+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 34, February 13, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 34 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: FLASH. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 13: TOOLS. 14: USABILITY. 15: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Use JavaScript to add default text to input fields By Jim Byrne "For as long as I can remember I've puzzled over whether or not to put in default characters in edit boxes and text areas in my web forms...." http://www.mcu.org.uk/show.php?contentid=77 Exporting Word to xHTML By Kirk Biglione "In nearly all cases, the resulting Word document exported to HTML produces code that requires a significant amount of cleanup effort..." http://www.alttags.org/archives/2004/01/14/8/ Top businesses ignore accessibility By Internet Magazine "Nomensa found that 79 per cent of the websites did not provide alternate text for images, 56 per cent did not have useful alternate text, and 77 per cent did not allow the font size to be rescaled." http://www.internet-magazine.com/news/view.asp?id=3913 Why Accessibility and Usability are Important to You By John Britsios "According to Usablenet.com, accessibility and usability are becoming increasingly critical to the internet experience..." http://tinyurl.com/3do4x +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Integrated Web Design: CSS Beyond the Retrofit By Molly Holzschlag "An even greater concern is that many designers and developers have inaccurately but understandably blamed CSS and Web browsers for challenges with CSS. The problem at this point may really have more to do with the fact that important concepts in CSS are not explained to us in clear terms. As a result, what might appear to be a browser bug or a fault of CSS might simply be the result of the way CSS integrates with our HTML or XHTML documents, or how the concepts within CSS are resolving conflicts. Without a clear understanding of CSS as a language, and the way it integrates with markup, we're all at a disadvantage if we want to create CSS-based sites that are cross-platform, cross-browser-compliant and also attractive..." http://tinyurl.com/yqwpw Use Descendant Selectors By Andrew B. King "Descendant selectors are an elegant way to apply styles to specific areas of your page while reducing the need to embed classes within elements..." http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/descendant/ CSS Validator (Changes the Rules) is Broken By Jeffrey Zeldman "The W3C's CSS validation service has changed the way it interprets CSS authoring practices. Many sites that were designed valid no longer validate. The change in behavior affects sites that use the box model hack to compensate for the incorrect CSS implementation in versions of Internet Explorer for Windows prior to IE6." http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0204b.shtml CSS validator bug - box model hack By Kynn Bartlett "I can't believe that people are arguing that their hack doesn't work right. Yes, it's a bug that should be fixed, but they don't really care about the issue because they want to use aural CSS properties -- they care because they're using a nasty, awful hack which abuses a legitimate CSS property that's INTENDED to be used to increase accessibility for people with visual disabilities, as well as other audio-output users. In my opinion, Zeldman and the other whiners are way off base..." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator-css/2004Feb/0012.html +03: DREAMWEAVER. PHP and Dreamweaver MX Video Tutorials By Mark Fletcher "Learn how to set up site definitions for PHP within Dreamweaver, how to create a MySQL database and connect to it through Dreamweaver, and how to perform basic database tasks through PHP, such as inserting, deleting, updating data. Get all your PHP basics through these video tutorials from Mark Fletcher." http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/articles/php_videos.html +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Creating Effective Online Surveys: Owning Photoshop doesn't make you an artist By Kath Straub "...Creating surveys that meaningfully collect data from the right set of participants requires a keen and thoughtful effort built on an understanding of the subtleties of survey design..." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/jan04.asp#susan +05: EVENTS. CHI (Human Computer Interaction) 2004 April 24-29, 2004 Vienna, Austria http://www.chi2004.org/ +06: FLASH Patagonia finds HTML beats rich media for e-catalog By Internet Retailer "After testing both a rich media and HTML version of their new e-catalog, Patagonia found that users preferred the straight HTML version. Download time and clarity of images were two of the biggest concerns with the beautiful Flash version. Customers had a 30% higher sales conversion rate and a $20 higher average order with the HTML version." http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=11184 +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Strategic IA vs Technical IA By IAwiki "Peter Morville posted the name of Big IA and Little IA...to which many have taken exception in one way or another. One aspect that grates uncomfortably for many is the big vs little connotations. In Peter Morville's article Speed of Internet Architecture he pointed out an ugly truth of web design: much of what we do today will be tossed away in the next version even if the content is useful and valuable, in lieu of dragging the current structure kicking and screaming into the new structure..." http://www.IAwiki.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?StrategicIAvsTechnicalIA +08: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Image Gallery By Jeremy Keith "Here's a quick and easy way of making a one-page gallery that uses JavaScript to load images and their captions on the fly." