[webdev] Web Design Update: October 2, 2014

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Oct 2 06:37:02 CDT 2014 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 14, October 2, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 14 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: EVENTS.
05: HTML5.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: NAVIGATION.
09: TYPOGRAPHY.
09: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

This One Secret Will Save you $100,000 on Accessibility
By Karl Groves.
"The cost of remediation actually has two faces: The actual
time-on-task it takes to fix issues, of course, but also the lost
opportunity dollars that come from development staff time being
diverted to bug fixes rather than being spent on new features. We'll
skip past the opportunity cost for now because the actual remediation
cost is enough to get our point across anyway..."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2014/09/29/this-one-secret-will-save-you-100000-on-accessibility/

Vestibular Issues in Parallax Design
By Dennis Lembree.
"Over the last year or so, a design trend in the web and mobile world
has been transition animations, parallax effects, and the like. For
many users, this can cause vestibular issues; the symptom is usually
vertigo, or a feeling of motion sickness..."
http://www.webaxe.org/vestibular-issues-parallax-design/

Accessibility Camp Toronto Slides - Selfish Accessibility
By Adrian Roselli.
"I'll add some photos and other notes after I've the event is over and
I've had a chance to write up my thoughts. In the meantime, my
slides..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/09/accessibility-camp-toronto-slides.html

Why the WCAG 2.0 Reading Level Criterion is Doomed
By Rachel McAlpine.
"here's a major problem with the international web accessibility
guideline designed to ensure that web content is as clear and simple
as possible..."
http://www.contented.com/blogs/news/15409689-why-the-wcag-2-0-reading-level-criterion-is-doomed

Higher Education Websites Unsuitable for Special Needs  Students, says Report
By Colm Gorey.
"A new study has found that poorly-designed Irish higher education
websites could be contributing to significant dropouts among students
with particular disabilities because they cannot access certain
assignment services..."
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/38436-higher-education-websites-u

Lack of Skills and Awareness Fuel Web Inaccessibility, Survey Finds
By Headstar.
"Lack of skills or knowledge and lack of awareness of web
accessibility are responsible for the great majority of website
accessibility problems, according to a US survey of web accessibility
practitioners..."
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=1057

For Bill on Disabled Access to Online Teaching Materials, the Devils
in the Details
By Rebecca Koenig.
"As smart classrooms become the norm on more campuses and online
courses proliferate, some observers worry that the digital revolution
will leave students with disabilities behind. But a bill under
consideration in the U.S. Congress, the Technology, Equality, and
Accessibility in College and Higher Education Act (HR 3505), would
deal with that concern by creating accessibility guidelines for
electronic materials used or assigned by college professors and
administrators..."
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/for-bill-on-disabled-access-to-online-teaching-materials-the-devils-in-the-details/

Law, Policy -- and IT?
By Tracy Mitrano.
"Tracy Mitrano explores the intersection where higher education, the
Internet and the world meet (and sometimes collide)."
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/law-policy-and-it/convergence

Portland Community College Launches Web Accessibility MOOC for Educators
By Joshua Bolkan.
"Portland Community College (PCC) has teamed with a private partner to
launch a massive open online course (MOOC) for educators that will
address Web accessibility concerns associated with online learning..."
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/09/29/portland-community-college-launches-web-accessibility-mooc-for-educators.aspx


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

On Declaration Sorting in CSS
By Jens Meiert.
"..."Type sorting is extraordinarily ineffective, for it's extremely
slow and consistently unreliable (or reliably inconsistent)..."
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20140924/on-declaration-sorting/

How to Code Object Orientated CSS
By Sara Vieira.
"It sounds really impossible that a language like CSS can be object
oriented but it is possible to implement OOP ideas in CSS to make it
into a much more pleasant writing experience whilst along the way
making your CSS faster to load..."
http://www.developerdrive.com/2014/09/how-to-code-object-orientated-css/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

6 Tips for Better Data Analysis
By Jeff Sauro.
"While you always can't control the quality of the responses, or the
questions asked to participants, you can make the most with the data
you receive by using these six techniques the next time you analyze
data..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/better-analysis.php


+04: EVENTS.

Web Accessibility MOOC for Online Educators
Registration is open from September 29 until November 14, 2014.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).
https://opencourses.desire2learn.com/cat/course/web-accessibility-7195/


+05: HTML5.

