+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 2, Issue 30, January 16, 2004.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. 

++ISSUE 30 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: 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.

Web opens up for learning disabled
By Geoff Adams-Spink 
"New software that will make websites accessible to people with learning difficulties will go on sale later this year." 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3379547.stm

Content Accessibility
By Ross Shannon
"The accessibility of your site is its ease of use, and is very important. Learn how it's done."
http://tinyurl.com/2rog3


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Abstracting CSS
By Dave Shea
"The further you abstract the structure of your markup, the weightier your CSS file becomes. It's inevitable, and by all indications, the way things are meant to go for two important reasons: it fulfills the complete separation of structure and presentation, and CSS is cachable -- each new page load pulls new content alone, without pulling new presentation."
http://tinyurl.com/22zhy

Explaining CSS Positioning in Greater Detail
By Kynn Bartlett
"The main 'trick' here is that you have to know enough about absolute positioning and containing blocks (and how to create them) in order to make it work, but once you've got that, it's fairly reliable."
http://www.maccessibility.com/archive/001281.php

Colored boxes - one method of building full CSS layouts 
Russ Weakley
"This article explains one method of building a full CSS layout from start to finish. The method, based on positioning colored boxes and testing across a range of browsers, can be used to build a wide range of full-CSS layouts."
http://tinyurl.com/28fmp


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Building Dreamweaver MX 2004 Tables
By Laura Gutman 
"Laura Gutman goes over some table basics, looks at how Dreamweaver MX 2004 works with tables, and then covers different ways to maximize table-making power in the Dreamweaver environment."
http://tinyurl.com/2h6qt

Should You Upgrade to Panther? 
By Kim Cavanaugh
"...for Macromedia MX users, are some of the performance issues on the Mac addressed by upgrading?..."
http://tinyurl.com/233u2


+04: EVENTS.

Contingency Design
January 28, 2004
Chicago, Illinois  U.S.A.
http://www.acm.org/chapters/chi-sqrd/meetings/20040128.html

The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON)
July 26-30, 2004 
Portland, Oregon U.S.A.
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/

AusWeb04
July 3-7, 2004
Seaworld Nara Resort
Gold Coast, Australia
http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/


+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Enterprise IA as intellectual property
By Lou Rosenfeld
"And down the road, we might start seeing enterprises take their information architecture a bit more seriously, seeking to establish it as intellectual property treated in much the same way as products and services. I'm kind of looking forward to the day that the business logic that drives selection of a site's related links might be patented. As soon as the lawyers get involved, you'll know that IA has arrived."
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000231.html


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Transitional CSS and JavaScript Strategies
By Makiko Itoh 
Chapter 12 of the book "JavaScript + Css + DOM Magic".
http://www.createwebmagic.com/samplechapter/

The decline of JavaScript and modern web design
By Makiko Itoh
"I think this is an indication yet again of the simplification of things. Much of the things we used to do with JavaScript are now achievable through CSS."
http://tinyurl.com/2k8mk


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

WaSP Interviews: Ryan Carver
By WaSP
"When Lee Jeans popped onto the scene a few months ago, it caught some of us off guard. We're getting used to technology sites taking the plunge into the world of standards, but the first fashion site was a pleasant surprise. Ryan Carver is the guy to thank, and we caught up with him just after the holidays."
http://www.webstandards.org/learn/interviews/rcarver/


+08: PHP.

Working with Forms in PHP
By Matt Zandstra
"PHP code is usually embedded in HTML pages and provides near-transparent techniques for accessing data sent via HTML forms. This lesson covers the basics of gathering user input and looks at some techniques for creating scripts that use forms."
http://tinyurl.com/2gf5q

Sort Array Keys
By webdevtips
"Scenario - you want to create a list with values from a database. You have a column called names but you only want unique names in the list - no duplicates. Let's take a look at an example array made from a database call."
http://www.webdevtips.com/webdevtips/php/sortkeys.php

Anthology Volume 1, Chapter 2 - Object Oriented PHP
By Harry Fuecks 
"If the words 'Object Oriented' send a chill down your spine, Chapter 2 of The PHP Anthology is for you! It includes a run-down of PHP's class syntax, as well as a primer that explains how all the key elements of the Object Oriented Paradigm apply to PHP." 
http://www.sitepoint.com/article.php/1264


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

The Daily Standards
By Adam Howell
"Painstakingly updated every weekday, The Daily Standards is dedicated to recognizing sites that have been lovingly crafted with web standards and the future in mind."
http://www.dailystandards.com


+10: TOOLS.

Tidy your HTML
By Dan Connolly
Another Online version of Tidy.
"When editing HTML it's easy to make mistakes. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a simple way to fix these mistakes automatically and tidy up sloppy editing into nicely layed out markup? Well now there is!"
http://cgi.w3.org/cgi-bin/tidy

Accessibility Toolbar (beta)
By Steven Faulkner 
"The Accessibility Toolbar is provided by the Accessible Information Solutions (AIS) team at the National Information and Library Service (NILS), Australia...It is not designed to tell the user if a page/site is accessible, it is designed to help the user to interrogate aspects (structure/code/content) of an html document that can have an affect on the accessibility of that document...System Requirements: Microsoft Windows,Internet Explorer 5.0 or later with Javascript enabled."
http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar/

Web Developer 
By Chris Pederick
"The Web Developer extension for Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools."
http://chrispederick.myacen.com/work/firebird/webdeveloper/


+11: USABILITY.

Why HTML in E-Mail is a Bad Idea
By Scot Hacker
"If you take away only one thing from this page, let it be this: When you send HTML email, you have no guarantee that your message will be A) readable at all or B) visually legible to the recipient. With plain text email, you always have that guarantee, no matter what mail client the recipient is using."
http://birdhouse.org/etc/evilmail.html


+12: XML.

XForms And Accessibility
By T. V. Raman 
This is chapter 12 of the book "XForms: XML Powered Web Forms".
http://tinyurl.com/2djrb

Getting Started with XForms
By Bob DuCharme 
The XForms standard...lets us define forms that are much more sophisticated  than those of HTML. Perhaps more importantly, it makes it easier for applications that we write to grab and use the data entered into forms, because an XForms client can plug the data directly into any XML structure that you like.
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/12/30/xforms.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.]