[webdev] Web Design Update: December 31, 2014

Wed Dec 31 13:47:58 CST 2014

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 27, December 31, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 27 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: EVENTS.
04: JAVASCRIPT.
05: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
07: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessibility - It's not as Hard as You Think
By Chris Northwood.
"I've been fortunate enough to spend most of my career so far in an
organisation where accessibility is part of the culture, so when I see
inaccessible code, it's as jarring to me as I'm sure code like this is
to most developers who've learnt a bit about security..."
https://medium.com/@cnorthwood/accessibility-its-not-as-hard-as-you-think-59dd48582803

2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"People who have difficulty in reading stationary text quickly, those
who will be distracted easily and those who use screen readers face
difficulty in reading the content that is moving, blinking or
scrolling..."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/12/2-2-2-pause-stop-hide/

Advanced Form Labeling
By Jared Smith.
"WebAIM's forms article has been expanded to include information on
aria-labelledby and aria-describedby"
http://webaim.org/techniques/forms/advanced

Mark Zuckerberg Seeks Ideas for Next Year's Personal Challenge (Facebook post)
Comment by Leonie Watson.
"Do not use a mouse, trackpad or any other pointer device on any piece
of technology you use, to understand the way people with disabilities
(that mean they either cannot see well enough to use a pointer or do
not have the dexterity to do so) experience the web on a daily basis."
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101822067339241?comment_id=10101822982570111&offset=0&total_comments=38320

Quail Accessibility Testing Framework - 2014 Project Conclusion Report
By J. Renee Beach.
"Late in 2013 the Quail project and the Kwaliteits Instituut
Nederlandse Gemeenten (KING) organization of the Netherlands joined
together to improve automated testing of accessibility support on web
pages. KING brought resources and knowledge to Quail and without their
support, this project would not have improved at such a rapid pace..."
https://medium.com/@jessebeach/quail-accessibility-testing-framework-2014-project-report-d64f7d6275d7

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS Grid Layout 2014 Recap: Specification Evolution
By Manuel Rego Casasnovas.
"Year 2014 is coming to an end, so it's the perfect timing to review
what has happened regarding the CSS Grid Layout spec, which Igalia has
been implementing in both Blink and WebKit engines, as part of our
collaboration with Bloomberg..."
http://blogs.igalia.com/mrego/2014/12/30/css-grid-layout-2014-recap-specification-evolution/

Copying Content Styled with Text-Transform
By Adrian Roselli.
"Using the CSS property text-transform to automatically shift copy to
uppercase has been popular for a while now, but a combination of a
recent explosion in the use of that style and my slow move to Chrome
as my default browser has caused me to regularly paste text into
emails, tweets, and blog posts that is not what I expect."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2012/06/copying-content-styled-with-text.html

Approaches to Media Queries in Sass
By Eduardo Boucas.
"Using media queries in CSS as part of responsive websites is bread
and butter stuff to todays front-end developer. Using preprocessors to
make them more comfortable to write and easier to maintain has become
common practice as well..."
http://css-tricks.com/approaches-media-queries-sass/

+03: EVENTS.

W3C HTML5 Training
February 2-March 15, 2015.
Online.
http://www.w3devcampus.com/html5-w3c-training/

Responsive Web Design
February 6-March 16, 2015.
Online.
http://www.w3devcampus.com/responsive-web-design-w3c/

ConvergeSE
April 15-18, 2015.
Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.A.
http://convergese.com/

Fluent Conference
April 20-22, 2015.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
http://fluentconf.com/javascript-html-2015

Industry
April 22, 2015.
Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom
http://2015.industryconf.com/

Front-Trends
May 6-8, 2015.
Warsaw, Poland
http://2015.front-trends.com/

An Event Apart Boston
May 11-13, 2015.
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
http://aneventapart.com/event/boston-2015

GOTO Chicago
May 11-14, 2015.
Chicago, Illiois, U.S.A.
http://gotocon.com/chicago-2015

+04: JAVASCRIPT.

Accessible Timeout Notifications
By Leonie Watson.
"When a web application has a session timeout, it's a good idea to
warn users about the impending timeout and give them the opportunity
to do something about it. It's therefore important to make sure that
all users know when the warning notification appears..."
http://tink.uk/accessible-timeout-notifications/

Symbols in ECMAScript 6
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Symbols are a new primitive type in ECMAScript 6. This blog post
explains how they work."
http://www.2ality.com/2014/12/es6-symbols.html

+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

A New Microsoft Browser?
By Peter-Paul Koch.
"Recently the news broke that Microsoft may be working on another
browser instead of IE. After reviewing the available evidence I've
come to the conclusion that, although Microsoft is making a few
adjustments, and a name change for IE might be a good idea, the new
browser will essentially be IE12. Still, I think we web developers
should support the 'new browser' narrative..."
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2014/12/a_new_microsoft.html

Interactive Git Tutorials
By Jacob Gube.
"To be completely honest, I find Git to be a dry subject. But a
version control system is essential to a modern dev workflow so I had
to learn it. Any good VCS is fine but Git seems to be the most
popular. So I went with Git..."
http://sixrevisions.com/git/interactive-git-tutorials/

+06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Style Guide Best Practices
By Brad Frost.
"Style guides and pattern libraries are essential tools to help Web
teams maintain sanity while creating experiences for our multi-device
Web..."
http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/style-guide-best-practices/

+07: USABILITY.

M-Commerce: Terrible UX (at least during Christmas 2014)
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Traffic and sales data collected by IBM shows that e-commerce sites
had 288% higher conversion rates on desktop than on smartphones during
Christmas 2014."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/m-commerce-terrible-ux/

Broken All the Way Down - Seeking Basic Information from Southwest Airlines
By Jeffery Zeldman.
"...Design, user experience, customer service: whatever you call it,
it seems some companies will only be driven to it when it is too
late."
http://www.zeldman.com/2014/12/27/broken-all-the-way-down-seeking-basic-information-from-southwest-airlines/

Average Page Weight Increases 15% in 2014
By Craig Buckler.
"The HTTP Archive Report collates information from almost half a
million of the web's most popular websites. The latest figures
indicate that average page weight has increased by 15% in one year to
reach 1,953Kb - a little under 2Mb - and comprises 95 individual HTTP
requests. While this is smaller than the 32% increase in 2013, it
remains cause for concern..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/average-page-weight-increases-15-2014/

7 More Controversial Usability and UX predictions for 2015...
By W Craig Tomlin.
"My very first set of usability predictions was originally posted 5
years ago. So how did I do? And what are my more even controversial
predictions for 2015?..."
http://www.usefulusability.com/7-more-controversial-usability-and-ux-predictions-for-2015/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+08: 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.]