. Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:31:09 -0500 From: Laura Carlson <lcarlson@xxxxxxxxx> To: webdev <webdev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [webdev] Web Design Update: July 19, 2012 +++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 10, Issue 04, July 19, 2012. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 04 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: BOOKS. 03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Best Practices by Use By Donald Evans. Topics include images, forms, links, drag and drop, video and multimedia, navigation, show and hide, tables, and tser messaging. http://websiteaccessibility.donaldevans.com/best-practices-by-use/ Developer Tools to Help Check Web Accessibility By Emily Coward. "Three tips for using the web developer toolbar to help check for accessibility issues on your website..." http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2012/developer-tools-to-help-check-web-accessibility/ +02: BOOKS. Kadlec, Tim. Implementing Responsive Design, New Riders Press. 2012. Mills, Chris. Practical CSS3: Develop and Design, Peachpit Press. 2012. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Vendor Prefixes By Openweb. "Vendor prefixes are a complex topic with wide-ranging consequences both short- and long-term that should not be underestimated. Nicolas Hoffmann offers some explanations and a perspective view on this difficult subject..." http://openweb.eu.org/articles/vendor-prefixes CSS Floats By Thierry Koblentz. "This property specifies whether a box should float to the left, right, or not at all..." http://www.css-101.org/float/index.php CSS Selector Performance - Front-End Myths By Niels Matthijs. "No matter where you look, no matter what sources you follow, if you read up on front-end development you cannot escape the reign of performance. As many studies suggest, websites need to be fast to perform well..." http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/css-selector-performance-myth +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Most Important Usability Activity By Jakob Nielsen. "What's worth the most - field studies or user tests? Depends on your company's usability maturity, but user testing is the safe bet if you can do only one thing." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/field-study-vs-user-test.html +05: EVENTS. The eduStyle Higher-ed Web Awards July 30 - August 1, 2012. Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. http://www.edustyle.net/awards/2012/nominees.php Responsive Web Design Summit 2012 August 28, 2012. Online http://environmentsforhumans.com/2012/responsive-web-design-summit/ Refresh LX September 20-21 2012 Lisbon, Portugal http://refresh-lx.com/ Breaking Development Conference September 24-26, 2012. Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. http://bdconf.com/2012/dallas Ready to Inspire December 9-12, 2012. Leiden, The Netherlands http://2012.inspireconf.com/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Ten Years Ago: Web Design Update Newsletter Began In July 2002 the first issue of this newsletter was published. Authors included Meryl K. Evans, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Christopher Schmitt, Henrik Olsen, Peter Merholz, Peter Morville, Donald Norman, and John S. Rhodes. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/itsshelp/news/2012/07/ten-years-ago-web-design-update-newsletter-began.html Archives: (Volume 4, Issue 06, August 4, 2005 to date.) http://lists.d.umn.edu/pipermail/webdev/ First 162 Issues: (Volume 1, Issue 01, July 2002, through Volume 4, Issue 05, July 2005) and subsequent issues are available as text files. http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/newsletter/ +07: NAVIGATION. Why Do We Need Navigation At All? By Tom Johnson. "...Regardless of how you organize the content, the larger point is this: giving users a table of contents does much more than simply provide users with a means of navigating the content. The table of contents expresses the hierarchical relationships of your content, and by so doing gives users a sense of your content's overall story and structure. Even if users can't find the answer to their question by navigating the table of contents, they can find other meaning in browsing and perusing the structure of your content..." http://idratherbewriting.com/2012/07/12/why-do-we-need-navigation-at-all/ Why You Should Not Use ARIA Role=Tab On Header Navigation Tabs That Look Like Tabs But Aren't Actually Tabs By Bryan Garaventa. "This is another commonly misunderstood concept that I would like to explain a bit..." http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Why-you-should-not-use-4512178.S.134719297 +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Role Attribute 1.0 W3C Candidate Recommendation 12 July 2012 "An attribute to support the role classification of elements" http://www.w3.org/TR/role-attribute/ It's OK to Use Tables By Adrian Roselli. "...With all the push for hand-crafted HTML and CSS and the strong desire to show off what developers can do using HTML5 and assorted tricks, take a look at any grids you find yourself marking up. If you find you have columns of data, rows of data, headings for rows or columns, or are using any CSS table display properties, then you just might need to use a table instead." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2012/07/its-ok-to-use-tables.html +09: USABILITY. Performance Implications of Responsive Design By Guy Podjarny. "...Responsive Web Design is a powerful and forward thinking technique, but it also carries with it significant performance implications. Make sure you understand these challenges and design to avoid them, so that users won't abandon your website before they got to experience your amazing visuals and content." http://www.guypo.com/mobile/performance-implications-of-responsive-design-book-contribution/ Great Works of Fiction Presents: The Mobile Context By Stephen Hay. "...Users are ultimately the experts in deciding what they want to do on your site. Make it possible, make it easy, then get out of the way and let them fill in the blanks. They'll attribute the good experience to you." http://www.the-haystack.com/2012/07/09/great-works-of-fiction-presents-the-mobile-context/ Mobile > Local By Karen McGrane. "Just because someone is doing a search from a mobile device doesn't make it a local search. And just because someone is looking for local content doesn't imply they're using a mobile device. Just because many local searches are from mobile devices does not imply that most mobile searches are for local information..." http://karenmcgrane.com/2012/07/10/mobile-local/ We'll Tell You What You Really Want - Mobile Context, Top Tasks, and Organization-Centric Thinking By Sara Wachter-Boettcher. "...When your organization is truly customer focused, right down to its core, then the prospect of preparing your content to go wherever your users are stops seeming outlandish and starts seeming like the only sensible course of action. Mobile is a tremendous shift, but it's just the beginning. Devices are going to get wackier. Users' expectations about shifting and saving and sharing content are going to get greater. As they do, this mindset-one where we, the benevolent organization, tells customers what they, the individual, should want-will get more and more frustrating for users, and damaging to businesses." http://sarawb.com/2012/07/11/mobile-context-top-tasks/ Mobile Design Pattern Gallery By Theresa Neil. http://mobiledesignpatterngallery.com/mobile-patterns.php The Elements Of The Mobile User Experience By Lyndon Cerejo. "Mobile users and mobile usage are growing. With more users doing more on mobile, the spotlight is on how to improve the individual elements that together create the mobile user experience..." http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/12/elements-mobile-user-experience/ Checkout Usability: Don't Use "Apply" Buttons (72% Get it Wrong) By Jamie Appleseed. "This is the first in a series of 8 articles on checkout usability that combine findings from our checkout usability research from 2011, and our 2012 benchmark of the 100 largest e-commerce sites (database coming soon)." http://baymard.com/blog/checkout-usability-apply-buttons [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 Dreamweaver Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.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 Flash Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.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. + SUBSCRIPTION INFO. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webdev_listserv.html The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates. + TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN). As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN guideline information please visit: http://www.headstar.com/ten + 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@xxxxxxxxx [Issue ends.]