[webdev] Web Design Update: January 9, 2015

Fri Jan 9 06:26:28 CST 2015

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 28, January 9, 2015.

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

++ISSUE 28 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
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.

You Don't Have Accessibility Problems, You Have Quality Problems
By Karl Groves.
"...ignorance doesn't absolve you of the responsibility of doing a
good job and accessibility - like security, SEO, cross-platform
reliability, and meeting stated business requirements - is part of
doing a good job..."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2015/01/01/you-dont-have-accessibility-problems-you-have-quality-problems/

Basic Screen Reader Commands for Accessibility Testing
By Leonie Watson.
"When you test your website with a screen reader there are a few basic
commands you should know. Just remember not to make design decisions
based only on your tests. Even with these useful screen reader
commands, you won't experience things in the same way as a person who
uses a screen reader all the time..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/01/basic-screen-reader-commands-for-accessibility-testing/

Notes on Providing alt Text for Twitter Images
By Steve Faulkner.
"...What you can do pretty easily is provide the alt text as text in
the same tweet as the image (if it fits) or if it is a tweet from
someone else or there is not enough space to provide in the same tweet
you can reply to the tweet with an alt text..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/01/notes-on-providing-alt-text-for-twitter-images/

To Hell With Compliance
By Karl Groves.
"...if you think you can do only the bare minimum and call it
'compliant', you're mistaken. What you need to be concerned with is
the experience of the user: give a damn about what you're doing, and
make it usable. Then you'll be compliant."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2015/01/06/to-hell-with-compliance/

Defining Multiple Captions and alt Text for Responsive Images
By Ian Devlin.
"With the welcome rise of the <picture> element and srcset attribute,
we now have control over what images are loaded when, allowing us to
make our images more responsive, and even to change the image entirely
based on screen size. Of course showing a different image in this case
is not recommended, but it is possible that you might want to change
the focal point of the image, showing less of a larger image, and
highlighting a particular object or person within it. This is all well
and good, but what about the image's caption or alt text? How can we
provide different captions or alt text per image, should the need
arise?..."
http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2014/12/html5/defining-multiple-captions-and-alt-text-for-responsive-images

Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web
Information and Services of Public Accommodations
By Federal Register.
"The Department of Justice is considering proposed revisions to the
regulation implementing title III of the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA) in order to address the obligations of public accommodations
to make goods, services, facilities, privileges, accommodations, or
advantages they offer via the Internet, specifically at sites on the
World Wide Web (Web), accessible to individuals with disabilities..."
https://www.federalregister.gov/regulations/1190-AA61/nondiscrimination-on-the-basis-of-disability-accessibility-of-web-information-and-services-of-public

ADA Defense Lawyer - New ADA Standards for Website Accessibility
By Jim Butler.
"...The DOJ's issuance of website standards is not a matter of 'if'
but 'when'...The best approach to avoiding an ADA lawsuit is to
conduct an ADA compliance and prevention survey of your business..."
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=daf28278-37c7-47d4-876c-f5b2d03165f9

The Difference Between Assembly Line Accessibility and Intuitive
Accessibility, and Why This is Important
By Bryan Garaventa.
"This came up recently, and I wish to outline the differences between
these two schools of thought, because they directly affect the
learning process for engineers..."
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/difference-between-Assembly-Line-Accessibility-4512178.S.5958872013232680963

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS, Accessibility, and You (Video)
By Derek Featherstone.
Derek's CSS Dev Conference presentation.
http://teamtreehouse.com/library/css-accessibility-and-you

Designing For Print With CSS
By Rachel Andrew.
"If you mention printing with CSS to many people who work on the web,
print style sheets1 are the use that comes to mind. We are all well
used to creating a style sheet that is called upon when a web document
is printed. These style sheets ensure that the print version is
legible and that we don't cause a user to print out huge images.
However, CSS is also being used to format books, catalogs and
brochures - content that may never have been designed to be a web page
at all..."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/07/designing-for-print-with-css/

8 Simple CSS Hover Effects
By Sara Vieira.
"ith support for CSS3 increasing with each new release for every
browser, and those tiresome CSS2-only browsers slowly dropping off the
usage charts, we have far more options for hover effects and
transitions in general. Almost all the calls to action that you see on
the Web use some form of hover effect, because they draw the eye and
make a website feel more engaging..."
http://www.developerdrive.com/2015/01/8-simple-css-hover-effects/

Conditional Form Fields with CSS
By Christian Heilmann.
"...Once you publish something like this, you will get a lot of tweets
that this is not accessible. The same happened here, and it doesn't
matter that I wrote about the shortcomings in the first version of
this post. The debate is interesting and relevant. So let's break it
down..."
http://christianheilmann.com/2015/01/08/quick-tip-conditional-form-fields-with-css/

5 Ways to Not Shoot Yourself in the Foot with CSS
By Brent Jackson.
"1. Don't make assumptions..."
https://medium.com/@jxnblk/5-ways-to-not-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-with-css-8d3c84c94364

CSS You Can Get Excited About in 2015
By Rachel Andrew.
"In this article I'll take a look at some newer modules and individual
CSS features that are gaining browser support. Not all of these are
features you'll be able to use in production immediately, and some are
only available behind experimental flags. However you'll find plenty
of things here that you can begin to play with - even if only during a
prototyping stage of development..."
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2015/01/css-you-can-get-excited-about-in-2015/

+03: DRUPAL.

