+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 21, November 15, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 21 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 13: TOOLS. 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. High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization By Andy Hagans. "It's no coincidence that search engines love highly accessible websites; in fact, by designing for accessibility, you're already using effective search-engine optimization techniques. Andy Hagans explains yet another reason to pay attention to accessibility." http://alistapart.com/articles/accessibilityseo Form Help Without Popups By Gez Lemon. "Thrusting new windows upon visitors of your site is frowned upon, as it goes against device independence by assuming a windowed environment. One situation where developers feel that a new window is appropriate is with web forms. If the visitor requires help on a form field, a new window saves the visitor the trouble of having to leave the form, and possibly losing the data they have entered. This article illustrates a scripting technique to get around the problem without having to open a new window." http://juicystudio.com/article/form-help-without-popups.html Spacer Image - Disney Store's Number One Gift Idea This Christmas By Mike Davies. "The UK Disney Store pushed web standards into the limelight. It was an imaginative blend of open standards and creative design. A site that any designer could be proud of. Unfortunately, Disney has seen fit to replace their successful site with a shambolic poor imitation." http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/access/SpacerGifDisneysNumberOneGiftIdea An Open Letter to Disney Store UK By Molly E. Holzschlag. "I would write this to you directly via your site feedback page but it is throwing Access database errors. The email appears to be down as well. So instead, I'm going to write my letter here in a public forum in the hopes that someone from your team sees it and takes heed. Your so-called redesign is a travesty, a tragedy, and an embarrassment..." http://www.molly.com/2005/11/03/an-open-letter-to-disney-store-uk/ Of Mice and Men By Andy (Malarkey) Clarke. "Over recent days I have received a number of emails from people asking for my reaction to Disney Store UK's decision to move from valid and semantic XHTML and AA-AAA WAI compliance to an invalid HTML site which fails to meet Priority 1 accessibility guidelines..." http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/of_mice_and_men.html On Accessibility and Validity By Matt May. "Validity and accessibility guidelines are like matter and antimatter: you probably don't want to be there when they collide." http://tinyurl.com/alhnz A Principled Argument By Matt May. "The next draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 probably will not require HTML content that conforms at Level A to be fully valid. The following is my rationale for agreeing to this." http://www.bestkungfu.com/archive/date/2005/06/a-principled-argument/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. One Clean HTML Markup, Many Layouts... By Thierry Koblentz. "It is this thread (title: "one template to rule them all") on the CSS-Discuss List that initiated this article. The original post included a link to a document that contained a set of images representing different layouts, the question was: 'Is it possible to have one HTML file, and style these pages this way only with CSS' So here we go..." http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/liquid.asp In Search of the One True Layout By Alex Robinson. "Pure CSS-based layouts have come a long way but they still have shortcomings...that fail to address certain design goals without compromising the true separation of content and presentation. In short, the problematic design goals are these...Total Layout Flexibility...Equal Height Columns...Vertical placement of elements across grids/columns...This article shows how to achieve each of these goals, and then how to combine them, creating what could be called the One True Layout" http://positioniseverything.net/articles/onetruelayout/ Layout Revolution By Eric A. Meyer. "Recently, Alex Robinson published an article titled 'In Search of the One True Layout', and it basically turns the conventional wisdom about what CSS layouts can and can't accomplish on its ear. One of the article's primary aims is nothing less than enabling multi-column layout using no extra markup (beyond a div to enclose each column's content) and allowing the columns to be in any document source order. Impossible? No. It appears to have done just that in all current browsers, and several non-current browsers as well." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2005/11/01/layout-revolution/ Multi-Unit Any-Order Columns By Eric A. Meyer. "A way to use the Any Order Columns technique when the columns use mixed units, such as percentages and ems or ems and pixels, in a single layout." http://tinyurl.com/b8bl6 Structuring CSS and Macromedia Labs Site Design By Neil Straghalis. "A few weeks ago we launched a new site - Macromedia Labs. It's a place where we can post early software releases, documentation and samples, and where developers can collaborate and contribute. You can read all about it here, but I'd like to mention a few things about the site design and how we put it together." http://weblogs.macromedia.com/neils/archives/2005/11/macromedia_labs.cfm IE7: Sane and Rational? By Ben Buchanan. "I think it would have been much better to provide conditional comments in the CSS rather than the page source...So why on earth was it not a 'sane and rational' approach?" http://weblog.200ok.com.au/2005/11/ie7-sane-and-rational.html