[webdev] Web Design Update: November 14, 2013

Thu Nov 14 06:59:32 CST 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 21, November 14, 2013.

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

++ISSUE 21 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML5.
07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
08: JAVASCRIPT.
09: MISCELLANEOUS.
10: NAVIGATION.
11: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessible Google Maps
By Dylan Barrell.
"...First things first, Google has really made absolutely no attempt
to make Google maps accessible at all and the fact that I can take a
weekend, without access to their code and make it basically fully
keyboard and screen reader accessible (at least for the basic
functionality) speaks to how irrelevant accessibility seems to be to
them. Shame on you Googlers..."
http://unobfuscated.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/accessible-google-maps.html?m=1

Accessible Form Labeling Basics
By Dylan Barrell.
"The most basic and important aspect of making forms accessible is to
ensure that the form fields have perceivable labels and that all
instructions and error messages are programmatically associated with
the form field..."
http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2013/10/accessible-form-labeling-basics.html?m=1

Accessible Form Layout
By Dylan Barrell.
"Most people think of blind users when thinking about accessibility,
however there are other disabilities that are impacted by bad form
design, following some simple layout principles can address the major
issues faced by these disability groups..."
http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2013/10/accessible-form-layout.html?m=1

Web Accessibility Fundamentals - Exclusive Presentation [VIDEO]
By Jared Smith via Deque.
"...we are please to bring you video and slides from Jared Smith's
talk 'Web Accessibility Fundamentals'. Jared Smith is the Associate
Director of WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind and is a highly regarded
speaker about web accessibility issues."
http://www.deque.com/web-accessibility-fundamentals-exclusive-presentation-video

5 Top Tools for Web Accessibility
By Jared Smith.
"Even though web accessibility can be a complex thing, there are some
basic tools you can use to help ensure your web content is usable by
people with disabilities..."
http://cehsatusu.blogspot.com/2013/11/guest-blog-5-top-tools-for-web.html

Podcast 98 - AHG13
By Dennis Lembree.
"The 16th Annual Accessing Higher Ground Accessible Media, Web and
Technology Conference (hash tag #AHG13) was held recently in
Westminster, Colorado at a very nice venue, the Westin Westminster..."
http://www.webaxe.org/podcast-98-ahg13/

Accessibility In Practice - Can Design Thinking Help?
By Sarah Horton.
"...One of the design thinking concepts we are working with is the
idea of prototyping and iterating. Rather than reworking policies,
position responsibilities, training efforts, development methods, and
accountability to support accessibility in practice across the board,
throughout an organization, we propose to create a model for one
project or project team, execute the model, and evaluate and refine
the model until it works. Then we would look to applying the working
model across the larger organization..."
http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2013/11/accessibility-practice-can-design-thinking-help/

Uncle Sam Orders Airlines Make Websites Accessible To Disabled Passengers
By Roberto Castiglioni.
"All airlines operating flights to, from, and within the United States
will have to make their websites accessible within two years, a new
DOT rule states."
http://www.reducedmobility.eu/20131108395/The-News/uncle-sam-orders-airlines-make-websites-accessible-to-disabled-passengers.html

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Multi-Line Padded Text
By Chris Coyier.
"This is one of those tricky CSS things that I see come up every few
months. I guess what better place to address it than CSS-Tricks eh?"
http://css-tricks.com/multi-line-padded-text/

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

HTML5 Video in Dreamweaver CC
By Virginia DeBolt.
"...There's now an HTML5 Video command in the Insert menu. Once you
have a placeholder for the video element on the document page, the
Properties Panel gives you all the options you need to manage your
video in Document View..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2013/11/11/html5-video-dreamweaver/

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

User Stories Don't Help Users - Introducing Persona Stories
By William Hudson.
"User stories are one of the most popular alternatives to traditional
user requirement specifications. But despite their promising name,
user stories are not about - and don't necessarily help - users at
all. In most cases, user stories are written about roles that users
adopt and take no account of the needs and behaviors of real users.
Were that not indictment enough, user stories suffer from demonstrable
flaws in structure and are often written by the wrong people at the
wrong time. Here, I examine the background of user stories in their
current form, highlight their failings, and propose a more appropriate
alternative for the development of interactive systems: persona
stories."
http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/november-december-2013/user-stories-dont-help-users-Introducing-persona-stories

+05: EVENTS.

The National Association of Government Webmasters Conference
September 9-12, 2014.
St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A.
http://nagw.org/news/2013/11/12/nagw-2014-national-conference

+06: HTML5.

