+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 10, August 22, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 10 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: BOOKS. 03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 04: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION and TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES and PATTERNS. 13: TOOLS. 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. The Future of Accesskeys By Derek Featherstone "The July 22, 2004 Working Draft of XHTML 2.0 abandons accesskey for a much more powerful and flexible access attribute that will put the user in control and allow keyboard users to define their own keystrokes." http://www.wats.ca/articles/thefutureofaccesskeys/66 Spitzer Agreement To Make Web Sites Accessible To The Blind And Visually Impaired. Press Release from the Office of the New York Attorney General "Attorney General Eliot Spitzer today announced settlements with two major travel web sites that will make the sites far more accessible to blind and visually impaired users. The web sites, Ramada.com and Priceline.com, have agreed to implement a variety of accessibility standards that will permit users of assistive technology, such as screen reader software, to more easily navigate these web sites..." http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2004/aug/aug19a_04.html Businesses Agree to Make Websites Accessible By Kassia Krozser "We believe this settlement will lead to increased awareness, and, yes, more lawsuits as Americans fight for accessible websites. While most non-web professionals and many web professionals remain unaware of web accessibility guidelines, advocacy groups for disabled persons will use the settlement as a platform for educating both the public and Internet community on the issues created by inaccessible websites. Web developers who understand Section 508 (which applies to Federal government websites, but is often voluntarily adopted by state and local government agencies) or WCAG (even as it evolves) will be in a strong position to assist clients making the transition to accessible websites." http://www.alttags.org/archives/2004/08/20/39/ +02: BOOKS. Schmitt, Christopher. CSS Cookbook, O'Reilly, 2004. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. A Matter of Styles By Ethan Marcotte "The Web is slowly, surely shifting toward treating CSS as the de facto method for creating our pagesŐ presentation layer, and we'll eventually have to work in less independent environments in order to support the demand for CSS development. Our once-unpopular little technology has come a long way, baby we'd better learn to grow alongside it, for it's about to get even bigger." http://digital-web.com/articles/a_matter_of_styles/ Screenreader Visibility By css-discuss Wiki "When you hide material from visual display on a PC screen, you almost always hide it from screen readers too..." http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ScreenreaderVisibility&version=39 Stylesheets for Speech Synthesisers By css-discuss Wiki "This document describes some of the issues concerning the use of CSS for speech synthesisers (media="aural" or "speech")...The appropriate media type is in a state of transition at present (August 2004). CSS2 defines a media type "aural" but support by speech synthesisers is negligible (see below). The CSS2.1 Candidate Recommendation [CSS2.1 App. A Aural Stylesheets] deprecates "aural". It introduces 'speech' in its place but does not formally (normatively) define specific CSS properties for it, leaving that task for the upcoming CSS3." http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=SpeechStylesheets +04: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver MX 2004 Basics By Garo Green "Garo Green gives you a step-by-step guide to creating a simple website using Dreamweaver MX 2004. Aimed at beginners, this chapter provides simple instruction on creating and saving a page, inserting and aligning images and text, and using hyperlinks to connect pages together, as well as some other basic functions." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=174360 +05: EVALUATION and TESTING. Information Architecture Heuristics By Louis Rosenfeld " Every information architect should always have a set of favorite questions in their back pocket; they really do come in handy. I categorize mine into groups that correspond to the five areas that a user is most likely to interact with a site's information architecture..." http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000286.html What Happens After Customer Research? By Mark Hurst "When labs are complete, the observers - development team, stakeholders, executives - should have the basis for a customer experience strategy: an initial idea about how to conceptualize it, and the beginnings of the consensus needed to support it. Here's a less boring way to put it. If you observe customers carefully, and participate in the discussions afterwards - you might begin to see the outlines of 'the elephant in the living room.' It may be a bodacious 'gotchas'; it may be a radically simple transformation of the site that no one thought of before; it may be a corporate taboo that you couldn't voice until the customers voiced it just then in the labs." http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/archives/000039.php +06: EVENTS. Web Usability Training September 15-16, 2004 London, England http://www.userfocus.co.uk/training/webusability.html +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Representing Content and Data in Wireframes: Special Deliverable 10 By Dan Brown "Visio practically groaned as I opened the wireframes for my current project, which were in something like the twentieth revision. It was the usual story-poorly defined requirements and business