[webdev] Web Design Update: July 25, 2013

Thu Jul 25 06:09:31 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 05, July 25, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 05 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML5.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: PHP.
10: USABILITY.
11: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Justice Department Settles with Louisiana Tech University Over
Inaccessible Course Materials
By justice.gov.
"The Justice Department announced today that it has reached a
settlement with Louisiana Tech University and the Board of Supervisors
for the University of Louisiana System to remedy alleged violations of
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)...Under the settlement
agreement, the university will adopt a number of disability-related
policies, including the requirement to deploy learning technology, web
pages and course content that is accessible in accordance with the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA standard in the
university setting.  The university will also make existing web pages
and materials created since 2010 accessible.  The agreement also
requires the university to train its instructors and administrators on
the requirements of the ADA, and secured a total of $23,543 in damages
for the student from the university and the Board..."
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/July/13-crt-831.html

Small Demo Video About Firefox OS Accessibility
By Marco Zehe.
"Over the past few weeks, especially after the launch of Firefox OS
devices in early July, I received a lot of questions about the
accessibility of this mobile operating system purely based on web
technologies..."
http://www.marcozehe.de/2013/07/19/small-demo-video-about-firefox-os-accessibility/

Basic Accessibility Principles
By Mark Magennis.
"There are three aspects to accessibility: a user must be able to
perceive, understand, and operate every control, instruction or
output..."
http://www.e-accessibilitytoolkit.org/toolkit/eaccessibility_basics/basic_accessibility_principles

Understanding the Basics of Web Accessibility Testing
By Denis Boudreau.
"In the last few blog posts from this column, we've discussed the
importance of focusing on core accessibility rules when it comes to
tackling web accessibility requirements so designers and developers
really understand what the different WCAG 2.0 guidelines and Success
Criteria mean. Prior to that, we had also discussed the importance of
leaving designers and developers some breathing room so they could
come up with their own innovative solutions based on their
understanding of those core rules..."
http://www.deque.com/pragmatica11y-understanding-basics-web-accessibility-testing

YouTube Accessibility
WebAIM Thread.
"Is YouTube generally considered to be an accessible place for video
content these days?..."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=6004

Laying the Foundations of an Accessible Website
By bdaily.
"Alastair Campbell, director of accessibility at design agency
Nomensa, outlines which aspects of accessibility can be checked at
each stage of development in order to create a fully accessible
website..."
http://bdaily.co.uk/advice/19-07-2013/laying-the-foundations-of-an-accessible-website/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Troubleshooting CSS
By Hugo Giraudel.
"Sometimes CSS can be frustrating. Learn about some tricky properties,
the common issues they can cause and how to solve them."
http://tympanus.net/codrops/2013/07/17/troubleshooting-css

The Worst CSS Practices
By Pam Selle.
"Forget bleeding edge technologies. From training and style guides to
code reviews, Pam Selle recommends you conquer worst practices first
to improve CSS..."
http://www.netmagazine.com/opinions/worst-css-practices

CSS Specificity
By Estelle Weyl.
"Specificity determines which CSS property declaration is applied when
two or more declarations apply to the same element with competing
property declarations. The most specific selector takes precedence. If
specificity is equal, the last declaration in the source order takes
precendence.By understanding CSS Specificity, you'll understand how
the browser determines which declaration is more specific and will
therefore take precedence. Let's take this paragraph as an example..."
http://www.standardista.com/css3/css-specificity/

+03: COLOR.

Prevent Barriers to Conversions By Choosing The Right Color Contrasts
By Kimberly Krause Berg.
"Remember when the web design fad was to use two colors, sky blue and
lime green? Today the new color is gray, and many of you can't see
it...How can a visitor sign up for something they struggle to see? Why
make it difficult to read your content?"
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/design/prevent-barriers-to-conversions-by-choosing-the-right-color-contrasts/

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Measuring Website Visitors' True Intent
By Jeff Sauro.
"...One of the most cost effective and easiest ways to understand who
your users are and what they are trying to do is to conduct a true
intent study.   As the name suggests, such studies aim to understand
the intended goals of actual visitors to a website..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/true-intent.php

+05: EVENTS.

