[webdev] Web Design Update: February 6, 2014

Thu Feb 6 06:25:28 CST 2014

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 33, February 6, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 33 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: EVENTS.
05: HTML5.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: TOOLS.
10: TYPOGRAPHY.
11: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

GOALS Blueprint for Institutional Web Accessibility
By National Center on Disability and Access to Education.
"This blueprint will guide you through several key phases of
implementing institutional accessibility: Gaining support from
administration, engaging in institutional self-study, benchmarking and
planning, reporting and providing recommendations, and finally making
accessibility improvements at your institution..."
http://ncdae.org/goals/blueprint.php

Infographic Accessibility - Text is Text
By Derek Featherstone.
"Infographics are growing in popularity, but they are often criticized
for the accessibility challenges they create. Here's an infographic
that was very surprising when it comes to accessibility, and we felt
it should be celebrated and shared as a positive--a small thing, done
well."
http://simplyaccessible.com/article/text-is-text/

Institutional Guidelines on Captioning
By Cyndi Rowland.
"Many would argue that the single most difficult issue of
institutional web accessibility is captioning. The issue presents a
challenge, in part because there are so many people linking audio and
video materials without regard to the need to have captions present.
The ways in which institutions engage their faculties and staffs on
this tough issue shows the maturity of the institution's journey
toward full web accessibility..."
http://ncdae.org/blog/guidelines-captioning/

The ADA Title III Year in Review - Trends, Hot Topics, and What's In
Store for 2014
By Seyfarth Shaw.
"...Perhaps the most significant news in the area of website
accessibility is that DOJ sought to intervene in a private class
action brought against a public accommodation for not having an
accessible website.  While DOJ has always pressured businesses behind
the scenes to make their websites accessible, this is the first
enforcement suit of its kind, filed before DOJ has even issued
proposed regulations defining what constitutes an accessible website.
The proposed complaint cites to the WCAG 2.0 as a well-accepted
industry guideline, further persuading us that the DOJ will in fact
adopt this set of guidelines as its legal standard when it finally
issues its proposed rule..."
http://www.adatitleiii.com/2014/01/the-ada-title-iii-year-in-review-trends-hot-topics-and-whats-in-store-for-2014/

Loss Aversion and Web Accessibility
By Jared Smith.
"I think we can all agree that the field of web accessibility needs
more good data...the best approach is not to simply ask users what
they think, but to actually test users in real-world environments and
situations to determine what best affects their experience..."
http://webaim.org/blog/loss-aversion-and-web-accessibility/

Blind People Using Touchscreens - The Issues
By Incobs.
"Our tablet tests conducted in November 2013 have revealed some
general issues that blind users encounter when using touch input on a
tablet with the screen reader turned on. We describe the issues
here..."
http://www.incobs.de/tests-english/items/tablettest-blind-en-touchscreen-use.html

Few Excuses for Not Performing Accessibility Testing
By Ken Nakata.
"My friends at Microsoft told me that they had just partnered with GW
Micro to provide free copies of Window-Eyes to any customers who
bought and installed any version of Microsoft Office 2010.  For those
who don't actively follow the assistive technology market, Window-Eyes
is a popular and very powerful screen reader software used by blind
and visually-impaired users for accessing computer information-and now
(hopefully) also by software professionals who develop and test
webpages and software..."
http://blog.hisoftware.com/2014/compliance/few-excuses-for-not-performing-accessibility-testing

Accessibility Testing and Multiple Platforms
By Dylan Barrell.
"Last week there was quite heated Twitter debate between Paul Adam,
myself and a couple of other people as to what the appropriate
approach is to accessibility testing and multiple platforms."
http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2014/02/accessibility-testing-and-multiple.html

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Boxes That Fill Height (Or More) (and Don't Squish)
By Chris Coyier.
"...let's just try and focus on one thing that flexbox solves very
nicely: the ability to have an arbitrary set of boxes fill up all the
available height of a parent box. And not only that, but expand beyond
that if needed (not squish them to fit)..."
http://css-tricks.com/boxes-fill-height-dont-squish/

International Box-Sizing Awareness Day
By Chris Coyier.
"It makes working with boxes so super duper much nicer."
http://css-tricks.com/international-box-sizing-awareness-day/

Managing Hyphenation With CSS
By Nicolas Hoffmann.
"This article describes  how to set up hyphenation on websites."
http://openweb.eu.org/articles/managing-hyphenation-with-css

