+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 4, July 21, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 4 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: FLASH 08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 09: JAVASCRIPT. 10: MISCELLANEOUS. 11: NAVIGATION. 12: PHP. 13: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 14: TOOLS. 15: TYPOGRAPHY. 16: USABILITY. 17: XML. SECTION TWO: 18: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Multimedia By Joe Clark "Basic accessibility: Set up a schedule to provide at least a transcript of the dialogue and meaningful sound effects of any posted online video or audio. Use all available accessibility features in Flash." http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter13.html Certification and testing By Joe Clark "You may be required to assert that your Website is accessible Ð and prove it. Here's how..." http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter14.html Making applets and plug-ins accessible By the University of Massachusetts Boston "Requirement: If a page requires the use of a plug-in or applet, the plug-in or applet and its means of downloading and installation must be accessible. Otherwise, the content accessed via the plug-in or applet must be presented in an alternative accessible form." http://www.umb.edu/wau/techniques/plug-ins.html Web Accessibility Learning Modules By California State University, Frenso "This is a good resource regarding basic why and how of accessibility." http://www.csufresno.edu/webaccess/learningmodules/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. An Introduction To CSS By Adrian Senior "CSS is the abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheet. A style sheet simply holds a collection of rules that we define to enable us to manipulate our web pages..." http://tinyurl.com/gnaq CSS 2 Selector Fundamentals By Porter Glendinning "In this article, the first in a two-part series, we're going to take a look at the basics of selectors in Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2 (CSS 2), including the components used to build them and the various ways to combine them. " http://nemesis1.f2o.org/articles CSS Selectors: Pattern Matching and Inheritance By Adrian Senior this article explores "the document tree and how it effects inheritancy in CSS, a look at the direct adjacent sibling selector and combinators". http://tinyurl.com/gnap Style Web Forms Using CSS By Rachel Andrew "Sick of boring Web forms that don't match your site's look and feel? Rachel explains how easy it is to ensure consistent design across forms using CSS." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1166 +03: COLOR. Branding and the User Interface, Part 2 Tips on New Media Branding: Behavior and Color By Nate Fortin This article takes a "closer look at how branding differs between traditional applications, like printed corporate collateral, and emerging new media applications, such as software user interfaces, with a focus on behavior and color". http://tinyurl.com/gj38 +04: DREAMWEAVER. Form Processing: Post and Get what are they? BY Adrian Senior This article discusses the get and post methods and how they differ in passing data. http://tinyurl.com/gnan Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Killer Tips: Maximum Acceleration By Angela Buraglia and Joseph Lowery "Be the envy of all your friends when you master Macromedia Dreamweaver MX using this guide. Well, that envy part may never happen, but look at the smattering of 28 quick tips to help make your efforts in Dreamweaver MX even more simple." http://tinyurl.com/gnam +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Usability Heuristics for Rich Internet Applications By Jess McMullin and Grant Skinner "Over the coming months and years, RIAs will move from cutting edge to mainstream. That transformation will accelerate with the Flash and user experience communities working together to understand and develop best practices and shared knowledge." http://tinyurl.com/h8f0 Culture and Usability Feature: Culture as a Design Heuristic By Ann Light "Culture theories can elicit design alternatives, help us ask the 'right questions' and help designers think about new implementations and new interfaces, she said. To be predictive, cultural theory requires constrained target audience, but it can still be productive." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1183.asp +06: EVENTS. Extreme Markup Languages 2003 August 4-8, 2003 Montreal, Quebec Canada http://www.extrememarkup.com/extreme/ Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo August 18-21, 2003 San Jose, California U.S.A. http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/summer03/index.html Integrating the Web into your Admissions Strategy August 11-13, 2003 Orlando, Florida U.S.A. August 18-20, 2003 Denver, Colorado U.S.A. https://www.academicimpressions.com/conferences/integrating_web.htm +07: FLASH. Multimedia Accessibility - Flash And The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines By Sofia Celic and Andrew Arch "Flash developers have traditionally overlooked accessibility, or been unable to address it directly by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) recommendations and techniques. In this paper, we describe the application of WCAG checkpoints to the Flash MX multimedia development platform and discuss how accessibility can be incorporated using a variety of techniques..." http://tinyurl.com/gn5n +08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The Power of Process, The Perils of Process By Erin Malone "...creating and documenting process has been a good exercise to help institutionalize ways of working, to help educate new team members as well as to unveil the mysteries of what we do for executives, product