[webdev] Web Design Update: February 5, 2015

Thu Feb 5 06:38:22 CST 2015

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 32, February 5, 2015.

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

++ISSUE 32 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: HTML5.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: USABILITY.
10: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Setting an Example
By Ian Pouncey.
"All of us who build websites or application have at one time or
another copied example or demo code and used it in our own work. Heck,
a large number of us learnt our craft this way..."
http://ianpouncey.com/weblog/2015/01/setting-an-example/

Accessible PDFs and the Potential of PDF/UA
By Tim Lohman.
"Media Access Australia spoke with Accessibil-IT's Karen McCall
(M.Ed.) about the importance of PDF accessibility and the PDF/UA
(Portable Document Format/Universal Access) standard...PDF/UA is a
technical standard for developers to implement so that PDF documents
are accessible to people who are using adaptive technology..."
http://www.accessiq.org/news/features/2015/02/accessible-pdfs-and-the-potential-of-pdfua

Justice Department Reaches Agreement with Nueces County, Texas, to
Improve Accessibility of Services and Programs
By The US Department of Justice.
"...One of the hallmarks of the agreement is the requirement that the
county will assess all existing web content and online services for
conformance with industry guidelines-the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0-for making web content accessible..."
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-reaches-agreement-nueces-county-texas-improve-accessibility-services-and
Settlement Agreement:
http://www.ada.gov/nueces_co_tx_pca/nueces_co_tx_sa.html

As the ADA Turns 25, Website Accessibility Issues Pose Legitimate
Risks for the Financial Services Industry
By Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
"..over the past year, both DOJ and advocacy groups, such as the
National Federation of the Blind and the American Counsel for the
Blind, have continued to press the issue, utilizing the threat of
litigation and/or investigation to prompt website accessibility
agreements with notable entities in a variety of industries. These
agreements involved, among others, H&R Block, Peapod, Safeway, eBay,
multiple colleges and universities (e.g., Florida State University,
the University of Montana, and the University of Cincinnati), and
other facilities, including hospitals and fashion retailers. In recent
years certain Offices of the State Attorney General (e.g., New York
State) have also pursued settlement agreements involving website
accessibility in industries including financial services..."
http://www.aoda.ca/as-the-ada-turns-25-website-accessibility-issues-pose-legitimate-risks-for-the-financial-services-industry/#post-3441

Reframing Accessibility for the Web
By Anne Gibson.
"We need to change the way we talk about accessibility..."
http://alistapart.com/article/reframing-accessibility-for-the-web

WP Accessibility
By Joe Dolson.
"Updated WP Accessibility - now it knows if you have an
accessibility-ready theme..."
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-accessibility/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

SASS CSS Frameworks - Everything You Need to Get Started
By Sunil Arora.
"Web design is not so plain anymore and authoring CSS is increasingly
becoming complex and time consuming. CSS of course is evolving with
the web but still lacks way behind and it is getting difficult to
manage CSS in large projects. SASS is the CSS preprocessor language
that extends CSS capabilities and makes CSS authoring and management
much easier, structured and cleaner..."
http://noeticforce.com/sass-css-preprocessor-framework-getting-started-guide

+03: EVENTS.

The Web and Mobile Development Process
February 19, 2015.
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-web-and-mobile-development-process-tickets-15303783027

Responsive Web Design (RWD) Summit 2015
March 10, 2015.
Online
http://environmentsforhumans.com/2015/responsive-web-design-summit/

Respond
March 19-20, 2015.
Sydney, Australia
http://www.webdirections.org/respond15/

Lone Star PHP
April 16-8, 2015.
Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.
http://lonestarphp.com/

Frontend Design Conference
May 21-22, 2015.
St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A.
http://frontenddesignconference.com/

International PHP Conference
June 7, 2015.
Berlin Germany
https://phpconference.com/2015se/en

Web Design Day
June 12, 2015.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
http://webdesignday.com/

+04: HTML5.

Emulating Failure
By Steve Faulkner.
"HTML has a problem. As implemented in browsers many interactive
elements cannot be styled as desired by web developers, or developers
as directed by designers, marketing or any of the numerous others
whose wishes code cutters must abide by..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/02/emulating-failure/

YouTube Fired Flash, Clearing HTML5's Last Obstacle For World Domination
By Adriana Lee.
"It's official: Flash has lost its groove. There's no stopping HTML5 now..."
http://readwrite.com/2015/01/30/youtube-flash-html5-online-videos

YouTube Embraces HTML5
By Tim Lohman.
"The accessibility of Google's YouTube video service looks set to
improve thanks to the recent decision by the internet giant to abandon
Adobe's Flash technology in favour of the fifth and final version of
the Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML5."
http://www.accessiq.org/news/news/2015/02/youtube-embraces-html5

Extensibility
By Jeremey Keith.
"I've said it before, but I'm going to reiterate my conflicted
feelings about Web Components: I have conflicting feelings about Web
Components. I am simultaneously very excited and very nervous..."
https://adactio.com/journal/8276

The Long Web - An Event Apart Video
By Jeremy Keith.
"IN THIS 60-minute video caught live at An Event Apart Austin, Jeremy
Keith bets on HTML for the long haul: 'The pace of change in our
industry is relentless. New frameworks, processes, and technologies
are popping up daily. If you're feeling overwhelmed, you are not
alone. Let's take a step back and look at the over-arching trajectory
of web design. Instead of focusing all our attention on the real-time
web, let's see which design principles and development approaches have
stood the test of the time. Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it, but those who can learn from the past will
create a future-friendly web'."
http://www.zeldman.com/2015/01/31/the-long-web-an-event-apart-video/