IE7 Conditional Comments Dave Shea. "In mid October, the IE Blog urged developers to stop using CSS hacks to workaround IE's problems, and start relying on Microsoft's proprietary conditional comments. I was mostly fine with the new syntax, and it seemed practical enough considering that IE7 is looking to address most of the reasons you'd hack in the first place. But in the comments it became clear that some of you have discovered non-trivial problems in working with conditional comments -- for instance..." http://mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/11/03/ie7_conditio/ +03: COLOR. More Adaptations for Color Blindness By Joe Clark. "...Now, then: Ken Wakita and Kenta Shimamura have written a paper, 'SmartColor: Disambiguation Framework for the Colorblind,' which sets out some algorithms to automatically convert colour in images (mostly charts and illustrations) into analogues that colourblind people can distinguish..." http://blog.fawny.org/2005/10/26/dalton/ Colour Blindness on the Web By Richard Rutter. "Colour blindness has crept back on to the agenda recently. Joe Clark recently pointed to SmartColor: Disambiguation Framework for the Colorblind, a proposed algorithm for converting colours in a document (or more likely an image) into colours that a colour blind person can distinguish. Also doing the rounds is Etre's Colour Blindness Simulator which enables you upload images to see how they look to some colour blind users. The thing is, colour blindness on the Web isn't a big deal. You do have to bear it mind (as I will show later on), but there is no need to let it dominate any design decisions..." http://www.clagnut.com/blog/1605/ Color Blindness By Wikipedia. "Color blindness, or color vision deficiency, in humans is the inability to perceive differences between some or all colors that other people can distinguish..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness +04: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver 8 Does Standards! By Rachel Andrew. "If you're reading this article, you probably already have an interest in the subject of "Web standards," and are curious about the application of standards in a site that's built with Dreamweaver." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/dreamweaver-8-standards Creating Accessible Tables for Data Using Dreamweaver 8 By Macromedia. "Here's a basic overview of how to create accessible tables using Dreamweaver 8..." http://www.macromedia.com/resources/accessibility/dw8/tables.html Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Review By Roger Johansson. "...All in all, Dreamweaver 8 is a decent application, but its flaws outweigh its benefits, at least for me. I find it especially hard to deal with the unpolished GUI, the sluggishness, and the instability. So I will not be spending my money on a Dreamweaver license until it improves. This is just my personal opinion. Dreamweaver may be perfect for you, so if you like it and feel it's worth the money, by all means buy it..." http://tinyurl.com/cuvau Dreamweaver TechNote: The Paste HTML option is missing from the Dreamweaver 8 Edit menu By Macromedia. "In Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, under the Edit menu, the Paste HTML and Copy HTML options are missing..." http://tinyurl.com/cfnlz +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Is Lab Usability Dead? By Peter Merholz. "...let's get out of our labs and conference rooms and into our users' environments. It's becoming clear that it's the only way to truly understand, and meet, their needs." http://www.peterme.com/archives/000628.html Design Choices Can Cripple a Website By Nick Usborne. "Do you test your designs? If not, Nick Usborne wants you to take responsibility for your design choices and the very quantifiable effect they can have on websites that are built for business." http://alistapart.com/articles/designcancripple +06: EVENTS. Student Information Systems and Individuals with Disabilities Webcast November 30, 2005. "The National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE) will host another in their series of webcasts with a focus for those in education. A discussion will be held on the accessibility of student information systems used for registration, grading, student services, and financial aid. Join them Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 for the live audio Webcast. The broadcast is free and will begin at 1PM Mountain Daylight Savings Time (12:00PM Pacific; 2:00PM Central; 3:00PM Eastern)." http://www.ncdae.org/webcasts/ ETRA 2006 Eye Tracking Research and Applications March 27-29, 2006. San Diego, California U.S.A. http://www.e-t-r-a.org/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Information Architecture 2.0 By Dan Brown. "The typical information architect thinks about structure - how one item in a group relates to all the other items in the group and how that group relates to all other groups. In the early days of information architecture (IA), groups and their related items tended to be well defined. For example, in the heyday of e-commerce, an information architect translated a product catalog into a storefront on the Web. Today, these problems seem old hat..." http://dev.