[webdev] Web Design Update: August 6, 2014

Wed Aug 6 06:23:03 CDT 2014

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 06, August 6, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 06 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML5.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues
By Anne Gibson.
"...This alphabet soup of accessibility is not a collection of
personas. These are friends and family I love. Sometimes I'm
describing a group. (One can only describe chemo brain so many times.)
Some people are more than one letter. (Yay genetic lottery.) Some
represent stages people were in 10 years ago and some stages we know
they will hit - we just don't know when..."
http://the-pastry-box-project.net/anne-gibson/2014-July-31

How to Be a Keyboard Accessibility Super Hero
By Derek Featherstone.
"You too can be a keyboard accessibility super hero if you do these
three simple things really well. The best part is, you don't even have
to work that hard to do them and they make you look brilliant!"
http://simplyaccessible.com/article/keyboard-superhero/

Two Important Tests for Website Accessibility
By Kyle Hebert.
"Once you've decided to improve accessibility, the first thing to do
is to work out where you are accessibility-wise and where you need to
go. This will differ based on your target audience, but Joe and
Crystal offered some basic tests that are good starting points..."
http://maptechworks.org/two-important-tests-for-website-accessibility/

Define Abbreviations or Acronyms on their First Occurrence in Content
By Denis Boudreau.
"Make sure abbreviations and acronyms are explained on their first
occurrence in content..."
http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/93590502707/define-abbreviations-or-acronyms-on-their-first

Programmatically Associate Abbreviations with Their Definitions
By Denis Boudreau.
"Make sure the meaning of abbreviations and acronyms is conveyed to
assistive technologies..."
http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/93678107207/programmatically-associate-abbreviations-with-their

PDF Accessibility - Accessible Forms in Acrobat XI
By WebAIM.
"Compared to HTML, PDF forms have some inherent accessibility
limitations. There is no real way to associate the visible text label
with the form field, but there is a way to provide a text description
that will be read to a screen reader while navigating through the PDF.
In addition to the accessibility principles outlined in the previous
page of this article, the following four steps are required to ensure
the accessibility of a PDF form..."
http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/forms

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

On Internet Explorer Supporting webkit Vendor Prefixes
By Bruce Lawson.
News is just in from Microsoft that Internet Explorer on Windows Phone
8.1 Update will support legacy webkit-prefixed features..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2014/on-internet-explorer-supporting-webkit-vendor-prefixes/

Remove Unused CSS to Reduce the Size of your Stylesheets
By Amit Agarwal.
"he CSS files of your website may have several redundant rules that
are no longer used by any element on the web pages. For instance, you
may have added a site search box on your website and associated styles
went into the stylesheet. Later, if you decide to remove that search
box, the styles may continue to exist in your CSS though they aren't
being used anywhere..."
http://www.labnol.org/internet/remove-unused-css/28635/

Adding a Sticky Footer with Flexbox
By Marc Drummond.
"If you work on almost any site design, you'll run into a fun little
problem: short pages, and the footers that hate them..."
http://marcdrummond.com/posts/2014/08/04/adding-sticky-footer-flexbox

Keep Sass Simple
By Hugo Giraudel.
"...at some point every single person using Sass (or any other
preprocessor for that matter) has been tempted to over-engineer
something to make things simple... be careful with what you're doing
in real projects. Above all, keep things simple. Less is more."
http://www.sitepoint.com/keep-sass-simple/

+03: DRUPAL.

math captcha (Drupal module)
WebAIM Thread.
"I'm evaluating a website for accessibility. This site has a math
captcha in which the math question is not read while in forms mode by
JAWS or NVDA. The user can use the up arrow key to hear the question,
but it is not read when tabbing into the form field..."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=6532

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Observing Usability Studies: A Guide for Stakeholders
By Cory Lebson.
"I love knowing that one or more stakeholders are going to observe a
study live. By doing so, they will gain a better understanding of the
issues and will more fully understand the associated recommendations.
Live in-person observation not only gives observers the opportunity to
pick up on visual cues and nuances during the study, but also lets
them easily ask questions or discuss their observations between the
sessions..."
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140710141212-46886-observing-usability-studies-a-guide-for-stakeholders