Changing and Using CSS With Drupal
By CSS Newbies.
"Whether your Drupal theme is 6 or 7, or you're using some of the more
popular themes like Zen, Skeleton, TheCompany, or FontFolio - Changing
the CSS in your theme can be a bit confusing at first..."
http://www.cssnewbie.com/changing-and-using-css-with-drupal/

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Usability Testing Goals - Knowing 'Why' Before 'How'
By Jerry Cao.
"Like all significant undertakings, you need to go into usability
testing with a plan. But as you'll see, a little extra time planning
at the beginning can pay off in the end..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/usability-testing-goals-knowing/

How Confident Do You Need to be in Your Research?
By Jeff Sauro.
"Every estimate we make from a sample of customer data contains error.
Confidence intervals tell us how much faith we can have in our
estimates..."
http://www.measuringu.com/blog/confidence-levels.php

17 Usability Testing Myths and Misconceptions
By Jim Ross.
"Usability testing has been around so long that it's the most
well-known and most frequently practiced user research method. So I
find it amazing that there are still so many misconceptions about
usability testing. In this column, I'll debunk the most common myths
and misconceptions that I've encountered over the years..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/01/17-usability-testing-myths-and-misconceptions.php

+05: EVENTS.

WebVisions Portland
May 12-15, 2015.
Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
http://www.webvisionsevent.com/portland/

Confab Central
May 20-22, 2015.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.
http://confabevents.com/events/central

UX London 2015
May 20-22, 2015.
London, England, United Kingdom
http://2015.uxlondon.com/

An Event Apart San Diego
June 8-10, 2015.
San Diego, California, U.S.A.
http://aneventapart.com/event/san-diego-2015

UX Scotland
June 10-12, 2015.
Edinburgh, Scotland
http://uxscotland.net/2015/

+06: HTML5.

Accessible and Responsive HTML5 Video Player
By Laura Kalbag.
"...You can download, and find all the usage instructions, for our
Responsive Accessible HTML5 Video Player from our repository...And
again, a huge thank you to Dennis Lembree, for giving us such a solid
foundation upon which I could build."
https://ind.ie/about/blog/accessible-video-player/

HTML 5 Image Description Extension; New Web Accessibility Tutorial on Images
By Geoff Freed.
"Following last month's ruling on the inclusion of @longdesc in HTML5,
the W3C has moved the HTML5 Image Description Extension forward to
Proposed Recommendation status..."
http://blog.diagramcenter.org/?p=1751

+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Top 3 IA Questions about Navigation Menus
By Kathryn Whitenton.
"The number and order of navigation categories, and use of hover menus
for touchscreens are frequently asked questions that arise when
organizing information on a website or application."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ia-questions-navigation-menus/

Learning from Closed Card Sorts with Different Inputs
By Kevin Sheldon.
"The card sort is one of the most common research techniques for
developing information architectures. The concept is pretty
straightforward: you ask participants to place various items into
different categories and, by doing this, get a sense of what pieces of
content should go where. As with many research techniques, however,
the reality is more complicated. In fact, entire books have been
written about the subject..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/01/learning-from-closed-card-sorts-with-different-inputs.php

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Beyond alt-text (Larry Goldberg Interview)
By Sara Hendren.
"Yahoo is searching for two front-end mobile and web engineers...These
new hires need to know more than the existing accessibility team and
teach us what's new and what's next. This is the kind of knowledge
universities should be adding to their design and engineering
curricula."
https://medium.com/@ablerism/beyond-alt-text-103b00eec89

Adaptive Web Design - Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement
By Aaron Gustafson.
The first addition of Aaron's book is available.
http://adaptivewebdesign.info/1st-edition/

+09: TOOLS.

Access Monitor
By Joe Dolson.
"Test your WordPress site for accessibility compliance. Run on-demand
tests or schedule a weekly accessibility check."
https://wordpress.org/plugins/access-monitor/

+10: USABILITY.

20 Things You Can Do This Year to Improve Your User's Experience
By David Travis.
"The new year is as good a time as any to review and improve the way
you work. With a good user experience now widely seen as the key
attribute of many high-tech products, it makes sense to review your
own products to see how you can give them that user experience edge.
Here are 20 quick, simple and virtually free ideas you can apply in
this new year..."
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/improve_your_users_experience.html

Checkboxes, Passwords and Magical Incantations
By Alex Walker.
"...All this time we've been telling our computers how to think, they
may have been doing the same to us."
http://www.sitepoint.com/masking-passwords-magical-incantations/

+11: XML.

SVG Basics-How to Work with Scalable Vector Graphics
By Steven Bradley.
"...Whenever I talk about responsive images, I mention that where
possible, scalable vector graphics are a preferred option to bitmap
images. The last time I offered the advice, I realized I didn't know
as much about SVG as I should."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-basics/

[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.]