[webdev] Web Design Update: June 6, 2013

Thu Jun 6 06:07:30 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 50, June 6, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 50 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: DRUPAL.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML5.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
09: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: PHP.
11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
12: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Using alt, figcaption, and longdesc Together
By Shelley Powers.
"I was recently asked about alt, figcaption, and longdesc being used
together..."
https://plus.google.com/115416893708386851153/posts/3azVNqGmnYJ

Screen Readers at a Crossroads
By Greg Kraus.
"I believe screen reading software stands at a crossroads right now.
At Google I/O 2013, Google showed some of the possibilities of the
ChromeVox API. What they demonstrated showed some fundamental changes
in the ways screen reader software interacts with Web browsers. In
this post I will discuss how I see this as a fundamental shift. I'll
discuss both the risks and rewards that I see with this model..."
http://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/blog/2013/05/31/screen-readers-at-a-crossroads/

UC Seeks Comment on Proposed IT Accessibility Policy
By  University of California, Davis.
"As UC policies go, it is relatively short, only four pages. But, oh,
how important it is in the electronic information age at a public
university...."
http://dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.php?id=14498

Advancements in the Accessibility of Facebook
By Marco Zehe.
"In December 2011, I wrote this overview of the accessibility of
social network sites and apps, and I had to paint a rather sad picture
about most of the accessibility experiences. As time went by, some
things improved here and there, others stalled..."
http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/06/02/advancements-in-the-accessibility-of-facebook/

Blind Federation Criticises Captcha Security Test
By British Broadcasting Corporation.
"The National Federation for the Blind says its members are unable to
sign an e-petition calling for printed material to be more accessible
to the visually impaired because of "Captcha" security."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22754006

Rock Bottom for Captcha, White House
By Dennis E. Lembree.
"Unbelievable and embarrassing. Is this a new low for CAPTCHA and also
for the White House? Let me explain..."
http://www.webaxe.org/rock-bottom-for-captcha-white-house/

International Web Access Guidelines 'Ineffective', Academic Claims
By Tristan Parker.
"Conforming to the international industry standard Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) can be 'ineffective' as a method of
reducing problems encountered by blind and visually impaired web
users, one IT academic has claimed..."
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=873

Disabled People and the Web - User-Based Measurement of Accessibility
By Andre Pimenta Freire.
"Being able to use websites is an important aspect of every-day life
to most people, including disabled people. However, despite the
existence of technical guidelines for accessibility for more than a
decade, disabled users still find problems using websites. However,
our knowledge of what problems people with disabilities are
encountering is quite low. The aim of the work presented in this
thesis was to conduct a study that characterises the problems that
print-disabled users (blind, partially sighted, dyslexic users) are
encountering on the web..."
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3873/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Is Generated Content Actually Content?
By James Edwards.
"...For me, these practical differences underline the key conceptual
difference between generated content and normal text - generated
content is not content text, just as background images are not content
images. Text can still convey information without conveying semantics
- just as colors and other design choices convey information, yet the
document still makes sense when that information is missing. And that
- the real point -  generated content might not be seen or perceived
by the user at all, so if it's important, it should be in the markup."
http://www.sitepoint.com/is-generated-content-actually-content/

Firefox and the Magical text-overflow:ellipsis z-index
By Roger Johansson.
"A while ago I received a strange bug report for a site It's been
working on. The report mentioned dots appearing on top of a dropdown
menu when it was expanded. I had a look in Safari, could not see any
dots, but then tried Firefox. And sure enough, there were sets of
three dots in the dropdown menu..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201305/firefox_and_the_magical_text-overflowellipsis_z-index/

Designing for Breakpoints
By Stephen Hay.
"Jeremy Keith notes that what happens between the breakpoints is just
as important as the breakpoints themselves-perhaps even more so. While
I agree with this, we do have to start somewhere. In a way, this part
of the process reminds me of storyboarding, or creating animation
keyframes, with the in-between frames being developed later. We're
going to do that here..."
http://alistapart.com/article/designing-for-breakpoints

Classes and Ids No CSS Exclusives
By Niels Matthijs.
"When reading about classes and ids these days, you'd start believing
that they were invented exclusively for css and js targeting. To the
point where css and js are actually dictating the rules for using
classes and ids. While it's true that css and js are the primary
languages that make use of them, they are not the ones laying down the
rules. Classes and ids are part of the html and are the htmler's
responsibility..."
http://www.onderhond.com/features/html-musings/class-id-html-function

Clown Car Technique: Solving Adaptive Images In Responsive Web Design
By Estelle Weyl.
"Adaptive images are the current hot topic in conversations about
adaptive and responsive Web design. Why? Because no one likes any of
the solutions thus far. New elements and attributes are being
discussed as a solution for what is, for most of us, a big headache:
to provide every user with one image optimized for their display size
and resolution, without wasting time, memory or bandwidth with a
client-side solution..."
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/06/02/clown-car-technique-solving-for-adaptive-images-in-responsive-web-design/

+03: DRUPAL.

