+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 16, October 13, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 16 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 13: TYPOGRAPHY. 14: USABILITY. 15: XML. SECTION TWO: 16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Essential Components of Web Accessibility By The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). "This document shows how Web accessibility depends on several components working together and how improvements in specific components could substantially improve Web accessibility. It also shows how the WAI guidelines address these components." http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components.php Lawsuit Charges Online University Does Not Accommodate Learning-Disabled Students By Dan Carnevale. "A former Capella University student has filed a lawsuit against the online institution, claiming that it violated the Americans With Disabilities Act.." http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i49/49a03301.htm AOL Gets It Right, Sort Of. By Matt Bailey. After posting examples of access-obstructing captchaÕs from the major search players Google, Yahoo and MSN, I was very happy to notice that AOL has the right idea. http://www.accessibilityblog.com/2005/09/07/aol-gets-it-right-sort-of/ Using the Accessible Information Solutions (AIS) Web Accessibility Toolbar By Steven Faulkner. "The Web Accessibility Toolbar is a free extension for Internet Explorer (version 5 and above, Windows), it contains many features that can help in the assessment of the accessibility of web pages..." http://www.webaim.org/techniques/articles/aistoolbar Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility with the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar By Patrick H. Lauke. "Patrick H. Lauke, Web Editor at the University of Salford shows how to use the Firefox Web Developers Toolbar extension to test for accessibility." http://www.webaim.org/techniques/articles/evaluatingwithfirefox +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Introducing the CSS3 Multi-Column Module By Cedric Savarese. "Cedric Savarese would like you to meet the CSS3 multi-column module. It may not have extensive browser support yet, but this semantically sound method of dividing content into columns may be more relevant than you think." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/css3multicolumn CSS Swag: Multi-Column Lists By Paul Novitsk. "Multi-column lists: can't live with 'em, can't achieve perfect bliss without 'em. Paul Novitski offers a staggering six possible methods for accomplishing this commonly requested layout trick. Examine your options and choose wisely." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/multicolumnlists More CSS fixes for IE7 By Kevin Yank. "Microsoft has announced several more fixes for IE7 that will have CSS experts dancing in the aisles." http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/09/02/more-css-fixes-for-ie7/ Starting with CSS: Revisited By Faruk Ates. "Little over a week ago I posted about my initial.css file, which I have used for a few years now to start off my CSS-powered layouts. Posting about it publicly spurred quite a lot of interest it seemed (the post caused a huge traffic peak that tripled my average), but there were also a few concerns raised by some readers. As a result, I bring you the revised initial.css file." http://kurafire.net/log/archive/2005/07/26/starting-css-revisited +03: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver 8 Basics By Macromedia. "Get the most out of your Dreamweaver experience by understanding the basic elements of the workspace." http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/studio/articles/dw8_basics.html Consuming a Remote RSS 1.0 Feed with Dreamweaver 8 By Marius Zaharia. "Use server-side XSL transformations to syndicate content on your site." http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/dw_xsl_rss.html Overview of CSS in Dreamweaver 8 By Julie Hallstrom. "Get familiar with all the new CSS features, tools, workflows and user interface improvements." http://tinyurl.com/dwvxz Integrating Dreamweaver 8 with Contribute 3 By Mark Fletcher. "Explore the powerful integration features that give designers, developers, and contributors a powerful way to maintain websites." http://tinyurl.com/6zcyr +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Metrics That Make the Case for Quality Content By Gerry McGovern. "The essential business case of a website is self-service. To maximize value from self-service, you want a limited menu, a fast transaction and a significant volume of people." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt-2005-08-29-content-metrics.htm +05: EVENTS. O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference March 6-9, 2006. San Diego, California U.S.A. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/et2006/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Redesign Phase 2 - Information Architecture By Garrett Dimon. "The redesign is still happening, and I have some sample wireframes and page description diagrams to prove it. For this phase, I really just wanted to analyze and capture the elements that are important and determine the best way to display them. You can download the PDF of sample page description diagrams and wireframes if you're interested in seeing more." http://tinyurl.com/7qncz +07: JAVASCRIPT. Results for JavaScript - Part 1: Navigating Links By James Edwards, Mike Stenhouse, Derek Featherstone and Ben Easton. These results refer back to a quiz and test case from several weeks ago. Our first test was in Quiz 4.1.4: JavaScript - part 1. Results from about 60 runs of the test case were compiled by James Edwards...Explanation: Browser-based screen readers are able to read and/or navigate through a page without moving the focus (the dotted-line around links that otherwise accompanies keyboard navigation). This is because they have their own, 'virtual' cursor or highlight, which tracks where the user is in a document independently