+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 40, March 26, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 40 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: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. 13: XML. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility of the Blogging Revolution By Kynn Bartlett "Web logs, also known as blogs, make it easy for anyone to regularly publish content on the Internet, and that brings both challenges and benefits for Web accessibility." http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2004/proceedings/150.htm I don't care about accessibility By Jeffery Veen "These are the speaking notes I used during the 'Accessibility is for everyone!' panel discussion at South by SouthWest..." http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000503.html Accessibility Reference Library List By Apple "Following simple guidelines, developers can take advantage of built-in MacÊOSÊX features that make the user interface of their applications available to external assistive applications. An assistive application interacts with an application to allow persons with disabilities to use it, such as allowing a person with a visual impairment to use an application to convert menu items and button labels into speech and then perform actions by verbal command." http://tinyurl.com/27flh +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Selectors By Eric A. Meyer Here is chapter two from Eric's new book "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition". http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/css2/chapter/ Fun with forms - customized input elements By Soren Madsen "Ever wanted to match the look of your HTML forms with the rest of your website? This article demonstrates how to apply customized backgrounds to HTML forms, while preserving structurally clean markup and accessibility." http://www.picment.com/articles/css/funwithforms/ Form Highlighting Rudex By Ryan Brill "It seems the form highlighting effect I was experimenting with ended up being fairly well liked overall, so I thought I'd write up an explanation of how this was done, and how you can implement it on your own sites, if you wish." http://www.ryanbrill.com/archives/form_highlighting_redux/ Mac IE 5 - problems with css rendering By Philippe Wittenbergh "This is a collection of odd, ugly or buggy behaviors with CSS in Internet Explorer 5.x for the Mac. Even though this browser has pretty good support for CSS1 and CSS2, some things simply don't work correctly, or can cause trouble down the road." http://www.l-c-n.com/IE5tests/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Validating Code in Dreamweaver MX 2004 By Mark Fletcher "Code validation is the process of ensuring that your documents adhere to the rules of a particular markup language. For example, you can validate markup languages, such as HTML and XHTML, which the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) created, by comparing the code against a document known as the DTD (Document Type Definition). The DTD defines the tags and syntax that are used to structure web pages and declares what the markup means..." http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/articles/validate.html +04: EVENTS. TODCON: The Other Dreamweaver CONference April 2-4, 2004 Orlando, Florida U.S.A. http://www.todcon.org/ Open Source Conference May 9-11, 2004 Toronto, Canada http://osconf.kmdi.utoronto.ca/ Designing and Organizing Digital Information Spaces June 8-9, 2004 Paris, France http://www.infotoday.com/iaparis/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Don't Forget to Architect the Home Page By David Wertheimer "The solution is to stop trying so hard with the home page and start thinking about how the rest of the site works. Functionality and placement become more obvious inside the site. Why not carry those same principles backward, onto the home page?" http://tinyurl.com/35p7m Day 1: IA Summit 2004 Wrapup By Boxes and Arrows Staff "This year's IA Summit, themed 'Breaking New Ground', seemed to have the right mix of new and returning folks, a nice variety of interesting and well-attended pre-conference workshops and several tracks of presentations to suit the IA of every flavor." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/day_1_ia_summit_2004_wrapup.php Day 2: IA Summit 2004 Wrapup By Boxes and Arrows Staff "The second day of the IA Summit dawned with rain and storm clouds. But the weather cleared, the presentations were inspiring and by the end of the day, each of us returned back to our lives recharged and eager to build on what we had learned." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/day_2_ia_summit_2004_wrapup.php +06: JAVASCRIPT. The power of JavaScript's EVAL command By Greg Griffiths "Many JavaScript programmers have come across the EVAL command, as it has been around since JavaScript 1.0 and ECMA-262, but few will have used it. In this article, I'll take a quick look at several potential uses for this command, including one allowing us to write code that is easier to read, maintain, and has less lines while achieving the same effect. I will also look at how EVAL can assist you when you are using dynamic content in your Web-based applications." