+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 8, Issue 38, March 19, 2010. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 38 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: COLOR. 04: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. 13: XML. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Problems with CAPTCHA and Audio CAPTCHA Alternative By Gregory J. Rosmaita. "...as a crowning insult, due to the problems described above, i had to wait until i could obtain sighted assistance in order to submit this comment." http://groups.drupal.org/node/55683 YouTube Auto-Captioning By Meryl Evans. "A New Meme Is Brewing: YouTube CaptionFail. This is one of those situations where you wonder is it good to have captioning even though a lot of it is messed up or no captioning..." http://meryl.net/ci/2010/03/youtube_auto-ca.html Draft Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Standards and Guidelines The Access Board has released the draft of the refresh for the Section 508 standards. http://access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/draft-rule.htm Why Websites Shouldn't Accommodate Disabled Users By Pete Love. " The notion that websites should accommodate disabled users is one I've come across a few times, and though it sounds like a perfectly reasonable and nice thing to do, as an approach to designing a website it is actually really problematic..." http://tinyurl.com/ycv6e4v Why, Why, Why? WCAG 2.0 for Content Writers By Rachel McAlpine. "...This series of articles takes you through the most popular guidelines, called WCAG 2.0..." http://tinyurl.com/ydrnsk3 Stop Using JAWS for Web Accessibility Testing? By John Rochford. "...Like all screen readers, JAWS is complicated...Web content it reads can not be visually tracked...Sighted developers inexperienced with JAWS, and sighted people to whom JAWS is being demonstrated, are often confounded by the way it reads Web content...JAWS is expensive...Ninety percent of blind people don't use a screen reader..." http://tinyurl.com/yd4l3zf Cognitive Web Accessibility Assessment: First Attempt, Part 1 of 3 By John Rochford. "This post describes my first structured attempt to evaluate cognitive Web accessibility..." http://tinyurl.com/yhe9drq +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Dear CSS By Max Kanat-Alexander. "I love you, man. I really do. You're like a brother to me. But you and me and these web developers here need to sit down and have a little intervention with you..." http://avatraxiom.livejournal.com/101850.html Meet the Pseudo Class Selectors By Chris Coyier. "Pseudo class selectors CSS selectors with a colon preceding them. You are probably very familiar with a few of them..." http://css-tricks.com/pseudo-class-selectors/ Focus on the Hover By Anton Peck. "Add the :focus psuedo-class to everything that has a :hover style in your CSS, so that keyboard users get the same visual goodness that you give people who use a mouse..." http://antonpeck.com/journal/article/focus_on_the_hover/ Opera Browser Standards Support Chart By Zi Bin, Cheah. "...We thought it would be nice to provide you with a comparative list of standards support across our three browsers..." http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/2010/03/16/opera-standards-chart CSS Specificity Part 2 -Lacking Proximity By Niels Matthijs. In last week's article on fuzzy css specificity I presented a case that illustrated the difference between regular specificity and css specificity. While it's interesting to review these cases, it's even better to get to the very core of them. This article will do just that. http://tinyurl.com/yhhjvmw +03: COLOR. Red-Green Color Blindness By Daniel Fluck. "You could already learn a lot about the different types of color blindness and what color blindness actually is. In this chapter of Color Blind Essentials I would like to tell and show you some more and deeper details about the most common and also most well known type of color vision deficiency: red-green color blindness..." http://www.colblindor.com/2010/03/16/red-green-color-blindness/ +04: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver CS4 Basics - Linking to Sound and Video By Stefan Mischook. "Yet another Dreamweaver CS4 video...this time on inserting links into web pages. Along the way, we also learn a few other things..." http://tinyurl.com/yk5fnc7 Video on Dreamweaver CS4 Basics - A Look at Built In Template By Stefan Mischook. "Dreamweaver has a collection of web design templates to make the web design process much easier - all the funky cross browser CSS issues have already been solved in the provided templates..." http://tinyurl.com/yfn9drj +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Website Usability Testing: Guide To The Best Professional Usability Testing Tools And Services By Robin Good. "Website usability testing is a troubleshooting methodology that helps you discover specific ambiguities, pitfalls or issues in your website design and interface that spoil the effective use, legibility and navigation of your web pages. If you want to improve the user experience on your website, in this MasterNewMedia guide you can find all the best paid-for commercial website usability testing tools now available on the market..." http://tinyurl.com/yl34t5c +06: EVENTS. HTML5 Online Conference April 12, 2010. Online. http://carsonified.com/online-conferences/html5/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Content Strategy as Information Design By Will Sullivan. "Content strategy is in many respects information design. And as Steve Jobs famously said, 'Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.' Content, and content strategy are experiential - much the same as design. And design requires planning." http://craftinteractive.com/content-strategy-as-information-design/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Project Management By Stephanie Troeth and Denise Jacobs. "This course covers key competencies in the different facets of managing a project, including managing team and client interactions. Students will learn essential skills from the ability to provide structure at the foundling stages of the project, to estimating and projecting budgets, as well as developing and managing a project timeline for ensured project success..." http://tinyurl.com/yz47of6 Why HTML5 is Worth Your Time (Eric A. Meyer Interview) by Mac Slocum. "The debate over HTML5 vs. Flash is great for comments and page views, but all that chatter obscures the bigger issue: Should developers and designers invest in HTML5? According to Eric A. Meyer, an author and HTML/CSS expert, the answer is a definitive yes..." http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/why-html5-is-worth-your-time.html +09: PHP. Server-side Scripting By Lars Gunther. "This course will provide an overview of the PHP scripting language and SQL, and how to use these technologies to generate dynamic web sites. It will introduce secure and maintainable coding practices..." http://tinyurl.com/ygkt5gk +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML5 Structure - div, section, and article By Oli Studholme. "It seems my HTML5 id/class name cheatsheet article interested a few people, so here's the start of an in-depth look at the document structures that fall out of the HTML5 spec. First, let's introduce three easily confused HTML5 structural elements..." http://boblet.tumblr.com/post/130610820/html5-structure1 The small and hr Elements By Oli Studholme. "...Two more elements that have undergone transmogrification to receive semantics in HTML5 are and