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000020.php +08: JAVASCRIPT. Debugging JavaScript Without Alerts By Jeremy Keith. "I wrote a while back about logging tools for JavaScript and how some very powerful tools have been appearing lately. Sometimes though, you don't need all the power and complexity that a fully-fledged logger brings. Sometimes, you just want to know what's happening at a certain point in your script - you might want to find out the value of a particular variable, for instance. In those cases, the humble alert function can be very handy." http://domscripting.com/blog/display/30 AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons By Brad Neuberg. "This article presents an open source JavaScript library that finally brings bookmarking and back button support to AJAX applications. By the end of this tutorial, developers will have a solution to an AJAX problem that not even Google Maps or Gmail possesses: robust, usable bookmarking and back and forward behavior that works exactly like the rest of the Web." http://tinyurl.com/bhhx4 Ajax in Action. Chapter 6: The User Experience By Dave Crane and Eric Pascarello with Darren James. Excerpt from the book "Ajax in Action". http://www.webreference.com/programming/ajax/index.html +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview with Matt May By Ian Lloyd. "Much of WCAG 1.0 is anchored to HTML as the dominant technology, and expects textual documents as the delivery method. It's too spread out, as well, with 14 guidelines and 68 checkpoints. WCAG 2.0 is more technology-agnostic and wide-ranging, but with a more compact set of guidelines. The Working Group wants to put everything they know out there so that authors can understand how a problem impacts users with different disabilities, what part of the process is failing the user, how the problem can be fixed sufficiently in a number of technologies, and why we took the approach that we did. It's a lot different from the 'do this, don't do that' mode of accessibility we see in laws such as Section 508. But it will ultimately answer a lot of the whys individual developers may have been afraid to ask. That's good, because it lets them experiment, and improve on that knowledge. It also boils the guidelines down into four driving principles, and explains in detail how to meet those needs using various Web technologies. And that's important in itself, because it removes the excuse that accessibility is some kind of black magic that is incomprehensible to the outsider. Every guideline exists for a reason, and all those reasons are now spelled out." http://www.accessify.com/features/interviews/matt-may/ Ambient Findability: Talking with Peter Morville By Liz Danzico. "Can we reasonably judge authority? How can we make good decisions in the information age? How do we know enough to ask the right questions? Peter Morville takes a moment to talk with us these and other potential answers, his most recent book, the death of data, and our fascination with the future.." http://tinyurl.com/9fqeh The Top 5 Red Flags of Software Development By Jason Fried. "1. Wouldn't it be easy to...(the hidden cost of change)..." http://tinyurl.com/b49n2 Rethinking Application Design By Dirk Knemeye. "...Our industry generally does not know how to design great user experiences, so the blind are always leading the blind. This is amplified when firms copy the methods of teams that have produced successful products. Unfortunately, successful product design sometimes occurs despite the structure and process of the design team-not because of it. So What Should We Be Doing? Here are my recommendations, based on working with and for numerous companies, and seeing success with my own company..." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/rethinking_application_design/ +10: NAVIGATION. How To: Anchor Text (Don't Click Here!) By Matt Bailey. "It never fails to amaze me when I browse sites. One of the most critical factors on the page that affect everything from rankings, accessibility and usability is overlooked. Many times it is abused to the point of ridiculousness..." http://tinyurl.com/bl8j6 Should Nav be on the Left or on the Right? By Jared Spool. "On the often interesting Interaction Design Association discussion list, David Hatch from Macromedia asked if people liked their navigation panels on the left side better than on right side." http://tinyurl.com/cxxhk +11: PHP. CSS-PHP Variable By Tedd Sperling. "The question has been asked numerous times, in the css forum, if there is a way to use a variable from inside css and the answer has always been 'No'. Well... technically, if you are using just css, then that answer is correct. However, with just a minor amount of php code (7 lines), you can use variables in css." http://www.sperling.com/examples/pcss/ PHP 101 (part 15): No News is Good News By Vikram Vaswani. "After the workout I gave you last time, you're probably either chomping at the bit to build another PHP application or you've decided to give up PHP programming and try growing cucumbers instead. If it's the latter, you should stop reading right now, because I can guarantee you that this concluding installment of PHP 101 has absolutely nothing to teach you about vegetable farming. If it's the former, however, then you're going to enjoy what's coming up. Over the next few pages, I'm going to be building a simple RSS news aggregator using PHP, SQLite and SimpleXML. With this news aggregator, you can plug into RSS news feeds from all over the web, creating a newscast that reflects your needs and interests for your website. The best part: it updates itself automatically with the latest stories every time you view it!Come on in, and let's get this show on the road!" http://www.zend.com/php/beginners/php101-15.php These Things I Know, PHP Tips By Nick Schaffner. "There is more than one way to achieve the same result when programming in PHP. There are many shortcuts I wish someone had explained to me when I began learning the language. Here are my favorites." http://evolt.org/these-things-i-know-php-tips +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Blandards By John Allsopp. "To my recent post on semantics, a couple of comments touched on the wider issue (and one I have never