+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 1, Issue 51, June 8, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 51 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: 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. Learning Disabilities: Being Different Shouldn't Mean Being Discriminated Against By Karen Mardahl "With our multi-faceted expertise as technical communicators, we have a fantastic potential to make educational material accessible and eradicate prejudicial treatment due to 'differences.' Are we ready to invest the time and energy to do this? Just think if materials were adjusted to the learning methods and needs of students, not vice-versa! Perhaps then all children would have a chance to show their capabilities." http://tinyurl.com/d8on Guidelines for Writing Accessible On-line Help By Will Reed, Everyl Yankee and Wendi Fornoff, with Deborah Murray "This article describes how to write effective on-line help for blind and low vision users of text based readers. The authors draw on their collective experience in both using text (screen) readers like JAWS to access web applications as well as preparing accessibility help for web pages and applications." http://www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/0304-help.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Converting HTML to CSS By Tom Gilder "So you're used to using HTML for visual formatting, and trying to get into CSS? But aren't entirely sure how to do effects you've been been doing in HTML for years? Well..." http://tom.me.uk/html-to-css/ Abridged CSS2 Support By MacEdition This is a handy reference of browser CSS2 support. http://macedition.com/cb/resources/abridgedcsssupport.html +03: COLOR. Color and Usability By grokdotcom "...One of the more important acceptance tests you can run is to evaluate each of your pages first in grayscale and then in black and white (the most extreme form of contrast in which your site can be rendered by an assistive technology)..." http://www.grokdotcom.com/usability-of-color.htm +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Standards Update: Usability Test Reporting By David Travis "It's a truism that even a bad usability test will help improve your software. But the findings from different usability tests are notoriously difficult to compare. This makes it difficult to track usability improvements or to see how you compare against an earlier product. An emerging international standard looks set to solve this problem." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/cif.html +05: EVENTS. XML Conference & Exposition 2003 December 7-12, 2003 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S.A. http://www.xmlconference.org/xmlusa/ Flash Kit Conference & Expo August 21-22, 2003 San Jose, California U.S.A. http://www.jupiterevents.com/flash/summer03/index.html +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. About: Information Design By Design Council "Information design is concerned with making complex information easier to understand and to use. It is a rapidly growing discipline that draws on typography, graphic design, applied linguistics, applied psychology, applied ergonomics, computing, and other fields. It emerged as a response to people's need to understand and use such things as forms, legal documents, computer interfaces and technical information. Information designers responding to these needs have achieved major economic and social improvements in information use." http://tinyurl.com/dfyi +07: JAVASCRIPT. Cooking with JavaScript & DHTML, Part 3 By Danny Goodman This is a recipe excerpt from "JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook". http://tinyurl.com/d8om +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Jeffrey Zeldman interview By Brian Alvey "Brian Alvey and Jeffrey Zeldman discuss the secret origins of The Web Standards Project, the business case for using Web standards and his latest book titled Ń you guessed it - Designing With Web Standards." http://meet-the-makers.com/conversations/dwws/ +09: NAVIGATION. How did you get here? Designing for visitors who donŐt enter through the home page By Jeff Lash "One of the most overlooked aspects of designing a Web site is how users get to it. Separate factions are often devoted to promoting, designing, and maintaining a Web site, and the lack of communication and involvement can lead to apathy or confusion. Too frequently is it assumed that visitors are knowledgeable about the company and Web site, and that they enter through the home page. False assumptions about visitor entry can plague even a well-planned, well-designed site." http://tinyurl.com/djfg Give visitors your content first (and your navigation second) By Jim Byrne "There is however a problem with this 'standard layout' for people using screen readers. Accessing a website using a screen reader is a 'linear process'; the text that comes first, gets read first - and if the navigation is the first thing on the page - that is what gets read. If your navigation bar contains a lot of links, that can mean a lot of wasted time before a person using a screen reader gets to the content of your page. http://www.mcu.org.uk/show.php?contentid=8 Big Changes