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/imagegallery/ Event Handlers By James Craig, Jim Allan, and Rob Sartin "Accessible event handlers..." http://cookiecrook.com/AIR/2003/train/eventhandlers.php +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Louis Rosenfeld: The InfoDesign interview By Dirk Knemeyer "...we are stepping across the boundaries of 'traditional IA'. We've got most of those basic 'textbook' concepts named and fairly well-understood, but now we have to connect them to other fields like, for example, content management. We also need to explore IA in settings where it's not well understood, such as the enterprise environment or information systems that have to support a multi-lingual, multi-national audience." http://www.informationdesign.org/special/rosenfeld_interview.htm +10: NAVIGATION. SimpleQuiz Ý Part XII: Breadcrumbs By Dan Cederholm "Breadcrumb navigation is commonly used as a method for showing the user where they are within the structure of a site - and giving them an easy way of getting back. Marking up a breadcrumb trail of links could be handled a variety of ways - and I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts on how they're best presented structurally, keeping in mind an unstyled version as well." http://www.simplebits.com/archives/2004/02/04/sqxii.html +11: PHP. PHP Anthology, Volume 2: Applications. Chapter 5: Caching By Harry Fuecks "The PHP Anthology tackles the most common problems and shows you how to solve them using modern PHP-coding practices. The PHP Anthology will help you improve your development techniques, cut down on needless lines of code and avoid potential security pitfalls." http://www.webreference.com/programming/phpanth3/ PHP Login Script with Remember Me Feature By jpmaster77 Ê "This tutorial will teach you how to create a login member system with the popular 'Remember me' feature. Allows use of MySQL and flat file databases." http://tinyurl.com/ypbt2 +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Webstandards Awards By Johan Edlund, Andy Budd, Cameron Adams "The Web Standards Awards aims to promote web site design using W3C standards by seeking out and highlighting the finest standards-compliant sites on the Internet. By showing you standards-compliant sites that make your jaw drop, we hope to show you that web standards aren't a constraint, they are a liberation." http://www.webstandardsawards.com/ A Three-legged Stool By Mark Newhouse "The Web is a platform. For publishing, for interaction, for information mining, for entertainment, for commerce, for fun. Whatever form it takes this platform we call the Web is underpinned with standards, the 3 legs of the stool. And those cross-supports that keep the legs from collapsing and flying away from each other. Here we'll take a look at each leg, why it is important, and some resources to help you apply these standards to your web design, whether it is a blog, a pro bono site or your job." http://www.realworldstyle.com/stool.html +13: TOOLS. Information Architecture Deliverable Templates By Peter Van Dijck "To download Visio stencils, (assuming you have Visio installed on your computer): right-click the link and save to the Solutions directory in Visio (usually C:\Program Files\Visio\Solutions). " http://www.iabook.com/template.htm Testing Web accessibility with Home Page Reader By IBM "After a Web site or template has been created, a developer or designer can use Home Page Reader to check the site to ensure that it complies with accessibility requirements. Several techniques are available to verify that the content on the Web pages is accessible to people with disabilities. The overall technique for using Home Page reader to test accessibility is outlined below..." http://www-3.ibm.com/able/guidelines/web/webhprtest.html +14: USABILITY. Valentine Flower Sites No Bed of Roses: Usability Thorns Await By Andrew B. King "With Valentine's Day on its way, how better to celebrate than a review of the top flower sites? Will these sites enjoy the sweet smell of success or wilt under the traffic? To find out, we compared six of the top flower sites to see how fast and accessible they are for people with disabilities. Did they pass the sniff test?" http://www.optimizationweek.com/reviews/flowers/ Four Things Every Web Site Headline Must Do By Nick Usborne "If you're writing a headline or heading for a site page, here are four things you need to keep in mind, four elements that demand your attention, four separate Ôaudiences' you need to satisfy..." http://www.uieroadshow.com/articles/usborne_article_4.html More Than Just a Footer By Jeff Lash "While arguments about getting more links, content, and important elements 'above the fold' are common, more sites are taking advantage of the entire Web page, adding useful elements to the bottom of the page. These features don't just place normal elements at the bottom of the page, they use the location to a distinct advantage. Here are three examples, along with some rationale, for adding a feature to the bottom of a page." http://tinyurl.com/2n5fv Seven Myths of Usability ROI: Daniel Rosenberg Presentation Presentation report by Nerija Sinkeviciute "Daniel Rosenberg began his talk by confessing that he doesn't believe in usability Return on Investment (ROI). Having spent 30 years in the field of User Experience (UE), and never having been asked to justify usability by its ROI, Rosenberg raises a question: Why are we still discussing this topic?..." http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20031014/#1 +15: XML. How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer By Stephen Downes "An RSS (Rich Site Summary) feed is an XML file used to describe the contents of your website. As your website content changes, your RSS feed changes. Other computer systems, known as 'aggregators' or 'harvesters', read your RSS feed every once in a while. If you have provided new information, the aggregator takes that information and sends it to readers around the world. Thus information about your site's contents is 'syndicated', that is, rebroadcast to a much larger audience." http://tinyurl.com/239vn Creating Schemas While Preserving Your Sanity By Simon St. Laurent "Using XML shouldn't be a mind-binding experience, and it's possible to discard most of W3C XML Schema and still get work done - even get more and better work done. The key to this sanity is a strict focus on XML and XML documents. Stop pretending that these things have object hierarchies, and stop hacking around the conflicts between object hierarchies and document realities with broken tools like substitution groups and keys. Focus on the documents themselves and the structures you'd like to have in those documents, and there's a chance you'll produce documents that are a pleasure, rather than a burden, to work with." http://simonstl.com/articles/sanity2/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +16: 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.]