+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 35, February 19, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 35 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: FLASH. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: TYPOGRAPHY. 13: USABILITY. 14: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Should Ignorance Be Our Real Target? By Ben Buchanan. "One point people are missing is that we really are talking about discrimination. Making an inaccessible website means treating some customers as second-class citizens. Target is refusing to serve them, just as effectively as if they turned their backs on them in-store...Now let's cast aside the moral high ground, since it doesn't motivate business. Plain and simple, accessibility is the law. As Joe Clark has pointed out, Target is bound by law not to discriminate against someone based on skin colour, religion or disability. It's one of those rare laws which are based on enforcing some basic humanity on the free market...So if it's the right thing to do and it's the law anyway... why do we still see so many inaccessible websites?...In part, I think it's ignorance...People don't know that it's the law, they don't understand why it's the right thing to do, they don't know that it's entirely achievable...If we can attack ignorance, if we can inform enough people, then maybe one day the lawsuits won't be required so much any more. I suspect that sometimes the big stick will still have to come out, but maybe afterwards people will be more receptive to the carrot." http://tinyurl.com/8zhwc NFB vs. Target in Perspective By Matt May. "...I'm hesitant to paint Target as the solitary enemy of users with disabilities. Let's be clear: The accessibility of Target's site is terrible. But in a short review I did of big-box store sites this morning, they're not the worst around. In fact, they're pretty much the middle of the range...So, to what do we attribute the utter inaccessibility of many e-commerce sites: ignorance, miscommunication, or malice? I've seen all three in practice. Often, it doesn't take the threat of a lawsuit to get site owners to come around; they merely need to understand the problems, and what they can do to solve them, in order of impact on the user. But I've also seen cases where it's a legal game of chicken: some companies refuse to comply with a legal mandate that they feel doesn't clearly apply to them. They're gambling that the cost of being found guilty of non-compliance is lower than that of conforming to a standard that may not apply to them. This strategy falls apart like a house of cards as soon as one of them is found liable. And it's a tactic I find particularly odious when they're consciously acting to keep users with disabilities out. The fact is that the Web has afforded many people with disabilities new-found potential to buy and sell things, work, manage finances, find community, gather news, and access government services - all things able-bodied people take for granted. When people with disabilities received legal protection, it wasn't given out of pity. It was given to protect their right to participate equally in society. Web designers and developers can enable that equal participation with every site they design, using modern coding principles. Or they can hide in a castle or a cave, clutching their legacy code, certain that those evil, litigious disabled people are out to get them." http://tinyurl.com/9bsgf Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM0.5) "Welcome to the webpages of the Unified Web Evaluation Methodology version 0.5 (UWEM0.5). This draft methodology is the result of a joint effort by 24 European organizations in three European projects combined in a cluster to develop a Unified Web Evaluation Methodology. The methodology is based on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10] and will be synchronized with the foreseen migration from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 [WCAG20] in the near future. The UWEM0.5 offers an interpretation of the guidelines agreed among stakeholders within the projects..." http://www.wabcluster.org/uwem05/ Accessibility Testing and Reporting with TAW3 Patrick H. Lauke. "This tutorial steps users through the process of evaluating web content for accessibility using WAVE 3.5. As with all tools, human-mediated evaluation is the best approach, and WAVE is designed specifically to help users make the kind of judgments that only humans can make." http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue46/lauke/ Validating a Vendor: Evaluating Claims of Accessibility Expertise By Glenda Watson Hyatt. "...In other scenarios, an organization may procure an online application, such as a dynamic mortgage rate calculator, from external vendors to save time over developing it in-house. This externally developed application still needs to meet the organization's web accessibility policy, thus finding a vendor with web accessibility expertise is crucial. The challenge lays in selecting the best-qualified vendor to meet the organization's specific needs. How do you effectively evaluate vendors' claims of web accessibility expertise?..." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n1/index.php?view=vendor Deconstructing Multimedia: Break It Up for Accessibility By Andrew Kirkpatrick. "Multimedia to web technologists is like indecency to the Supreme Court-we know it when we see it, but can't define it clearly. To some, multimedia means a movie with video and audio. To others, a silent Flash movie with animation qualifies. Some will make the argument that a web page that has text and images is multimedia. I'm giving up trying to define what it is because the term itself has little value to the process of making content accessible.In web accessibility, multimedia is what we generally call something we can't make very accessible. If we break multimedia into constituent parts, making such content accessible is broken into more familiar tasks." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n1/index.php?view=multimedia Creating Accessible CSS By WebAIM. "This article gives an overview of CSS, tips on how to use CSS to your advantage, and common pitfalls to avoid when using CSS." http://webaim.org/techniques/css/ CSS in Action: Invisible Content Just for Screen Reader Users By WebAIM. "Most of the techniques for making Web content accessible to screen readers are invisible to visual users. This article examines a few circumstances in which hiding text from visual users can be beneficial, and proposes a solution which allows HTML to be hidden without compromising the accessibility or semantic integrity of the document, and which works across browsers and platforms." http://webaim.org/techniques/css/invisiblecontent +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Unitless line-heights By Eric A. Meyer. "I'd like to share something that will be old news to readers of CSS: The Definitive Guide and all of my other books, but nonetheless needs to be said out loud, in public, for everyone to hear. The property line-height can accept unitless number values. You can also give line-height united values, though generally you shouldn't. But unitless numbers are just fine for this property." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2006/02/08/unitless-line-heights/ Internet Explorer and CSS Issues By Trenton Moss. "Internet Explorer has a number of CSS issues. Find out what these issues are and how to get around them, so your website looks the same in all browsers." http://tinyurl.com/7u8qg CSS Drop Column Layout By Stuart Colville. "When I created this site I wanted to have 4 columns which are all fixed width. The idea was that if you resized the window then the columns would drop down when there wasn't enough room....To achieve the desired effect I am using floats. A natural property of a floated element is to drop down when there isn't enough room until there is enough space. This means that the column on the furthest right will drop when the window is re-sized. One of the issues with this would be if the primary content column was not high enough the displaced column would wrap underneath it. To combat this undesired effect I have used a wrapper with a left margin to 'hold' the 3 smaller columns to the right of the primary content." http://www.muffinresearch.co.uk/archives/2006/02/7/CSS_Drop_Column_Layout.php CSS: An Introduction By Adrian Senior. "In this tutorial we will take a look at the very basics of CSS, if you are new to cascading style sheets this is the place to start..." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=B6A50 CSS Basics.com Ben Partch. "You've heard the buzz about the separation of style from content, but you are stuck in the world of nested tables and deprecated markup. If so, you have come to the right place! Using CSS to style your (X)HTML files, will benefit you and your visitors in many ways. The following chapters cover all the basics of CSS design..." http://www.cssbasics.com/ What is CSS and Why Should You Use It? By Christopher Jason. "CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a markup language used to format the 'look' of web pages. This includes overall layout, text size, style, and formatting, table formatting, link properties, and more. When used correctly, CSS allows one to define the look of an entire site in one single document. If you're a Web person who doesn't already utilize CSS, you should be very excited right now, as it can quickly become your new best friend. Some of you, however, may be wondering..." http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/what-is-css/ Using Basic CSS In Web pages By Christopher Jason. "In this article, I'll show how to use basic CSS in your Web pages..." http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/basic-css-web-pages/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Creating Your First Website - Part 3: Adding Content to Pages By Jon Varese. "This tutorial shows you how to add content to web pages in Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. You can add many different kinds of content to web pages, including graphics, Macromedia Flash files, Flash video, and text-to name just a few. After you've added content to your pages, you can preview your work in a browser so that you can see what it will look like on the web." http://tinyurl.com/dtno2 Creating Your First Website - Part 4: Formatting Your Page with CSS By Jon Varese. "This tutorial shows you how to format text on your page using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in Dreamweaver. CSS provides you with greater control over the appearance of your page by letting you format and position text in ways that HTML cannot." http://tinyurl.com/anscz +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Usability Testing on the Cheap By Ned