Responsive Images - End of Year Report
By Bruce Lawson.
"It's nearly two years since I suggested a <picture> element as a
strawman proposal as a way to solve the problem of responsive images,
so let's have a look at how we're doing..."
http://html5doctor.com/responsive-images-end-of-year-report/

+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Flat vs. Deep Website Hierarchies
By Kathryn Whitenton.
"Information can be organized in either flat or deep hierarchies; both
have their advantages and pitfalls."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-vs-deep-hierarchy/

+08: JAVASCRIPT.

Accessible JavaScript Gestures
By Dylan Barrell.
One of the problems with creating accessible dynamic HTML applications
that work well across multiple browser and AT platforms is the issue
of keyboard accessibility on a touch device. The major mobile
operating systems like iOS and Android all allow a keyboard to be
attached (via Bluetooth or otherwise) and used in conjunction with the
other assistive features. In fact on iOS, the keyboard is only really
usable as the major input device when you have VoiceOver turned on.
http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2013/11/accessible-javascript-gestures.html?m=1

An Introduction To DOM Events
By Wilson Page.
"..As developers, we should understand how DOM events work, so that we
can harness their potential and build engaging experiences..."
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/11/12/an-introduction-to-dom-events/

Immediately Invoked Constructors and Object Literals
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"By now, you are probably familiar with immediately invoked function
expressions (IIFEs, [1]). This blog post looks at immediately invoked
constructors and immediately invoked object literals."
http://www.2ality.com/2013/11/immediately-invoked.html

+09: MISCELLANEOUS.

Standings.md (Responsive Images)
By Mat Marquis.
"Wondering what the current standings are for the Responsive Images
Community Groups efforts? Look no further."
https://gist.github.com/Wilto/7453901

screen.width is Useless
By Peter-Paul Koch.
"Yesterday I tested screen.width/height and related properties in the
mobile browsers. The conclusion is that screen.width/height is
completely unreliable."
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2013/11/screenwidth_is.html

+10: NAVIGATION.

Emulating Google - Is It Always the Right Choice for Navigation?
By Jeffrey Easton.
"...As designers we need to fight the impulse to use search as a
primary navigation style whenever we are confronted with a site or
application that our users are struggling to navigate...Search is
generally not the right answer for sites and applications. In fact, a
user asking where they can search is usually a solid sign that the
structural design is awful. It is an indicator of failure. It is
rarely an effective model... the core of the problem with search is
recognition vs. recall. Your user should be able to pick the item they
need from your navigation, and then proceed quickly through a minimal
number of selections with increasing scent of their desired
functionality..."
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/Nov13.asp

+11: USABILITY.

Why You Should Not Use Image Carousels on Your Website
By Christian Watson.
"A web design element that I have commonly used is the image carousel
or image slider. However, I recently caught up with some articles that
highlight usability issues with them. This has caused me to question
my fondness for them as a way to present hero content above the fold
when space is limited..."
http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/006605.php

Design for Fingers and Thumbs Instead of Touch
By Steven Hoober.
"...Edges are...more difficult to hit accurately, take more time to
hit accurately, and cause users to have reduced confidence in their
ability to hit them accurately..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/11/design-for-fingers-and-thumbs-instead-of-touch.php

Putting People's Needs First
By Gerry McGovern.
"...By giving people what they needed, the organization got more of
what it needed..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/putting-people%E2%80%99s-needs-first

10 Facts About the Brain that will Help You Design Better Websites
By Joe Leech.
"Psychology provides a framework for understanding how your users
think. This post explains how to use that knowledge to improve your
websites."
http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/psychology-tips-ux-11135216

Performance is the New SEO
By Niels Matthijs.
"Being a front-ender is more than just flashing some fancy html5, css3
and javascript magic in people's faces. A small but important part of
our job is to steer a project in such a direction that the resulting
front-end code stays maintainable and up to par, quality-wise..."
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/performance-new-seo

Halo Effect
By Jen Cardello and Jakob Nielsen.
"The Halo Effect is when one trait of a person or thing is used to
make an overall judgment of that person or thing. It supports rapid
decisions, even if biased ones."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/halo-effect/

[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.

+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how
to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit:
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webdev_listserv.html
The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates.

+ TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN).

As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to
the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines.  Please let me
know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier.
For TEN guideline information please visit:
http://www.headstar.com/ten

+ 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.]