+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 41, April 2, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 41 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. Evaluating Web Site Accessibility: A Seven Step Process By Jared Smith and Paul Bohman "Web Accessibility is becoming a very critical topic in information technology. Assistive technologies are allowing individuals with disabilities the power to access Web content when and how they desire. Most Web developers and designers are aware of the issues of Web accessibility, but do not know where to begin implementing accessibility. The first step to creating an accessible Web site is evaluating the current accessibility level of the existing site. This hands-on workshop will teach participants a seven step process for evaluating the accessibility of their current Web site. Along the way, they will learn the basics of accessible Web design, assistive Web technologies, and how individuals with disabilities use the Web...." http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2004/proceedings/203.htm Web Accessibility - What not to do By Jim Thatcher "The subject here is the home page of just one federal Agency. Amongst federal agencies, I would expect this Agency to be one of the most attuned to the needs of people with disabilities. But the Agency's home page stands out as an example of how not to do accessibility. It is clear that the designers of the page knew about accessibility techniques but they didn't have the slightest idea why!" http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2004/proceedings/80.htm FORMS: Friends, Not Foes! By Meryl K. Evans "A couple of months ago, I reviewed Web sites to determine whether or not they were worthy of a nomination for an award. When coming across forms, I rarely found sites with accessible forms other than those aimed at people with disabilities. They're missing attributes that help screen readers to correctly read the form..." http://tinyurl.com/2p5yt Opera's browser finds its voice By Matt Loney and Paul Festa "Opera is adding voice control to its browser, enabling users to browse the Web and fill in voice-enabled Web forms by talking to their PC. They can also have the contents of Web sites read back to them." http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5178061.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Student Portfolios: standards-based design required By Malaspina University Students Take a look at the portfolios of Jim Rutherford's students. He requires them "to create two versions of their portfolio - one using Macromedia Flash, and the other using web standards (XHTML and CSS)." Bravo! http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/archives/000550.html CSS Tables By Robert Denton Robert Denton has some nice examples that look nice enough, however some have violations of good accessibility practices. For example, using "& middot ;" for a bullet instead of "ul li" tags. http://www.bowdoin.edu/templates/tables.html Accessible, stylish form layout By Cameron Adams "The code I've used in my form templates is all the same, and entirely semantic. There's more than enough valid form data tags to give CSS the ability to style all elements, so there's no need to introduce any superfluous divs or spans." http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2004/03/24/ Absolute Lists: Alternatives to Divs By Pat Collins "I am a list person. As far back as when my own wallet started directing my spending habits, I was making lists that instructed me "what to-do," "who to call," and "who to pay back exorbitant amounts of money." Lists make the most sense when trying to organize a life that needs it. The same ethos applies to the web design world." http://www.burned.com/absolutelists.php Choosing a DOCTYPE By Gez Lemon "If you use an XHTML Transitional DOCTYPE, ask yourself why. If you're honest, the answer will either be because you can't live without the presentation elements that a Transitional DOCTYPE affords, or because you want to launch new windows..." http://www.juicystudio.com/choosing-doctype/ CSS 2.1 -- A Step Backwards? By Sitepoint "At a glance, the newly-finalized CSS 2.1 Candidate Recommendation may not seem like it holds much value for developers. After all, most of the significant changes are features that have been removed!" http://tinyurl.com/2vuke +03: DREAMWEAVER. CSS Killer Tips for Dreamweaver By Joseph Lowery and Angela Buraglia "The tips in this article are a sampling of those that appear in the book Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips by Joseph Lowery and Angela Buraglia, published by New Riders." http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/articles/css_tips.html Gradually Implementing CSS in Your Site By Greg Rewis "How do I move from traditional HTML markup to CSS? The answer, as you all know, is 'Very carefully'. All kidding aside, the truth of the matter is that there is no silver bullet capable of slaying the and dragons and rendering your site a complete, fluid, and flexible CSS masterpiece. However, as any good late-night infomercial will tell you, a nip here and a tuck there will have your site looking like new, and even easier to maintain. In other words, contrary to popular opinion, CSS is not an all-or-nothing decision. You can gradually implement CSS into your designs..." http://tinyurl.com/26oqg +04: EVENTS. E-Learn 2004 November 1-5, 2004 Washington, DC, U.S.A. http://www.aace.org/conf/elearn/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! By Lars Marius Garshol "Information architects have so far applied known and well-tried