[webdev] Web Design Update: May 15, 2014

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu May 15 06:27:59 CDT 2014 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 47, May 15, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 47 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: DRUPAL.
03: HTML5.
04: JAVASCRIPT.
05: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: TYPOGRAPHY.
08: USABILITY.
09: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day May 15
By ITSS, University of Minnesota Duluth.
"Discover what Accessibility Awareness Day is and check out over 30
ways you can celebrate it..."
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/itsshelp/news/2014/04/celebrate-global-accessibility-awareness-day-may-15.html

5 Questions to Ask to Gauge Web Accessibility Compliance
By Abbe Miller.
"...To determine the accessibility of your website, the following
questions can be used as the foundation for future development
conversations..."
http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/5-questions-ask-gauge-web-accessibility-compliance-0842802

4 Guiding Principles for Providing Online Accessibility
By Abbe Miller.
"...In 2008, the World Wide Web Consortium established its web content
accessibility guidelines to enhance website usability. The group's
recommendations were broken into four guiding principles, which still
serve as the backbone for creating accessible websites today..."
http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/4-guiding-principles-providing-online-accessibility-0833288

Writing Appropriate Alternate Text for Images
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"Alternate text for images is the first standard or practice that
comes into mind when we talk about accessibility. People think adding
an alternate text for images is as simple as providing an alt
attribute. I don't want to argue if it is simple or complex at this
point. I want to leave it up to the readers but come to a conclusion
after reading this article. 1.1.1 Non-text content of WCAG 2.0
mandates that every image should have an alternate text."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/05/writing-appropriate-alternate-text-images/

Let Your Users Check and Change Their Submissions
By Luke McGrath.
"Some of your users are more likely to make mistakes than others. They
may have difficulty concentrating, using forms or understanding
instructions. You can help these users by allowing them to check their
submissions and confirm them before they're sent."
http://www.wuhcag.com/error-prevention-all/

Help Your Users Fill Out Forms Before They Need You
By Luke McGrath.
"...This article explains what you need to do to meet Guideline 3.3.5
- Help from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0..."
http://www.wuhcag.com/help/

Content and Web Accessibility
By Derek Featherstone.
"If you're not considering content strategy, creation, and writing an
essential part of web accessibility, you're failing."
http://simplyaccessible.com/article/content-web-accessibility/

WordPress Accessibility Plug-in - Who Needs It?
By Joe Doleson.
"The WP Accessibility plug-in contains features that will be useful to
all WordPress sites, such as support for the longdesc attribute. Even
if your theme was designed with accessibility in mind, there's a place
for the WP Accessibility plug-in on your site."
https://www.joedolson.com/articles/2014/05/wordpress-accessibility-plug-needs/


+02: DRUPAL.

Introduction to Views 3 in Drupal 7
By Daniel Sipos.
"Views is one of the most popular Drupal modules with over 5 million
downloads and over 700 thousand sites that report using it. It is so
popular that Drupal 8 will ship with Views in core as part of an
exciting and welcomed initiative of the Drupal 8 release process..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/introduction-views-3-drupal-7/


+03: HTML5.

The New srcset and Sizes Explained
By Martin Wolf.
"Last sunday I sat down on my couch, got comfy and started reading up
on the new srcset and sizes syntax. I wanted to understand it and then
starting to use it now with the awesome picture/srcset/sizes polyfill
picturefill 2."
http://martinwolf.org/2014/05/07/the-new-srcset-and-sizes-explained/


+04: JAVASCRIPT.