Drupal 8 - Best Authoring Experience for Structured Content?
By Wim Leers.
"...how well does it fare with the growing importance of structured
content? Do Drupal 8's WYSIWYG & in-place editing enable it or prevent
it?..."
http://wimleers.com/article/drupal-8-structured-content-authoring-experience

WYSIWYG and In-Place Editing for Structured Content
By Dries Buytaer.
Karen McGrane gave a great keynote at DrupalCon Portland on
future-friendly content with Drupal. It's worth watching the video
recording. I agree with Karen's vision for the future. With the
proliferation of different devices, screen sizes and input devices,
there is a growing need for structured content that can be reused in
multiple channels..."
http://buytaert.net/wysiwyg-and-in-place-editing-for-structured-content

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

User Testing Observations with Disabled Mobile Users
By Henny Swan.
"Below are a handful of observations from user testing on mobile
websites and applications I‚Äôve seen recently. All users had some
form of disability including people with limited mobility, sight
impairments, cognitive impairments  dyslexia or hearing loss. Testing
was carried out using Android or iOS with blind users accessing using
the TalkBack or VoiceOver screen readers respectively. For obvious
reasons I can‚Äôt share with you any details about the products..."
http://www.iheni.com/user-testing-observations-with-disabled-mobile-users/

7 Myths of Usability Testing
By Ian Franklin.
"...In this article, Ian addresses the seven most common excuses we
all use to avoid doing usability testing..."
http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/usability/7-myths-of-usability-testing/

Note Taking During User Testing
By Hua Zhang.
"...I decided to tap into the knowledge and expertise of the UX team
to share tips and tricks on how they take notes taking during user
testing..."
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/blog/note-taking-during-user-testing

+05: EVENTS.

User Experience Professionals Association Conference
July 9-12, 2013.
Washington DC, U.S.A.
http://uxpa.memberclicks.net/

Open Web Camp
July 13, 2013.
San Jose, California, U.S.A.
http://openwebcamp.com/

Advanced Web Accessibility Training
September 17-18, 2013.
Logan, Utah, U.S.A.
http://webaim.org/training/

+06: HTML5.

HTML 5 Headings Behavior With Screen Readers
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"Recently I have observed a slightly but significant difference in
JAWS behavior while browsing a website developed on HTML 5. Below are
my findings and recommended solution."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2013/06/html-5-headings-behavior-with-screen-readers/

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Paul Irish on JavaScript Authoring Tooling (Video)
"Paul reflects on his Fluent 2012 keynote 'JavaScript Development
Workflow of 2013' and what's happened in between. He also digs deep
into the latest hotness within the Chrome DevTools..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqfoYaKCYUI

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Three Reasons We've Outgrown Mobile Context
By SuAnne Hall.
"It seems like it's taken forever, but everyone is finally taking
designing experiences for smaller screens seriously - whether they're
doing responsive design or designing stand-alone mobile Web sites."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/06/three-reasons-weve-outgrown-mobile-context.php

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/

+09: NAVIGATION.

Mega Menu Accessibility on Adobe.com
By Matt May.
Editor's note: Recently, the adobe.com site switched over to a using a
mega menu for global navigation. Adobe accessibility engineer Michael
Jordan worked closely with our web team to build a menu system that
brings great accessibility to a very design-sensitive site. Here,
Michael explains his approach..."
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2013/05/adobe-com.html

+10: PHP.

10 Steps to Properly do PHP Bug Tracking and Fixing as Fast as Possible
By Manuel Lemos.
"No matter how hard you try to test your PHP applications before
putting them in production, you will always ship code to your server
that has bugs..."
http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/package/1351/post/1-10-Steps-to-properly-do-PHP-Bug-Tracking-and-Fixing-as-Fast-as-possible.html

+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

I Met the TAG
By Bruce Lawson.
"On Thursday, I travelled down to the swanky Mozilla offices in London
to an open invitation to meet the W3C Technical Architecture Group
(TAG), who were in town (presumably for this week's Bilderberg
meeting). I've met many of them before, and they're all jolly good
people, but I'd never met them as an entity."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2013/i-met-the-tag/

+12: USABILITY.

Opportunities and Challenges For Touch and Gesture-Based Systems
By Don Norman and Bahar Wadia.
"Paper presented at 2013 Society for Information Display conference,
Vancouver, Canada (May 23, 2013) under the title 'The Next Touch
Evolution. Advancing the Consumer Experience in Other Realms: Tasks
and Tough Environments'..."
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/opportunities_and_ch.html

Mobile Form Usability: Never Use Inline Labels
By Jamie Appleseed.
"Labels placed inside the form field (aka 'inline labels') are
widespread in mobile apps and sites - almost to the point of being a
best (mal)practice. Yet in every usability test we've conducted inline
labels have suffered from major usability problems. Mobile
included..."
http://baymard.com/blog/mobile-forms-avoid-inline-labels

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+13: 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.]