+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 1, Issue 50, June 3, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 50 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 13: USABILITY. 14: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Techniques for Accessible HTML Tables By Stephen Ferg "This paper discusses ways to format complex tables of statistical data in HTML so that they are accessible to visually impaired users and compliant with the provisions of Section 508. The purpose of the paper is to assist HTML developers, and vendors of screen-reader products, to understand what constitutes "coding to the standard" for accessible HTML tables." http://tinyurl.com/cras HTML Tables Cookbook By Stephen Ferg "This page presents a description of a set of procedures that a Federal agency might use in designing its HTML data tables..." http://tinyurl.com/craq Accesskey standards By Clagnut Here is a survey of accesskey assignments. http://www.clagnut.com/blog/193/ Short List Accesskeys By Jan Hellbusch This is German accessibility evangelist Jan Hellbusch's short list of accesskeys used by various browsers. His findings are that the only characters which weren't used in the most common browsers are c, j and t. Note that this only covers Win98, so the list of 'free' keys get even get shorter when you start looking at other OS's and UA's. For instance in Pine/Lynx alt/c is cancel, alt/t is replace a word and alt/j is to untangle M$ linewrap. And "t" is used for the Tools menu under Mozilla on Linux. http://tinyurl.com/crao "Pure CSS Pulldowns" and Accessibility By Kynn Bartlett "...when using ONLY or SOLELY a Pure CSS menu, Javascript nav menu, DHTML layer menu, etc., your site may fail an accessibility test, but if you (or your client) wants the latest whizbang navigation on your site - it's fine - so long as you provide ALTERNATE ACCESSIBLE content, such as simple text links of the same." http://www.maccessibility.com/archive/000592.php +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The Search for the Missing Link By Stuart Robertson This technique uses CSS to make text more accessible. When you move your cursor over a paragraph, every link in that paragraph undergoes a hover effect. It works in Mozilla browsers, Opera 7, and Safari. http://www.uoguelph.ca/~stuartr/articles/missinglink.shtml Official List of Valid DTDs By W3C http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html Understanding the Box Model By Simon Willison "The box model is an inevitable part of CSS, and understanding it is critical if you want to do anything remotely interesting. Like most of CSS, it's a lot simpler than it sounds." http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/05/26/theBoxModel Fun with links By Simon Willison "Yesterday we talked about the box model. Today we're going to put a small part of it to work, by investigating ways of styling links." http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/05/27/funWithLinks StrangeBanana By strangebanana.com "StrangeBanana is a generator that automatically creates graphic webpage designs. You can see StrangeBanana at work by going to the StrangeBanana Generator page. What you see there will be a unique webpage design which have never been seen by anyone else before. If you want to, you can use that design for your own website." Most of the designs are pretty unattractive but it is an interesting idea and executuion. http://www.strangebanana.com/ +03: COLOR. Quick Color By Kohaistyle This is another color picker. http://kohaistyle.com/scripts/quickcolor/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Observing Users Who Listen to Web Sites By Janice Redish and Mary Frances Theofanos "These users are just as impatient as sighted users. They want to get the information they need as quickly as possible. That means that they do not listen to every word on the page - just as sighted users don't read every word. They 'scan with their ears' just as sighted users scan with their eyes." http://www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/0304-observing.html +05: EVENTS. 19th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning August 13-15, 2003 Madison, Wisconsin U.S.A. http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The Sociobiology of Information Architecture By Alex Wright "Long before anyone was looking for 'godfathers' of information architecture, our fellow species were wrestling with some of the same problems we face today. The real godfathers of information architecture, as it turns out, emerged a very long time ago with the earliest origins of life on this planet." http://tinyurl.com/crbv Sharing Knowledge is Better than Having It By Peter J.Bogaards Presentation on "The Structure, Content, and Form in the Information Design and Architecture of Information Artifacts" http://tinyurl.com/craj +07: JAVASCRIPT. Cooking with JavaScript & DHTML, Part 2 By Danny Goodman this is a recipe excerpt from "JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook" http://tinyurl.com/cram +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Death of a Web Team By D. Keith Robinson This is a work of fiction based on a few true stories. Nothing ever happened exactly this way, yet this happens all the time. Lots of things are made up. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead is coincidental, yet unavoidable. You may see yourself in here or perhaps your boss or coworker. I'm in here several different times, mostly as a good guy, but once or twice as a bad guy. It happens, on to the story..." http://tinyurl.com/cw49 5 Ways to Get the Most from In-House Designers By Kim Goodwin "Over the last two years, we've heard from increasing numbers of executives who want to bring interaction design in-house because they've realized how critical it is to product success. There are plenty of challenges involved in doing this, including hiring and training the right people. One of the challenges companies may not expect, though, is in deciding how to use those resources once they've been found." http://tinyurl.com/cyoq +09: NAVIGATION. How Search Can Help You Understand Your Audience By Martin Belam "...the action of typing a word or phrase into a search box is a very direct interaction between the user and the site. We can safely assume that when the user typed in that word or phrase they expected 'something' back from the site." http://www.currybet.net/articles/audiences/index.shtml +10: PHP. Common Style Mistakes, Part 1 By John Coggeshall "Programming securely is more than working down a list of checkboxes. You must adopt a security mindset. In the first of a series called PHP Paranoia, John Coggeshall explains several PHP style mistakes that make writing solid code more difficult." http://tinyurl.com/d1vi How Not To Use A Template System By Darrell Brogdon "The purpose of this article is to show PHP's inherent capabilities as a template engine for developers who donŐt wish to learn another sub-language." http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/tutorial-Darrell.php +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Standards Switch or how to improve your Web site easily By W3C "The method that we propose in this document is valid for Web sites of any size; it will suit your needs whether you are managing an individual, small business or a large corporate Web site." http://www.w3.org/QA/2003/03/web-kit Acting locally (Draft) Challenges in Web Standards Evangelism By Tristan Nitot http://www.nitot.com/temp/Acting_locally_detailed.html +12: TOOLS. Word HTML Cleaner By Dean Allen "This utility strips proprietary Microsoft tags and artefacts from Word HTML documents, leaving basic formatting and typographic entities intact. This is a free online tool." http://www.textism.com/resources/cleanwordhtml/ +13: USABILITY. The Train Track Gauge of the Future: Solving Usability Problems with Web Standards Today By Tara Cleveland and Stephanie Troeth These presention notes from the 'Toronto Usability Summit' address the underlying concepts of Web standards and how these concepts affect usability. http://unadorned.org/talks/traintrack/traintrack.html Why Things Don't Work By Jimmy Gutterman "Maybe it's because the user-experience pros need to learn a new language." http://business20.com/articles/web/0,1653,49676,00.html Spam is tip of iceberg of information overload By Gerry McGovern http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_05_26_spam.htm PowerPoint Remix By Aaron Swartz "PowerPoint is standard...but bad. Why?" http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000931 +14: XML. Standards-Based Collapsible Table of Contents Widget By Bob Clary Find out how XML and the W3C DOM were used to create the collapsible tree widgets on some sections of the DevEdge site. http://tinyurl.com/craw [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +15: 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 only. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist + TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN) STANDARD. As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) Standard. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN Standard information please visit: http://www.headstar.com/ten + SIGNATURE. Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]