+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 25, November 30, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 25 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: 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. Semantic (X)HTML Markup: Using Tables Appropriately By Zoe Gillenwater "In this article, you'll learn how to use perhaps the most misused semantic element: the table element. Like all the other (X)HTML elements you've learned about in the Semantic (X)HTML Markup series, there's a right and wrong way to use tables. This article explains when it is appropriate to use tables (yes, there are such times!) and how to structure tables when you do need to use them. Beyond just rows and cells, (X)HTML provides you with additional elements and attributes that can add structure and accessibility to your tables and make them easier to style down the road." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=0BEA6 HTML, CSS and Tables: The Beauty of Data By Chris Heilmann "Assistive technology gags when it encounters HTML tables coded by the old school methods. Using the new coding lets you make tables more accessible to your users, and it really isn't that much harder--just remember what a table really is. Chris Heilmann reminds us, and gives an introduction to CSS." http://tinyurl.com/6zrvk +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Simplicity Where It Counts By Eric A. Meyer "Adam Bosworth holds forth on the value of simplicity, and I decide to glancingly approve of 95% of his message while arguing at length with the other 5%...There are two places where I'd like to take issue with Adam...The first is the idea that the Web should never be more complicated than plain old HTML...The (second) part I don't get is the perception that 'CSS fanatics have been trying to bind' HTML." http://tinyurl.com/6ylbf Bug Report - Latest reports By Peter-Paul Koch "The Bug Report system is entirely dedicated to finding, mending and publishing CSS and JavaScript browser bugs. Anyone can report bugs, and I hope that the existence of this system will lead to more and better bug reports. Essentially this is a beta version; although I've done my best to foresee problems and tricky bits, both technically and interaction-wise, I don't doubt that you'll find a few rough spots. I'll continue to tinker with the system, and devoutly hope that in the end it will serve the needs of web developers looking for reliable and complete bug reports." http://www.quirksmode.org/bugreports/ CSS Bug of the Day By Dan Cederholm "You know those desk calendars where you tear off a page for each day of the year?...Someone should create one based on CSS bugs, where each day talks about a different bug and its workaround....I'll start posting reminders here as I rediscover old favorites. While there are some bugs that we run into every day, immediately knowing their remedies, there are others that pop up here and there, only to be looked up again and again to be reminded of their workarounds. It never hurts to publicize these suckers now and again...Today's bug is the IE Doubled Float-Margin Bug..." http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/11/05/botd.html +03: DREAMWEAVER. Introduction to Understanding CSS Design Concepts Part 3 By Adrian Senior "This series reviews how you can use Dreamweaver MX 2004 to move towards CSS as a positioning technique when developing web pages. Part 2 builds on what you learned in Part 1. I discuss floating elements and investigate the height property. In addition, I cover inheritance and specificity. In Part 3 you'll create your first CSS-positioned layout." http://tinyurl.com/4fgb8 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. AD-HOC Personas and Empathetic Focus By Don Norman "John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin are writing a book on the use of 'Personas' in design. They asked if I would write a sidebar to be inserted into the relevant chapter of their book: here it is, but with additional notes and discussion." http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/adhoc_personas_em.html +05: EVENTS. Enterprise Search Summit May 17-18, 2005 New York, New York U.S.A. http://www.enterprisesearchsummit.com/ ED-MEDIA 2005 World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications June 27-July 2, 2005 Montreal, Canada http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Make All Your Tables Sortable By Stuart Langridge "...This is not a new trick, sorting a table using the DOM. However, this mini-library has two nice attributes; the first is, unsurprisingly, that it follows my principles of unobtrusive DHTML, as you'll see below. The second is that, as mentioned above, it knows how to sort a variety of different data types, and it works them out for itself -- you don't have to tell it." http://www.kryogenix.org/code/browser/sorttable/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. The Mistakes of Version 1.0 By Scott Berkun "A smart organization centers the goals of version 1.0 on validating key assumptions for the team and for management, (and possibly for the industry or investors). V 1.0 should deliver on clear improvements on the most important customer scenarios, establish core technological progress, and provide a foundation for future efforts. Management needs to be eloquent and precise about what those scenarios and supporting technologies are, and what improvements on them truly mean." http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue36.htm +08: NAVIGATION. A-Z Web Site Indexes By Heather Hedden "Alphabetical back-of-the-book style