folks, and development teams." http://tinyurl.com/h3tr Information Design: The Understanding Discipline By Dirk Knemeyer "Information design is not the same as information architecture; it is not merely an 'enlightened' version of graphic design; it is not somehow a niche component in interface or experience design; it is not technical writing. It is a broad and exploratory discipline that encourages research and development, understands that a galaxy of disparate tactics are bound together in creating successful information solutions, endeavors to understand people and the world as thoroughly as possible to enable better design and endeavors to identify and synthesize any discipline that contributes to better understanding." http://tinyurl.com/h3tn International Information Architecture By Peter Morville "Connecting people from diverse disciplines, countries and cultures is a strategic imperative, not only for AIfIA but for the information architecture community as a whole. Our competitive advantage derives from our very ability to build bridges and span networks." http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000012.php +09: JAVASCRIPT. Quick and Dirty Date Differences with JavaScript By JavaScript Kit "Working with date differences in JavaScript is a tad fiddly. In this article George shares some source code to ease the pain..." http://www.devarticles.com/art/1/601/2 +10: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview with Eric Meyer: CSS, Web Standards and Star Wars By Bruce Lawson "CSS guru and Netscape Standards Evangelist Eric Meyer talks about CSS, Web Standards and Star Wars and answers DMXzone members' questions in this interview conducted immediately before the news that Netscape has been discontinued." http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=5307 +11: NAVIGATION. Optimizing Flow in Web Design By Andrew King "Create exceptional moments or "flow experiences" for your web users by designing toward their needs. A responsive, well-designed web site can induce flow in its users, and you can learn how to design for speed and feedback to make that flow happen." http://tinyurl.com/gnaa Principles of Web Design Lecture/Navigation By Perry Vasquez http://tinyurl.com/gj40 +12: PHP. Writing Libraries in PHP By Bill Moran "This tutorial is intended for PHP programmers who are interested in writing reusable code. Experience with PHP4 and familiarity with writing classes are assumed. The article is primarily geared toward programmers who are new to writing code libraries, but experienced programmers may find the article informative as well." http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/tutorial_moran.php +13: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The Fallout of Netscape's demise By isolani "With the closure of Netscape Communications Corporation by its owners AOL, where does that leave the web authoring community?" http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/standards/FalloutOfNetscapesDemise Browser Wars II: The Saga Continues By Peter-Paul Koch This is an interesting, controversial and lengthy analysis. He touches on web standards: "No web standards. Ever. They're for our own internal use, not for external communication." http://tinyurl.com/gz8u +14: TOOLS. WebCAT By National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) "The Web Category Analysis Tool (WebCAT) allows a web designer/usability engineer to test a proposed or existing categorization scheme of a website to determine how well the categories and items are understood by users....WebCAT is a variation on traditional card sorting techniques." http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/WebCAT/overview.html +15: TYPOGRAPHY. Using Relative Font Sizes By Paul Watson "Using relative font sizes in your website will ensure that your site is accessible to users with poor sight. This article explains how to use relative font sizes effectively." http://www.codeproject.com/html/relativefontsize.asp Use relative font sizes By the University of Massachusetts Boston "Requirement: Text sizes should be set using relative units such as percent or ems." http://www.umb.edu/wau/techniques/font.html +16: USABILITY. PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption By Jakob Nielsen "Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html Usability, Accessibility, and Equity: Understanding the Anomalies in Online Learning By Joanne McInnerney, Lissa McNamee, and Tim Roberts "Issues of usability, accessibility, and equity in college and university education, often focus on those learners who have a physical or intellectual disability. However, students without a recognized disability may also be disadvantaged. The requirement for online access may provide a disadvantage, due to a number of factors ranging from those of a socio-economic nature, to extreme geographic isolation, to difficult work environments. Educators and their parent institutions would be well advised to investigate ways and means to alleviate such problems, before they impinge upon the learning experience of the students." http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw03/papers/roberts/paper.html +17: XML. XHTML: the XML for the Rest of Us By Jeffery Zeldman "It's XML. But browsers think it's HTML." http://www.happycog.com/lectures/xhtml/ Sharing Your Site with RSS By Jason Cook "Web builders use RSS to dish out and bring in fresh news and content on their websites, just like the big portals. And Web surfers can use RSS applications to collect custom-tailored selections of their favorite websites to be read at their leisure." http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/03/17/index3a.html [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +18: 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.]