tools from library science to solve this problem, and now topic maps are sailing up as another potential tool for information architects. This raises the question of how topic maps compare with the traditional solutions, and that is the question this paper attempts to address. The paper argues that topic maps go beyond the traditional solutions in the sense that it provides a framework within which they can be represented as they are, but also extended in ways which significantly improve information retrieval." http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tm-vs-thesauri.html +06: JAVASCRIPT. The Table Ruler By Christian Heilmann "Make your site easier to use by giving your visitors a virtual 'ruler' to guide and track their progress down long data tables. With a pinch of JavaScript and a dash of the DOM, your table rows will light up as your visitors hover over them." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/tableruler/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview: Dave On Standards By Gary Bland Dave Shea discusses his views on web standards in this Nemesis Project interview. http://nemesis1.f2o.org/aarchive?id=8 Setting the price: Part II By Paul Scrivens "Asking for a low rate will only get you the clients that are looking for paying the low rate. You do not want these kinds of clients. No matter how much of a bind you are in with money, they will suck you dry of all your energy." http://tinyurl.com/2os38 +08: NAVIGATION. Link location that works By Rachel McAlpine "A surprising proportion of people read only link text and nothing but link-text when they first encounter a page. At first glance, they don't read headlines or image captions or logos or taglines. Their eyes go straight to the usually-blue, underlined text. After questioning hundreds of people in my workshops, I guess at least 50% are link-readers. Link-readers get an instant impression of your page based on the placement (and wording - but that's another story) of link text. Do it right, and you give people confidence in your expertise. Do it wrong, and they get an impression of a disorderly and annoying page." http://www.webpagecontent.com/arc_display/5/ +09: PHP. PHP 5 InfoCenter By Zend "PHP 5 brings along a host of new features and major improvements..." http://www.zend.com/php5/ Build intelligent Web applications through conditional probability By Paul Meagher "In 1763, Thomas Bayes wrote an excellent computer science reference. Learn how to draw from it to improve your Web applications, as Paul Meagher delves into Bayesian inference and conditional probability with PHP-based tools." http://tinyurl.com/39zjd +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The Advantages of Using Valid HTML By Jim Byrne "HTML standards were developed to make it easy to share and process electronic documents regardless of the type of device, computer platform or operating system used." http://www.mcu.org.uk/training/usestandardmarkup.php +11: TOOLS. The best web development tool - ever By Chris Heilmann "...The pen helped us a lot in finding, sorting and honing what we want to put on the web, a lot faster and cheaper than trial and error in any fancy web development package. It helped us avoiding flashy traps that might have annoyed a lot of users. And we were able to do that anytime and anywhere. It also enables people who don't know how to create web sites to prepare the content for the web developers in a clean way, no searching through hundreds of emails or copying and pasting from one word file. Surely the mightiest web development tool of them all." http://evolt.org/article/rdf/4090/60302/index.html I.A. Tools "Below you will find document templates, process map posters and other tools to help you in your practice. The documents, which have been donated by various people in the organization, have been found to be useful at one time or another. Items can be used in combination or alone as needed." http://aifia.org/tools/ +12: USABILITY. Opening Links in a New Window By Gez Lemon "...opening links in a new window is akin to changing my browser settings, moving a window to a position I don't want, or resizing a window to a size I don't want. If I want to open a link in a new window, I will choose to do so. If I want to open a link in a new tab, I will choose to do so. How do you know which I prefer? You don't. The window is part of the user interface, and as a content developer, you have no right to dictate where a link opens in my browser." http://www.juicystudio.com/new-windows/ Common Myths about Web Design By Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann "The hype that surrounded the Web and its concomitant New Economy led to many popular myths concerning the design of Web content and Web-based applications. This excerpt from 'About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design' explores some of these myths." http://tinyurl.com/23cjo Multimedia: Use Weighted Optimization By Andrew B. King "For critical applications, weighted optimization can help you squeeze more bytes out of your images. For JPEGs the technique seemed to work best at higher quality settings. For GIFs changing the amount of lossiness was most effective at reducing file size. Increasing dithering actually increases file size and should be used judiciously." http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/weighted/ +13: XML. Why RSS Is Everywhere By Xeni Jardin "All the info goodness of the blogosphere in a convenient snack size." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/start.html?pg=7 [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.]