+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 11, September 8, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 11 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: COLOR. 04: DREAMWEAVER 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: FLASH. 08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 09: JAVASCRIPT. 10: MISCELLANEOUS. 11: PHP. 12: TOOLS. 13: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Web Accessibility: A Broader View By John T. Richards and Vicki L. Hanson. "In this paper, we take a broader view, discussing an approach that costs developers less and provides greater advantages to a larger community of users. While we have quite specific aims in our technical work, we hope it can also serve as an example of how the technical conversation regarding Web accessibility can move beyond the narrow confines of limited adaptations for small populations." http://www-306.ibm.com/able/news/broader_view.html CSS and Accessibility By Richard Rutter. "Here's something that's been playing on my mind recently. What role can CSS alone play in making websites accessible? WCAG says to separate content from presentation, so the implication is that using CSS for layout, colours, fonts, etc. makes a page more accessible. But what about more specific aspects?" http://www.clagnut.com/blog/1553/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Mobile Web Design By Cameron Moll. "Let's cut to the chase: You're considering retrofitting an existing website/web app to be more accessible to mobile users, or you're planning a new website/web app and want to include mobile in the mix. What are your options? The way we see it, your options boil down to four choices: 1.) Do nothing. 2.) Kill all styling and allow raw HTML to be rendered. 3.) Use media="handheld" stylesheets. 4.) Re-purpose content, code, and images specifically for mobile users. Following is an explanation of each method, including an unbiased look at the advantages and disadvantages of each..." http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000428.html Soup to Nuts: Making a CSS-based Layout Start to Finish By Nate Steiner. "My intention with this article is to describe how I make working, standards-based XHTML/CSS web sites. The challenge is not really 'how do I do this' but rather 'how do I choose from all the different ways to do this', and I thought some folks interested in this subject might appreciate a step by step walk through of my workflow. A basic understanding of HTML and CSS will be helpful, but not required." http://tinyurl.com/dyohj +03: COLOR. Color Contrast By James Siddall, Junior. "Our call for assistance is directed towards cognitive psychologists, human factors specialists, color perception specialists, any expert that can confirm (or contradict, if more appropriate) our doubts regarding the W3C algorithm, either through experimentation or documented expertise. Our first goal is to collect scientific data which will disprove the validity of this formula, so that its acquired international authority is reasonably disproved. Our second goal is to identify (or propose and verify) a new alternative, which provides more credible results." http://english.contrastocolori.org/ +04: DREAMWEAVER. Macromedia Studio 8 (Review) By PC Pro. "...Ultimately, whether Macromedia is going out with a bang or a whimper, and whether you should buy Studio 8 or not, depends on your primary interest. If you're producing page-based sites with Dreamweaver/Fireworks, version 8 is a damp squib of an upgrade, but if you're producing or planning to produce 'rich Internet apps' with Flash, it's a breakthrough release..." http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/76248/macromedia-studio-8.html +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. A Usability Testing Bake-Off By Jared M. Spool. "Practicing usability testing has great similarities with baking an apple pie." http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/articles/usability_testing_bakeoff/ When Discount Usability Misleads Management - A Solution By John Sorflaten. "Usability folks often interact with marketing folks about progress on Web site design. Do they speak the same language? That is the question. If you tell someone that 80% of your test subjects "succeeded,'how might you be misleading them? Know how to qualify your discount usability test results with a "margin of error'." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/jul05.asp#kath +06: EVENTS. Web Application Development Workshop October 4-5, 2005. Albany, New York U.S.A. http://www.joinwow.org/albanyworkshop/ DesignFest 2005 October 5, 2005. Toronto, Canada. http://www.designfest.ca/ +07: FLASH. In Search of... A Perfect Plugin Technique By Andrew Kirkpatrick. "I created a few test files that represent different approaches to including Flash in a web page and then tested them. Methods, testing criteria, and results at the end of this posting. The best solution? Using a server-side scripting language (ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, etc), a developer could deliver a page that satisfies all requirements to individual browsers without too much difficulty." http://tinyurl.com/dl26x +08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. IA in Academia By IAwiki. "Who in the academic community is doing the leading research and inquiry into IA issues? Who are the big thinkers?" http://www.iawiki.net/IAinAcademia +09: JAVASCRIPT. The Power of Javascript: Controlling the Execution of the Script By Michael Youssef. "When you write a script, most of the time you need to make a decision based on the values of some of your variables, or based on the values entered by the users, or even based on user actions. Decision making is a fundamental building block for all programming languages and it's similar in most of them. In this article, we discuss the if/else statement block, the switch statement, and take a look at the prompt() dialog box." http://tinyurl.com/bju7f Niceforms By Lucian Slatineanu. "As always, there is a solution. It's just not as handy as using just plain simple CSS styling. So it's time to bring on some JS support. As always, the trick is in getting this solution to work in all browsers, across all platforms and also degrade gracefully for those users that for some reason haven't yet made the move to a real browser." http://www.badboy.ro/articles/2005-07-23/index.php +10: MISCELLANEOUS. Work vs. Progress By Scott Berkun. "It's easy to tell when someone is working, but how can you tell when they're making progress?" http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay45.htm +11: PHP. 10 Tips That Every PHP Developer Should Know, Part 2 By Jeffery Vaska. "I wish I had known these 10 simple things the day I started working with PHP. This article is part II in the this series and is intended for newbies." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/vaska20050812.php3 PHP 6.0 Wishlist By Rasmus Lerdorf. "Chiming in with his thoughts on PHP6 and what changes should be made for it, Rasmus has sent a new email to the php-dev mailing list with his eight suggestions." http://tinyurl.com/bnog8 Getting Started With Objects With PHP V5 By Matt Zandstra. "This article describes the fundamentals of objects and classes in PHP V5, from the very basics through to inheritance, for experienced object-oriented programmers and those who have not yet been introduced to objects." http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-phpobj/ +12: TOOLS. CSE HTML Validator Lite By htmlvalidator.com "Clean up your site with CSE Lite! CSE HTML Validator Lite is an award winning free HTML editor and basic HTML syntax checker for Microsoft Windows." http://www.htmlvalidator.com/lite/ +13: USABILITY. Simplicity Is Hard Work By Gerry McGovern. "Simplicity is hard. It's expensive to do well. 'Our experience is that for every mouse click we take out of the user experience, 20 things have to happen in our software behind the scenes,' states Brad Treat, Chief Executive of SightSpeed...You are the worst judge of whether your website or product is simple. You know your website. You designed it. Remember, a potential customer who has never been at your website before will spend less than one minute figuring out your homepage...To achieve simplicity an organization needs to be genuinely customer-focused. Extra investment will be required, as well as a special commitment from designers and management. Is it worth it? Certainly, organizations such as Apple and Google are showing that simplicity can become a genuine competitive advantage." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt-2005-08-15-simplicity.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.]