of the main cursor. Many events are only reported on links if the user or screenreader action sets or transfers focus to an element. This is further varied by whether the action would: set focus onto an element when none other is currently focussed; or transfer focus to an element from a different focussed element (as opposed to a currently-focussed element receiving another event that retains it)." http://tinyurl.com/c3xda Embrace the Remote Scripting Revolution Via AJAX By Tony Patton. "If you've been involved in Web development for any amount of time, the latest trend of developing applications with remote scripting capabilities via AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) will not be a surprise. After all, it has been available for many years with the drawback being browser inconsistencies. Microsoft always promoted ActiveX as the way to go, but this approach has changed with AJAX's rise in popularity. Let's take a closer look at the AJAX revolution, including Microsoft's involvement and approach." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5862723.html AJAX Access By Andrew Kirkpatrick. "Pete at standards-schmandards.com put together a post on AJAX and accessibility and an example back in March, but it has attracted some attention on WebAIM discussion list. Pete's example is a useful one, but there are obviously limits to how far this model can be extended. On an web application to book a flight there are more bits of information than can be easily communicated in alert dialogs, and if the user needs to interact with the new information in a dialog, additional difficulties present. Still, a useful technique to keep in the back pocket, and use when appropriate." http://tinyurl.com/dto3h Why Ajax Matters Now By Jesse James Garrett. "Proprietary solutions are never as compelling for Web designers as open standards are. Web designers are passionate about the Web as a medium, and that medium doesn't belong to any technology provider...Technologies that don't work on a Web-wide scale are, by definition, not participants in this process...What's the difference between Oddpost and Gmail? One followed desktop interaction conventions, required a particular browser and a particular operating system, and gained a cult following. The other came along four years later, followed Web interaction conventions, worked across all modern browsers - and transformed its entire category. Some might argue that Oddpost is the more sophisticated solution. But Gmail is part of the larger Web in a way that Oddpost never could have been. Gmail demonstrated to the entire industry that we don't have to compromise anymore. Sure, there are still plenty of challenges, both for designers and for technologists, in creating Ajax applications that really work effectively for users. But the new wave of Ajax applications reflects the industry?s newfound (and still increasing) sophistication. We're smarter about the Web than we were before, and that alone opens up new possibilities for interaction designers." http://tinyurl.com/bjsws +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview: Sarah Horton By Alex Barnett. "...it [universally accessible design] makes good sense, itÕs just good design, itÕs good coding, and ultimately itÕs going to save money because, again, a lot of it is just a matter of using the medium appropriately. So, you know, extracting pages from convoluted table code, extracting that content and putting it into an accessible framework is going to be costly, but down the road itÕs going to have to happen anyway in order for any kind of flexibility and ubiquity to happen with those Web pages. So in that sense, itÕs just a good practice. ItÕs like tearing down a shack and building a decent building, in the long term itÕs the right thing to do and itÕs going to pay off....I still build sites from scratch with BBEdit. I have to say that I don't think the tools are supporting it [universally accessible design] very well and I think you're right in bringing up this question because it's the pivotal issue in terms of building accessible sites. I think that tools could do an enormous amount, but then from my little corner of the world, I don't see a lot of progress being made on that front. So if there are any enterprising listeners or readers, I think building a CMS that employs 'access by design' and makes it very easy for people who are just providing content to make it accessible, that would be such a win." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/sarah_horton/ Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb By Philipp Lenssen. "I realized that, paradoxically enough, good programmers need to be both lazy and dumb." http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-08-24-n14.html +09: NAVIGATION. 'Skip Navigation' Links By Paul Bohman. This tutorial is an excerpt from the "WebAIM Guide to Web Accessibility Techniques and Concepts." Topics include various techniques for creating "skip navigation" links (visible, invisible, visible with keyboard focus, etc.), how to phrase the link, dealing with browser bugs that can make the link useless, and alternatives to "skip navigation" links. http://www.webaim.org/techniques/skipnav/ Skip Links: What Are They? By Russ Weakley. "Skip links are designed to allow certain users the ability to skip over one section of content so that they can quickly get to another section of content. This may mean skipping over site navigation links in order to get directly to the content of the site, or skipping over the content in order to get to the site navigation, or other content..." http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/workshop/slide16.cfm +10: PHP. PHP 101 (part 7): The Bear Necessities A gentle introduction to object oriented programming in PHP 4 and PHP 5. By Vikram Vaswani. "Over the course of this tutorial, I'm going to take a brief look at PHP's OO capabilities (both PHP 4 and PHP 5), together with examples and explanations to demonstrate just how powerful it really is. I'll be covering most of the basics - classes, objects, attributes and methods - and a couple of more advanced concepts - constructors, destructors, private methods and properties, and inheritance. And if you're new to object-oriented programming, or just apprehensive about what lies ahead, don't worry - I promise this will be a lot less painful than you think. And unlike dentists, I don't lie." http://www.zend.com/php/beginners/php101-7.php Understanding MVC in PHP By Joe Stump. "This article series demonstrates how to build an MVC web framework using PHP 5. This article covers the basics of MVC web frameworks, building the foundation classes for a framework that the other three articles in this series will build..." