* WEB DESIGN UPDATE. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. NOTE: As a navigation aid for screen readers, all headings begin with an asterisk and end with a full stop. All items are also numbered in the contents and throughout the issue, with numbers appearing immediately after the asterisks. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. [Issue starts.] * December 12, 2002. * Volume 1, Issue 24. * What's new at the Web Design Reference site? New Links In These Categories: 1: ACCESSIBILITY. 2: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 3: DREAMWEAVER. 4: EVALUATION & TESTING. 5: FLASH. 6: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 7: JAVASCRIPT. 8: NAVIGATION. 9: PHP 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. 13: XML. SECTION ONE: New references. * 1: ACCESSIBILITY. Last week we had the opportunity to "Ask an Expert (Joe Clark) About Web Site Accessibility". This week Joe answers questions: Multiple input form fields By Ian Lloyd "You're probably wondering what a 'multi input form field' is right now. Let us explain: this is a section of a form that requires maybe two or three separate inputs to collect the data, for example a telephone number or a date field. In most cases these types of inputs are not implemented properly for optimum accessibility. By the end of this page you will be armed with a few techniques to make these a little more usable." Accessibility testing on a budget By Ian Lloyd Guide to Accessible Web Design By jarmin.com * 2: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. W3C switched its home page to a full CSS layout instead of the previous table-based one. Visit: The "W3C Home Page Table-less Layout: HOWTO and FAQ" technique used is documented at: It is basically realized through the float property. MacEdition Guide to CSS2 Support in PDA/Handheld Browsers By MacEdition By creating a separate handheld style sheet, you can create a look and feel that is optimized for small screens. Blast Sites with User CSS Sheets By Meryl K. Evans * 3: DREAMWEAVER. Video Quick Tip: Dreamweaver MX and LIFT By Jason Taylor "Join Jason Taylor of UsableNet as he explains how to create accessible complex data tables using the UsableNet LIFT plug-in application with Dreamweaver MX." * 4: EVALUATION & TESTING. Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports By The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Usability measurement in context By N. Bevan and M. Macleod (Please note that the link to is an acrobat PDF file. If you do not have acrobat you can download the acrobat viewer from . This download is for people who do not have Acrobat installed on their computers. It allows you to open and view a PDF file. Additional Adobe free tools are available to assist visually impaired users at ) * 5: FLASH. Web design guru sees Flash challenges By David Becker * 6: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Eat Me, Drink Me, Push Me (...) By Christina Wodtke An excerpt from "Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web" * 7: JAVASCRIPT. The Perfect Pop-up By Ian Lloyd How to create accessible "pop-up windows". * 8: NAVIGATION. Proper Website Navigation: Why you absolutely need it (with due apologies to Jakob Nielsen) By Kiruba Shankar Ten taxonomy myths By Montague Institute * 9: PHP. Internationalization and Localization with PHP By Adam Trachtenberg * 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Rebuilding a Site With Standards By Eric A. Meyer "Eric delivered an hour-long talk at a recent Web Design World in which he showed how to convert an old-school design to a leaner CSS-driven design, thus reducing file size and complexity without sacrificing visual appeal. Read the talk's outline and see code fragments in a single file!" * 11: TOOLS. WAVE 3.0 alpha Although it is still very much a work in progress WAVE 3.0 alpha is now available to the public. "WebAIM has continued development the WAVE project which Dr. Len Kasday started at Pennsylvania's Initiative on Assistive Technology (PIAT), at The Institute on Disabilities, Temple University...For those who have never used the WAVE before, it has a slightly different philosophy than some of the accessibility tools out there. It doesn't give you a list of errors. It displays icons in the contetxt of the page itself which show you where various elements are in the page, such as layout tables, image alt text, form labels and so on. Not all of the icons represent errors. In fact, icons are placed in the document in the places where you did things right too. This allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your work in the context of the page itself. For example, the WAVE prints out your alt text right next to the image. This allows you to judge whether the alt text is appropriate for the image." Also see: What's New in WAVE 3.0 Alpha? The explanation of icons (this also is a work in progress) * 12: USABILITY. Designing information-abundant web sites: issues and recommendations By Ben Schneiderman Usability Is Next to Profitability By Jane Black Return on Investment for Usable User-Interface Design: Examples and Statistics By Aaron Marcus (Please note that the link to is an acrobat PDF file. If you do not have acrobat you can download the acrobat viewer from . This download is for people who do not have Acrobat installed on their computers. It allows you to open and view a PDF file. Additional Adobe free tools are available to assist visually impaired users at ) * 13: XML. This is XFML By Mark Pilgrim [Section one ends.] * SECTION TWO: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. Association Information. Book Listings. Cascading Style Sheets Information. Color Information. Dreamweaver Information. Evaluation & Testing Information. Event Information. Flash Information. Information Architecture Information. JavaScript Information. Miscellaneous Web Information. Navigation Information. PHP Information. Sites & Blogs Listing. Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. Tool Information. Typography Information. Usability Information. XML Information. [Section two ends.] * SUBSCRIPTION INFO. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription only. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: * SIGNATURE. Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]