CSS Regions Matter
By Sara Soueidan.
"...CSS Regions give us the ability to do a lot of things that are
otherwise not possible without them..."
http://flippinawesome.org/2014/01/27/css-regions-matter/

Reversing Course, Google Rejects Adobe Web Publishing Tech
By Stephen Shankland.
"The CSS Regions would have helped ease magazine-like layouts on the
Web. But Google's priority now is on performance, not features -
especially mobile browser performance..."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57617840-93/reversing-course-google-rejects-adobe-web-publishing-tech/

Why Native CSS Variables Will Be A Good Addition
By Steven Bradley.
"On Monday I walked through css custom properties for cascading
variables and mentioned that some people have objections to variables
becoming part of the css language. Two notable objectors are Jeremy
Keith and Chris Coyier..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/variables-belong-in-css/

One Solution To Responsive Images
By Gavyn McKenzie.
"In this article, we'll look at one solution to the problem that we
implemented on our portfolio website at Etch, where you can see an
early working version in the wild."
http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2014/02/03/one-solution-to-responsive-images/

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Lorem Ipsum and the Art of Prototype Testing
By Dave Ellender.
"...the solution that preserves user flow, works well with tired
facilitators and enables effective and unbiased enquiry around users
expectations about the effect of their actions? Yes, a wireframe where
key pieces of text are changed back into lorem ipsum. This way when
the user gets to the next screen we can ask for their expectations as
to what should be there..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2014/lorem-ipsum-and-the-art-of-prototype-testing/

5 Essential Analytics Reports for UX Strategists
By Jennifer Cardello.
"Google Analytics is filled with very useful information for UX
Strategists defining a baseline and tracking trends in order to define
design goals, strategies, and concepts for a brighter tomorrow."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/analytics-reports-ux-strategists/

+04: EVENTS.

STLUX 2014
March 14, 2014.
Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.
http://stlux.org/

SmashingConf Oxford
March 17-19, 2014.
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
http://smashingconf.com/

Responsive Web Design Summit
April 1-3, 2014.
Online
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rwd-summit-2014-the-online-live-responsive-web-design-conference-registration-9888276100

UX Immersion Mobile Conference
April 7-9, 2014.
Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
http://uxim14.uie.com/

Industry 2014
April 22-23, 2014.
Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom
http://2014.industryconf.com/

ARTIFACT Conf
May 5-7, 2014.
Austin, Texas, U.S.A.
http://artifactconf.com/

+05: HTML5.

HTML is Too Complex
By Baldur Bjarnason.
"...unless there is an immediate visual or behavioural benefit to
using an element, most people will ignore it..."
http://studiotendra.com/2014/01/29/html-is-too-complex/

The Complexity of HTML
By Jeremy Keith.
"... I've talked before about the confusion between section and
article. Providing two new elements might seem better than providing
just one, but in fact it just muddies the waters and confuses authors
(in my experience). But I realise that in the grand scheme of things,
I'm nitpicking. I think HTML is in pretty good shape. Baldur said
'simply put, HTML is a mess,' and he's not wrong ...but HTML has always
been a mess. It's the worst mess except for all the others that have
been tried. When it comes to markup, I think that 'perfect' is very
much the enemy of 'good'..."
http://adactio.com/journal/6663/

Does EPUB3 Have Any Place in an HTML5 Universe?
By Brad Neuberg.
"A common question I hear is whether EPUB3 is useless above and beyond
HTML5. Why not just eliminate EPUB and use plain HTML5?..."
http://codinginparadise.org/ebooks/html/blog/epub3_in_html5_universe.html

+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

The Lingering Seduction of the Page
By Andy Fitzgerald.
"...I examined the articulatory relationship between information
architecture and user interface design, and argued that the tools that
have emerged for constructing information architectures on the web
will only get us so far when it comes to expressing information
systems across diverse digital touchpoints. Here, I want to look more
closely at these traditional web IA tools in order to tease out two
things: (1) ways we might rely on these tools moving forward, and (2)
ways we'll need to expand our approach to IA as we design for the
Internet of Things..."
http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/01/the-lingering-seduction-of-the-page.html

Architecture, Design, and the Connected Environment
By Andy Fitzgerald.
"...user interface design is a context-specific articulation of an
underlying information architecture. It is this IA foundation that
provides the direct connection to how human end users find value in
content and functionality. The articulatory relationship between
architecture and design creates consistency of experience across
diverse platforms and works to communicate the underlying information
model we've asked users to adopt...his basic distinction between
architecture and design is not a new idea, but in the context of the
Internet of Things, it does present architects and designers with a
new set of challenges. In order to get a better sense of what has
changed in this new context, it's worth taking a closer look at how
the traditional model of IA for the web works."
http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/12/architecture-design-and-the-connected-environment.html