indexes on web sites are certainly a useful aid to site navigation...So, why don?t we see more web site indexes?" http://www.iawiki.net/WebSiteIndexes +09: PHP. FAQ on my Development Infrastructure for PHP By Tony Marston Tony Marston has produced a large document that explains how he goes about structuring the code for his complex PHP Web applications. http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/infrastructure-faq.html +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Growing Up With Web Standards By Derek Featherstone "There are still a lot of developers out there that don?t know how to build sites any other way than with font tags, spacer gifs and multiple nested tables. Why? Two reasons: they don?t know any other way (after all, these old methods are what they grew up with - it is what they know, just as we know web standards and would have a difficult time going back to old school methods), and there aren't enough good resources on doing things the 'right' way...So, get some new resources up there, focus on standards, accessibility, and best practices. Open it up for comments from others, so that we get the resources right. Then announce it to the world, so that we can all link to it (that part is key), drive them up to the top of the search engine results page, and obliterate all the sites that teach poor techniques, bad habits and old ways of thinking. We need to have more people grow up with web standards." http://tinyurl.com/4ow6k W3C May Push Wireless Web Specs By Paul Festa "After years of issuing Web standards for mobile devices, the W3C may try to get people to actually use them." http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5457214.html +11: TOOLS. Fangs: The Firefox Screen Reader Emulator Extension By Joseph Lindsay "I get a lot of questions on how certain pages appear in a screen reader. That is why I have started developing a Mozilla Firefox extension that emulates the output of a modern screen reader." Download from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fangs/ Joseph's Blog Post: http://tinyurl.com/5dhpq Lorem Ipsum - The Motherlode By Marek Moehling Mark's new tool provides randomly generated typographic filler text in many languages and charsets (both ascii and unicode) with various options. It provides randomly generated typographic filler text the services in a bare bones approach which might suit typographers needs better. http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/generator3 +12: TYPOGRAPHY. Web Browser Default Text Size By Felix Miata "Why do I see so little of my default text size on web pages? In a nutshell, it is because the overwhelming majority of web site developers arrogantly assume yours is too big, and feel compelled to do something about it, regardless what your default actually is, something they can't possibly know anyway. Many of the people who train site developers agree." http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/defaultsize.html +13: USABILITY. No PDF Press Releases, Please! By Amy Gahran "When you think 'web first', that removes the temptation to format a nice-looking word processing document and then save it as a pdf. Anytime you see a pdf-format press release on a web site, it implies that the organization really doesn't understand how to use the web well, especially for media outreach." http://tinyurl.com/5znf9 Who Framed the Web: Frames and Usability By Roger Johansson "Back in the nineties, using frames to split a browser window into several independent parts was very popular. Much due to the increased awareness of usability and accessibility over the last few years, frames usage is not quite as widespread as it used to be. However, frames can still be found on many sites, especially those that haven't had a major overhaul in a while..." http://tinyurl.com/3t5fz Open Usability "...a project that brings open source developers and usability experts together. The idea behind is simple: There are many usability experts who want to contribute to software projects. And there are many developers who want to make their software more usable, and - as a consequence - more successful." http://www.openusability.org/ Planning a Usable Website: A three-step guide By Trenton Moss "A website is like an information flow, with you as the provider and your site visitors as the receivers of the information. If you don't plan your website with this in mind right from the start, you could find yourself with a brand new website that solves all your immediate needs... but not those of your site visitors. Clicking away from your website has never been easier for Internet users. There are about 35 million websites competing with yours on the Internet (source). Search engine results are becoming better and better and Internet connection speeds faster and faster - finding one of your competitors' websites is now very quick and very easy." http://tinyurl.com/7yh94 Why Usability Folks Don't Focus on Visuals in Design By Joshua Porter "..when a trivial split doesn't accurately reflect the actual situation, we call it a false dichotomy. The black and white approach just doesn't work - we must investigate the gray areas to find out the truth..." http://www.bokardo.com/archives/usability_visual_design/index.php +14: XML. From the Exhibition Floor By Simon St. Laurent Simon St. Laurent reports from the exhibition floor of the XML 2004 conference in Washington, DC. http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/11/19/xml2004.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 U.S.A. 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]