+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 21, November 15, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 21 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: BOOKS. 03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TOOLS. 11: USABILITY. 12: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. How to Save Web Accessibility from Itself By Joe Clark "The entirety of WCAG 2.0 is a poorly-written morass. The document violates its own draft guidelines on clear and simple writing. It is an outright mess, and urgent plain-English rewrites are required..." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/saveaccessibility/ Attitudes to Web Accessibility By John Knight "During the summer of 2003, we ran an online questionnaire, conducted interviews and carried out a literature review on Web accessibility. One hundred and seventeen respondents participated and they included designers, information officers and accessibility advocates. This initial set of results are intended to encourage debate on the subject." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1321.asp +02: BOOKS. Van Duyne, Douglas et al. The Design of Sites, Addison-Wesley, 2002. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Keep CSS Simple By Peter-Paul Koch "Complicated CSS hacks are the modern equivalents of the frames and tables we used in wholesale lots back in the nineties...Instead of seeking false comfort in hacks that seem all the more comfortable because of their complexity, you should accept uncertainty as a basic principle." http://tinyurl.com/uk7j Big Baer Explains CSS Font-Size By bigbaer.com "Em-phatic about fonts! In reply to a question about css font-size" http://www.bigbaer.com/css_tutorials/css_font_size.htm +04: EVENTS. Web Communications and Strategies Conference July 12-13, 2004 (Conference) July 14, 2004 (Workshops) Salisbury University Salisbury, Maryland, U.S.A. http://www.salisbury.edu/webconf/ GEL 2004 (Good Experience Live) April 30, 2004 New York City, New York, U.S.A. http://www.goodexperience.com/gel/register.html +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Information Architecture Made As Simple As Possible -- and No Simpler By Gerry McGovern "Right now is a great time to be approaching the redesign of a site's information architecture. In my work with clients, I have seen that best practices are definitely emerging. Web design has been through the evolutionary period -- the period of experimentation. There was a time when nobody really understood how to design a website. It was new for all of us. But the Web is not so new anymore. So much has been learned and figured out about what works and what doesn't work. Your job can be so much easier by adapting best practices." http://tinyurl.com/uk7f We Are All Connected: The Path from Architecture to Information Architecture By Fu-Tien Chiou "We've all seen blueprints formally known as contract documents which architects produce and builders use to construct. No one person knows all the details of the design; the end result is entirely a product of teamwork. But there is one axiom: architects do not build." http://tinyurl.com/uk66 +06: JAVASCRIPT. Suckerfish Dropdowns By Patrick Griffiths and Dan Webb "Teach your smart little menus to do the DHTML dropdown dance without sacrificing semantics, accessibility, or standards compliance." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dropdowns/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Forgotten Forefather: Paul Otlet By Alex Wright "In 1934, years before Vannevar Bush dreamed of the memex, decades before Ted Nelson coined the term 'hypertext', Paul Otlet envisioned a new kind of scholar's workstation: a mechanical desk that would let users search, read, and write their way through a vast database stored on millions of 3x5 index cards." http://tinyurl.com/uk6i +08: PHP. Keeping Navigation Current With PHP By Jason Pearce "Turning unordered lists into elegant navigational menus has become a new favorite pastime for many web designers. A dash of PHP can add intelligence to your CSS-styled menu." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/keepingcurrent/ +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered. By Bill Merikallio and Adam Pratt Here is an entertaining Seybold presentation. http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/ The Document Triangle The interdependence of the structure, information and presentation dimensions By Peter J. Bogaards "Every paper and digital document shares three basic dimensions: structure, information and presentation. Although these dimensions are always interwoven, some people in the digital world mostly focus on document structures (e.g. information architects), some on the information they contain (e.g. marketers and writers/editors) while others specialize in the (interactive) presentation aspects (e.g. visual designers and Flash developers). The mutual dependence and interaction of these dimensions is the next level of design and does not regularly get the proper attention. In order to better understand the relationship between these dimensions, let us look at each of them separately, and how they inter-relate." http://www.bogieland.com/postings/post_interdependence.htm The Design of Sites Patterns, Principles, And Processes For Crafting A Customer-Centered Web Experience By Douglas Van Duyne et al. Douglas K. Van Duyne has made available a free one year access license to his website containing all the design patterns in his Design of Sites book. There's one page of registration required: http://www.designofsites.com/pb/register.html Here is a sample pattern: http://www.designofsites.com/about_the_book/patternh1.pdf Here is the book web site which also has a sample chapter for download: http://www.designofsites.com/about_the_book/index.shtm (Please noted these are Acrobat PDF files. If you do not have Acrobat you can download the Acrobat viewer from . This download is for people who do not have Acrobat installed on their computers. It allows you to open and view a PDF file. Additional Adobe free tools are available to assist visually impaired users at ) +10: TOOLS. OpTool By Martin Larsen This is a handy (and free) Windows tool which will let you press a key combo and have a menu popup which will offer to open the current page in other browsers. http://www.kreacom.dk/tools/optool/ Multiple IE's in Windows By Joe Maddalone Here is a method for running multiple versions of Internet Explorer on one installation of Windows. The problem of testing in different versions of IE has plagued developers for years. Looks like this is a solution. http://tinyurl.com/uk79 +11: USABILITY. Tackling Usability Gotchas in Large-scale Site Redesigns By Jeffrey Zeldman "Redesigns can solve old usability problems while creating new ones that must be solved in turn. From the lessons of the ALA 3.0 redesign comes this quick study in remapping content without frustrating readers." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/tacklingusability/ The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines By Jakob Nielsen "There are ten usability mistakes that about two-thirds of corporate websites make. The prevalence of these errors alone warrants attention, especially since they appear on sites with significant investment in usable design." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031110.html Full Page Zoom By Simon Willison Simon has a post about a method that combines Fixed Width and Liquid Deign. He expresses some conflict over which he prefers. http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/11/09/fullPageZoom MAX-WIDTH and flexible layout with shortÊlines By Jesper Tverskov "It is now possible to make flexible layout with user-friendly short lines that adapt to screen resolution, to width of browser window, and to font-size chosen by the user. This could be a new beginning for more accessible and usable web pages." http://www.smackthemouse.com/20031007 +12: XML. An RSS Overview By John Foliot "A brief overview explaning RSS, the RDF Site Summary" http://www.wats.ca/resources/rssoverview/39 [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]