[webdev] Web Design Update: July 23, 2014

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Wed Jul 23 06:25:54 CDT 2014 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 04, July 23, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 04 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: HTML5.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: TOOLS.
10: USABILITY.
11: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Data Tables and Accessibility
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"Tables are often used for representing tabular data on web pages. The
structure of a general data table consist of column or row header and
the cells against the headers. Some tables may have both column and
row headers. Captions which represent the heading for the tables are
also observed in few data tables. Few data tables may have a complex
structure with more than one header for same cell, content spanning
across the data cells."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/07/data-tables-accessibility/

Accessibility Basics
By W3C Web Education Community Group.
"When you create a web site, accessibility-making the web site usable
by everyone, regardless of their ability or disability-should always
be a central concern. So far in this course accessibility has always
been implicit in all the examples you've seen, even if you didn't
realise it; in this Web Standards Curriculum article I'll now look at
accessibility explicitly, so you can understand fully what it is, why
it is important, how to ensure that sites are accessible, and what
guidelines exist to define accessible sites..."
http://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Accessibility_basics

Provide User Interface Components that are Consistently Labelled
By Denis Boudreau.
"Make sure call to actions repeated on multiple pages are labelled
consistently..."
http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/92336374047/provide-user-interface-components-that-are-consistently

Evaluating Web Accessibility Efforts-A Guide for Accreditation Review Teams
By National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE).
"This document is a guide to help Accreditation Review Teams
understand and evaluate institutional evidence of web accessibility
efforts. These guidelines may also serve to assist institutions as
they develop, review and enhance their reaffirmation materials."
http://ncdae.org/goals/accreditation/guidelines.php

Justice Department Reaches Agreement with Orange County Clerk of
Courts in Florida to Ensure Equal Access to Court Records for Blind
Individuals
By Department of Justice.
"The Justice Department announced today that it has reached a
settlement with the Orange County Clerk of Courts in Florida to remedy
violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)..."
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/July/14-crt-751.html

Best Practices for the Audio Description of Live Events
By Robert Pearson.
"Accessible Media Inc.'s Director of Accessible Digital Media, Robert
Pearson, on the long road to making TV, film and video content
accessible through audio description."
http://www.accessiq.org/news/news/2014/07/best-practices-for-the-audio-description-of-live-events

Anti-Social - Feds Wonder Why Social Media Companies Drag Feet on
Accessibility Issues
By Greg Otto.
"The Federal Communications Commission hosted a panel of experts
Thursday to talk about the challenges and ongoing need to make social
media platforms more accessible to those with disabilities. But there
was one group of representatives notably absent from the proceedings:
the social media companies themselves..."
http://fedscoop.com/social-media-accessibility/

Accessibility is Good for the Planet
By Olivier Nourry (Correction from last week. Hat tip to Nicolas
Hoffmann. Apologies to Olivier.)
http://openweb.eu.org/articles/accessibility-is-good-for-the-planet


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Origin and Importance in the CSS Cascade (Screencast)
By Russ Weakley.
"Origin & Importance is one of the four steps of the CSS Cascade. This
step determines which declaration will win - between author, user, and
browser (or user-agent) styles..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/screencast-origin-importance-css-cascade/


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Why Isn't the Main Element in Dreamweaver CC's Insert Panel?
By Virginia DeBolt.
"One of the arguments Adobe uses to convince all of us that we want to
fork over a monthly subscription fee for Adobe products is that we get
all the latest updates. So why isn't the main element among the
choices in the Insert panel?..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2014/07/18/isnt-main-element-dreamweaver-ccs-insert-panel/


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Ten User Testing Bad Habits
By Susan Weinschenk.
"...here are 10 bad habits to watch out for when you are doing user testing..."
http://www.blog.theteamw.com/2014/07/20/ten-user-testing-bad-habits/

Accessibility Testing
By W3C Web Education Community Group.
"Web accessibility testing is a subset of usability testing where the
users under consideration have disabilities that affect how they use
the web. The end goal, in both usability and accessibility, is to
discover how easily people can use a web site and feed that
information back into improving future designs and implementations..."
http://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Accessibility_testing


+05: HTML5.