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2005/09/15/mvc_intro.html +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Why Do We Have To Fight? By Robert Nyman. "Why do we have to fight to be allowed to make things right? I mean, really? Look at all the web standards advocates out there, fighting to get their message through; People lobbying for stylesheet-driven web sites and accessibility. And all these battles are not about trying to have something in line with cool scripts animating things all over the page, not about doing something to show off to your friends. These things are about keeping development costs down, vastly reducing bandwidth usage by having all presentation in CSS files that will be cached in the visitor's web browser, and reaching a lot more potential customers with web sites that are accessible." http://www.robertnyman.com/2005/09/13/why-do-we-have-to-fight/ Got Browser Woes? Think Again. By Molly E. Holzschlag. "If you've been losing hair due to browser incompatibilities on the desktop, blame your remaining gray hairs on IE 6.0..." http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_09.html#a000579 +12: TOOLS. XML Schema Validator By Christoph Schneegans. "This service lets you validate XML documents against the appropriate schemas. It performs a more accurate validation than the W3C validator. And, of course, a much more accurate one than Validome. You can validate XML documents by URL, by file upload or by direct input. Furthermore, you can validate fragments of XML documents." http://schneegans.de/sv/ XML Nanny By Todd Ditchendorf. "XML Nanny is a Free Mac OS X developer tool that provides an Aqua interface for checking XHTML and XML documents for Well-Formedness and Validity either locally or across the network. XML Nanny is the perfect tool for the web author who cares! Checking your XHTML document's validity either locally or remotely is a snap, and XML Nanny's detailed error messages let you know about those embarrassing validation errors so you can debug them immediately." http://xmlnanny.com/ +13: TYPOGRAPHY. Line Lengths When Reading From a Screen By Joe Clark. "A topic that never goes away is fixed vs. fluid vs. 'elastic' vs. 'Jell-O' CSS layouts..." http://blog.fawny.org/2005/09/21/measures/ +14: USABILITY. Web Manager: You Can't Serve Everybody By Gerry McGovern. "Every time you serve someone, you make someone else wait. Every time you publish a piece of content you make other content less findable. A myth has grown up around the Web that it is an extremely cheap publishing environment. This is simply not true. Publishing is much more than simply physically publishing content on a website, newspaper, magazine, etc...Every time you add a piece of content you make it more difficult for another piece of content to be easily found. Sure, you only make it a little more difficult. However, as you keep adding content, the navigation becomes less intuitive, and the search less effective. (Most people will not go to the second page of search results.) It is a noble objective to try and answer everyone's questions when they come to your website. However, it is neither practical nor achievable." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt-2005-09-05-web-manager.htm Methods for Measuring Text Readability By Peter Krantz. "In this article we will have a look at how you can test your content to see give a brief overview of formulas for measuring readability as well as an online tool to measure readability for your texts." http://tinyurl.com/cz4zz Usability: One Sure Way to Maximize Sales (and Increase Conversions) By Lisa Wehr. "...One way to increase your conversion ratio is to make sure your Web site is easy to navigate and information is easy to find. In other words, ensure its 'usability.' Often, search engine optimization and marketing principles benefit a site's usability with people as well as search engines. Here are some tips on how to improve usability and improve your conversion rates..." http://www.marketingprofs.com/5/wehr4.asp Jakob Nielsen on the Unwieldy Web By Business Week. "The Web usability whiz says some sites are getting better, but far too many remain too complex and frustrating for typical users..." http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39/b3952418.htm?chan=tc The Power of Defaults By Jakob Nielsen. "Search engine users click the results listings' top entry much more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings. Once again, people tend to stick to the defaults." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/defaults.html Institutionalizing Usability: Ways To Embed Usability In Your Company By David Travis. "Trying to embed usability in an organization needs more than persuasive, logical arguments. You also need to appeal to managers' emotions and political ambitions. This article describes five successful strategies that we've seen work in companies large and small." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/institutionalising.html +15: XML. Transforming XML: Automating Stylesheet Creation By Bob DuCharme. "Bob DuCharme shows how an XSLT stylesheet can read simplified XML-conversion instructions and create a new, working XSLT stylesheet from those instructions." http://tinyurl.com/basvm [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +16: 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.]