5 Provocative Views on Usability Testing
By David Travis.
"In July, I had the pleasure of being on a panel on usability testing
at the UXPA with Rolf Mohlich, Steve Krug, and Jakob Biesterfeldt. I
was asked to take a deliberately provocative view on 5 issues in
usability testing. In this article, I'll argue that these 5 common
beliefs about usability testing are false."
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/5-provocative-views.html

+05: EVENTS.

dConstruct 2014
September 5, 2014.
Brighton, England, United Kingdom
http://2014.dconstruct.org/

Web Accessibility Training
October 7-8, 2014.
Logan, Utah, U.S.A.
http://webaim.org/training/

+06: HTML5.

The HTML5 longdesc Attribute is Finally Home Again
By Shelley Powers.
"...The transition of @longdesc to CR status demonstrates that the
HTML5 working process has, indeed, grown up."
http://burningbird.net/html5-longdesc-attribute-finally-home-again

Using the tabindex Attribute
By Leonie Watson.
"The HTML tabindex attribute is used to manage keyboard focus. Used
wisely, it can effectively handle focus within web widgets. Used
unwisely however, the tabindex attribute can destroy the usability of
web content for keyboard users..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/08/using-the-tabindex-attribute/

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

How to Provide Accessible Error Identification
By Jonathan Avila.
"This post covers the basics of providing accessible form error
identification to users with disabilities. Accessible error
identification in particular benefits users who are blind or visually
impaired and users with cognitive impairments. Good error
identification has benefits to all users. The Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level A and AA provide three main
success criteria (SC) for accessible error identification..."
https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2014/08/04/how-to-provide-accessible-error-identification/

ARIA Cheat Sheet
By Karl Groves.
Includes Landmark Roles, Widget Roles and States & Properties
http://www.karlgroves-sandbox.com/ariacheatsheet.php

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Open Web Camp VI Videos
By Evan Davis.
"On July 12, 2014 the sixth annual Open Web Camp went down in San
Jose. The NewCircle crew was lucky enough to attend, and we brought
some cameras too. Please enjoy these sessions from a select group of
speakers dedicated to making the web an open and accessible place for
everyone!"
https://thenewcircle.com/s/post/1621/open_web_camp_vi_videos

+09: NAVIGATION.

2.4.5 Multiple Ways
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"More than one way is available to locate a Web page within a set of
Web pages except where the Web Page is the result of, or a step in, a
process. (Level AA). Description A website may differ ranging a simple
website of 4-5 pages to thousands of web pages. Searching for
information on..."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/07/2-4-5-multiple-ways/

+10: USABILITY.

Print is View, Web is Do
By Gerry McGovern.
"How much of your organization's online world is made up of dead zones
and how much is do zones? A dead zone is any space where there's
nothing to do. It's a big pretty picture, or a huge graphic-heavy
masthead, or a long-winded explanation of what you do or what the
customer can do. The customer doesn't want an explanation of what they
can do. They just want to do."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/print-view-web-do

3 Questions With Usability Expert Dr. Jakob Nielsen
By Paul Brooks.
"What's the biggest usability mistake you see in corporate web design?
Not getting to the point. Beating around the bush. Corporate websites
have big pictures of things that people don't care about that delay
them in finding the answers to their questions. Or the websites don't
even answer their questions. The one thing users ask the most is,
'What's the price?' and it's amazing how often you can't see the
price'..."
http://simplicity.laserfiche.com/content/3-questions-usability-expert-dr-jakob-nielsen

How We Read
By Jason Stanta Maria.
"We're pleased to share an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Jason Santa
Maria's new book, On Web Typography, available now from A Book Apart."
http://alistapart.com/article/how-we-read

Maximize the Content-to-Chrome Ratio, Not the Amount of Content on Screen
By Raluca Budiu.
"On a large screen, hiding the chrome significantly affects
discoverability and interaction cost, with virtually no improvement to
the content-to-chrome ratio."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-chrome-ratio/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.

+ 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.]