+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 47, April 27, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 47 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: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: PHP. 08: 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. The Surfer and The Accessibility Statement By Patrick Griffiths "Once upon a time, a disabled web user surfed his way to a web site. On that web site was a tantalizing link that simply said 'Accessibility Statement. Oooo... intriguing' said The Surfer, 'I will follow that link...'" http://www.htmldog.com/ptg/archives/000100.php Webnauts Open Directory By John Britsios http://www.webnauts.net/directory/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Handy CSS By Lachlan Hunt "As I promised over two weeks ago, I've written some useful CSS that I'm going to share with you all. The first is used to identify links using relationships like rel="nofollow" and rel="tag", the second for identifying the language of a document being linked to, the third can be used either as a substitute for rel="external" on external links, or for identifying links to a particular site, and the fourth and final is Hixie's Cat Attack Hack. They're not all new, some of you have probably seen or used similar variants before. However, that doesn't make them any less useful, which is why I'm publishing them." http://lachy.id.au/log/2005/04/handy-css Exploring Footers By Bobby van der Sluis "This article explores the ways you can position footers using web standards, although the same techniques may be used to vertically position other elements." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/footers/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Adobe and Macromedia By Adobe "Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia..." Hopefully this takeover will mean that the tools will become more focused on standards and become more accessible. I am tired of the religious wars over different text and WYSIWIG editors. It is time to think about what is really important; getting information to users in an accessible way, unencumbered by petty battles over platform or tools. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html Analysis: Considering Adobe's future By David Sawyer McFarland "...Newsgroups are abuzz with predictions about the two companies and their products. Users on both sides of the fence are rightfully concerned, and wonder what will become of the products they most cherish -- especially products like Freehand and Illustrator, or Dreamweaver and GoLive, which compete head to head. It seems unlikely that Adobe would keep two illustration and two web design programs alive for long. Adobe may attempt to integrate features from competing programs and I've already seen some proposed new names -- GoDream, PhotoWorks, or, my favorite name for a hybrid web/print design super-program: Sortaworks. Alternatively, Adobe may just scrap programs that compete with theirs..." http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/04/19/adobeanalysis/index.php Developers' Mixed Reaction to Macromedia Takeover By Paul Festa "Adobe's proposed acquisition of Macromedia took software developers by surprise, stirring a mix of apprehension and optimism about the fate of the joined companies and their respective software titles." http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/developer/0,39020387,39195493,00.html +04: EVENTS. MOBILE HCI 2005 The Sixth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services September 19-22, 2005 Salzburg, Austria http://mobilehci.icts.sbg.ac.at/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. What is Information Architecture? By Brainboost http://tinyurl.com/6pg53 +06: JAVASCRIPT. The JavaScript Diaries: Part 1 By Lee Underwood "JavaScript is a versatile language which can be used to create menus, validate forms, provide interactive calendars, post the current day's headlines, track a visitor's history on your site and much more. This week is part one of an ongoing series on the process of learning JavaScript." http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/diaries/1/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Creating a Site Design Plan By Karen Morrill-McClure "When thereีs a fork in the road, design-wise, I look to my goals. Does one direction get me closer to those goals? Have I met the most important goals? I make my decision based on the answers to those questions." http://digital-web.com/articles/creating_a_site_design_plan/ +08: PHP. Learning PHP - Part 1 By Thomas Pletcher "A basic introduction to PHP, placing the language in context vis-a-vis its competitors, and providing syntax and usage examples ั including connecting to, and displaying data from, a MySQL database." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=D5084 +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Validating an Entire Site By Peter Krantz "Periodically you may want to make sure your entire website validates. This can be a hassle if your site is big. In this article we introduce a few python scripts which will help us do mass validation from a list of links. We will also modify the W3C validator to work the way we want." http://tinyurl.com/6xf46 Web Browser Standards Support By David Hammond "This document will summarize the level of support for standard web technologies by popular web browsers. It deals primarily with the Internet Explorer, Firefox/Netscape/Mozilla, and Opera web browsers, with focus on the HTML, CSS and DOM technologies." http://nanobox.chipx86.com/browser_support.php +10: TOOLS. Visio IA Stencil By Garrett Dimon "I'm giving away a slightly scaled back version of my Visio stencil and template..." http://tinyurl.com/8jmmp +11: USABILITY. Ten Ways to Speed Up the Download Time of Your Web Pages By Webcredible "Do you like to wait for pages to download? Neither do your site users. Read on and find out how to speed up that download time..." http://tinyurl.com/6a8jk +12: XML. Doctype Declarations and Content-Type Headers By Tommy Olsson "I regularly visit a few discussion forums for web developers. Right now there are several different debates on whether XHTML is 1.) a given; 2.) useful; 3.) pointless; or 4.) absolutely silly." http://tinyurl.com/67upr The Future: HTML or XHTML By Lachlan Hunt "The discussion of XHTML versus HTML (via) has popped up again, and until now I've managed to resist the urge to throw in my 2ข. Well, no longer will I sit on the side line while the same arguments (via) get rehashed again and again, which will not get us anywhere. The question, which I will attempt to answer, is whether the future of the Internet lies with HTML or XHTML." http://lachy.id.au/log/2005/04/xhtml-future [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.]