[webdev] Web Design Update: May 29, 2014

Thu May 29 06:24:12 CDT 2014

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 49, May 29, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 49 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: DRUPAL.
04: EVENTS.
05: HTML5.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
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.

ARIA-describedby
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"ARIA-describedby property is used when the content provided by the
HTML tags is not sufficient to explain complete information to the
user..."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/05/aria-describedby-property/

10 Things Everyone Can Do to Improve Access to Media
By Media Access Australia.
"...we have compiled a list of tips that everyone can use to make
someone's experience of media a little better. Accessibility is for
all of us - it benefits everyone, and everyone can do their part."
http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/digital-technology/global-accessibility-awareness-day-10-things-everyone-can-do-to-improve-access-to-media

Rely on CSS and Not Images of Text to Present Section Headings
By Denis Boudreau.
"Make sure section headings are set using the CSS font-face property
and not images of text..."
http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/86955003347/rely-on-css-and-not-images-of-text-to-present-section

LSAC Agrees To Pay Over $9 Million To Settle Lawsuit Over Testing
Accommodations And Commits To Substantial Injunctive Relief
By Seyfarth Shaw.
"...After two years of costly litigation, on May 20, 2014, the parties
announced an agreement to resolve the matter and filed a proposed
Consent Decree with the court. The Consent Decree includes a permanent
injunction specifying a number of affirmative steps that LSAC must
take to ensure the LSAT is accessible to persons with disabilities..."
http://www.adatitleiii.com/2014/05/lsac-agrees-to-pay-over-9-million-to-settle-lawsuit-over-testing-accommodations-and-commits-to-substantial-injunctive-relief/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Getting to Know CSS Blend Modes
By Shwetank Dixit.
"CSS Blend Modes provide a way to specify how one layer will interact
or 'blend' with the one underneath. Until now, this was the domain of
photo editing applications, but now they are available on the web
using CSS itself..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/getting-to-know-css-blend-modes/

HTML5 Forms - CSS
By Craig Buckler.
"In the second article of this three-part series about HTML5 forms,
we're going to look at styling or - more specifically - the
pseudo-class selectors you can use to target input fields in various
states. If you haven't read it already, please refer to part one to
ensure you understand the basic markup concepts..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/html5-forms-css/

+03: DRUPAL.

How to Create Your Own Drush Command
By Daniel Sipos.
"Drush is a command line tool built to assist you in working with
Drupal from the terminal. It comes by default with a bunch of useful
commands, such as downloading, enabling or even updating modules. But
modules can define their own commands to have Drush perform operations
using their code..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/drupal-create-drush-command/

Light-Weight Solution to Provide Custom View Modes and Suggest Related
Templates in Drupal 7
By Jeff Beeman.
"When it comes to providing custom view modes for entities in Drupal,
most developers turn immediately to Display Suite or Entity View
Modes. Display Suite is very powerful, but I've found it to be far too
"heavy" for most of my use cases. In this case, by "heavy" I mean that
the module days way more than I need it to. It does a lot of things I
simply don't want on my site. Entity view modes is a lighter-weight
approach to supplying additional view modes, but I found that even it
was cumbersome when it came to managing my view mode configuration in
an easily-deployable way..."
http://jeffbeeman.com/node/326

+04: EVENTS.

AbilityNet Webinars
AbilityNet provides "accessibility webinars (to) help make the web a
more accessible place."
http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/advice-info/webinars

+05: HTML5.

HTML5 Developer Conference Slides - Selfish Accessibility
By Adrian Roselli.
"Today I had the pleasure of speaking at the HTML5 Developer
Conference in lovely San Francisco. I presented on accessibility and
how it relates to you as a current and future user with my
presentation Selfish Accessibility..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/05/html5-developer-conference-slides.html

Sections and Articles are Not Generic Containers
By Virginia DeBolt.
"he proper use of section and article elements in HTML5 is one of the
sticking points to good implementation. If you're teaching HTML5, or
just learning about HTML5, here's a tip for you..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2014/05/26/sections-articles-generic-containers/

HTML5 Forms - The Markup
By Craig Buckler.
"This is the first in a three-part series about web forms. We'll cover
the basic markup in this article before progressing to styling and the
client-side JavaScript validation APIs. I recommend you read this even
if you're already familiar with forms -- there are many new attributes
and gotchas! HTML forms may be mundane but they're essential for the
majority of web sites and apps. In HTML4, input fields were limited
to.."
http://www.sitepoint.com/html5-forms-markup/

+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

HTML Wireframes
By Brad Frost.
"or the first few years of my career, I didn't know that wireframes
existed. It wasn't until I started working at a larger agency that I
first encountered a strange new black-and-white InDesign world, where
multiple rounds of 100+ page PDFs were generated and presented to
clients..."
http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/post/html-wireframes/

Exploring the Phase-Space of Information Architecture
By Marsha Haverty.
"I introduced the phase-space of information architecture, a mapping
of the semantic neighborhoods created when we run through all the
permutations of the two flavors of information: perceptual and
linguistic...Here we will look in detail at the facets of each flavor
of information. Now that we've detailed the facets of our stuff of
design, let's situate ourselves in a design problem and visualize how
we may engage the phase-space of information architecture to
strategically turn the dials of perceptual and linguistic
information..."
http://praxicum.com/home/2014/5/12/exploring-the-phase-space-of-information-architecture-part-2