Responsive Images - Use Cases and Documented Code Snippets to Get You Started
By Andreas Bovens.
"Finally, true responsive images are becoming a reality on the web -
in pure HTML, without convoluted hacks..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/responsive-images/

On the Complexity of the Picture Element
By Bruce Lawson.
"... Responsive images addresses 4 different use-cases. There are also
new constructs like sizes and srcset to wrap your bonce around. So the
syntax for addressing all four at once is, at first sight, pretty
complex. But, like the most complex of the 24 English tenses, the
Future Passive Perfect Continuous tense*, you'll probably rarely need
it..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2014/on-the-complexity-of-the-picture-element/


+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Information Architecture - Planning Out a Web Site
By W3C Web Education Community Group.
"...This Web Standards Curriculum Table of contents article is going
to look at the early stages of planning out a web site, and a
discipline that is commonly referred to as Information architecture,
or IA. This involves thinking about who your target audience will be,
what information and services they need from a web site, and how you
should structure it to provide that for them. You'll look at the
entire body of information that needs to go on the site and think
about how to break that down into chunks, and how those chunks should
relate to one another..."
http://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Information_Architecture_-_planning_out_a_web_site

Towards a New Information Architecture
By Christina Wodtke.
"...IA has taken a long time to find its feet after the one-two punch
of interaction design and user experience (And I haven't even brought
up Content Strategy!) No amount of 'let's be friends' will change the
fact that IA has stagnated in the years following the rise of UX. He's
also not wrong that we need IA and IA thinking more than we ever have.
IA is not dead. Thank goodness. Because no matter whether you think
your digital product has 'content' or not, the world is made of data.
And somebody needs to make that world of data make sense to the humans
who live in it. In fact, I'm even going to argue it's making a
comeback..."
https://medium.com/@cwodtke/towards-a-new-information-architecture-f38b5cc904c0


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

An Introduction to WAI-ARIA
By Stephan Max.
"It might come as a shock, but I tell you: The web has changed! The
last eight years have seen the rise of Ajax, JavaScript, HTML5, and
countless front-end frameworks. Consequently, the internet is no
longer a place of static HTML pages, as funny as they sometimes are.
Rather, it has become a playground for complex, almost desktop-like
web applications, each with their own widgets, controls, and
behavior..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/introduction-wai-aria/


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Inclusive Design 24 (Screencasts)
By The Paciello Group.
"All 24 sessions from Inclusive Design 24 are now online at WebAble.tv"
http://www.webable.tv/Events/inclusivedesign.aspx

Designing for Accessibility
By Laura Kalbag.
Laura Kalbag's presentation at the New Worlds of JavaScript held
October 2-3, 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOM5eY5hG-Q

Is Usability Taking a Nose Dive? (Video)
By Steven Krug.
Steven Krug's NELAUX Presentation at the Art Center College of Design.
http://youtu.be/1LNB6SacvLQ
Steve's presentation slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/SteveKrug/nelaux-talk-pasadena-june-2014-posted-final

How to Communicate Primary Actions (Video)
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Luke W on how to get your users on track with clearly identified
Primary Actions and make their experience a positive one.."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl3OYHo2_b8


+09: TOOLS.

Online Sitemap Generator (Hat Tip: Troy Peterson)
By XML-Sitemaps.
"Build your Site Map online..."
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Refresh Your Cache
By refreshyourcache.
"...Refreshyourcache.com contains step by step guides to clear your
browser's cache forcing it to download all latest data from a
website..."
http://www.refreshyourcache.com/


+10: USABILITY.

Breaking Web Design Conventions = Breaking the User Experience
By Katie Sherwin.
"Bucknell University caused a stir with its unconventional responsive
redesign, but at a high cost to usability, as shown in tests with
students and parents...Minimalist and hidden navigation unanimously
frustrated users and prevented them from finding information...Tools
to customize homepage content and view browsing history are
underutilized....Glossy visual design made the site look nice, but
they hurt usability...the reality is that too often, resources are
spent on making the site look great or creating an innovative widget,
and usability is neglected until the very end of development (if it's
even ever looked at)...Any budget that has room for an expensive
glossy redesign should also have room for usability testing...Instead
of guessing what customers want, find out. Then design for your users,
not for glitz."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/breaking-web-conventions/

Using Top Tasks to be Top-Notch - Federal Reserve Board Usability Case Study
By Ben Rosset.
"The top-task process is easy to learn, execute, and repeat. It
involves your users at every step of the way to create a website that
features a menu structure your users will find intuitive and easy to
use. In short, it helps your users complete the tasks that are most
important to them in the shortest amount of time, leading to happy
users and happy clients!"
http://www.digitalgov.gov/2014/07/02/using-top-tasks-to-be-top-notch-federal-reserve-board-usability-case-study/

Focus on Legibility over Fancy Technology or Marketing Copy
By Paul Boag.
"People often spend too much time on cutting edge technology or
'clever' marketing campaigns, when basic things like legibility are
not in place."
http://boagworld.com/design/legibility/

Tweets Quoting 'Don't Make Me Think, Revisited'
By Dennis Lembree.
A short while ago, my author @DennisL read the excellent book Don't
Make Me Think, Revisited by acclaimed usability professional Steve
Krug..."
http://www.webaxe.org/tweets-quoting-dont-make-me-think-revisited/


+11: XML.

A Compendium of SVG Information
By Chris Coyier.
"A huge pile of information about SVG..."
http://css-tricks.com/mega-list-svg-information/


[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

Drupal Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.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

HTML Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.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.]

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