+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 41, March 16, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 41 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: NAVIGATION. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TOOLS. 11: USABILITY. 12: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Dyslexia List Launches with Major Research Programme into Accessibility Guidance By Ann Light "The Adult Dyslexia Organization (ADO) is launching a "Dyslexia Friendly: User Friendly" campaign, and putting out a call for participation in a new research initiative." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article2255.asp Forms By Dan Cederholm "Forms play an integral role on the Internet in allowing users to communicate and interact with websites. Forms are an important way for website owners to collect information from their visitors. There are many ways to handle forms markup -- but the best way is the one that will benefit both the user and the site owner. This article was excerpted from the book Web Standards Solutions The Markup and Style Handbook, written by Dan Cederholm." http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Design-Standards/Forms/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The Early Bird Catches the CSS: Planning Structural HTML By Virginia DeBolt "Do you struggle to make the switch to Cascading Style Sheets? Are you using some CSS but can't quite complete the transition to all CSS? Your problem may be that you are not thinking about Cascading Style Sheets early enough in the process of making a web page. Before you even begin to think about the appearance of your web page, you need to think about the semantic or structural content of your page so that the HTML is ŇCSS-ready.Ó This article will help you start your projects by first making your HTML structurally ready for CSS... http://www.wise-women.org/tutorials/cssplanning/ Introduction to CSS Positioning Properties Part 2 By Alejandro Gervasio "In this second part of a two-part article, we examine more positioning properties available in the CSS2 specifications, and use what we've learned to build a simple drop-down menu without employing any JavaScript." http://tinyurl.com/45wax A Simple Introduction to 3 Column Layouts By John Oxton "This tutorial is by no means complete and is intended as a quick 'how to' guide for beginners rather than a definitive guide to why these things work (or in the case of older browsers, don't work). For the sake of simplicity I have chosen fixed width rather than fluid design, though these methods can easily be used as the basis for fluid layouts." http://joshuaink.com/blog/196/a-simple-guide-to-3-column-layouts +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Eyetracking Studies: Usability Holy Grail? By Frank Spiller "Eye-tracking studies are a type of usability test where user gaze concentrations are recorded in thermal-like "heat zone maps". The heat zone maps track user eye movements. Eye tracking tests make usability testing look really interesting, sophisticated, high-tech and scientific. The reality is that eye-tracking, while valuable, doesn't make usability testing any more powerful. It's what you do with the observations and the usability test data that counts." http://tinyurl.com/3q3h2 Eyetools Eyetracking By Greg Edwards "Eyetools provides tools and services to measure eye-movement as people look at webpages to quantify what people read, what they don't read, what they glance at, what they skip, and what they never see...and then we correlate this to their clicks, comments, and actions." http://blog.eyetools.net/ CSS Zen Garden -- an Eyetools Eyetracking Analysis By Greg Edwards This is an Eyetracking analysis CSS Zen Garden. http://blog.eyetools.net/eyetools_research/2005/02/css_zen_garden_.html +04: EVENTS. ASSETS 2005 Conference The Seventh International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility October 9-12, 2005 Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/assets05/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Put the 'Card' Back into Card Sorting: Computer-aided paper sorting (Caps) By William Hudson "Appropriate allocation of tasks to users and computers has always been an important part of successful interaction design. In the case of card sorting, we would like users to work with materials they are comfortable with (cards and pens), while reducing the task load for researchers. This is where Caps (Computer-Aided Paper Sorting) comes in. The cards are computer printed with barcodes that can be used for very quick data capture." http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/cardsort.shtml +06: JAVASCRIPT. Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications By Jesse James Garrett "Ajax isn't a technology. ItŐs really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates: standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS; dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model; data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT; asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest; and JavaScript binding everything together." http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php AJAX and Accessibility By Peter Krantz "In this article we will have a look at the implications for accessibility and usability when using Javascript to dynamically update a web page. I will also show how you can increase accessibility for AJAX-based forms." http://tinyurl.com/67xn7 Usability and accessibility with Ajax By Simon Willison "The Ajax express train rumbles on, threatening to crush anything in its path. Recent discussion has turned to those critical elements of good web development, usability and accessibility. Accessibility is a major issue with Ajax, mainly because anything that relies on JavaScript to function is inaccessible pretty much by default. There are two solutions: either provide a fall-back system where the site remains useful without its Ajax enhancements, or provide a whole separate interface that works without scripting." http://www.sitepoint.com/blog-post-view.php?id=241871 +07: NAVIGATION. 