Keyboard Accessible Google Map
By Pierre Frederiksen.
"The basic map controls for Google maps (pan, zoom and the Map and
Satellite buttons) are not keyboard accessible by default. This can be
addressed by adding a short script to your page..."
http://www.visionaustralia.org/digital-access-googlemap

Make Your Site Work on Touch Devices
By Patrick H Lauke.
"Patrick H Lauke demonstrates how to make your site work on touch
devices in an introduction to handling touch events in JavaScript..."
http://www.creativebloq.com/javascript/make-your-site-work-touch-devices-51411644

ECMAScript 6's New Array Methods
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"This blog post explains what new array methods ECMAScript 6 will
bring and how to use them in current browsers..."
http://www.2ality.com/2014/05/es6-array-methods.html

Understanding the Four Layers of JavaScript OOP
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"JavaScript OOP is baffling: on one hand, there is a simple core, on
the other hand, there are some really weird things going on..."
http://www.2ality.com/2014/05/oop-layers.html


+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

Sarah Horton and Jonathan Lazar - Accessibility Research Methods (Interiew)
By Sean Carmichael.
"Accessibility research can help us better understand how people with
disabilities use the web and what we in product design and development
can do to make that experience more successful and enjoyable. However,
accessibility research is often carried out in academia. The valuable
insights gained through research are shared and built upon among
scholars, but often do not make their way into the practice of people
who are designing and building digital products and services...."
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2014/05/09/sarah-horton-and-jonathan-lazar-accessibility-research-methods/


+06: NAVIGATION.

Efficiently Simplifying Navigation, Part 1 - Information Architecture
By Anastasios Karafillis.
"This series of articles, divided into two parts, is a four-step guide
to efficiently simplifying the navigation experience, by analyzing the
type and amount of content as well as choosing and carefully designing
the right type of navigation menu..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/12/03/efficiently-simplifying-navigation-information-architecture/

Efficiently Simplifying Navigation, Part 2 - Navigation Systems
By Anastasios Karafillis.
"How do we make navigation as simple and predictable as possible? As
explained in part 1 of this series, the first two steps are to
structure content in a way that naturally narrows the navigation
options, and to explain those options in a way that minimizes the
cognitive load on users. However, two more steps are required..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/05/09/efficiently-simplifying-navigation-systems/

Bad Intranet Navigation Labels: 3 Workarounds
By Kathryn Whitenton.
"Many intranets are saddled with poorly-understood labels. If you
can't change them, add context to make these labels more transparent
to users..."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/fixing-bad-intranet-navigation/

URLs are Already Dead
By Nicholas C. Zakas.
"...The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this move
was not only okay for the web, but it is the next logical step in a
process that has been ongoing for sometime now..."
http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2014/05/06/urls-are-already-dead/


+07: TYPOGRAPHY.

Using Small Caps and Text Figures on the Web
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"Typography on the Web is slowly getting better. These days it is not
unusual to see custom fonts in use, and oftentimes, though not always,
set in comfortable sizes, with enough padding and line spacing to
ensure a pleasant reading experience. And yet, some important
typographical tools are still being ignored. In this post I'll talk
about two such tools: small caps and text figures..."
http://usabilitypost.com/2014/05/10/using-small-caps-and-text-figures-on-the-web/


+08: USABILITY.

It's About Branding (How Traditional Branding is Killing the Web)
By Gerry McGovern.
"Of course, everything you are now about to read is fictional. Most
real customers couldn't be bothered writing to organizations to vent
their annoyance. They just leave."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/it%E2%80%99s-about-branding-how-traditional-branding-killing-web

Placeholders in Form Fields Are Harmful
By Katie Sherwin.
Placeholder text within a form field makes it difficult for people to
remember what information belongs in a field, and to check for and fix
errors. It also poses additional burdens for users with visual and
cognitive impairments.
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/form-design-placeholders/

Error Messages Are Evil
By Don Norman.
"...Error messages punish people for not behaving like machines. It is
time we let people behave like people. When a problem arises, we
should call it machine error, not human error: the machine was
designed wrong, demanding that we conform to its peculiar
requirements. It is time to design and build machines that conform to
our requirements. Stop confronting us: Collaborate with us."
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/error_messages_are_e.html


+09: XML.

The Designer's Guide to Working with SVG - Pt 1
By Alex Walker.
"What's the big deal about SVG, anyway? Don't you just hit 'Save as
SVG' in Illustrator, and you've got yourself an SVG?  Yes and no.
While it's technically true, by the same logic, every MS Word user is
technically a web developer..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/designers-guide-working-with-svg/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+10: 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.

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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.]

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