+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 37, March 5, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 37 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: COLOR. 04: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 13: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Associate form fields explicitly with their labels By Jim Byrne "Here is handy accessibility tip that will make filling in web forms easier for screen reader users, and for people with impaired motor skills: associate form fields explicitly with their labels by making use of the 'label' element and the 'id' attribute..." http://www.mcu.org.uk/show.php?contentid=79 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS From the Ground Up - 2 By Joe Gillespie "More about CSS text styling, how to make list items look more interesting and hyperlinks less ugly." http://tinyurl.com/26vyq Cascading Style Sheets, oh my! By Mark Gibbs "A friend recently asked us how Cascading Style Sheets really function (we have strange friends). He added, 'I mean, I know what they are for, but how do they work?' We suspect that many people might have the same question, so this week we are going to start exploring CSSs." http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/0216gearhead.html CSS Drop Shadows By Sergio Villarreal "They're the corkscrew in every graphic designer's Swiss Army knife. Much used, oft maligned but always popular, drop shadows are a staple of graphic design. Although easy to accomplish with image-editing software, they're not of much use in the fast-changing world of web design. On the web, adaptability and ease of use dictate trends Ñ and static images with a fixed background effect are not very adaptable. But what if we had a technique to build flexible CSS drop shadows that can be applied to arbitrary block elements?" http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssdropshadows/ Drop Shadows By W3C http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/shadows.html The CSS 'Reader' Media Type Working Draft By W3C This is the beginning of a brand new CSS media type intended to instruct devices to display and speak a document or display and render it in braille. http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-css3-reader-20040224/ 03: COLOR. Using Color By Adrian Roselli et al. "This is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of 'Web Graphics for Non-Designer'...It introduces the basics of color theory, choosing color schemes that work, and good practice when dealing with color on the Web." http://www.glasshaus.com/samplechapters/1159/default.asp +04: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver MX 2004 Accessible Forms By Damien "Create and Style Accessible Forms with Dreamweaver MX 2004." http://www.dreamlettes.net/tutorials/accessibleforms/ +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Risks of Quantitative Studies By Jakob Nielsen "Number fetishism leads usability studies astray by focusing on statistical analyses that are often false, biased, misleading, or overly narrow. Better to emphasize insights and qualitative research." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040301.html Conducting Your Own Inherent Value Test By Jared M. Spool "If you've conducted a usability test in the past, it's simple to put together an Inherent Value Test..." http://www.uie.com/articles/inherent_value_testing_part2/ +06: EVENTS. Arguments for Web Accessibility: A Rhetorical Analysis March 9, 2004 12:30-1:30 p.m. Solon Campus Center 25 University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, Minnesota. U.S.A. http://www.d.umn.edu/centers/wordwork/index.htm Introductory Usability Evaluation April 7, 2004 Canberra, Australia http://www.steptwo.com.au/seminars/040407/index.html Introductory Usability Evaluation May 4, 2004 Sydney, Australia http://www.steptwo.com.au/seminars/040504/index.html +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. J-Flow Presentation By Peter Boersma and Jacco Nieuwland "This is where you can download a version of the presentation (5.5 Mb) that we did during the IA Summit. We have also included the HTML deliverable that we created during the demonstration." http://www.xs4all.nl/~nieuwnet/iasummit/ +08: JAVASCRIPT. Data Validation Techniques By Paul Wilton This is Chapter 10 from the book "Practical JavaScript for the Usable Web". http://www.glasshaus.com/samplechapters/1051/default.asp +09: NAVIGATION. User-Centered Information Retrieval By Marcel van Mackelenbergh "To find information, a reader uses either a search engine or the reader browses through metadata. The main difference between search engines and metadata lies in the quality of the links. A search engine offers you a lot of results,..." http://members.home.nl/mackelenbergh/ +10: PHP. Migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5 By php.net "PHP 5 and the integrated Zend Engine 2 have greatly improved PHP's performance and capabilities, but great care has been taken to break as little existing code as possible. So migrating your code from PHP 4 to 5 should be very easy. Most existing PHP 4 code should be ready to run without changes, but you should still know about the few differences and take care to test your code before switching versions in production environments." http://docs.php.net/en/migration5.html PHP 5 Meets XML and the DOM By Adam Trachtenberg "An Intro to PHP 5's rewritten DOM, XSLT, and XPath extensions." http://www.php-mag.net/itr/online_artikel/psecom,id,503,nodeid,114.html SQLite: A Lightweight Alternative By Timothy Boronczyk Timothy Boronczyk shows how to use SQLite. http://codewalkers.com/tutorials/63/1.html +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The Importance of Web Standards By Denis Boudreau http://www.sitepoint.com/print/649 +12: TOOLS. Dreamweaver Code Cleaner By Webmaster Toolkit "Our Dreamweaver Code Cleaner will read the page you specify, and clean a lot of the un-needed code created by Macromedia Dreamweaver. This helps to shrink the size of the actual page, which has many benefits..." http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/dreamweaver-code-cleaner.shtml Link Checker By Webmaster Toolkit "Our Link Checker will read the page you specify, extract the links from it and test the status of each one. If any errors are found (broken links) these are reported." http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-checker.shtml Search Engine Position Checker By Webmaster Toolkit "The Search Engine Position Checker tool will automatically query the search engines you specify and check if your URL appears in the first 50 results for your chosen keywords. If the URL is present, it will output what position it occupies. As an additional feature, the tool also informs you if any other URLs from your domain appear in the search results. The tool queries the following engines: Altavista, Excite, Google, HotBot, MSN, WiseNut, All the Web, and Teoma." http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine-position-checker.shtml +13: USABILITY. Pop-up 'suicide' can kill your brand By Tim Richardson "Employing pop-up ads to target punters is like playing Russian roulette with your brand, according to Web behaviour consultancy Bunnyfoot Universality. They reckon companies that use - or host - pop-up advertising are a big turn-off, risking 'suicide' for their brand. Bunnyfoot's research found that pop-ups were the 'single biggest turn-off among users' with users deleting the ads on average just 2.5 seconds after they appear..." http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35792.html List of articles about writing web content By Quality Web Content Here are some good articles on the writing web content. http://www.webpagecontent.com/arc_display/5/ Do y'see what I'm saying? Using visual hierarchy to support your message By Kath Straub "Have you ever tried to read a paper that someone else highlighted?...This has serious implications for used textbook buyers. It also has implications for Web page designers...." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/feb04.asp#susan [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +14: 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.]