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Navigation in Lists: To Be or Not To Be
Chris Coyier sums-up and weighs in on the debate about whether menus should be written as lists - which, traditionally, they have been. It looks like this standard is a carry over from best practices for accessibility when we were comparing against archaic, table-based layouts. Even though there is now a <nav> element, there really hasn't been further attention given. [See the Article] |
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Finally! The Accessibility Project
Accessibility isn't just a legal mandate for our publicly or tuition funded library websites, it is a changing standard that is often a pain to stay on top of. Dave Rupert started a new, contributor-based Accessibility Project which is "a community-driven effort to make web accessibility easier." And, thankfully, with check lists and skimmable resources, it really works. [Check it out] |
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Detector: Browser & Feature-Detection
Dave Molsen's Detector isn't really new news, but it's the kind of tool I think everyone should watch. Presently in beta, it uses a User Agent parsing PHP Library and Modernizr to detect and make it easier for websites to adapt content for screen sizes and browser capabilities. It's a little heady if you're newish to PHP, but it is a must-have in your toolbox. [This is a Bandwagon You Want to Jump] |
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ADAPTIVE DESIGN [Wordpress] |
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... or just try this plugin
Of course, if your library is on Wordpress--because Drupal? Lol /kidding--you could literally just try this PHP Browser Detection plugin that literally came to my attention after I linked to the above. To be honest, I'd like to see a Detector plugin because it does more, but oftentimes the ease of use is the game-changer. [PHP Browser Detection Plugin] |
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modern.IE
Testing for Internet Explorer just got a little bit easier. Free tools and resources so we can spend less time testing for the various versions of Internet Explorer and more time building usable, attractive [hopefully] libraries. With such a broad patronbase, we can't so nonchalantly drop support for deprecated browsers. Our users might still be hitting us up from Windows XP on IE7. This tool makes fair play more tolerable. [modern.IE] |
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Vocabulary for Web Designers
Well, it's like this: Brett Jankord got frustrated with our tendency to throw around keywords: i.e., "mobile first responsive adaptive web design with RESS." To all of our benefit he drummed-up a brief lexicon so we can all at least speak the same language :). [You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means] |
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GVSU Library Labs
The systems and tech folk at Grand Valley State University Libraries (my brother and his wife went there ...) Githubbed a lot of their projects for reuse under GPL licensing by, well, us. I already forked their simple business hours script and I'm turning it into a Wordpress plugin. Go, creatives! Steal! I also suggested in my workplace that we put something together like the GVSU Library User Interface Pattern Library, which helps speed the development of your library's projects on the web by serving as a style guide, quick code-snippets, and so on. There's a lot to admire, and GVSU Lib people should be proud of their work. |
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