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

WAI-ARIA - An Introduction to Accessible Rich Internet Applications
By Patrick H Lauke.
Patrick's WAI-ARIA's presentation slides.
https://patrickhlauke.github.io/aria/presentation/

New String Features in ECMAScript 6
By Dr. Axel Rauschmayer.
"The blog post covers new features of strings in ECMAScript 6 (ES6)..."
http://www.2ality.com/2015/01/es6-strings.html

Angular Accessibility Issues - Dynamic Content Update Announcements
By Dylan Barrell.
"This is part two in a series of posts on Angular.js accessibility..."
http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2015/01/angular-accessibility-issues-dynamic.html

Angular.js Accessibility - The Woeful TodoMVC Application
By Dylan Barrell.
This is part three in a series of posts on Angular.js accessibility...
http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2015/02/angularjs-accessibility-woeful-todomvc.html

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

One of W3C WAI's Finest - An Interview with Shawn Henry
By Scott Hollier.
"It's my great pleasure to introduce someone whose work is vital to
the running of W3C WAI, Shawn Henry. Shawn very kindly took some time
out of her incredibly busy schedule with various working groups and
the WAI-IG mailing list for an interview."
http://www.accessiq.org/news/w3c-column/2015/02/one-of-w3c-wais-finest-an-interview-with-shawn-henry

Web Design and Principles
By Jens Meiert.
"Web design has become complex. More people, more ideas, more use
cases, more technical innovations, more design variations, &c. pp.
More makes for more complex. The developers of us have already
observed that with our standards..."
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20150130/web-design-and-principles/

Strategy Versus Tactics
By Liam Friedland.
"I wanted to document a handful of key UX concepts... [and] hit upon
the idea of using 3 x 5-inch note cards and simple, hand-drawn
visualizations as an expressive medium for this content"
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/02/strategy-versus-tactics.php

+07: NAVIGATION.

Block Level Links and Screen Reader Support
By Ted Drake.
"Daniel Goransson introduced VoiceOver's contradictory support for
block level links on a mailing list for Apple accessibility.
Specifically, Safari + VoiceOver on OSX allows the link to be
announced as a single object, whereas on iOS, the link is announced as
individual element..."
http://www.last-child.com/block-level-links-and-screen-reader-support/

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Standards for Web Applications on Mobile - Current State and Roadmap
By W3C.
"This document is the 16th edition of this overview of mobile Web
applications technologies. The previous edition was released in
October 2014. A live version of this document accepts contributions on
the W3C Web and Mobile Interest Group Github repository."
http://www.w3.org/2015/01/mobile-web-app-state/

+09: USABILITY.

The Fold Manifesto - Why the Page Fold Still Matters
By Amy Schade.
"What appears at the top of the page vs. what's hidden will always
influence the user experience-regardless of screen size. The average
difference in how users treat info above vs. below the fold is 84%..."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/

Why You Should Avoid Using Modal Windows on Mobile
By uxmovement.
"One of the most frustrating things users experience on mobile sites
is a modal window. On desktop, modal windows display without issue
because of the large screen size. But on mobile, modal windows get cut
off because of the small screen size. Users only see part of the modal
window and can't exit nor view it with ease."
http://uxmovement.com/mobile/why-you-should-avoid-using-modal-windows-on-mobile/

Bad User Interface Design is Death by a Thousand Cuts
By Paul Boag.
"Too often we excuse small usability issues by saying it is only a
minor inconvenience. But small things add up..."
https://boagworld.com/usability/bad-user-interface-design-is-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/

When to Override Native UI Components
By Jamie Appleseed.
"During our usability tests, we generally find the default native UI
components to be very user-friendly. Meanwhile, custom designed UI
components tend to be a lot more hit and miss. In fact, our testing
often finds custom UI components to be poor for usability. In the
worst cases, we have found them to be outright harmful to the user
experience and be the direct cause for site abandonments. Luckily,
there is a brighter side to the world of custom UI components too..."
http://baymard.com/blog/custom-vs-native-ui

How to Do Pair Writing Well
By Gerry McGovern.
"...Pair writing is a process, not one workshop. What you want to
encourage is that the organization integrating this into the way they
work, the way they create content. This is happening, according to
Bjorn. On an ongoing basis you might consider using remote meeting
software like GoToMeeting or Webex to continue the collaborative
process."
http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/how-do-pair-writing-well

+10: XML.

SVG Basics-Creating Paths With Curve Commands
By Steven Bradley.
"Last week I began a discussion about paths, mainly focusing on the
different line commands you can use to draw lines and shapes. Today I
want to continue the path discussion and talk about the different
curve commands at your disposal..."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-paths-curve-commands/

SVG Accessibility API Mappings
By Richard Schwerdtfeger, Editor.
"This document, the SVG Accessibility API Mappings [SVG-AAM]
specification, defines how user agents map Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG) markup to platform accessibility application programming
interfaces (APIs). It is intended for SVG user agent developers
responsible for SVG accessibility in their user agent..."
http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/svg-aam/svg-aam.html

[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.]