+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 35, February 20, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 35 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 13: TYPOGRAPHY. 14: USABILITY. 15: XML. SECTION TWO: 16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Web Accessibility and Individuals with Disabilities in Postsecondary Education: The Legal Issues By the University of Washington "Does the information on public websites, intranets, and distance learning courses at postsecondary institutions (colleges, universities, and vocational technical schools) have to be accessible to individuals with disabilities?..." http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webpslegal.html Overview of Aging and Accessible Technology By Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/enable/aging/ Use headings to structure your document By W3C http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/headings +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Dodging CSS Hacks By Ryan Christie "Problem: Trident, IE's rendering engine, interprets the box model incorrectly when reading stylesheets. In order to correct this bug, use of 'CSS Hacks' are used to feed IE an incorrect width to counter the problem, while allowing other browsers to read a correct value. Reasoning: Technically, moving from using table hacks for layout to CSS hacks for layout is going from hack to hack. The question then becomes 'Why bother?'. Solution: Don't give IE's box model what it wants." http://web.theward.net/dodgingcsshacks.html Exploring Footers By Bobby van der Sluis "This article explores the ways you can position footers using web standards, although the same techniques may be used to vertically position other elements. Many designs contain a footer that is positioned directly under the content area, unless the content and the footer together don't fill the window entirely. In this case, the footer will be positioned at the bottom of the browser window." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/footers/ Absolute Lists: Alternatives to Divs By Patrick Collins "Learn how to structure your site with lists, for the crazed semantic in all of us." http://tinyurl.com/ywl86 Use Type Selectors By Andrew B. King "By using simple, high-level selectors you can simplify your style sheets..." http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/type/ Float: The Theory By John Gallant and Holly Bergevin "If you are like most people, the whole issue of Floats is rather intimidating. The theory is difficult to grasp, and on top of that, the bugs are rumored to be numerous and nasty. Well fear not, because we will walk through the concepts, some of the bugs, and the practical uses of floats, in nice easy stages..." http://positioniseverything.net/articles/float-theory.html CSS Support in Safari By Apple "The following lists CSS properties and the status of their support by Safari version..." http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/safari_css.html +03: DREAMWEAVER. Why Use CSS? By Greg Rewis "Since the launch of Dreamweaver MX 2004, I've had numerous opportunities to demonstrate its new features and power to both new and existing Dreamweaver users. As with any product demonstration, it doesn't take long before I'm singing the praises of Dreamweaver MX 2004's newfound abilities to design and render CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets. Recently, however, a novice user asked a question, which, quite honestly, threw me for a loop. The user simply asked, 'Why should I use CSS?' I realized at that moment that while those of us who work with HTML and CSS on a daily basis are intimately familiar with the benefits, many of you are not. Or, at least, you may not be fully aware of all of the benefits that CSS can provide. This article is, in written form, my response to that new user's question..." http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/articles/why_css.html Migrating from Microsoft FrontPage to Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 By Charles Nadeau "If you're a Microsoft FrontPage user, you can easily migrate to Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004. Even though Dreamweaver is a more feature-rich product than FrontPage, it's friendly enough for you to jump right in..." http://tinyurl.com/ojma +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Standards Update: Usability Test Reporting By David Travis "It's a truism that even a bad usability test will help improve your software. But the findings from different usability tests are notoriously difficult to compare. This makes it difficult to track usability improvements or to see how you compare against an earlier product. An emerging international standard looks set to solve this problem." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/cif-pf.html Six Steps to Better Interviews and Simplified Task Analysis By Indi Young "...there are six simple things you can do to improve the quality of your interviews, and clarify task analysis..." http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000295.php Evaluation of Websites for Older Adults: How 'Senior-Friendly' Are They? ByÊT. Hart "Thirty-six websites designed for older adults were evaluated as to how well they complied to 25 "senior-friendly" guidelines recommended by the National Institute of Aging. Results indicate that a majority of the sites complied to guidelines related to basic navigation and content style but not for text size, text weight, or site map availability. Implications of compliance to these guidelines on user satisfaction and performance are discussed." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/61/older_adults.htm +05: EVENTS. Museums and the Web 2004 March 31-April 3, 2004 Arlington, Virginia U.S.A. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/ Beyond Usability: Designing the Complete User Experience June 22-23, 2004 Amsterdam, The Netherlands http://www.adaptivepath.com/events/2004/amsterdam/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Information Architecture: Creating Order out of Chaos By Tracy Reith A "quick and dirty" information architecture presentation. http://www.treith.com/ia_presentation/index.html +07: JAVASCRIPT. Javascript navigation - cleaner, not meaner By Chris Heilmann "Javascript makes HTML more interactive and can increase usability. It can also mess up the markup code with loads of event handlers. Which is not at all necessary, as this example explains..." http://tinyurl.com/3hcko Understanding the JavaScript RegExp Object By Harish Kamath "Need to match and replace patterns on a Web page? You don't need Perl or PHP - JavaScript can do the job just as well. In this article, find out how, with an introduction to the JavaScript RegExp object and its methods..." http://tinyurl.com/32fqu +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Managing Project Creep and Client Changes By Jim Babbage "In a web developer's vocabulary, there are two words that shrivel the heart and strike fear into the mind: project creep. These words are scary because they are also - in many a designer's brain - inevitable by-products of any web site project. While to some degree, a certain amount of scope creep is expected, there are ways to manage and minimize the problem. This article talks about some of the thing you can do to help you in this area..." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=A1319FAA02F6EDB4 +09: NAVIGATION. Influence of Training and Exposure on the Usage of Breadcrumb Navigation By S. Hull "Recent studies have shown that while the use of breadcrumb trails to navigate a website can be helpful, few users choose to utilize this method of navigation. This study investigates the effects of "mere exposure" and training on breadcrumb usage. Findings indicate that brief training on the benefits of breadcrumb usage resulted in more efficient search behavior." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/61/breadcrumb.htm Tracking user navigation methods by logging where users click on web pages By Michael Angeles A good blog entry regarding using logs to determine the effectiveness of navigation. http://urlgreyhot.com/drupal/node/view/1440 +10: PHP. Totally PHP A resource for scripts, code snippets and links. http://www.totallyphp.co.uk/ +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Usability: A New International Standard By David Travis "ISO is developing a new standard for web usability. The new standard will be of interest to anyone who designs, evaluates or commissions web sites and it is likely to have a significant impact in improving the overall usability of the web." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/ISO23973.html Bluffers' Guide To ISO 9241 By David Travis "In the dusty institutions where usability standards gather to party with each other, ISO 9241 is a bit of a celebrity. It is widely cited by people who would be hard pushed to name any other standard, and parts of it are virtually enshrined in law in some European countries. But as is the fate of many celebrities, all most usability professionals know about the standard is its name. This white paper describes each of the 17 parts of ISO 9241 in detail." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/iso9241.html +12: TOOLS. icapture By Daniel Vine "iCapture is provided as a public service to the 97% of the computing world without macs. Standing tall, we 3% hereby declare 'we too have a browser'. So go on, give it a try by entering your URL above. You'll be delivered a screenshot of your site as a Mac sees it through Safari or Internet Explorer, all in 30 seconds or so. (Assuming the queue is empty) Come back as often as you would like." http://www.danvine.com/icapture/ CSS Accessibility Analyser By Gez Lemon "I've been working on a CSS accessibility program. It's a very basic service at the moment, but I'm hoping over time to make the service highlight potential accessibility issues. At the moment, it validates the CSS using the W3C's validation service, checks for colour contrast between foreground and background colours, and then checks that relative units have been specified for font sizes. It also has an option to check that relative units have been used for margin, padding, and width. At this point, I wouldn't say it's amazingly useful, but it's an extra tool that might be useful for developers wanting to ensure their work is accessible." http://www.juicystudio.com/permarchive.asp?pageInfo=193 +13: TYPOGRAPHY. What's the point of using pixels? By David Andersson "The obvious solution to the problem would be to not use absolute font sizes. Em are relative to the user's default font size, and are relative to the DPI. The same goes for per centages. The same goes for the relative keywords. And yes, even the absolute keywords, because they are also relative to the default size. The absolute keywords have their own problems, however - the default was small instead of medium in early CSS savvy browsers, and still is in quirks mode for some browsers. So, the absolute keywords are no good choice. Ems have cascade problems. The best solution for now seems to be to use percentages for the base font size, and go with ems for the rest - for accessibility and usability reasons." http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001165.php +14: USABILITY. Does Background Music Impact Computer Task Performance? By C. Phillips "The effects of music on performance on a computer-mediated problem-solving task were examined. Participants completed the task in anonymous dyads as they were exposed to either Classical music, Punk music, or No Music. Results indicate that those in the Classical music condition performed better on the problem solving-task than those in the Punk music or No Music conditions. However, those listening to the Classical music offered more off-task comments during the task than those listening to No Music. Implications for website designers are discussed." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/61/music.htm A longitudinal study of Web pages continued: a consideration of document persistence By Wallace Koehler "It is well established that Web documents are ephemeral in nature. The literature now suggests that some Web objects are more ephemeral than others. Some authors describe this in terms of a Web document half-life, others use terms like 'linkrot' or persistence. It may be that certain 'classes' of Web documents are more or less likely to persist than are others. This article is based upon an evaluation of the existing literature as well as a continuing study of a set of URLs first identified in late 1996. It finds that a static collection of general Web pages tends to 'stabilize' somewhat after it has 'aged'. However 'stable' various collections may be, their instability nevertheless pose problems for various classes of users. Based on the literature, it also finds that the stability of more specialized Web document collections (legal, educational, scientific citations) vary according to specialization. This finding, in turn, may have implications both for those who employ Web citations and for those involved in Web document collection development." http://informationr.net/ir/9-2/paper174.html +15: XML. Help! what is a blog and what is an RSS feed? By Maxine Sherrin "Hopefully you are about to enter a whole new world of hour after hour staring at a computer screen in search of the only thing that matters: knowledge..." http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/blog/what_the.html [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.]