[webdev] Web Design Update: September 4, 2014

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Sep 4 06:31:37 CDT 2014 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 10, September 4, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 10 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: 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.

2.4.6 Headings and Labels
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"The content of web page is structured with content, headings, form
elements etc. Heading for every article helps in identifying the
information it contains. Users can skim through the headings and read
the content they required. Similarly label for each form element
describes what the user needs to fill in or select to continue with
the form or submit the form."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/09/2-4-6-headings-labels/

Heading Structure For Accessibility
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"Headings play a crucial role in structuring a web page. Headings help
the users to skim through the page and find the information they need.
Especially in case of large documents headings are highly recommended
to enhance the user experience. While improving user experience,
proper heading structure increase search engine optimization (SEO) and
accessibility""
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/08/heading-structure-accessibility/

CAPTCHA, Cognitive Disabilities, v1 (W3C Task Force)
By John Rochford.
"...CAPTCHA often blocks people with physical and/or cognitive
disabilities who cannot discern the text they are required to enter
and submit. The scope of the problem is vast because, for example,
people with disabilities are prevented from purchasing goods and
registering for services on the (probably) millions of websites that
use CAPTCHA..."
http://clearhelper.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/captcha-cognitive-disabilities-v1-w3c-task-force/

How To Upload Transcripts to YouTube Videos
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"One of my user experience colleagues contacted me this week, asking
about uploading transcripts for a YouTube video. Unfortunately, he had
run into issues..."
http://www.lireo.com/upload-transcripts-youtube-videos/

Web Accessibility 101 Video Series - Screen Magnification Challenges - Forms
By Mike Schutte.
"In this week's featured video in our Web Accessibility 101 Series,
Client Services Director Mike Schutte demonstrates potential
challenges for users of screen magnification software when attempting
to complete form fields, and offers ideas for developers to improve
form accessibility..."
https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2014/08/28/web-accessibility-101-video-series-screen-magnification-challenges-forms/

Dragon 13 ARIA Support is Here
By Jonathan Avila.
Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 13 was release recently and adds
support for the Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA)
specification. Currently no release date has been set for Dragon
Naturally Speaking Professional 13 (the current version of
Professional is 12.5). Dragon is speech recognition software that
allows a user to dictate text as well as control their computer
through spoken commands.
https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2014/08/29/dragon-13-aria-support-is-here/

3 Great Reasons to Make Your Website Accessible
By Armando Roggio.
"For web designers and developers, web accessibility is the simple act
of making sites and apps available to everyone, including those with
disabilities..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/3-great-reasons-make-website-accessible/

Survey of Web Accessibility Practitioners Results
By WebAIM.
"In July 2014, WebAIM conducted a survey of web accessibility
practitioners. We received 900 valid responses to this survey..."
http://webaim.org/projects/practitionersurvey/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Centering in CSS - A Complete Guide
By Chris Coyier.
"Centering things in CSS is the poster child of CSS complaining. Why
does it have to be so hard? They jeer. I think the issue isn't that
it's difficult to do, but in that there so many different ways of
doing it, depending on the situation, it's hard to know which to reach
for.
So let's make it a decision tree and hopefully make it easier."
http://css-tricks.com/centering-css-complete-guide/

Getting Started with Sass, Part 1
By Laura Kalbag.
"Sass is a CSS pre-processor. When you write in the Sass language, you
use a compiler to convert your Sass files - usually written in the
.scss file format - into CSS. Sass adds handy functions, variables and
other script-like helpers that make CSS quicker to write and easier to
maintain..."
http://webstandardssherpa.com/reviews/getting-started-with-sass-part-1


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

The Relevance of Dreamweaver
By Virginia DeBolt.
"...I've certainly aired some complaints about Dreamweaver since
Creative Cloud came along. But that doesn't mean I think it's
irrelevant. Anyone who doesn't know enough to built a good website is
going to build a bad website whether they are using Dreamweaver or
some other tool. If I use Microsoft Word to write a terrible book, is
that the fault of Word? Developers have to know what they are doing.
When they do, their choice of software is just a choice. That software
will do what they tell it to do."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2014/08/27/relevance-dreamweaver/