IA is the New (Old) UX
By Elisabeth Hubert.
"Information architecture relates to science as its models draw on
insights and theories of cognition. And its models relate to art as
they aim to create a meaningful experience."
http://www.elisabethhubert.com/2014/05/ia-is-the-new-old-ux/

The Present and  Future of Information Architecture
By Timothy Jaeger.
Interview with Peter Morville."We're in an era of service ecosystems.
This means we must wrangle with the challenges of digital strategy and
cross-channel user experience."
https://medium.com/information-architecture/4fc07ac9fe7f

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

WTF-ARIA
By Karl Groves.
"...So on the topic of 'Use ARIA first' vs. 'Use ARIA last', neither
is right. The right answer is to use ARIA whenever ARIA is the best
tool for the task at hand. That might be for a progressive enhancement
scenario when the user's browser doesn't support a specific feature,
or to enhance accessibility under certain use cases, or to create an
accessible widget that doesn't exist in native semantics. Blanket
statements don't help, but constructive guidance does."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2014/05/21/wtf-aria/

The Curious Case of JavaScript NaN
By Ariya Hidayat.
"NaN (meaning Not a Number) is a special value in JavaScript that
denotes an undefined or unrepresentable value. However, it can also
feel like it means 'Not a NaN' because NaN === NaN is false. Confused?
Ariya lays it out..."
http://ariya.ofilabs.com/2014/05/the-curious-case-of-javascript-nan.html

Checking Whether a Value is an Integer in JavaScript
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Integers lead an odd life in JavaScript. In the ECMAScript
specification, they only exist conceptually: All numbers are always
floating point and integers are ranges of numbers without decimal
fractions (for details, consult 'Integers in JavaScript' in 'Speaking
JavaScript'). In this blog post, I explain how to check whether a
value is an integer..."
http://www.2ality.com/2014/05/is-integer.html

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Live Stream - Global Accessibility Awareness Day - May 15, 2014
By Yahoo.
"This is the live stream from the Global Accessibility Awareness Day
event at Yahoo! in Santa Monica, CA. The purpose of the day is to get
people talking, thinking and learning about digital accessibility and
users with different disabilities. The event kicked off with a special
introduction by Tommy Edison..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJNkvLGLPnk

+09: NAVIGATION.

WAI-ARIA Landmark Roles Cheatsheet
By Nicolas Barrera.
"In practice, WAI-ARIA gives us more attributes to assign to elements.
There are two kinds of attributes, the role attribute and the aria-.*
attributes ('.*' meaning that what follows 'aria-' is variable).."
http://mcdlr.com/wai-aria-cheatsheet/

Mobile Navigation Menus and Great User Experience
By Page Laubheimer.
"But here's the thing: not nearly as many people as you might think
understand the nav burger convention."
http://www.newfangled.com/user_experience_mobile_menus_and_nav_burgers

SEO Study - Discovery Digital Networks Gets Boost by Adding Closed
Captions to YouTube Videos
By Lily Bond.
"Based on the results of this study, Discovery Digital Networks
decided to roll out captioning for the rest of their video content.
They were very pleased with the demonstrated increase in views, and
believe that the projected gains will be profitable for their
channels. Discovery Digital Networks - study shows that adding closed
captions to YouTube videos can have a dramatic immediate impact on
views, as well as a solid positive impact over time."
http://www.3playmedia.com/2014/05/19/seo-study-discovery-digital-networks-gets-boost-adding-closed-captions-youtube-videos/

+10: TYPOGRAPHY.

How Typography Affects Readers
By Ankit Oberoi.
"Often times we find ourselves spending hours crafting articles,
making sure that each word we select is the perfect one to project the
story we are trying to paint. But there is another factor, often
overlooked, that is just as important as writing great content:
Typography. Let's delve a little into the world of typography and see
how it affects readers. If you are someone who despite getting traffic
and producing quality content, just can'Äôt seem to get your readers
to stay, you will want to read this till the end."
http://www.adpushup.com/blog/how-typography-affects-readers/

+11: USABILITY.

Automatic Infinite Scrolling and Accessibility
By Derek Featherstone.	
"Automated infinite scrolling is a popular web design technique even
though it creates difficult accessibility problems for keyboard
users..."
http://simplyaccessible.com/article/infinite-scrolling/

The Scroll Up Bar
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"While these bars may be useful, they take up vertical space, reducing
the reading space the user has chosen for themselves by picking the
size of their browser window. Additionally, information displayed on
these bars does not do anything to aid the reading of the actual
content, making the bar more of a nuisance than help."
http://usabilitypost.com/2014/05/24/the-scroll-up-bar/

Why It's Still Important To Design 'Above The Fold'
By Steven Bradley.
"When I was first learning to design websites, a frequent topic of
conversation was the fold. I remember it being part of the very first
class I took and it found it's way into the discussion of several that
came after. Is it still relevant? I think so..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/above-the-fold/

Usability Moves Beyond the Screen
By Jason Deign.
"Web designers have long been aware of the need to make things easy
for Internet users. Now usability is increasingly an issue for other
technology areas."
http://newsroom.cisco.com/feature-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1415749

Writing for the Web #5: Paragraphs
By Linnea Ann Williams.
"This is the fifth post in my series on Writing for the Web. In this
post, I'll talk about how to write a good paragraph for the web."
https://swsblog.stanford.edu/blog/writing-web-5-paragraphs

10 Surprisingly Common But Painful User Experiences
By Jeff Sauro.
"...Inspired by some more general frustrations, we've quantified 10
surprisingly common but generally painful experiences you've almost
certainly encountered...."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/common-pain.php

[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.

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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.]