Making Images Responsive
By Virginia DeBolt.
"I've been attempting to sort out in my own mind exactly what I needed
to be teaching students about responsive images. For a while, things
have been a bit wobbly in this area and there were no definite best
practice ideas. Thanks to the Responsive Images Community Group, I
think a consensus on best practice has gelled for now..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2014/09/29/making-images-responsive/

Responsive Images - If You're Just Changing Resolutions, Use srcset
By Chris Coyier.
"If you're implementing responsive images (different images in HTML
for different situations) and all you are doing is switching between
different versions of the same image (the vast majority of usage), all
you need is the srcset attribute on the <img>..."
http://css-tricks.com/responsive-images-youre-just-changing-resolutions-use-srcset/

To Picturefill, or not to Picturefill
By Scott Jehl.
"This week over at the always-bustling Responsive Images W3C mailing
list, a thread discussing whether we should more commonly use the
srcset and sizes attributes instead of the picture element (answer:
yes, we more commonly should) eventually led to another discussion
over whether to polyfill these features in unsupported browsers..."
http://filamentgroup.com/lab/to-picturefill.html

Accessibility in a Web Components World at MakingWeb
By Steve Faulkner.
"Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting at the 2nd MakingWeb
conference in Norway, I talked about web components."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/09/accessibility-in-a-web-components-world-at-makingweb/


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

ARIA in HTML - There Goes The Neighborhood
By Steve Faulkner.
"Will HTML5 make the use of WAI-ARIA in HTML redundant? the short
answer is definitely not. There are many ARIA roles and properties
that are not provided by native elements and attributes in HTML5. Also
developers still have the desire to roll their own interactive
controls or web components even though they have been available in
HTML as native elements for 15 years, why would this suddenly change
with HTML5?"
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/10/aria-in-html-there-goes-the-neighborhood/

Douglas Crockford -The Better Parts (Video)
By Douglas Crockford.
"Douglas Crockford is known as The JavaScript Guy. He's famous not
only for his O'Reilly book JavaScript: The Good Parts but even more so
as the visionary behind the JSON data format as well as the JSLint
tool."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo36MrBfTk4


+07: NAVIGATION.

Thoughts on Pagination
By Chris Coyier.
"I've had some disparate thoughts regarding pagination lately, so I
thought I'd attempt to organize them in a post..."
http://css-tricks.com/thoughts-pagination/


+08: TYPOGRAPHY.

Improving International Typography on the Web and in eBooks
By Richard Ishida.
"The W3C needs to make sure that the typographic needs of scripts and
languages around the world are built in to technologies such as HTML,
CSS, SVG, etc. so that Web pages and eBooks can look and behave as
expected for people around the world.
http://rishida.net/blog/?p=1153

@font-face with Font Load Events
By Zach Leatherman.
"@font-face is an established staple in the diet of almost half of the
web. According to the HTTP Archive, 47% of web sites make a request
for at least one custom web font. What does this mean for a casual
browser of the web? In this article, I make the argument that current
implementations of @font-face are actually harmful to the performance
and usability of the web. These problems are exacerbated by the fact
that developers have started using @font-face for two completely
different use cases: content fonts and icon fonts, which should be
handled differently. But there is hope. We can make small changes to
how these fonts load to mitigate those drawbacks and make the web work
better for everyone..."
https://dev.opera.com/articles/better-font-face/


+09: USABILITY.

Size Matters - Balancing Line Length And Font Size In Responsive Web Design
By Laura Franz.
"As we refine our methods of responsive web design, we've increasingly
focused on measure (another word for 'line length') and its
relationship to how people read."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/09/29/balancing-line-length-font-size-responsive-web-design/

The Most Hated Web Experience, and How to Do It Right (If You Have To)
By Hannah Alvarez.
"Ever since the early days of online marketing, pop-up ads have been
annoying..."
http://www.usertesting.com/blog/2014/09/23/the-most-hated-web-experience-and-how-to-do-it-right/

Customer Convenience
By Gerry McGovern.
"Today, time is more valuable than a Rolex watch. To save time in a
hassle-free way is the best gift you can give the busy, stressed
customer. Focus on increasing convenience for customers. Seek to
reduce the effort they have to make to do business with you."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/customer-convenience

Image-Focused Design - Is Bigger Better?
By Kathryn Whitenton.
"Large images are visually appealing, but they can harm the overall
user experience if they aren't appropriately prioritized."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/image-focused-design/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+10: 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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