+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 14, September 17, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 14 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 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. Library Web Accessibility at Kentucky's 4-Year Degree Granting Colleges and Universities By Michael Providenti "Based on low levels of compliance with the basic principles of Web accessibility and the potential of legal threats, institutions need to take accessibility issues more seriously...." http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september04/providenti/09providenti.html Assistive Technology: Keyboards And Other Input Alternatives By Mel Pedley This article discuses ability switches, Braille keyboards, Braille notetakers, ergonomic keyboards, keyboard emulation systems, key guards, keytop stickers, larger keyboards, large monitors, mini keyboards, overlay & concept keyboards, portable keyboards, small keyboards, the Twiddle,and touch screens. http://www.gawds.org/show.php?contentid=96 Assistive Technology: Braille and Low Vision Aids By Mel Pedley This article discuses Braille displays, Braille embossers, Braille keyboards, Braille notetakers, Braille translation software, CC TVs, hot spotters, large monitors, low vision aids, scanners with optical character recognition, and screen readers (text-to-speech). http://www.gawds.org/show.php?contentid=97 Accessibility Is Just Another Language By Ultan O'Broin "I have looked at accessibility as a global, social-political and commercial necessity in the last few years and how we need to think of it in broader terms than just disability." http://tinyurl.com/6yc4t +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Really Undoing html.css By Eric A. Meyer "There's an aspect of document presentation most of us don't consider: the browser defaults." http://tinyurl.com/6h49g CSS Centering 101 By Dan Cederholm "The following is documented in order to provide a neat and tidy way of responding to a frequently asked question here at SimpleBits: 'How do I center a fixed-width layout using CSS?' For those that know, it's simple. For those that don't, finding the two necessary rules to complete the job can be frustrating. So here it goes..." http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/09/08/centering.html Designing 3D buttons with pure CSS By Michael Meadhra "CSS buttons are much more efficient than image-based buttons because they're entirely text-based. Here are two techniques for creating a beveled-edge by styling the borders of a CSS button." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5323375.html CSS and Round Corners: Build Accessible Menu Tabs By Trenton Moss "An attractive, accessible menu in CSS? Yes, it *can* be done! Trenton proves the point with his step-by-step guide to building an accessible tabbed navigation..." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/accessible-menu-tabs CSS3 Tests: Compatibility Tables By Sean M. Hall "CSS3 support is what I expected it to be: iffy. I was surprised because Mozilla 1.7 RC 1 and Safari 1.2 are the most advanced in CSS3, and Opera, who has always had excellent CSS support, has a lot of catching up to do (though it does support box-sizing). Explorer doesn't support one bit of CSS3..." http://geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/compat.html +03: DREAMWEAVER. Using Font Formatting in Dreamweaver MX 2004 (TechNote) By Macromedia "When trying to change the appearance of text in the page, developers may be surprised to see span tags with style attributes instead of font tags. They may also notice that in spite of choosing certain page properties, there is no code written to the body tag. Developers will also see style code written to the top of the code." http://tinyurl.com/6tlq2 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes By Steve Outing and Laura Ruel "In Eyetrack III, we observed 46 people for one hour as their eyes followed mock news websites and real multimedia content. In this article we'll provide an overview of what we observed. You can dive into detailed Eyetrack III findings and observations on this website -- use the navigation at the top and left of this page -- at any time. If you don't know what eyetracking is, get oriented by reading the Eyetrack III FAQ." http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm When it Comes to Homepages, It is Polite to Stare By Jay Small "If it's your job to design the homepage for a newspaper website, you already deserve sympathy. The organization chart may show you have one boss. But you know better. You must drive traffic from that one page to everything else on the site. So everyone else at your company whose job depends on that traffic becomes your boss when design decisions affect his or her interests." http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/jaysmall.htm +05: EVENTS. Semantic Technology Conference March 7-10, 2005 San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://www.semantic-conference.com/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. IA at Digital Web Magazine By digital-web.com "A variety of IA related articles published at Digital Web Magazine." http://www.digital-web.com/topics/information_architecture/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Creating Accessible JavaScript By Jared Smith "A Web page containing JavaScript will typically be fully accessible if the functionality of the script is device independent (does not require only a mouse or only a keyboard) and the information (content) is available to assistive technologies. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix that can be applied to solve all accessibility problems associated with JavaScript. The only way to ensure JavaScript accessibility is by evaluating each individual script and devising a unique solution to the accessibility problem it poses. Developers must be familiar with the issues surrounding JavaScript accessibility and apply techniques to do one or both of the following: 1. Ensure the JavaScript is directly accessible. 2. Provide an accessible, non-JavaScript alternative." http://www.webaim.org/techniques/javascript/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Ten questions for John Gallant (Big John) By Russ Weakley "John, along with Holly Bergevin, is responsible for the widely acclaimed Position Is Everything (PIE), which explains some obtuse CSS bugs, provides demo examples of interesting CSS behaviors, and shows how to 'make it work' without using tables. John is also active on the css-discuss mail list, helping people with their CSS related problems." http://webstandardsgroup.org/features/john-gallant.cfm An Interview with Ginny Redish Honing Your Usability Testing Skills By Christine Perfetti "Today, the line between usability testing and field studies has blurred quite a bit. Typically, today, I sit with the participant. Depending on the stage the product is in, I may engage in much more dialogue than I did when I started out. I've done usability testing in conference rooms and cubicles; I even did one this summer in an airport hangar." http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/articles/redish_interview/ +09: NAVIGATION. Use of Faceted Classification By Heidi P. Adkisson "Unlike a simple hierarchical scheme, faceted classification gives the users the ability to find items based on more than one dimension." http://www.webdesignpractices.com/navigation/facets.html +10: PHP. Introducing PHP 5's Standard By Harry Fuecks "In this tutorial, I'll introduce the functionality available with the SPL extension and PHP5 with just enough examples to get you started. Be warned: PHP5's syntax will be used." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php5-standard-library +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Standards Savings By Eric A. Meyer Eric has a post on how using standards provides for a faster web site. http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/09/13/standards-savings/ The Need for Web Design Standards By Jakob Nielsen "Users expect 77% of the simpler Web design elements to behave in a certain way. Unfortunately, confusion reigns for many higher-level design issues." http://useit.com/alertbox/20040913.html +12: TOOLS. Paparazzi! By Johan Sorensen "Paparazzi! is a small utility for Mac OSX that makes screenshots of webpages." http://0x.se/paparazzi/ +13: USABILITY. Making Personas More Powerful: Details to Drive Strategic and Tactical Design By George Olsen "Personas ought to be one of the defining techniques in user-focused design, but they've unfortunately become more of a check-off item than a useful tool. So how did we get here?" http://tinyurl.com/44tey Extending a Technique: Group Personas By Mike Kuniavsky "Entertainment, education, and collaboration software is often used by two or more people simultaneously. Each of these groups has a different set of needs and expectations, and each can be modeled as a group persona, rather than as individual users." http://tinyurl.com/53qzw Instructions not needed By Garrett Dimon "If it needs instructions or you have to explain it, there's room for improvement...Simply put, the length of your instructional text is almost always inversely proportionate to the usability of your product." http://tinyurl.com/47zfo Less is More for Government Websites By Gerry McGovern "Ironically, the freedom of information acts initiated in many countries are having negative side affects when it comes to web strategy. Huge quantities of content are being placed online just to that it can be said that "it's on the Web". It may be badly written, it may be poorly organized, but it's on the Web, and therefore the job of government to inform its citizens is done. Not so. Citizens need to be protected from the vast quantities of useless content that is churned out on a relentless basis. Citizens need to be able to find what they need as quickly as possible. They need to be able to fill out forms that are as simple and short as possible. http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_09_13_government_web.htm It's Not Just Usability By Joel Spolksy "My goal today is not to whine about how usability is not important...My goal today is to talk about the next level of software design issues, after you've got the UI right: designing the social interface." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/NotJustUsability.html +14: XML. The Economics of XHTML By Rakesh Pai "In this article, I take a look at the business aspects of XHTML, and try to evaluate if it is just 'cool' or if it really makes your pocket heavier. Also, hard as it is, I'll try not to be biased towards XHTML along the way." http://piecesofrakesh.blogspot.com/2004/09/economics-of-xhtml.html [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 + 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.]