[webdev] Web Design Update: May 22, 2014

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 48, May 22, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 48 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: HTML5.
05: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Web Accessibility Toolkit
By Molly Schwartz.
"Research libraries have an important opportunity to meet the urgent
need to make  information resources accessible to all of their
patrons, regardless of ability or disability. In so doing, libraries
can fulfill their mission to be content leaders in higher education
and enhance information access to their users. The path forward
requires planning and collaboration across the research institution,
particularly with academic leadership, disability services offices,
and information technology units. This toolkit is here to help.
Accessibility is not only an ethical imperative; it is a legal
requirement."
http://accessibility.arl.org/

Transcripts and Captions - Do-It-Yourself or Outsource?
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"This is part 2 in an ongoing series on transcripts and captions for
videos and podcasts. Check out the first post in the series, Benefits
of Transcripts and Captions for Your Videos and Podcasts. Other posts
for the series are listed at the end of this post..."
http://www.lireo.com/transcripts-captions-do-it-yourself-or-outsource/

CU-Boulder Student Seeks Accessibility Through Federal Complaint
By Sarah Kuta.
"Esha Mehta working toward improving campus for students with visual
impairments..."
http://www.coloradodaily.com/cu-news/ci_25764266/cu-boulder-student-seeks-a%0Accessibility-through-federal-complaint

Create Bookmarks from the Content Structure in PDF Documents
By Denis Boudreau.
"Make sure PDF documents can be navigated using bookmarks..."
http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/86376311462/create-bookmarks-from-the-content-structure-in-pdf

Mobile And Accessibility - Why You Should Care And What You Can Do About It
By TJ VanToll.
"1. Make Sure Everything Works With The Keyboard; 2. Mark Up Forms
Semantically; 3. Provide Plenty Of Contrast; 4. Ensure That Screen
Readers Know What Your Controls Do; 5. Test Your Website On An Actual
Screen Reader..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/05/21/mobile-accessibility-why-care-what-can-you-do/

Easy Chirp Now Provides Accessible Images for Your Tweets
By Dennis Lembree.
"You can now provide accessible images for your Tweets using the
web-accessible Twitter client Easy Chirp (@EasyChirp) which allows a
title (a short description) and a long description to be entered along
with the image. The title is required."
http://www.webaxe.org/easy-chirp-now-provides-accessible-images-for-your-tweets/

Accessibility TV Network Crowd Funding Campaign Launched
By a11y.tv.
"The Accessibility Training Network (a11y.tv) is designed to teach you
how to reach this important market segment. Meant to be an affordable
subscription based training network, a11y.tv will create and present
courses on topics related to serving the needs of people with
disabilities as we build our new world..."
http://a11y.tv/


+02: DRUPAL.

The Drupal Accessibility Advantage
By Mike Gifford.
Mike's presentation from http://inclusivedesign24.org/ for Global
Accessibility Awareness Day.
www.slideshare.net/openconcept/inclusive-design-24-gaad-34727054

User Facing Accessibility Improvements in Core (Part 1 of D8 A11y Update)
By Mike Gifford.
"Drupal 7 still remains the most accessible open source CMS available.
The changes that the community began implementing in 2008 to improve
accessibility for the entire user interface (public, content editor,
administrator and developer) has still not been matched by any other
piece of web software (open source or proprietary). By focusing
accessibility efforts on improving Core, we are able to fix
accessibility problems by default regardless of what themes, or
extensions are used in any given implementation. That being said,
Drupal 8 is already considerably better, and not just because we
removed Overlay."
https://groups.drupal.org/node/420413

Accessibility Issues That Affect Administrators (Part 2 of D8 A11y Update)
By Mike Gifford.
"In Part 1, I mentioned Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)
although most of the analysis here will be geared to achieving Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA. Drupal is both about
web content and the process of authoring that content and ATAG 2.0 is
about both. For the most part we've looked at seeing that the admin
side of Drupal is as accessible as the public facing components. The
interface also has a strong role in producing better, more accessible
content. Being able to force alt text for images is a part of this,
but it is just the beginning..."
https://groups.drupal.org/node/422598


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Conducting User Testing
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"At yesterday's Clean Up Your Bad User Testing Habits webinar, Dr.
Susan Weinschenk highlighted the mistakes people make when planning,
conducting, and analyzing user testing and shared tips on how to avoid
those bad habits..."
http://www.lireo.com/top-10-mistakes-people-make-when-conducting-user-testing/


+04: HTML5.