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Demonstrate Thinking Aloud by Showing Users a Video
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Show a 1-minute demo video to your test participants to teach them
how to think aloud in a usability study and give you more useful
information."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/thinking-aloud-demo-video/

The Experiment Requires That You Continue - On The Ethical Treatment of Users
By Jeff Sauro.
"...The results of vague and manipulative policies have ramifications.
We've seen this with our loyalty and trust scores.  At some point bad
business practices turn into unethical practices. When that happens is
not always clear ahead of time. With some transparency and improved
comprehension coming from the industry itself, I suspect many of these
problems introduced by the technology will self-correct.   In the
interim, helping test the comprehension of such policies will help."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/ethical-treatment.php

Getting Inside Your Users' Heads: 9 Interviewing Tips
By Kay Corry Aubrey.
"...Crafting a single statement that encapsulates your interview
objectives will help you and your teammates to stay focused and make
good decisions about which questions to cover..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/09/getting-inside-your-users-heads-9-interviewing-tips.php


+05: EVENTS.

Universal Design for Digital Media
September 22, 2014 - January 1, 2015.
Online MOOC via University of Colorado Boulder
https://www.canvas.net/courses/universal-design-for-digital-media

Web Visions Berlin
October 24-25, 2014.
Berlin, Germany
http://www.webvisionsevent.com/berlin/

Breaking Development
November 3-5, 2014.
Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.
http://bdconf.com/events/orlando-2014/

Future of Web Design
November 3-5, 2014.
New York, New York, U.S.A.
https://futureofwebdesign.com/nyc-2014/

Full Frontal
November 7, 2014.
Brighton, England, United Kingdom
http://2014.full-frontal.org/


+06: HTML5.

How a New HTML Element Will Make the Web Faster
By Scott Gilbertson.
"Today, the average size of a webpage is 1.7MB-1MB from images-but
change is afoot..."
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/how-a-new-html-element-will-make-the-web-faster/

Re: Usefulness of Language Annotations
By Richard Ishida.
"Here are some comments from me on your blog post to reply to the
question 'Hence, what data and evidence did I miss? And what else could,
or should, we do?'."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2014JulSep/0202.html


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Working with Images in JavaScript
By Dori Smith and Tom Negrino.
"Rollovers are a great tool, but you can do much more than rollovers
with JavaScript, such as automatically change images, create ad
banners, build slideshows, and display random images on a page. In
this chapter from JavaScript: Visual QuickStart Guide, 9th Edition,
you'll learn how to make JavaScript do all of these image tricks."
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2239154&WT


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

A Magna Carta for the Web (Video)
By Tim Berners Lee.
"Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web 25 years ago. So it's
worth a listen when he warns us: There's a battle ahead. Eroding net
neutrality, filter bubbles and centralizing corporate control all
threaten the web's wide-open spaces. It's up to users to fight for the
right to access and openness. The question is, What kind of Internet
do we want?"
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_a_magna_carta_for_the_web

The Damage of Examples
By Joe Dolson.
"...If you're going to teach somebody about the web, and how to create
good products, that means making sure that every example gives the
opportunity to do something right - not just a test scenario, to prove
that something works in general terms. Education needs to be
integrated: it should never be an option to learn how to do something
incorrectly. Whatever the specific issue that's being addressed, the
examples used must not simplify to the point that they introduce new
problems."
https://www.joedolson.com/2014/09/damage-examples/


+09: NAVIGATION.

Quicklinks - Bad Label or Indicative of Usability Issues
By Kara Pernice.
"A QuickLinks UI design pattern often surfaces as a poor fix for
addressing findability and discoverability issues on intranets. Acting
as a catch-all for different types of links causes a separate set of
issues. And QuickLinks is always a vague label.
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/quicklinks-label-intranet


+10: USABILITY.

Insights on Switching, Centering, and Gestures for Touchscreens
By Steven Hoober.
"...Touch devices are still fairly new. We're still developing
patterns for interactions and are just now beginning to understand how
users understand and employ their touchscreen devices..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/09/insights-on-switching-centering-and-gestures-for-touchscreens.php


[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.


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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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