..." http://html5doctor.com/small-hr-element/ Internet Explorer 9 Preview By Mircosoft. "The Internet Explorer Platform Preview Guide for Developers provides a 'sneak peek' at the features and improvements coming to Internet Explorer. Using this guide, Web developers and designers can prepare to take advantage of these enhancements..." http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff468705.aspx Testing the Internet Explorer Platform Preview (IE9) - reviewing the good, the bad and the main letdown By Robert Nyman. "I've tried to read up about it and play around with the preview as much as possible to get any indication of what to expect from IE 9, and here's my take..." http://tinyurl.com/ylb3ftr +11: TOOLS. Browser CSS3 Rule Generator By Paul Irish and Jonathon Neal. "This element will receive inline changes as you edit the CSS rules on the left." http://css3please.com/ +12: USABILITY. Usability 1 By Dara Solomon and Dana Wortman. "This course will introduce students to usability design concepts and authentic test methods for interactive media. Usability is grounded in tailoring interface design for the most effective user experience. Students will design, conduct and analyze usability tests based on established principles, research findings and theory. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to develop a usability test plan, recruit appropriate users, create robust task scenarios, facilitate testing, and analyze and communicate the test results..." http://interact.webstandards.org/curriculum/user-science/usability-1/ Why Isn't User Experience Design Inclusive? By Lisa Herrod. "...User Experience Design is not just for able bodied people..." http://scenariogirl.com/user-experience/inclusiveuserexperiences When More is Less By Joe Dolson. "...Any piece of new functionality adds complexity to a site. It may create an undesirable reaction, it may create user confusion - or it may be a brilliant idea which turns your home business into a multi-million dollar corporation. You shouldn't avoid adding functionality on the grounds that anything complicated is going to be a problem; but you should certainly take a very close look at every new feature and decide whether it will add to the user experience. When making that decision, the points to consider are not limited to the value of that feature alone. You need to also consider all the other features which will be simultaneously available; you may want to add a new feature, but move an existing one. It's usually not any given feature which causes problems; it's having too many paths to follow which may confuse your visitors. " http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2010/03/when-more-is-less/ Less is More! By John Lewis. "There seems to be an upsurge of interest in the philosophy of 'less is more'. A couple of recent articles about product design, in general and in a specific case, address relevant aspects of this phenomenon..." http://observations.johnwlewis.info/2010/03/16/less-is-more/ Just Add An Egg - Usability, User Experience and Dramaturgy By Harry Brignull. "...I like this story because it nicely sums up the progression in thinking from 'just designing for ease and speed' (old-school usability) to 'designing an entire experience' (new-school experience design)...The egg, therefore, becomes more than an ingredient, and more than just an extra pleasurable step. It becomes a prop, enabling the customer to play a social role. Goffman's theory of Dramaturgy explains this to some extent. It's worth reading about if you don't have much background in Social Psychology or Sociology..." http://tinyurl.com/ygsnogc +13: XML. Non-Draconian XHTML? By Sam Ruby. "Simple test script - Output with various browsers." http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/03/17/Non-Draconian-XHTML SVG Wow! Demos "This web site contains links to demos shown during the SVG Wow! session at the SVG Open 2009 conference. The purpose of the SVG Wow session is to demonstrate features of the SVG format in either pure rendering, interactivity, animation, or integration with HTML. Some of the demos are also meant to demonstrate advanced, upcoming features. Below is a list of the demos that were prepared for the 2009 edition of the conference session." http://svg-wow.org/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility Association Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/associations Book Listings. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/books Cascading Style Sheets Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/css Color Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/color Dreamweaver Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/dreamweaver Evaluation & Testing Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/testing Event Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/events Flash Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/flash Information Architecture Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/architecture JavaScript Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/javascript Miscellaneous Web Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/misc Navigation Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/navigation PHP Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/php Sites & Blogs Listing. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/sites Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/standards Tool Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/tools Typography Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/type Usability Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/usability XML Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/xml [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/goto/webdevlist 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@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]