+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 14, September 27, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 14 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: EVENTS. 04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: PHP. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TOOLS. 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. State and Federal E-Government in the United States, 2003 By Darrell M. West, Brown UniversityÕs Taubman Center for Public Policy "This report presents the fourth annual update on the features that are available online through American state and federal government websites. Using a detailed analysis of 1,663 state and federal government sites, we measure what is online, what variations exist across the country as well as between state and national government sites, and how e-government sites respond to citizen requests for information. We examine the differences that exist across the 50 states and between the state and federal governments as well as compare the Summer, 2003 results to 2000, 2001, and 2002...we test actual disability accessibility using the 'Bobby' evaluation software operated by Watchfire. Relying on both Section 508 and W3C Priority One Level guidelines, we examine every state and federal website for accessibility....we look to see whether websites are accessible through any type of handheld device or personal digital assistant." http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovt03us.html Website Accessibility And The Private Sector: Disability Stakeholders Cannot Tolerate 2% Access! By Ronald E. Milliman "...various Federal laws and Regulations (e.g. Section 508) have placed considerable pressure on web designers of all government entities and firms seeking to do business with the Federal government to make their websites fully accessible. To minimize the possibility of being sued, all web designers for firms, large and small, private or public, for-profit or not-for-profit must deal with this issue of web accessibility." http://www.rit.edu/%7Eeasi/itd/itdv08n2/milliman.html How to make printable characters between adjacent links invisible. By Jim Byrne "Some older screen readers are unable to distinguish between adjacent links if there is no printable character between them... http://www.mcu.org.uk/show.php?contentid=41 Web Accessibility - What not to do By Jim Thatcher "Federal requirements; the Agency home page" http://jimthatcher.com/whatnot.htm Tyranny of Tiny Type Online Design for Adults Over 50 By AARP "More and more U.S. adults over 50 have computer access (approximately 36 million), with most of those using their computers to go online. They bank, they buy, they search, they read, they contribute. But how hard is it for them to find what they need? AARP is convening a community of those who use the web to provide information and services to older adults, those who write about this subject, or those who develop web content for clients with older adult audiences." http://www.aarp.org/olderwiserwired/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Rounding Tab Corners By Eric A. Meyer "In the past year or so, it's become somewhat fashionable to use unordered lists to create "navbars;" that is, collections of navigation links. A good example of a navbar is the horizontal stripe across the page tops of this very site, where you can find links to the major areas of Complex Spiral Consulting. In most cases where a horizontal stripe is created, the links are often made rectangular, as they are here. Just to buck the trend, it might be fun to create a "tab" appearance for the links. Let's take a look at how we might accomplish this. " http://www.complexspiral.com/publications/rounding-tabs/ Looking For Bugs in All the Wrong Places By Arlen Walker "We've all been there. Hammering away late at night, carefully crafting our CSS. Finished! We load the page and scream. Gazing at the mess before us, we start thinking of alternatives. This month Arlen Walker will take us through the process of CSS debugging." http://nemesis1.f2o.org/aarchive?id=5 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) By Gez Lemon This in an introductorory tutorial to CSS. http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/css/index.html +03: EVENTS. SXSW South by Southwest Interactive Festival March 12-16, 2004 Austin, Texas U.S.A. http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/ PHP Cruise March 1-5, 2004 A five-day PHP cruise to the Bahamas Islands http://www.phparch.com/cruise/ +04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Origin of the Phrase 'Information Architecture' By R.E. Wyllys "The phrase 'information architecture' appears to have been coined, or at least brought to wide attention, by Richard Saul Wurman, a man trained as an architect but who has become also a skilled graphic designer and the author, editor, and/or publisher of numerous books that employ fine graphics in the presentation of information in a variety of fields." http://tinyurl.com/oj9k Soft Skills for Information Architecture By Jeff Lash This article is "about the other success factors that come from good IA; dealing with conflict, negotiating, and communicating." http://tinyurl.com/oj9b +05: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Tutorial By Gez Lemon This in an introductorory tutorial to JavaScript. http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/javascript/index.html +06: MISCELLANEOUS. The Future of the World Wide Web By Tim Berners Lee This is a Tim Berners Lee's video-on-demand and slides from a September 22 presentation for the Royal Society, London. http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/live/ +07: PHP. PHP Tutorial By Gez Lemon This in an introductorory tutorial to PHP. http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/php/index.html +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The Business Value of Web Standards By Jeffrey Veen "But industry accolades aside, how important is standardization to an individual business like ours? Do Web standards give organizations a return on investment? Does the transition to XHTML and CSS make financial sense? The answer to those questions is yes." http://tinyurl.com/nyh8 Making the Most of Web Design Patterns By Douglas van Duyne, James Landay, and Jason Hong "Web design patterns make up a language that you can use in your daily work. You may not know it, you may already be using some form of pattern language to articulate and communicate your designs. The patterns might reflect your own experiences using the Web. You might have picked them up from another site. They could even come from an insight you learned from a successful design you developed in the past." http://www.uiconf.com/8/articles/design_patterns_article.html +09: TOOLS. List-o-matic By Ian Lloyd This online wizard generates and formats navigation menus via CSS and semantically correct XHTML. It creates inline unordered lists with title attributes and then allows you to choose to have vertical or horizontal CSS styles to them. A great time saver. http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/list-o-matic/list-o-matic.asp Colour Contrast Analyser By Gez Lemon This tool can help determine if foreground and background colour combinations provide sufficient color contrast. http://www.juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.asp Analysing IDs By Christian Heilmann This is an online tool that analyzes a web page for IDs. It will list all of them on a page and tell alert you to any that are used more than once. http://www.onlinetools.org/tests/idchecker.php Link Summarizer This online tool lists the links on a web page. It is a good tool to use to check if your links provide enough information when read out of context. http://www.dodgydom.com/webtools/aslinks/ WaiZilla By Tim Roberts Tim Roberts has begun work on WaiZilla. WaiZilla will be an open source accessibility checking tool. It will integrate with Mozilla browsers (like Netscape 7) and provide instant checks on local and online web pages; it will also work on Windows, Mac and Linux. It will check against WCAG 1.0 and in future Section 508 and WCAG 2 when it arrives. http://waizilla.mozdev.org/ +10: USABILITY. Choose your words carefully on the Web By Gerry McGovern "What does "customer care" or "in a moment" mean to you? Probably something very different from what Dell and McAfee mean. The words you use make a big difference on the Internet. Carefully chosen, they can keep a customer happy. Sloppily chosen, they can infuriate." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_09_22_dell.htm Personas and Persona Sketching By D. Keith Robinson "...Let's face it, in the absence of good user research, all you have are assumptions about your users. Through the process of persona sketching you will, at the very least, have more informed assumptions..." http://www.7nights.com/dkrprod/gwt_nine.php +11: XML. Learning XML, 2nd Edition Chapter 2: Markup and Core Concepts By Erik T. Ray http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnxml2/chapter/index.html Underwhelmed by WAP - Impressions from the coalface By Mike Banahan Mike Banahan gives his Impressions of Using WAP/WML http://ebusiness.gbdirect.co.uk/ouropinions/wapimpressions.html [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.]