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Accessibility and the Shadow DOM
By Marcy Sutton.
"...It's easy - to make Web Components accessible to all users, write
accessible code..."
http://substantial.com/blog/2014/02/05/accessibility-and-the-shadow-dom/

Repeating Strings Efficiently
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Recently, Michael Ficarra pointed me to an efficient algorithm for
repeating a string several times. In this blog post, I explain how it
works. The algorithm makes use of the fact that natural numbers
(non-negative integers) can be represented as sums of powers of
two..."
http://www.2ality.com/2014/01/efficient-string-repeat.html

Smart Defaults: On Libraries and Frameworks
By Tim Kadlec.
"What worries me is that for many, libraries have become the default.
They're rolled into boilerplates and pattern libraries as an assumed
dependency. And if we know anything about default settings, it's that
most people will stick with them. This undoubtedly leads to many
projects incurring this overhead without every giving consideration to
whether it is really necessary."
http://timkadlec.com/2014/01/smart-defaults-on-libraries-and-frameworks/

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Accessibility Standards: An Interview with Mike Paciello
By Whitney Quesenbery.
"Mike Paciello has been a leader in promoting information and
communication technology accessibility since the 1980s. He helped
launch the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), was an author on the
first version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and
co-led the 2008 rewrite of the Section 508/Section 255 standards..."
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/blogs/a-web-for-everyone/accessibility-standards-an-interview-with-mike-paciello/

An Interview with Australian Accessibility Pioneer Dr Andrew Arch
By Scott Hollier.
"Welcome to 2014!  It's my great pleasure to kick things off for the
year by bringing you an interview with Australian web accessibility
pioneer Dr Andrew Arch..."
http://www.accessiq.org/news/w3c-column/2014/01/an-interview-with-australian-accessibility-pioneer-dr-andrew-arch

+09: TOOLS.

Why Codesign Tools are the Future of Web Design
By Leigh Howells.
"Co-what tools? I hear you ask. Ok, so I invented that word to
categorise software such as Webflow, Adobe Reflow and Macaw (not
available yet) as I didn't know what to collectively call them. These
new tools, and more like them, are slowly edging their way into the
web designers' world and would really like to revolutionise how we
think and design for the web..."
http://boagworld.com/design/why-codesign-tools-are-the-future-of-web-design/

+10: TYPOGRAPHY.

The Science Behind Fonts (and how they make you feel)
By Mikael Cho.
"The right font choice along with the absence of sidebars and popups
makes everything feel easier and better to read. Websites like Medium,
Signal vs. Noise, and Zen Habits are like yoga studios for content.
Their presentation of content puts me at peace while reading, allowing
me to fully focus on the stories without distraction."
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/12/23/science-behind-fonts-make-feel/

+11: USABILITY.

When Design Best Practices Become Performance Worst Practices
By Tammy Everts.
"Your design team has come up with a gorgeous prototype for the next
iteration of your home page. It conforms to known design and usability
best practices, and your testers loved it in the lab. You push the
design to your live site and the results are ...well, a little
disappointing. Not terrible, but your conversion rate hasn't made the
leap you expected..."
http://uxmag.com/articles/when-design-best-practices-become-performance-worst-practices

Don't Make Abbreviations a Puzzle For Me to Solve
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"...Don't leave your readers puzzling over what an abbreviation means.
Share the explanation with them early so they can focus on your
content, without wondering what that group of four letters means."
http://www.lireo.com/dont-make-abbreviations-puzzle-for-readers-to-solve/

Infinite Scrolling Is Not for Every Website
By Hoa Loranger.
"Endless scrolling saves people from having to attend to the mechanics
of pagination in browsing tasks, but is not a good choice for websites
that support goal-oriented finding tasks."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/infinite-scrolling/

User Friendly Online Forms
By Svetlana V. Kouznetsova.
"I've came across enough of online forms to say that many of them have
usability and accessibility issues regardless of whether you have a
disability or not. I would like to list some of them."
http://svknyc.com/journal/2014/01/user-friendly-online-forms/

Writing for the Web #4 - Lists
By Linnea Ann Williams.
"This is the fourth post in my series on Writing for the Web. In this
post, I will outline some options for how to use lists online..."
https://swsblog.stanford.edu/blog/writing-web-4-lists

[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.]