[webdev] Web Design Update: August 19, 2013

Mon Aug 19 06:43:40 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 08, August 19, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 08 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: BOOKS.
03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
04: DREAMWEAVER.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: HTML5.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
09: TOOLS.
10: TYPOGRAPHY.
11: USABILITY.
12: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Leonie Watson on Giving a Damn About What You're Building
By Martin Cooper.
"...[Accessibility] is a creative challenge, not a challenge to creativity..."
http://www.netmagazine.com/interviews/l-onie-watson-giving-damn-about-what-youre-building

Accessibility Driving Mobile Technology Market
By Clarizza Fernandez.
"Accessibility is driving competition in the mobile market, according
to President and Executive Director of The Global Initiative for
Inclusive ICT (G3ict) Axel Leblois...Key points: Functionalities that
persons with disabilities require happen to be useful to all users..."
http://accessiq.org/news/features/2013/08/accessibility-driving-mobile-technology-market

Capitalization Matters
By Joanna Briggs.
"...If you must abbreviate, make sure you're using the common forms of
abbreviations. If in doubt, use the abbr element."
http://simplyaccessible.com/bpow/capitalization-matters/

Accessibility
By Virginia DeBolt.
Virginia's InterLab 2013 presentation slides.
http://www.vdebolt.com/interlab/

PDF Association releases Matterhorn Protocol, the Definitive
Accessibility Testing Model for PDF Documents and Forms
By PDF Association.
"PAC 2.0, the PDF Accessibility Checker, is the first implementation
of the Matterhorn Protocol..."
http://www.pdfa.org/2013/08/pdf-association-releases-matterhorn-protocol-the-definitive-accessibility-testing-model-for-pdf-documents-and-forms/

+02: BOOKS.

Meloncon, Lisa. "Rhetorical AccessAbility: At the Intersection of
Technical Communication and Disability Studies", Baywood Publishing
Company Inc., 2013.

+03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Language-Wide Features in CSS
By Louis Lazaris.
"In addition to the unique property/value pairs that CSS offers, there
are also a small handful of language-wide features that can come in
handy, including a few that are brand new in the spec..."
http://www.impressivewebs.com/language-wide-features-css/

Absolute Horizontal And Vertical Centering In CSS
By Stephen Shaw.
"We've all seen margin: 0 auto; for horizontal centering, but margin:
auto; has refused to work for vertical centering- until now! But
actually (spoiler alert!) absolute centering only requires a declared
height* and these styles..."
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/08/09/absolute-horizontal-vertical-centering-css/

The CSS Shapes Module - Breaking Out of the Box
By Steven Bradley.
One of the limitations of developing websites is that everything is
fundamentally a rectangular box. We fight against it. We create
non-rectangular images, we round corners, we have a variety of
creative techniques to display less box-like shapes, but still behind
the scenes each of these things sits in a rectangular box and other
elements react to that box seen or unseen..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/shapes-module/

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Using Dreamweaver Fluid Grid Layouts (video)
By Virginia DeBolt.
"This is an Adobe/Lynda.com video tutorial explaining how to use fluid
grid layouts in Dreamweaver 6..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2013/08/07/using-dreamweaver-fluid-grid-layouts-video/

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Usability Testing - How Do We Design Effective Tasks
By Tingting Zhao.
"Previously, Charline Poirier provided an excellent post about how to
recruit representative participants for usability testing. To continue
the story, we are going to talk about the next stage: developing
effective task sets, which is a crucial part of a test protocol..."
http://design.canonical.com/2013/08/usability-testing-how-do-we-design-effective-tasks/

User Experience and Scientific Methods, Part 1 - Eyetracking
By James Coston.
"In this series, I'll describe the application of some of the
scientific techniques that user experience and market research have
adopted, including eyetracking, EEG, and fMRI..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/08/user-experience-and-scientific-methods-part-1-eyetracking.php

+06: HTML5.

HTML5 and CSS3 Form Validation
By Jonny Schnittger.
"In HTML5 forms got a major upgrade with the addition of some simple,
yet flexible validation attributes. To support these added attributes
CSS3 also added several new pseudo selectors styling controls based on
their validation state..."
http://www.developerdrive.com/2013/08/html5-and-css3-form-validation/

Object-Oriented HTML, and OOCSS
By Jens O. Meiert.
"elements as objects, giving all these objects classes, treating
objects' classes as single entities in style sheets, and taking it
from there..."
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20130806/object-oriented-html-and-oocss/

The Downward Spiral of Microdata
By Manu Sporny.
"Support for the Microdata API has just been removed from Webkit
(Apple Safari). Support for the Microdata API was also removed from
Blink (Google Chrome) a few months ago. This means that Apple Safari
and Google Chrome will no longer support the Microdata API. Removal of
the feature from a browser also shows us a likely future for
Microdata, which is less and less support..."
http://manu.sporny.org/2013/microdata-downward-spiral/

Improved Support for High-Resolution Displays with the srcset Image Attribute
By Dean Jackson.
"WebKit now supports the srcset attribute on image (img) elements..."
https://www.webkit.org/blog/2910/improved-support-for-high-resolution-displays-with-the-srcset-image-attribute/

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Why JavaScript Will Become The Dominant Programming Language Of The Enterprise
By Nolan Wright.
"A simple learning curve and flexible skill set have JavaScript on the
verge of taking over the enterprise..."
http://readwrite.com/2013/08/09/why-javascript-will-become-the-dominant-programming-language-of-the-enterprise

+09: TOOLS.

PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC2)
By Access For All.
"...PAC provides a fast way to test the accessibility of PDF files.
PAC supports both experts as well as end users conducting
accessibility evaluations..."
http://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-lab/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac.html

+10: TYPOGRAPHY.

What Do Your Format Choices Mean to Readers?
By Kim Sydow Campbell.
"... your format choices influence what readers think of your content.
Is it difficult or easy to use and understand? Is what you're talking
about risky or safe? Is it the truth?  All excellent reasons to learn
a few principles for choosing a successful format for your
documents..."
http://proswrite.com/2013/08/05/what-do-your-format-choices-mean-to-readers/

+11: USABILITY.

You Won't Finish This Article
By Farhad Manjoo.
I'm going to keep this brief, because you're not going to stick around
for long. I've already lost a bunch of you. For every 161 people who
landed on this page, about 61 of you-38 percent-are already gone. You
'bounced' in Web traffic jargon, meaning you spent no time 'engaging'
with this page at all..."
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/06/how_people_read_online_why_you_won_t_finish_this_article.html

Human Interest
By Trent Walton.
"...The only way to build is with real people in mind. They'd rather
be with their families than deleting emails. They'd rather not mine a
cluttered layout for content. They start off not knowing you and not
caring, but if they detect a hint of grace and respect you just might
have something upon which to build a relationship."
http://trentwalton.com/2013/08/12/human-interest/

+12: XML.

SVG and <image> Tag Tricks
By Alexey Ten.
"...A couple of months ago this property of image tag gave me the idea
to use it for graceful degradation of SVG images in browsers which do
not support SVG. The idea is extremely simple, we will have a SVG
image for modern browsers and regular raster image for others. And
write the following code..."
http://lynn.ru/examples/svg/en.html

[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

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.]