+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 48, May 21, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 48 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: TYPOGRAPHY. 13: USABILITY. 14: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. When a link falls at the end of a sentence always put the full stop outside the anchor tag By Jim Byrne "The solution is to get into the habit of adding the full stop after the anchor tag; simple but effective." http://www.mcu.org.uk/show.php?contentid=90 Using Section 508 to Improve Internet Access to Information for Everybody By Thomas Vander Wal Society of Technical Communication's 51st Annual Conference - "The presentation is for a short format progressive session, where I gave the presentation three times in an hour and a half to three different groups." http://www.vanderwal.net/essays/508/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. How To Attack An Internet Explorer (Win) Display Bug By: John Gallant, Holly Bergevin "Many authors who desire to make the switch to tableless design begin with high hopes, only to be brought up short by what is sometimes known as the "Explorer bug suite." Although a full understanding of how IE "gets it wrong" may not be within reach for everyone, it is possible to get by with a few key bug fixing tools, which is what this article is going to teach you." http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=C37E0 An Objective Look at Table Based vs. CSS Based Design By Andy Budd "In my experience, there is probably around a 6-12 month learning curve from knowing basic CSS to actually being able to develop CSS based sites competently...Web standards and CSS based design are defiantly the way forward. However in our rush to advocate these 'new' techniques, we may end up believing our own hyperbole. Build something up enough and the reality will always fall short of our expectations. By taking a dogmatic approach we risk alienating the very people we are trying to convince. Table based design will be around for a long time. To encourage developer buy-in we need to lead by example and help reduce the barriers to entry. Not create new barriers. We need to be honest and up-front about the benefits as well as the cost. Developing CSS sites can be hard and it can time consuming. In certain circumstances using tables for layout can make much more sense than CSS." http://tinyurl.com/253hz Tables My Ass By Patrick Griffiths "One myth is that CSS is 'hard'. It isn't hard. Well, not any more difficult than any other approach. The problem is that experienced web designers started out by using tables for layout and then had to completely change their approach to do things the CSS way." http://www.htmldog.com/ptg/archives/000049.php CSS Class: Index By Jay Gerard "This class is an introduction to CSS. I teach the class only in public libraries, and few of my students are destined for careers as professional Web developers. So I create the materials accordingly. I have not tried to cover all the bases. That's been done very well already in both print and on the Web." http://members.aol.com/jbjtutor/css/ +03: COLOR. To Hell with Color Coding By Didier "Color adds value and meaning to communication, giving life to the visual message, intensifying it, making it more identifiable and important. Color plays in important part in daily life, no one will argue that. People associate themselves with a particular color, or palette of colors. Color is personality. So if color is so significant, in life but yet also on web sites, why waste it on color coding? Personally I think color can be far more powerful in branding." http://superfluousbanter.org/archives/000174.php +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Software Usability Tools, Templates, and Testing Facilities By Eric M. Schaffer "This [sample] chapter outlines the tools you need, the templates that are helpful, and usability testing facilities that will help your staff be most efficient and effective in creating usability and testing plans." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=170791 +05: EVENTS. HighEdWebDev Conference October 10-13, 2004 Rochester, New York, U.S.A. http://www.highedweb.org/2004/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Accessible Website Menu By James Edwards "UDM 4 is a fully-featured and accessible website menu, which provides useable content to virtually all browsers - including screenreaders, search-engines and text-only browsers." http://www.udm4.com/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Web Designers On A Fence By D. Keith Robinson "On one side we've got design on the other usability.Ê Or perhaps your stuck in the middle between marketing and engineering.Ê Or perhaps your rock and hard place are form and function. This could be a load of other opposites.Ê Whatever the case may be, Web design usually is done in the middle." http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives/web_designers_on_a_fence.php The KJ-Technique: A Group Process for Establishing Priorities By Jared M. Spool This process takes some of the steps of affinity diagramming and adds a few more. http://www.uie.com/articles/kj_technique/ +08: NAVIGATION. Orient visitors with You Are Here button styling By Michael Meadhra "In order to navigate your Web site efficiently, visitors need to know where they are at all times. That's why providing visual feedback to indicate the current page's position in the site navigation scheme is such an important usability issue." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5206355.html +09: PHP. Quick Introduction to PHP 5 By Zend "PHP Version 5 marks a historical milestone for PHP, featuring a variety of important new features and major improvements. The Zend Engine II, the heart of PHP 5, features a brand new and extremely powerful Object Oriented programming model, that allows for the development of large scale, object-based applications, using common development methodologies and design patterns." http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Zend/Quick-Introduction-to-PHP-5/ SimpleXML Tutorial By Sterling Hughes This tutorial covers one of the more anticipated features of PHP5 - SimpleXML. http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-simplexml.php +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Separation: The Web Designer's Dilemma By Michael Cohen "Presentation separated from structure. Structure separated from content. The foot bone connected to the ... what were we talking about? Michael Cohen steps in to examine our assumptions and relieve our separation anxiety." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/separationdilemma/ Webby Award Validation Woes By Molly E. Holzschlag "If content is king then valid pages must be the poor suckers down in the dungeon. The Webby winners were announced today, and while certainly some of the most content-rich, culturally valuable, and technically helpful sites are on the roster of winners, there is only one valid home page among 'em..." http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2004_05.html#a000341 +11: TOOLS. Google PageRank Report By top25web.com "The Google PageRank Value Report will return the Google PageRank values for the list of urls you enter into the form below." http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php +12: TYPOGRAPHY. Top 10 Reasons Why Big Type is Good Business By Lighthouse International "There are 96.9 million people in the US age 45 and older today;1 by 2010, this number will grow to 119.3 million.2..." http://www.lighthouse.org/bigtype/top_10.htm +13: USABILITY. What they didn't teach me in Design & Usability school (Part 2) By Scott Berkun "This is the dramatic and stunning conclusion to the last month's essay about what I think they should have taught me in college about design and usability." http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue32.htm Web-User Satisfaction on the Upswing By Dennis O'Reilly "Site visitors are more likely to finish Web tasks successfully, but site searches are still troublesome, according to a recent survey." http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116060,00.asp +14: XML. XHTML 2 Public Working Draft By Gez Lemon "The design goals of XHTML2 are to bring it back inline with the original version of HTML that was designed to describe a document's structure, rather than the presentational elements introduced by browser manufacturers. By completely removing any presentation capabilities, documents will be more accessible to machines, such as PDAs, telephones, televisions, kitchen appliances, and just about any other electronic device that someone has the foresight to connect to the Internet in order to grab information to improve its function. Like XHTML 1.1, XHTML2 will be module based, meaning that content developers can use whichever modules they require for a particular document, and the modules will also be available for use with other XHTML family markup languages. XHTML2 introduces a few new elements, listed below." http://www.juicystudio.com/xhtml2.asp [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +15: 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.]