+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 35, February 4, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 35 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 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. An Accessibility Frontier: Cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties By Roger Hudson, Russ Weakley and Peter Firminger "The aim of this paper is to offer some ideas on how websites might more effectively meet the needs of people with cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties. The paper will look at three issues: 1.How the presentation of page content can be modified to make it more accessible. 2.Design of site navigation systems. 3.Tailoring content to the needs of different audience groups." http://www.usability.com.au/resources/cognitive.cfm Developing sites for users with Cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties By Roger Hudson, Russ Weakley, and Peter Firminger "When people think about accessibility of web content, there's a tendency to concentrate on people with visual impairments. People with cognitive impairments and learning difficulties are often overlooked. This article by Roger Hudson, Russ Weakley, and Peter Firminger, examines the types of problems visitors may encounter when using the web, with insightful and practical suggestions on how to develop websites that are inclusive for people with cognitive impairments and learning difficulties." http://juicystudio.com/cognitive-impairment.asp Web Accessibility and Design: a Failure of the Imagination By Bob Regan "Web accessibility and web design are two disciplines with a common theory and divergent practices. Both endeavors rely on a standard set of techniques to ensure a consistent experience of data and content across a diverse set of end users. Both rely on creative individuals to build and deliver great sites and great experiences that have an impact on the user. Both seek to extend the reach of the end user and link individuals together to form a stronger collective whole. However, despite the common theory that links them, web accessibility and web design do not share a common set of practices. Sites hailed for their accessibility are rarely noted for their design. Sites hailed for their design are rarely noteworthy as models of accessibility. Few sites are ever held up as models of both great accessibility and great design." http://www.designfor21st.org/proceedings/proceedings/plenary_regan.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Dynamic Galleries with DOM and CSS By Chris Heilmann "Thumbnail galleries are one of the first things that made the Web surfing experience more interesting. These are whole pages of preview images, which, when clicked on, became the big ones allowed for fast scanning of the image material on offer and easy access to selected pictures. Chris Heilmann shows you how to create and maintain a thumbnail gallery." http://tinyurl.com/6wrg4 Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide (Online Book) First edition, published May 2000. By Eric A. Meyer http://www.monkeytools.com/oreilly/webdesign/css/index.htm +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Investing in Usability: Testing versus Training By John S. Rhodes "Assume that you are in charge of a development project and you have about $10,000 to spend on usability. What is the best way to use the money? What is the right thing to do for the organization? What will be best for customers?" http://tinyurl.com/3psyc +04: EVENTS. Institute of Design Strategy Conference May 18-19, 2005 Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. http://www.id.iit.edu/events/strategyconference/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (Online Book) By Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville First edition, published February 1998. http://www.monkeytools.com/oreilly/webdesign/infoarch/index.htm +06: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Triggers By Peter-Paul Koch "Now that you've separated your website's (XHTML) structure from its (CSS) presentation, wouldn't it be great to similarly abstract the behavioral (JavaScript) layer from the others? ALA prodigal Peter-Paul Koch shows how to use JavaScript Triggers to do just that." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/scripttriggers/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Kelly Goto Interview By Meryl K. Evans "The New Usability is a necessary approach to target specific initiatives that combine a series of research and testing methodologies. This is not new to the usability community; however, the 'new' part is developing around short cycles or rapid testing techniques throughout the development cycle." http://digital-web.com/articles/kelly_goto_2/ +08: NAVIGATION. The answer you're searching for... is 'Browse' By Kath Straub "What does this mean for design? Taken together, these findings suggest that although search engines may become more usable, it is highly unlikely that they will become the primary means of navigation." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/jan05.asp#kath +09: PHP. PHP Security Consortium "The PHP Security Consortium (PHPSC) is an international group of PHP experts dedicated to promoting secure programming practices within the PHP community." http://phpsec.org/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. MSN goes CSS By Douglas Bowman "In conjunction with the launch of Microsoft's new search effort, MSN gets a pretty significant makeover. Significant, not because of the new look, nor because of the multi-million-dollar ad campaign which will attempt to oust Google out of the #1 search spot. But because the underpinnings of the home page represent a considerable move toward web standards..." http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2005/01/31/msn-goes-css.html +11: TOOLS. Web Developer Extension 0.9.3 Chris Pederick If you use the Web Developer Extension for Firefox/Mozilla, you should be aware that Chris Pederick has just released version 0.9.3 of the extension. ItŐs mostly bug fixes plus a notification feature for future updates. http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/ Card Sword CardSword is intended to streamline the process of conducting a card sort. It offers functionality to help with every step in the card sorting process. http://cardsword.sourceforge.net/ +12: USABILITY. Back to School: Design Usability By Eliana Stavrou "All of us have encountered websites that are painful to use. We know what doesn't work, and we might even have said "This site would work better if..." but how many of us have examined our own websites with these thoughts in mind? Maybe it's time for a fresh look. Eliana Stavrou takes you through the basic issues of design usability." http://tinyurl.com/5xnxl Information Visualization and the Challenge of Universal Usability By Catherine Plaisant "Information Visualization aims to provide compact graphical presentations and user interfaces for interactively manipulating large numbers of items. We present a simple 'data by tasks taxonomy' then discuss the challenges of providing universal usability, with example applications using geo-referenced data. Information Visualization has been shown to be a powerful visual thinking or decision tool but it is becoming important for services to reach and empower every citizen. Technological advances are needed to deal with user diversity (...) but also with the variety of technology used (...) and the gaps in user's knowledge (general knowledge, knowledge of the application domain, of the interface syntax or semantic). We present examples that illustrate how those challenges can be addressed." http://tinyurl.com/6n2ll What's the Problem? By Norm Carr and Tim Meehan "Freud asked, 'What does a user really want?' Ten-plus years into web development, we still don't know. One of the biggest problems in creating and delivering a site is how to decide, specify, and communicate exactly what we're building and why. Use cases can help answer these questions by providing a simple, fast means to decide and describe the purpose of your project. In this quick-reading article, Messieurs Carr and Meehan introduce use cases and their, uh, uses." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whatstheproblem/ Implementing Online Forms By James Robertson "It is surprising how few organisations have implemented online forms on their intranets. Most have instead created PDF versions of their existing forms, and have placed them on the site. Staff have to print these off, fill them in by hand, and submit them via internal mail. This is only a very small benefit beyond the original paper forms, and indeed many staff continue to use the paper equivalents. The question is: why haven't more organisations implemented online forms?" http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_onlineforms/index.html Usability in E-Learning By Michael J. Miller "While a large number of organizations have adopted e-learning programs, far fewer have addressed the usability of their learning applications. More attention should be devoted to assuring the usability of e-learning applications if organizations are to fully benefit from their investments." http://www.learningcircuits.org/2005/jan2005/miller.htm +13: XML. HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide (Online Book) By Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy Fourth edition, published August 2000. http://www.monkeytools.com/oreilly/webdesign/xhtml/index.htm Web Design in a Nutshell (Online Book) By Jennifer Niederst Second edition, published September 2001. http://www.monkeytools.com/oreilly/webdesign/wdesign/index.htm [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). As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN guideline 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.]