+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 13, September 20, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 13 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: FLASH. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: PHP. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. 11: XML. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility Information By The Royal National Institute of the Blind The Royal National Institute of the Blind has a nice set of accessibility information pages Web Access Centre web site. Topics include: Understanding accessibility http://tinyurl.com/ne6y The case for accessibility http://tinyurl.com/ne6z Checkpoints and techniques http://tinyurl.com/ne70 Implementing accessibility http://tinyurl.com/ne72 Resources http://tinyurl.com/ne77 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Listamatic By Russ Weakley Russ Weakley uses an array of CSS list effects from around the web to demonstrate how they can be applied to the same markup to produce a large range of different results. http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/listamatic/ Screenreader Visibility By Bob Easton "When you hide material from visual display on a PC screen, you almost always hide it from screen readers too. As we move from tag soup to CSS governed design, we throw out the layout tables and we throw out the spacer images. Great! It feels wonderful to do that kind of house cleaning. So, what do we do with those "skip navigation" links that used to be attached to the invisible spacer images? A few famous web designers have begun using regular text links for skip navigation and then hiding them from visual display with CSS display:none..." http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ScreenreaderVisibility What do Screen Readers really say? By Bob Easton Screen readers may or may not be picking up skip links when they are hidden using the CSS declarations display: none or visibility: hidden. Bob Easton has created a series of tests, including importing and linking the style, as well as other potential workarounds. http://eleaston.com/bob/screenreader-visibility.html CSS3 module: Paged Media By W3C CSS3 Working Draft Module for Paged Media, has features including pagination, margins, headers, footers, footnotes and cross-referencing. http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-css3-page-20030909/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Weaving CSS Dreams By Doug Bowman "...My only concern with Dreamweaver is the same as it was as Macromedia announced expanded and smarter HTML support in prior versions: it's very possible to use as a crutch which enables designers to avoid learning and understanding how the Web is (and should be) built. In order for us to truly understand the Web and design successfully for it, we need to at least partially understand the underpinnings. CSS is no exception. One only need look at the mass of sites produced in the last five years by designers and agencies who had no understanding of HTML, or what constituted appropriate use of Flash, to see an abundance of bloated and awkward sites which adhere too closely to the principles of print design..." http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2003/08/25/dreamweaving.html Designing With CSS in Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 By Drew McLellan "Dreamweaver MX 2004 boasts a slew of improvements to its CSS capabilities that reach right across the scope of the application..." http://tinyurl.com/nxjc +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Evaluating the 'Evaluator Effect' By Bob Bailey "The 'evaluator effect' is when different evaluators evaluating the same system detect substantially different sets of usability issues..." http://www.webusability.com/usability_article_Evaluator_Effect2003.htm +05: EVENTS. Don't Make Me Think: The Workshop - Steve Krug September 26, October 21, November 4, 2003 Dallas, Texas; San Francisco, California; and Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A. http://www.sensible.com/workshops.html +06: FLASH. CSS Support in Flash MX 2004 By Todd Dominey "After downloading Flash MX 2004 Pro from Macromedia yesterday, one of the first features I wanted to check out was Flash Player 7’s support for CSS. In case you haven't heard, the new player allows developers to load external CSS documents, or create in-line styles in ActionScript, to control the presentation of text fields; a long-standing (at least for me) Achilles heel in the application. What may seem trivial is actually quite powerful..." http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/001181.shtml +07: NAVIGATION. Global Navigation By Webdesign Practices "What percentage of sites provide global navigation? What style of global navigation is most common (tabs, navigation bar, other)? Where is global navigation most commonly located on a page?" http://www.webdesignpractices.com/navigation/globalnav.html Local Navigation By Webdesign Practices "What types of local navigation do sites provide? From a given page, where can users go in "one click"? Where are the various types of local links found on pages?" http://www.webdesignpractices.com/navigation/localnav.html Breadcrumb Navigation By Webdesign Practices "How common is breadcrumb navigation? What styles of breadcrumbs are used?" http://www.webdesignpractices.com/navigation/breadcrumb.html Global "Home" Link By Webdesign Practices "How many sites link the logo to the Home page? Where is the logo positioned? What other types of Home page links do sites provide?" http://www.webdesignpractices.com/navigation/globalhome.html Link Color, Treatment, and Rollover Behavior By Webdesign Practices "How many sites link the logo to the Home page? Where is the logo positioned? What other types of Home page links do sites provide?" http://www.webdesignpractices.com/navigation/linktreatment.html Search By Webdesign Practices "What percentage of sites provide global access to a search function? How is search provided on the page (as a text field and button or simply as a link)? Where is search located on pages?" http://www.webdesignpractices.com/functions/search.html +08: PHP. Storing form array data to MySQL using PHP By webinista "Got an array from a form? Need to store it to a database? Here's how..." http://tinyurl.com/mwdt +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Typography Glossary By Kevin Woodward http://www.redsun.com/type/glossary/ +10: USABILITY. How Critical is Page Download Time by Itself? By John S. Rhodes "...I call into question research that is concerned with single page (i.e., destination page) download times. Why? Because I would argue that almost any user would be willing to wait between 5 and 10 times as long for a single page to load if they were highly confident about it. If success is almost certain, they'll place a big bet on it (i.e., wait time). They will wait a long time, and when it does load, they'll be happy. As Christine Perfetti indicated, success drives the perception of page load time. Not surprising, especially in light of total task time as I am suggesting..." http://webword.com/weblog/002184.html#002184 Your website is for your customer, not for you By Gerry McGovern "An organization is a form of group. Groups can be elitist. Groups are always trying to define who is in and who is out. To a great many organizations, the customer is on the outside. To be a success, a website must live on the outside." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_09_15_outside.htm Web sites still have the same Usability Problems By Micro Enterprise Journal Forrester has been doing commercial web site reviews for the past few years, testing for usability and grading on specific site characteristics. In their latest review of some 375 web sites, Forrester found that web site managers still had quite a lot of work to do. In fact, the tone of this particular brief might be summed up with the question: Why do we still have to tell you people this stuff? http://tinyurl.com/ne7a On Writing Short By Jeffrey Veen "But of course we don't read instructions. It's a matter of context. When trying to get through an interaction, we're not in 'reading mode' ... we're in 'doing mode.'" http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000318.html +11: XML. Markup: Bulletproof XHTML By Evan Goer "Evan Goer is a senior technical writer for Chordiant Software. He realized that web standards were important the day that Netscape 6 became available internally while working at Sun Microsystems, and he's been recovering from the shock ever since..." http://www.mezzoblue.com/cgi-bin/mt/mezzo/archives/000250.asp Put XHTML 1.0 Strict and Transitional to work By Shawn Morton "XHTML 1.0 comes in three flavors, and it requires more than a sense of taste for developers to tell them apart. This article discusses the Transitional and Strict flavors of XHTML and how to leverage them appropriately." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371-5061538.html?tag=crm Why Choose RSS 1.0? By Tony Hammond "Part of RSS 1.0's value is in retaining its roots as primarily a metadata specification. A journal publisher explains why they chose RSS 1.0 as the basis for distributing RSS feeds of their publications." http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/07/23/rssone.html RSS in Depth By Sam Ruby These are Sam Ruby's slides for his 2003 Seybold presentation. http://www.intertwingly.net/slides/2003/seybold/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: 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.]