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371-5169823.html +07: MISCELLANEOUS. An Interview with Douglas Bowman By Craig Saila "Craig Saila interviews web designer Douglas Bowman about CSS, the Wired redesign, Webmonkey shutting down, Stopdesign, and SXSW Interactive 2004." http://www.digital-web.com/interviews/douglas_bowman.shtml +08: NAVIGATION. The Joy of Navigation Design By Peter Merholz "Navigation design isn't just about finding things - it imbues meaning based on the contexts it provides." http://www.peterme.com/archives/000296.html +09: PHP. Using MySQL from PHP, Part 2 By John Coggeshall "Today I'll explain dealing with errors, determining the number of rows in a result set, and more..." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004/03/18/php_foundations.html Making Usage Statistics in PHP By Adam Szanto "Making usage statistics on a web site is one of the most enjoyable things for me on the Internet. Thanks to the technology, you can see each click of each visitor, the date of the visiting, and how many seconds the user was reading your site. I use this feature to track which of my articles was read for the longest time. In this article I will show you how to store the statistics in a MySQL database, show the web stats in an HTML table and make figures based on the stats using the GD library." http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/PHP/Making-Usage-Statistics-in-PHP/ MySQL addresses open-source license problem By Stephen Shankland "The rift divided MySQL and PHP, software that lets computers construct customized Web pages on the fly. The two packages are found side by side so often--along with the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server--that there's an acronym, LAMP, to label the software combination. On Thursday night [March 11, 2004], MySQL published a license exception that, the company said, permits PHP to resume its previous practice of bundling MySQL components called libraries, said Zack Urlocker, MySQL's vice president of marketing." http://tinyurl.com/3ejk6 +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Why You Should Validate Your HTML By Christine Churchill "...Clean, well-written HTML is important if you want to ensure a good search engine ranking. It also helps guarantee that your page will be displayed properly on older, or more obscure browsers that are less forgiving. Therefore, you have two compelling reasons to validate your HTML today." http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0204.htm#TWO +11: TOOLS. CSS Favelets By Eric A. Meyer "Small JavaScript links that can be added to your favorites toolbar and used for diagnosing layout problems. Includes a 'favelet creator' that will set up a favelet to point to a style sheet [and examples]...Tableshow outlines table structure by making table borders solid red, table headers dotted red, and table cells dotted purple. It also throws in some small margins and padding to spread things apart and make the table structure easier to see...Fontpop draws attention to any font elements on the page. Trust me, you'll know when it happens. Also selects elements that descend from font elements in case you have one of those pages where a font is wrapped around three paragraphs or something...Style-attr draws a dashed red border around any element that has a style attribute. This can help work out which elements are likely to be trouble if you try to style them from a style sheet. No-alt Adds a green 'border' (actually padding and a background) and a red border to any image that has no alt attribute. A validator will tell you the same thing, but this is visual..." http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/favelets/ +12: USABILITY. Web Design Going in the Wrong Direction? By Jason Fried "Shouldn't sites be getting smaller not bigger? How come everyone keeps wanting to add new sections and new pages when the ones they already have aren't being read or looked at? It's not that you don't have enough content or features, it's that what you do have isn't making sense to the humans it's intended for. Sure, your CMS tool can help you manage up to 1,000,000 pages, and your search engine can scour them in less than 1 second, and you can pick from 100 templates and add a new section to your site in seconds, but how does all of this affect Bob or Susan down the street who are trying to look something up before the pasta water boils over?" http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives/000600.php I am USER, hear me roar! By Chris Heilmann "You want them, you need them - Users. Hear from one of them what you might do wrong and what you can do to make up for that." http://evolt.org/article/rdf/4090/60295/index.html An Open Letter to Jakob Nielsen By Andrei Herasimchuk, Donna Driscoll "The lack of a 'usability culture' is not the driving factor with poor design in my experience. It certainly is a factor when designers ignore usability practices in their work, but there is so much more to it than that." http://www.designbyfire.com/000068.html How to Tell People What Else You Do on Your Website By Gerry McGovern People come to your website on a mission. They want to do something specific. They are tunnel readers. Telling them what else you do-without annoying them-is a major challenge. Doing it well is about relevance and context. It's about presenting the right content at the right time. http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_03_22_tunnel1.htm +13: XML. XML in PHP 5 - What's New? By Christian Stocker "This article is intended for PHP developers at all levels who are interested in using the new XML functionality in PHP 5. Only basic, general knowledge about XML is assumed. However, it's an advantage if you have already worked with XML in PHP." http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-xmlphp.php [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.]