[webdev] Web Design Update: July 18, 2013

Thu Jul 18 06:09:53 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 04, July 18, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 04 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: DREAMWEAVER.
04: EVENTS.
05: HTML5.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: PHP.
10: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessibility Expert Warns - Stop Using Carousels
By Craig Grannell.
"Jared Smith slams UI elements that are detrimental to users...they
combine so many usability, accessibility, and content issues for all
users into one widget. Even if made technically accessible or
compliant, functionally, the end user experience is unlikely to be a
good one. And hopefully shouldiuseacarousel.com has prompted thought
about this and other usability and accessibility concerns."
http://www.netmagazine.com/news/accessibility-expert-warns-stop-using-carousels-132875

Easy Checks - A First Review of Web Accessibility
By W3C.
"This page helps you assess the accessibility of a web page. With
these simple steps, you can get an idea whether or not accessibility
is addressed in even the most basic way."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/preliminary

The Blind Community's Fight for a More Accessible Web
By Tim Sampson.
"...accessibility for websites is like accessibility for a building:
It's a few key changes that can make all the difference..."
http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/blind-internet-users-screen-reader-captcha/

Making an Accessible Form with ARIA, Part 1
By Lisa Seeman.
"This blog is part of my series on using ARIA. It will look at forms
and some easy things you can do with ARIA states and properties to
make forms accessible..."
http://www.deque.com/making-accessible-form-aria-part-1

10 Milestones in the Mainstreaming of Accessibility
By Scott Hollier.
"Lecturer and W3C Advisory Committee member Scott Hollier takes a look
at the milestones that have pushed accessibility into the mainstream
and continue to impact on the way we work "
http://www.netmagazine.com/features/milestones-mainstreaming-accessibility

WP Accessibility
By Joe Dolson.
"This plug-in helps correct a variety of common accessibility problems
in WordPress themes. While most accessibility issues can't be
addressed without directly changing your theme, WP Accessibility adds
a number of helpful accessibility features with the minimum amount of
setup or expert knowledge...."
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-accessibility/

Call for Review - HTML5 Image Description Extension (longdesc) Last Call
By Mark Sadecki.
"The HTML Accessibility Task Force, which is a joint task force of the
Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) and the HTML Working  Group
(HTML WG), invites your comments on the Last Call Working Draft of the
HTML5 Image Description Extension..."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2013JulSep/0018.html

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Height Equals Width with Pure CSS
By Marc Hinse.
"I was looking for a solution for flexible elements which remain the
aspect ratio when resized. Until now I used some Javascript for
resizing the elements. But using the resize event and recalculate the
height of an element is some kind of nasty and never felt right.
Recently I found a solution in an article from A List Apart and a
topic on StackOverflow, which works quite well..."
http://www.mademyday.de/css-height-equals-width-with-pure-css.html

Writing DRYer Vanilla CSS
By Harry Roberts.
"When dealing with code, we often strive to make things DRY. DRY code
usually means two things..."
http://csswizardry.com/2013/07/writing-dryer-vanilla-css/

CSS Regions - New Working Draft
By Radu Stavila.
"On May 28th 2013, we published a new W3C working draft for CSS
Regions, one of the features proposed by the Adobe Web Platform team.
Here are the most important changes you should be aware of:"
http://blogs.adobe.com/webplatform/2013/07/15/css-regions-new-working-draft/

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Using the SSI Extension in Dreamweaver to Create Page Headers
By Veeresh Hiremath.
"Before you begin, quit Dreamweaver if it is running. Next, download
the sample files. Uncompress the ZIP file and save the folder named
ssi_extension to your desktop. You'll define a site using this sample
files folder as the site's local root folder."
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/ssi-extension.html

+04: EVENTS.

BlogHer '13
July 25-27, 2013.
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
http://www.blogher.com/blogher-13

+05: HTML5.