A <picture> Perfect Problem
By Matt Wilcox.
"Any client-side solution to the responsive images problem must bake
into its mark-up the breakpoints that are in use in the current
design. Change the design and those breakpoints are likely to be
wrong. So you'll need to change all of the client-side mark-up that
references images. This is not something that can be worked around.
Picture is as good as it's going to get on the client side, and using
it will mean making that sacrifice..."
https://mattwilcox.net/archives/a-picture-perfect-problem/

Responsive Images Done Right - A Guide To <picture> And srcset
By Eric Portis.
"The latest specification of the <picture> element is the result of
years (years!) of debate on how to make images adapt. It gives authors
semantic ways to group multiple versions of the same image, each
version having technical characteristics that make it more or less
suitable for a particular user. The new specification has achieved
broad consensus and is being implemented in Chrome, Opera and Firefox
(maybe even Internet Explorer!) as I type. The time to start learning
this stuff is now!"
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/05/14/responsive-images-done-right-guide-picture-srcset/


+05: USABILITY.

Marketing Strength in Website Design - Don't Try to 'Blow the Doors Off'
By Bob Johnson.
"These designs may win creativity awards for being 'cool' and 'blowing
the doors off' conventional university websites. In the marketing
world, they fail against the clean and simple top task approach
introduced last year at University of Ottawa. Based on research to
learn the top tasks of site visitors, Ottawa gives page prominence to
just 4 links placed in the center of the page."
http://www.bobjohnsonblog.com/2014/04/website-marketing-strength-top-tasks-vs-design-creativity.html

What's Wrong with the Redesigned Bucknell University Website?
By Karine Joly.
"I don't know about you, but when 2 consultants working in higher
education, Bob Johnson and Gerry McGovern, take the time to publish 3
different posts on what's wrong with the redesigned website of an
institution AND Mark Greenfield tweets about it, it gets my
attention."
http://collegewebeditor.com/blog/index.php/archives/2014/05/15/whats-wrong-with-the-redesigned-bucknell-university-website/

The Definitive Guide to Form Label Positioning
By Jessica Enders.
"When it comes to the design and development of forms, one of the most
popular topics is the positioning of labels..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/definitive-guide-form-label-positioning/

Accordions Are not Always the Answer for Complex Content on Desktops
By Hoa Loranger.
"Longer pages can benefit users. Accordions shorten pages and reduce
scrolling, but they increase the interaction cost by requiring people
to decide on topic headings."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/accordions-complex-content/

Customer-Centric and Easy-to-Use is the New Business Model
By Gerry McGovern.
"Truly customer-centric companies will dominate the Internet Age."
http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/customer-centric-and-easy-use-new-business-model-alibaba-story

7 Reasons Usability Problems Don't Get Fixed
By Jeff Sauro.
"Finding and fixing usability problems is one of the most effective
ways for improving the user experience on websites, applications and
hardware.  But just because a problem is identified in a usability
test doesn't mean it gets fixed. While this may seem perplexing, there
are usually good reasons. Here are seven reasons why usability
problems often don't get fixed."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/problems-fixed.php

Good Design Ain't Pretty
By Luke Jones.
"Good design is not about making something pretty. It is about making
something usable and intuitive - the beauty of the product will be a
result of these things."
http://lukejones.me/archives/good-design-aint-pretty


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+06: 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.]