[webdev] Web Design Update: May 30, 2013

Thu May 30 07:02:08 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 49, May 30, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 49 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: DRUPAL.
05: EVENTS.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: TYPOGRAPHY.
09: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessibility and Code Development - 10 Thoughts from a MeetUp
By Greg Kraus.
"I recently attended a MeetUp of usability specialists involved in
agile development who discussed how usability can be successfully
incorporated into the agile process. I don't pretend to be an expert
in either user experience testing or in agile development, but I think
many of the topics that were discussed can be translated into
accessibility and code development in general. I'm going to take some
of the salient points from the discussion and present them as some
accessibility and development tips. I present these more as thoughts
than definitive how-to guides..."
http://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/blog/2013/05/22/accessibility-and-code-development-10-thoughts-from-a-meetup/

3 Steps to Avoid Negative Social Media and Lawsuits Over Website Accessibility
By Zach Thompson.
"Simply put, web accessibility amounts to how universally available
your website is. Consider those with disabilities. For someone who is
legally blind yet can still see a monitor, miniscule fonts will in
effect lock him out of your site. If an individual is deaf, and you
have non-signified audio messages on your site, the important
information in that audio becomes in effect withheld from that
individual. Web accessibility is the concept of overcoming these
barriers through the appropriate programming and design techniques."
http://www.corephp.com/blog/3-steps-to-avoid-negative-social-media-and-lawsuits-over-website-accessibility/

Ten Blunt Things I Wish I Could Tell Clients
By Karl Groves.
"Talking with clients & potential clients is always tricky. The last
thing I want to do is offend someone, but there are some things I wish
I could say up front and with frankness. As the saying goes, sometimes
the truth hurts, so in the interest of politeness these messages are
often skipped or glossed..."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/05/27/ten-blunt-things-i-wish-i-could-tell-clients/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

IE10, Metro, and Media Queries
By Adrian Roselli.
"...The lesson I learned here is that if I want to properly test
Internet Explorer 10, I can't rely on a desktop installation on
Windows 7 or Windows 8, I need to also test in the Metro interface
and, ideally, on the appropriate hardware as well..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2013/05/ie10-metro-and-media-queries.html

Just One of Those Weird Things About CSS - Background on body
By Chris Coyier.
"So you want to make the background of your website red eh? You'll
probably put this in your CSS..."
http://css-tricks.com/just-one-of-those-weird-things-about-css-background-on-body/

CSS Selector Length - Myth Busting
By Niels Matthijs.
"If I read one more misguided css post or article on css selector
length I think I'm going to explode. Somehow component-based css
ideologies managed to brainwash our community and launched a faux best
practice that the length of css selectors is something your average
csser should worry about. Well, it is not, nor should it ever be..."
http://www.onderhond.com/features/css-musings/css-selector-length

03: COLOR.

Web Industry Urged to Embrace Colour Accessibility
By Craig Grannell.
"Websites too often exclude people who cannot see a full colour range..."
http://www.netmagazine.com/news/web-industry-urged-embrace-colour-accessibility-132779

+04: DRUPAL.

Drupal Speak
By Frank Stepanski.
"One of the criticisms of Drupal is that it has a steep learning
curve. Some of the terminology used to describe elements of Drupal can
be a bit off putting and confusing to newcomers, so lets look at some
of the Drupal 'language'..."
http://www.javascriptworkshop.com/2011/05/01/drupal-speak/

+05: EVENTS.

Drupalcamp Colorado
June 29-20, 2013.
Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A.
http://2013.drupalcampcolorado.org/

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

JavaScript Quirk 7 - Inadvertent Sharing of Variables Via Closures
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Closures are a powerful JavaScript feature: If a function leaves the
place where it was created, it still has access to all variables that
existed at that place. This blog post explains how closures work and
why one has to be careful w.r.t. inadvertent sharing of variables..."
http://www.2ality.com/2013/05/quirk-closures.html

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

The State Of Responsive Web Design
By Stephanie Walter.
"Responsive Web design has been around for some years now, and it was
a hot topic in 2012. Many well-known people such as Brad Frost and
Luke Wroblewski have a lot of experience with it and have helped us
make huge improvements in the field. But there's still a whole lot to
do..."
http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2013/05/29/the-state-of-responsive-web-design/

+08: PHP.

Validating User Input
By Kevin Waterson.
"This article is an attempt to show how input from web based forms can
be dealt with safely..."
http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/Validating-User-Input.html

Regular Expression Tester
By Ruud Jansen.
"Information about regular expressions, including a regexp tester, a
regex reference and interactive tutorials."
http://www.reg-exp.com/

+09: USABILITY.

Ideal Line Length in Ems
By Russ Weakley.
"Let's assume that you have a chunk of body copy and you place it
inside a container..."
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2013/05/25/ideal-line-length-in-ems/

Seniors as Web Users
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Users aged 65 and older are 43% slower at using websites than users
aged 21-55. This is an improvement over previous studies, but designs
must change to better accommodate aging users."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-for-senior-citizens/

Do Users Care About Your Latest News?
By Paul Boag.
Many website owners seem fixated on including latest news on their
homepage. However, is that really the right decision? Does anybody
actually care about news?
http://boagworld.com/content-strategy/website-news/

The Complete Beginner's Guide to Universal Design
By Andrew Maier.
"...Like countless others, I initially perceived user experience
design through the lens of usability: as a 'science,' devoid of the
subjectivity of 'users.' If a door equipped with a push bar actually
required me to pull on it in order to open it, I became upset. I
considered it a bad experience. And while this does describe a bad
experience due to poor usability, my viewpoint was also incredibly
myopic."
http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/the-complete-beginners-guide-to-universal-design/

What Does It Mean to Be Simple?
By Daniel Ritzenthaler.
"All designers say simplicity is important, but what does it really
mean to make something simple? Most of the time we think it means
less, that by removing stuff we achieve simplicity. We think by
keeping content above the fold we're helping people focus, or by using
bullets instead of paragraphs more people will read it, or by cutting
text in half it becomes more clear. But simple doesn't mean 'less'. A
better definition would be 'just enough'."
http://52weeksofux.com/post/21026021557/what-does-it-mean-to-be-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

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.]