10 Steps To Higher Search Engine Positioning By Dave Davies "I have been ranking websites highly on the Internet for quite a few years now and there are some essential rules that, if followed, will insure that over time your website does well and holds solid and profitable positions on the major search engines." http://evolt.org/article/rdf/20/60390/index.html +08: PHP. Easy-peasy PHP By Jim Amos "Includes, Switching and Compression" http://www.digital-web.com/articles/easypeasy_php/ +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. CSS Based Design By Jeremy Keith "Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain but you feel it, that there's something wrong with the web. You don't know what it is but it's there like a splinter in your mind driving you mad..." http://adactio.com/articles/display.php/CSS_based_design/1 Internet Explorer and Standards By Chris Wilson (Lead program manager for the web platform in Internet Explorer) "...I want you all to know that specific requests and descriptions of problems in the field help us tremendously in prioritizing what we need to do. There is some great work that has been done in harvesting the collective knowledge of the web development community, such as on quirksmode [edit: fixed link], meyerweb.com, CSSVault, glish and Position Is Everything. We pay a lot of attention to this kind of thoughtful insight into the biggest problems web developers face today. We'd like to encourage those facing real-world problems with the IE platform to participate in these kinds of efforts, so we can use this to help prioritize our development..." http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/03/09/391362.aspx +10: TOOLS. Visual Impairment Simulator for Microsoft Windows "A senior design computer science student group at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign has developed a near real time Visual Impairment Simulator. This is the second release of the software and includes improved simulation of visual impairments and screen capture feature to save bit mapped images of the screen with the simulation." http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/software/vis/download.html +11: USABILITY. Rapid Contextual Design: A How-To Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design By Karen Holtzblatt, Jessamyn Burns Wendell, and Shelley Wood "Today companies want to infuse more user data into their processes. But if we analyze the 'right' way to do customer-centered design for any project we may be dismayed at the time and resources it takes. And, companies are also resistant to changing their own development processes. So what to do?" http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/book/v6i8_holtzblatt.html Understanding Usability By Richard Spindler "Unfortunately, it's not that easy to explain the term usability. I'll try anyway. I'd say that usability refers to whether a certain Product, software or not, enables a user to perform a certain more or less well defined task. It's not that one single feature decides whether a product has "usability" or not. Usability is more about the overall feature set, appearance and above all, usefulness of the Product. Throughout this article I'll briefly explain common misconception that usually appears when the discussion turns towards usability, then I'll try to identify some usability problems that might not be obvious to the average developer, and as a conclusion I'll propose some suggestions that will hopefully overcome the shortcomings of today's Software." http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9912 There is No Spoon and there is No Usability By John S. Rhodes "Usability isn't anything at all. It doesn't exist. Instead, usability is a label given to the results that we see or want. Just as osteoporosis isn't a disease, usability isn't the outcome of usability testing. You probably didn't know it but osteoporosis is just a label given to a cluster of medical symptoms. Analogously, usability is just a label given to a list of desirable features or outcomes associated with a product or service..." http://tinyurl.com/5g8wu +12: XML. XForms Myth By Ian Hickson "I'm getting tired of hearing XForms advocates say things that are either misleading or clearly wrong, so here's a quick list of myths, or misleading truths, about XForms, which I have heard recently..." http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1110316686 XHTML, http accept-header and mime-type application/xhtml+xml By Jesper Tverskov "In 2005 it is high time to start serving XHTML as XML on a grand scale. Others have been doing it for years. I have been doing it since Christmas. Switching between XHTML as xml and text/html is easy using the HTTP accept header." http://www.smackthemouse.com/xhtmlxml [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]