+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 27, December 26, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 27 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: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: NAVIGATION. 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. Accessible Forms By Patrick Griffiths This is a good introductory mini-tutorial. http://www.htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/forms.php +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The Mystery Of Why Only Four Properties Apply To Table Columns By Ian Hickson "Have you ever wondered why columns in CSS can only have four properties applied to them?..." http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1070385285&count=1 Tables for Tabular Data "In the last few years HTML tables have taken a beating with all manner of HTML 'expert' decrying them as bad/evil/the cause of world hunger etc. However, like most things in this world tables in and of themselves are not evil but are a useful and important part of HTML and it's just that people have used them to lay out entire websites which led to difficult to maintain code. To be fair, it was the only option at the time as CSS was only a far distant promise of what the web could be. However, over the last couple of years CSS has matured and is now the best tool for the job of laying out websites. Which free's up tables to be used for what they were designed - displaying tabular data." http://markl.f2o.org/tutorial/tables/Advanced_Tables.html +03: DREAMWEAVER. Using Image Editing Tools in Dreamweaver MX 2004 By Patti Schulze "Now, with the new image editing features in Dreamweaver MX 2004, you can perform basic image editing operations on images without using an external image-editing application such as Macromedia Fireworks. In fact, you can still use these features, even if you haven't installed Fireworks." http://tinyurl.com/zn02 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The importance of cross browser testing By Craig Cockburn "Why it's important to test for browsers besides Internet Explorer" http://www.siliconglen.com/usability/browsers.html +05: EVENTS. 20th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning August 4-6, 2004 Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A. http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/ Louis Rosenfeld on EIA and Steve Krug on Usability - USA Tour April 1-May 28, 2004. Louis Rosenfeld and Steve Krug take their two workshops round Minnesota, Washington and Seattle. Enterprise Information Architecture Seminar http://louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/seminars/eia/ Don't Make Me Think: The Workshop http://www.sensible.com/workshops.html +06: JAVASCRIPT. Javascript debugging: IE Option gotcha By Simon Willison "...I was having all kinds of strange problems in IE, which I finally tracked down to the following gotcha: in IE, the value property of an Option object is empty if the corresponding option tag doesn't have a value attribute. This is counter-intuitive because in HTML if an option attribute is omitted the text inside the option element is used as the value instead. Mozilla browsers duplicate this in their handling of the Option object; IE doesn't. Hopefully this tip will save someone some debugging time in the future." http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/12/13/ieGotcha +07: NAVIGATION. WebHCI Navigation By David Danielson http://hci.stanford.edu/cs377/hci-research/topics/david.html +08: PHP. XML in PHP5: An in-depth look into advanced XML features By Christian Stocker "PHP5 has a lot to offer regarding XML support. In this presentation, I will dig into some of the more advanced features of XML support in the upcoming PHP5 and to try to give some tips and tricks about them." http://slides.bitflux.ch/phpconf2003/ +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. CSS3 Paged Media Module W3C Working Draft 18 December 2003 Imagine making a webpage with a relatively long text look like a PDF document, with separate pages, that can be viewed and printed one-by-one. This 'adds functionality for pagination, page margins, headers and footers, image orientation' and 'generated content for the purpose of cross-references with page numbers' to CSS. http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-css3-page-20031218/ +10: TOOLS. EasyChart By IBM EasyChart is "usability teaching tool to demonstrate poor interface design...it is a charting tool that has been designed to purposefully violate well-known interface design rules of thumb". http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/3072 +11: USABILITY. Ideal line length for content By Russ Weakley "Is there an ideal line length for content?" http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/ Slow Shopping Sites Delay Santa: Scrooge Response Times By Andrew B. King "On narrowband connections, where most can relate, shopping online has become hurry up and wait. So in the spirit of the season, with not a touch of the Grinch, we bring you our first annual, Where to Shop in a Pinch." http://www.optimizationweek.com/reviews/shopping/ Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003 By Jakob Nielsen "Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031222.html +12: XML. Benefits of XHTML Modularization By WaSP "Just what is this magic word beginning with 'M' that spans six syllables? What does it mean, and what implications..." http://www.webstandards.org/learn/askw3c/dec2003.html [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. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates. + 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.]