for Search Engines By Michelle Delio "...Ben Shneiderman, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland in College Park, is convinced that most people are better at communicating with their computers when they can see data, rather than reading or writing it. He demonstrated several visual search tools, including the TimeSearcher, which allows seekers to see graphics illustrating search result data. TimeSearcher allows users to define search terms on a graph, clicking and dragging to specify that results should, for example, be confined to data created or changed on specific dates. Any information that is tied to time can be searched with TimeSearcher." http://tinyurl.com/d8n1 Essential Navigation Checklists for Web Design By Marta Eleniak "These checklists pull together best practice in the disciplines of information design, usability and accessibility, into an easy to apply format. If you are already familiar with those topics, the checklists serve as a handy reminder that is easy to refer to and apply when planning navigation. If unfamiliar it's also a fast-track lesson - providing you with a head-start in getting it right and enables you to make better informed choices / compromises." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1151 +10: PHP. Paypal, the PHP approach By Joel De Gan "This tutorial is intended for PHP programmers of all levels, who wish to add Paypal functionality to their website. The programmer needs only a PHP enabled website and Paypal account." http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/tutorial-paypal.php +11: TOOLS. Accessible Form Creator By HiSoftware "The HiSoftware Accessible Form Creator allows you to create forms for web sites containing all the additional markup required to make the forms accessible under Section 508 standards and the W3C WCAG 1.0 Priority 1-3 Guidelines." This is a free windows downlaod. http://www.hisoftware.com/access/valueadd9.html A Standards-Compliant Publishing Tool for the Rest of Us? By Jeffery Zeldman A List Apart Magazine is back with a new article about TypePad. "The development comunity, the independent content community, and especially webloggers, are familiar with Six ApartŐs Movable Type, a robust and popular publishing tool designed to faciliate the creation of blogs. Lately the community has been buzzing about a soon-to-be-released Six Apart product intended to deliver the power of personal publishing to an even wider, non-expert user base. What has not been told until now is that TypePad has been designed to generate standards-compliant sites, and that the application itself is built with web standards. A List ApartŐs publisher and creative director Jeffrey Zeldman caught up with Six ApartŐs Anil Dash to find out more." http://www.alistapart.com/stories/typepad/ +12: USABILITY. Forms, usability, and the W3C DOM By Peter-Paul Koch "From a usability point of view, hiding as many form fields as possible until the users need them seems to be a good idea. Writing a W3C DOM script that hides form fields turns out to be quite simple. When using this script, the relations between form fields can easily be changed by anyone having basic Web knowledge, because the script instructions are placed in XHTML attributes. In addition, the form remains 100% accessible at all times." http://tinyurl.com/d8ol Too bad browser support is't realy ready for this yet. Using Visualization in Websites By Bob Bailey "...we can conclude that using a visualization technique does not necessarily improve either efficiency or accuracy in information-retrieval tasks. Designers that elect to use any of the existing visualization software tools, definitely should do usability testing to ensure that the technology actually does benefit the users of their websites." http://tinyurl.com/d8oi Metadata is essential web writing skill By Gerry McGovern "Metadata is one of the most misunderstood aspects of content management and website design. Editors and writers tend to look at it as a technical issue. Technical people look for a software solution. Both are wrong. Metadata is a fundamental skill that web writers and editors must acquire." http://tinyurl.com/d8oh The 5 E's of usability By Whitney Quesenbery This is an article on the usability basics of web sites being "effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant and easy to learn". http://www.wqusability.com/articles/getting-started.html The Business Case For Usability By Bunnyfoot "Usable designs are associated with increased customer (user) loyalty and reduced costs. Usability engineering therefore generates a massive ROI (typically 800-1200%). While it is possible to save money in the short term by ignoring this key area, the alternative to usable design puts long-term revenues at risk." http://tinyurl.com/dfwp +13: XML. XHTML is the Most Important XML Vocabulary By Kendall Grant Clark "Kendall Grant Clark reviews the latest working draft of XHTML 2.0, finds some welcome changes, and stresses the importance of XHTML as a leading XML vocabulary." http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/05/21/deviant.html [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 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.]