Northeast PHP 2013
August 16-18, 2013.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
http://www.northeastphp.org/

CSS Dev Conference
October 21-23, 2013
Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S.A.
http://2013.cssdevconf.com/

+06: HTML5.

Using Caption Services with HTML5 Video
By Greg Tarnoff.
"One of the great things about the internet is the ability to share
video. With HTML5 we can now use video without the use of Flash. This
makes video more accessible as the controls are located in the DOM.
However, to do accessible video right, you need to include captions
and transcripts..."
http://a11yproject.com/posts/using-caption-services-with-html5-video/

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

jQuery UI Accessibility Analysis
By Bryan Garaventa.
"...Since a comprehensive accessibility analysis of jQuery UI has not
recently been done, I decided to do so in order to see what the
current level of accessibility is for the library, and to determine
how useful it would be as an accessible development resource. To
summarize, the public jQuery UI library widgets as of July 1, 2013,
are mostly inaccessible for both screen reader and keyboard only
users..."
https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2013/07/03/jquery-ui-accessibility-analysis/

In Defense of JavaScript's Constructors
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"In this blog post, I explain that not all of the constructors' flaws
are real. But even with those that are real, I still recommend to use
them. I'll tell you why and what the future holds for constructors."
http://www.2ality.com/2013/07/defending-constructors.html

Why I Test Private Functions In JavaScript
By Philip Walton.
"Last week I published an article on this blog entitled How to Unit
Test Private Functions in JavaScript. The article was well received
and even mentioned in a few popular newsletters (most notably
JavaScript Weekly). Still, a decent amount of the feedback I received
in the comments and on Twitter strongly disagreed with my approach.
The most common criticism was: unit testing private functions is
unnecessary and a mark of bad design..."
http://philipwalton.com/articles/why-i-test-private-functions-in-javascript/

+08: NAVIGATION.

When Responsive Web Design (RWD) Goes Bad
By Alastair Campbell.
"Most of the time, responsive design is good news for accessibility.
But, cautions Alastair Campbell, it's by no means a given..."
http://www.netmagazine.com/opinions/when-rwd-goes-bad

Link Purpose (WCAG)
WebAIM Thread.
"I'm well aware one should always use links that are meaningful
without context. But according to WCAG level A, it's allowed in
meaningful context, such as the preceding heading."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=6053

+09: PHP.

Google Finally Acknowledges that PHP Exists
By Kevin Schroeder.
"... PHP IS in the enterprise and has been for a long time.  People
just either don't know it or refused to admit it..."
http://www.eschrade.com/page/google-finally-acknowledges-that-php-exists/

+10: USABILITY.

The Importance of Designing for Readability
By Carrie Cousins.
"Text is not an afterthought in the design process. It should be your
first consideration."
http://designshack.net/articles/typography/the-importance-of-designing-for-readability/

The Human Body as Touchscreen Replacement
By Jakob Nielsen.
"When you touch your own body, you feel exactly what you touch -
better feedback than any external device. And you never forget to
bring your body."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/human-body-touch-input/

Content Auditing - the Basics
By Vincent Sevilla.
"...here are the essentials you need to learn about content auditing
and how it's done..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/content-auditing-the-basics/

+11: XML.

Creating Interactive Graphs With SVG, Part 1
By Roemer Vlasveld.
"In a series of two posts we take a look at building interactive
graphs with SVG, CSS and Javascript. We take a real-world example from
one of our projects and show you our approach. The final goal is an
interactive graph (think animations, shadows and tooltips) using a
jQuery-SVG plugin."
http://rvlasveld.github.io/blog/2013/07/02/creating-interactive-graphs-with-svg-part-1/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+12: 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.]