Essential Audio and Video Events for HTML5
By James Edwards.
"The <video> and <audio> elements provide a comprehensive range of
events. While some are quite straightforward, like the
self-explanatory 'play' event, others can be rather more tricky to
understand, especially the 'progress' event..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/essential-audio-and-video-events-for-html5/

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Performance Optimizations and For Loops
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"This blog post looks at two common performance optimizations for for
loops. Are they really faster than the canonical version?.."
http://www.2ality.com/2013/07/for-loop-performance.html

Trailing Commas in Object Literals and Array Literals
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Quick reminder: trailing commas in object literals are legal in
ECMAScript 5, trailing commas in arrays are ignored..."
http://www.2ality.com/2013/07/trailing-commas.html

JavaScript Is Way Too Slow - for What?
By Simon St. Laurent.
"There's more to mobile web apps than JavaScript..."
http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/07/javascript-is-way-too-slow-for-what.html

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Responsive Design - We Are Not There Yet
By Anselm Hannemann.
"...This explains a few of the problems around responsive web design
within HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I am sure there are more and if you
know of them, let people know. Reach out to the WHATWG/W3C and browser
vendors and encourage them to move the web forward. Only with your
help can the web get better."
http://www.netmagazine.com/features/responsive-design-we-are-not-there-yet

+08: NAVIGATION.

Designing the Perfect Hyperlink - It's Not as Simple as You Think
By John MacPherson.
"...I'm about to share with you some hyperlink design tips that will
lead to a better user experience, enhanced web accessibility, and
maybe even bring improvements to your search engine rankings..."
http://sixrevisions.com/usability/hyperlink-design/

No Link is an Island - The Problem with Silos on the Web
By Gerry McGovern
"There are no silos on the Web. The Web is a network and everything
you do has an impact on that network."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/no-link-island-problem-silos-web

+09: PHP.

Using Objects Doesn't Make an Application Object Oriented
By Brandon Savage.
"Lots of developers understand that object oriented code offers
advantages over procedural programming. And so, they begin working on
creating objects in their own projects, and eventually feel pretty
good about what they've done. After all, if they're using objects,
their code must be object oriented, right? Well, not exactly..."
http://www.brandonsavage.net/using-objects-doesnt-make-an-application-object-oriented/

+10: USABILITY.

Before You Try to 'Fix' or 'Improve' Forms on the Web
By Christian Heilmann.
"...It is very easy to replace forms with 'nicer' things. It is also
too easy to block out a lot of users when you do."
http://www.christianheilmann.com/2013/07/04/before-you-try-to-fix-or-improve-forms-on-the-web/

The Truth About Carousels
By Michael Schofield.
"Performance is a feature. Users bypass everything that gets in the
way of the content. Anything that looks, moves, sounds, smells, or
tastes like an ad is a blindspot. Embrace whitespace. Content does not
have to be cramped. Users scroll. Don't sacrifice accessibility for
pizzazz."
http://www.talks.ns4lib.com/truth-about-carousels/

Today's Design Tip Brought To You By The Letter 'F'
By Sarah Bauer.
"What's going on in the top left corner of your website? Take a look.
It's where your users are looking, too..."
http://www.kelownawebdesigns.com/web-design/today%E2%80%99s-design-tip-brought-to-you-by-the-letter-%E2%80%98f%E2%80%99/

Flat Design as a New Foundation for the Web
By Steven Bradley.
"The last couple of weeks I've been looking at the industry's move
from skeuomorphic detail to a flatter design aesthetic. I started by
considering the useful, albeit temporary, metaphors skeuomorphism
brings along with the inevitable reaction against it."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/flat-design-new-foundation/

Writing Tip - Use 1, 2, 3 for First, Second, Third
By Rachel McAlpine.
"When writing a list, how do you decide whether to use dot points or
numbers?..."
http://contented.com/contented/2013/writing-tip-use-1-2-3-for-first-second-third/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.]