages, variables only exist within the block
in which they have been declared. In JavaScript, they exist in the
complete (innermost) surrounding function..."
http://www.2ality.com/2013/05/quirk-variable-scope.html

+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

Responsive Images - Interim Report
By Bruce Lawson.
"At Google I/O last week, I was hoping to hear Google's thoughts on
responsive images. Every developer I speak to wonders how to send the
right image size to browsers, Google is obsessed with performance,
Peter Beverloo and Paul Kinlan were explicit in their talk Mobile
HTML: The Future of Your Sites that web sites should request the
correctly-sized images. But how?..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2013/responsive-images-intrerim-report/

Responsive/Adaptive Design - Do I Need It?
By John Eric Brandt.
"There has been a lot of chatter in the web design world recently
about something called Responsive/adaptive web design. I have merged
these two somewhat distinct methods into one just briefly to answer
the question as to whether you 'need this' or not. I'll get to the
differences in a little bit..."
http://jebswebs.net/blog/2013/05/responsiveadaptive-design-do-i-need-it/

Stop Building Websites and Start Building Smart Sites
By Chuck Longanecker.
"...As designers of the Web, we need to rally around a common cause of
democratizing web-based experiences as seamless, story-driven,
goal-based, intuitive and viscerally satisfying as their mobile
brethren..."
http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/news-events/impress-smart-site

+06: PHP.

How to Write Testable and Maintainable Code in PHP
By Chris Fidao.
"Here's how to begin structuring your code to achieve testability and
maintainability - and save you time..."
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/how-to-write-testable-and-maintainable-code-in-php/

5 Reasons Why the Web Platform War is Over: PHP Won with 75% says Google
By Manuel Lemos
"During Google I/O 2013 event a Google manager said PHP runs on 75% of
the Web sites. So they decided to finally support PHP as in their
AppEngine hosting service…
http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/208-5-Reasons-Why-the-Web-Platform-War-is-Over-PHP-Won-with-75-says-Google.html

5 Reasons Why the Web Platform War is Over: PHP Won with 75% says Google
By Manuel Lemos.
"During Google I/O 2013 event a Google manager said PHP runs on 75% of
the Web sites. So they decided to finally support PHP as in their
AppEngine hosting service...
http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/208-5-Reasons-Why-the-Web-Platform-War-is-Over-PHP-Won-with-75-says-Google.html

+07: USABILITY.

5 Tips for Writing Better Microcontent
By Dey Alexander.
"Most web writers produce the following kinds of microcontent..."
http://www.4syllables.com.au/2013/05/5-tips-microcontent/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+08: 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.

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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.]