rules-and my project folder was fast becoming the poster child for Feature Creep Flu..." http://tinyurl.com/5jmdt +08: JAVASCRIPT. The Irony of JavaScript's Success By Jacques Surveyer "JavaScript has had a roller coaster ride of early phenomenal success, then some bruisings and now renewed success as a macro language, but this recent success may be the highpoint for JavaScript." http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/j_s/column8/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Risky Business By Andy Budd "Like the world around us, Web projects can be a risky business. They can be big, complicated, time-consuming affairs. When you start out, you are faced with many unknowns. The success of a project can depend on external factors such as clients, partners, or other stakeholders that you have no control over. Put simply, projects can go wrong for a whole host of reasons. A good project manager is someone who is expert at managing risk, and the first step in risk management is identifying potential problems..." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=4B44E +10: NAVIGATION. Eight Quick Ways to Fix Your Search Engine By Jeff Veen "Our finding, not surprisingly, is that almost every site's search engine could use improvement. We also found that most organizations' Web teams couldn't really affect the quality of their search results - they were stuck tweaking search technologies that had already been purchased and installed. Often, the most dramatic change they could make was in the design of the search and results interfaces. In some cases, as the old saying goes, this was like putting lipstick on a pig. But cleaning things up does help users find answers to their queries. Through our research, we discovered eight quick fixes that will improve your site's search experience..." http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000341.php When Search Engines Become Answer Engines By Jakob Nielsen "The website is becoming a less prominent locus of experience as people use search engines to bring up answers to their current questions. How can sites cope with masses of freeloaders?" http://useit.com/alertbox/20040816.html +11: PHP. PHP 101 (part 7): The Bear Necessities By Vikram Vaswani ""So now you know how to create your own functions in PHP, and you've spent the last few days busily inspecting your applications and turning repeated code fragments into functions. But functions are just the tip of the software abstraction iceberg. Lurking underneath is a three-letter acronym that strikes fear into the hearts of most newbie programmers. http://www.zend.com/php5/abs/php101-7.php Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms By Brian Suda and Matt Riggott "Wouldn't it be great if you could extend search-term highlighting to the pages on your own website any time a visitor came from a search engine? How about also highlighting search terms from your own site's search tool?...We've written a script in PHP that you can add to individual pages or entire websites that will automatically highlight words in your page if the user has followed a link from a search engine results page." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/searchhighlight/ Looping in PHP By Timothy Boronczyk "Besides acting as big solid paperweights, computers are good at performing repetitive tasks. Over and over and over and over and over again ad infinitum, computers will happily do a repetitive task without complaining." http://codewalkers.com/tutorials/77/1.html +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES and PATTERNS. A Web Standards Checklist Web standards - more than just 'table-free sites' By Russ Weakley "The term web standards can mean different things to different people. For some, it is 'table-free sites', for others it is 'using valid code'. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and pursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc). In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly." http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/checklist.cfm You Said the 'S' Word! By Chris Kaminski "So I really want to know: why do some folks go apoplectic when the word 'standards' comes up, even when they agree with everything else being said? Just why is 'standards' still a dirty word?" http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2004_08.html#a000401 +13: TOOLS. CSS Optimizer Version 3.0 By flumpcakes Version 3.0 of the CSS Optimizer has been released. http://flumpcakes.co.uk/css/optimiser/ +14: USABILITY. Fitts' Law By Dave Shea "Taking a page from the book of HCI specialists, mezzoblue v5 makes liberal use of large link target areas for the sake of easier use." http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/08/19/fitts_law/index.php Usability Crosswords By Userfocus "These crosswords feature words and concepts in usability. Use them in your training courses, to raise awareness of usability in your team, or just for something to do over coffee." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/crosswords.html +15: XML. Making Lists Using XHTML By Dan Cederholm "As with all facets of web design, there are many ways to do a task and get the same (or similar) results. This chapter presents methods for making lists using XHTML and how the lists will look on a variety of devices, including handhelds. (From the book Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook...)" http://tinyurl.com/5uhum Quick guide to XHTML By Anne van Kesteren "There is so much to tell about XHTML and HTML and how to do it the correct way that I'm not sure where to start..." http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/08/xhtml [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 + SIGN OFF. Until next time, Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]