really understood) that somehow by standardizing, you stifle creativity. It's an argument I've heard for many years in criticism of web standards, and one that I fail to see any logic in. But I've never really seen it discussed in detail, and as it simply won't go away, I want to address it here..." http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2005/11/web_blandards.html Why Valid HTML Code is Important to Your Web Site By Goran Mitic. "Many webmasters overlook a very important aspect of web site promotion: the validity of the HTML code." http://tinyurl.com/9y8no Government Web Standards Usage: New Zealand By Peter Krantz. "In this article we have a look at government web sites in New Zealand. Testing NZ government websites is interesting as there is an official document, the e-government web guidelines, that regulate how they should be made. Out of 280 tested sites 16 (5.7%) were using valid HTML. However, 30 sites had between 1 and 5 errors. Read on for the details..." http://tinyurl.com/dxgkx +13: TOOLS. Colour Blindness Simulator [Beta] By Etre. "Use our Colour Blindness Simulator to reveal how your images may appear to users with a variety of colour blindness conditions. Upload a JPEG image of no more than 1000 pixels x 1000 pixels (100 KB filesize or less) to see how colour blind users may see it." http://www.etre.com/tools/colourblindsimulator/ Rapid Web Development and Testing with Firefox By Leslie Franke. Leslie's slide presentation showcases many useful extensions. They are in my toolbox. http://tinyurl.com/cn6p4 +14: USABILITY. UXmatters By Pabini Gabriel-Petit, Publisher and Editor in Chief. "We are very pleased to welcome you to UXmatters - a Web magazine created by and for UX professionals." http://www.uxmatters.com/ Graphic Design Plays a Minor Role on the Web By Gerry McGovern. "The best websites are highly functional. They are task-focused. Graphic design has an important, though limited role. Don't try and force the Web to be what it's not." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt-2005-10-24-web-design.htm Graphic Design on The Web By D. Keith Robinson. "Gerry McGovern, a Web content expert, wrote a bit entitled Graphic Design Plays A Minor Role On The Web. It's a short read that makes a few good points. I think what he's saying is that 'visual' or 'graphic' design should not be the focus of most Web sites. And to that point I generally agree with him. However, to imply that 'style' or visual graphic design isn't important on the Web at all is dead wrong in my opinion....I feel that the best Web sites are usable, functional and have a good visual aesthetic..." http://tinyurl.com/9qfql Is Beauty The New Usability Attribute? By Mark Hall and Kath Straub. "Hassenzahl's studies suggest that the emotional aspects of the design are important in attracting customers in the first place. Hedonic properties around beauty clearly influence first impressions. However, when getting stuff done matters, perceived usability - judged through usage over time - is what matters most." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/oct05.asp Usability Doesn't Have to be Ugly By Gerry McGovern. "There is a balance that needs to be struck between a website that is truly functional and one that is elegant and stylish." http://tinyurl.com/a7q9l Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes By Jakob Nielsen. "Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html Jakob Only Has Two Weblog Mistakes Right By Garrick Van Buren. "I read through Jakob Nielsen's Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes. As someone with a couple of weblogs, I only agree with two of his 'mistakes'. The rest of them have valid, strategic uses..." http://mnteractive.com/archive/jakob-only-has-two-weblog-mistakes-right/ In Praise of Web Experts By Gerry McGovern. "The Web is maturing. It needs more people like Jakob Nielsen who propose, explain and defend rules. There is a best way to manage a website. There is a best way to combine the talents of the editor with the opinions of the audience. Rules will not restrict the future growth of the Web. Rather, they will allow it to truly mature and flourish." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt-2005-10-31-web-experts.htm Business Blog Web Design Mistakes By Meryl Evans. "With more companies adopting blogs, it's no surprise Jakob Nielsen looks at the top ten blog usability design mistakes." http://www.meryl.net/blog/archives/003856.php If You're Reading This, You Are a Low-Value Demographic By Jeff Atwood. "Jakob Nielsen may not be today's hip and trendy Web 2.0 fixture, but he's still dispensing solid advice. Check out his Top Ten Blog Design Mistakes...It's a great set of guidelines that I completely agree with. However, it is missing one humongous mistake: disabling comments. You don't have a blog until you allow public, two way communication between the author and the reader. And when I say communication, I mean it: the author has to actually read and even (gasp!) respond to the comments. Otherwise you're just publishing content, like every other newspaper since the printing press was invented..." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000421.html +15: XML. Cross-browser XForms By Kevin Yank. "XForms is a complex but powerful replacement for HTML forms that relies heavily on cutting-edge XML technology. As a result of its complexity, browsers have been typically slow to implement it. But with working plugins for Internet Explorer and a pre-release extension now available for Firefox, the time is right to give this technology another look." http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/10/27/cross-browser-xforms/ [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.]