+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 11, September 6, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 11 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: EVENTS. 06: NAVIGATION. 07: PHP. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: XML. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. A Web Designer's Guide to JAWS By Kynn Bartlett "This is the initial draft of this tutorial...This is a short tutorial with the aim of helping Web developers understand exactly how JAWS and other screen reader software are used, and how they can develop Web sites to work best with JAWS." http://www.maccessibility.com/archive/000843.php JAWS Demo By Cheryl Kirkpatrick "It can be difficult for sighted Internet users to have an understanding of how vision impaired users ÒviewÓ Web pages. Below are three Windows Media files of JAWS reading three different Web pages, representing different levels of accessible or inaccessible design." http://www.state.sc.us/scsl/access/demos/ Inaccessible Website Demonstration By Disability Rights Commission The UK Disability Rights Commission has a demonstration of some things that can cause major problems for even the slightly disabled. http://www.drc.gov.uk/newsroom/website1.asp PDF format is still not fully accessible By Dey Alexander "...Although there have been significant improvements to the accessibility of PDF documents, they can only be accessed by blind users in a very limited set of conditions. As a result, whenever PDF documents are used on the web, they should always be supplemented by an accessible alternative (in HTML, RTF, or text format)." http://deyalexander.com/presentations/accessibility-pdfformat/ Attractive, Accessible Web Sites (AKA disproving the myth of ugly) By Ian Lloyd "Web accessibility is not the sexiest subject in the world. Let's be realistic. And selling the concept is never all that easy as a result. Sure, you can harp on about all the 'business benefits' (potential increased audience, reduced bandwidth costs, good PR), but what you really need to be able to do is show that it's possible to do this without compromising on the design, and that's often where the problems begin." http://www.accessify.com/articles/attractive-accessible-sites.asp +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Containing Floats By Eric A. Meyer "By understanding how floats and the normal flow relate to each other, and understanding how clearing can be used to manipulate the normal flow around floats, authors can employ floats as a very powerful layout tool. Because floats were not originally intended to be used for layout, some hacks may be necessary to make them behave as intended. This can involve floating elements that contain floats, 'clearing' elements, or a combination of both." http://www.complexspiral.com/publications/containing-floats/ Fast rollovers, no preload needed By Petr Stanicek This technique uses a single image, with three variations (the styles on hover and active). The image area that is shown is handled with positioning rather than loading an individual image for each state. http://www.pixy.cz/blogg/clanky/cssnopreloadrollovers/ Centering using Cascading Style Sheets By David Dorward David Dorward discusses some methods for centring elements using Cascading Style Sheets. http://david.us-lot.org/www/centre/ Nested Tables By David Dorward In this article David Dorward talks "about the (mis)-use of tables for layout". http://david.us-lot.org/www/nested/ +03: COLOR. A Quick Color Explanation By Joe Burns "It's pretty easy to understand the words color codes, but those hex codes are rather strange. Here's a quick explanation." http://www.htmlgoodies.com/colorexp.html +04: DREAMWEAVER. XHTML in Dreamweaver and Golive By Joe Gillespie http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/wpd0903.htm#footnote Dreamweaver MX 2004 By Elizabeth Naramore "Elizabeth takes a look at Dreamweaver MX 2004, the next version of Macromedia's popular web development software." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/naramore20030825.php3 Dreamweaver Cleans Up By Michael Kay "Frankly, I had mixed feelings about Dreamweaver MX. Its functionality is great, but after the integration of UltraDev and HomeSite, the user interface had become a bit overwhelming. But it seems they've cleaned things up in Dreamweaver MX 2004..." http://tinyurl.com/mbyv +05: EVENTS. SITE 2004 Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference March 1-6, 2004 Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A. http://www.aace.org/conf/site +06: NAVIGATION. Two tips on effectively organizing your navigation By Jamie Kiley "Not all links are created equal. While all of your links may be important, you must sort and prioritize to come up with an effective navigation scheme." http://tinyurl.com/mbzh +07: PHP. An Introduction to PHP By Leon Atkinson and Zeev Suraski "In this introduction to PHP, you'll learn how it came about, what it looks like, and why it is the best server-side technology. It also exposes the most important features of the language." http://www.webreference.com/programming/php/corephp/index.html PHP Security, Part 2 By John Coggeshall "If you have users, you'll undoubtedly have bad guys trying to break things. As a developer, it's your responsibility to make sure your code is secure. John Coggeshall explains how system calls from PHP can be exploited -- and how to make them secure." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/08/28/php_foundations.html +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Designing for the Future, and the Training Gap By Ian Lloyd "The dream of writing mark-up based on standards is not a pipe dream, but it can be a nightmare getting other people to follow suit. I just hope that venting these frustrations might spark conversation among passionate people on the web about what can be done..." http://www.mezzoblue.com/cgi-bin/mt/mezzo/archives/000238.asp Commentary: Web Standards Listen to All Things Considered audio By Paul Ford "Theoretically, pages on the Web are governed by standards -- rules about how they are built, how computers read their instructions and display them. Commentator Paul Ford makes his living developing Web sites, and he says that if the standards were really standard, it would make his job a lot easier. Paul Ford writes ftrain.com." http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1388637 Wish You Were Here: postcard style tips for website designers or owners By Matt Robinson Matt Robinson's new site advocates modern web design standards. It has some good tips for web designers. http://www.lazycat.org/postcards/ +09: XML. Semantics, HTML, XHTML, and Structure By Shirley Kaiser "The information below is just a few notes to help address some basic questions about using W3C recommended structural markup." http://www.brainstormsandraves.com/articles/semantics/structure/ XHTML! What's that all about? By Joe Gillespi "XHTML is the natural sucessor to HTML. This article explains why you should be using XHTML now and how to convert your HTML layouts to XHTML in four easy steps." http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/wpd0903.htm#feature Standards-compliant XHTML: Introduction to eXtensible HyperText Markup Language By sizefactory.com "This tutorial attempts to cover ground on a few fronts: an introduction to (X)HTML, CSS and efficient capitalization of these standards in production, the separation of style and content and bringing structure to (X)HTML documents. We hope to serve authors who may be familiar with code, but not with Cascading Style Sheets or separating style from content." http://www.sizefactory.com/xhtml/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +10: 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.]