Batchelder. "You've built a product. You think it's ready for real users. How do you find out? You do usability testing. This is a specialized discipline, and there are specialists out there who know what they are doing. You should hire one of them to do usability tests on your product. They will do a much better job than you can, and you will get much better results. But if you can't, here's how to do it yourself." http://www.nedbatchelder.com/text/usability.html Practical Usability Testing By Joshua Kaufman. "...The first article in this series is on one of my favorite practices: usability testing. The most critical aspect of user-centered design, usability testing breaks down the wall between the designer and user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in the real world. There are many benefits of usability testing, including uncovering pitfalls in a current system before a redesign and evaluating the usability of a system during and after design. Usability testing should be an iterative practice, completed several times during the design and development life-cycle. The end result is an improved product and a better understanding of the users that we're designing for..." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/practical_usability_testing/ Interaction Modeling By Matt Queen. "Interaction modeling makes design decisions explicit. In principle it's simple: record what users "should" do, what they actually do, and then explain the differences between the two. Of course there's more to it than that, and Matt Queen gives us all the details in this story." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/interaction_modeling +05: EVENTS. International Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities March 20-25, 2006. Los Angeles, California U.S.A. http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/index.htm Access U 2006 May 11-12 2006. Austin, Texas U.S.A. http://www.knowbility.org/conference/ +06: FLASH. Innovation Makes Flash-Based JKRowling.com Accessible By Bob Regan. "When creating an accessible Flash site, designers must apply many of the same concepts used in HTML. With Flash, designers have far more flexibility in the types of objects and controls they can create. While the solutions are often quite simple from a technical standpoint, designers need to think about the experience of the site from the perspective of the end user. Designers need to ask themselves how a blind person, a person with a mobility impairment, or a person who is deaf would experience the site. With a little research into accessibility and advice from users with disabilities along the way, Lightmaker built a truly unique site. The JKRowling.com site illustrates how to build an accessible rich-media site in Flash." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n3/index.php?view=jkrowling +07: JAVASCRIPT. Yahoo! User Interface Library By Yahoo. "The Yahoo! User Interface Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, HTML and AJAX. The UI Library Utilities facilitate the implementation of rich client-side features by enhancing and normalizing the developer's interface to important elements of the browser infrastructure (such as events, in-page HTTP requests and the DOM). The Yahoo UI Library Controls produce visual, interactive user interface elements on the page with just a few lines of code and an included CSS file. All the components in the Yahoo! User Interface Library have been released as open source under a BSD license and are free for all uses." http://developer.yahoo.net/yui/ JavaScript SkillBuilder: Making 'Do' Without By Jon Brundage. "As we discussed in our premier issue, there are challenges associated in complying with W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Checkpoint 6.3: 'Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page.' You may see instructions in accessibility programming guides stating, 'Always use the noscript tag' when JavaScript code is present. If you take the instructions literally, then for every instance of JavaScript a matching noscript tag should be present. I have seen this practiced in code. But there are several instances where a noscript tag is not required. In this article I'll show you some examples where the noscript tag can be intrusive, and even creates a bad user experience. We will also explore using JavaScript to aid the user experience when JavaScript is disabled!" http://tinyurl.com/afb38 Results for JavaScript - Part 2: Navigating Forms By Bob Easton. "Great work by James Edwards brings this blog briefly out of hiatus. James has completed the testing and results compilation for our JavaScript test case regarding form elements. Quite some time ago, we published our second quiz about JavaScript accessibility. This one focused on form elements and all of the ways that JavaScript might interact with them. As with the first set of results, they are extensive and fill a wide table. You will find them published on a wider page for better presentation..." http://tinyurl.com/deqqw ASK - AJAX Source Kit By Robert Nyman. "The thing with AJAX is that it needs JavaScript to work and a direct consequence surrounding its hype is that a lot of web sites have implemented it without catering to common usability and accessibility factors. This is something that has saddened me, and therefore I developed ASK - AJAX Source KIT to address that while at the same time offer a light-weight library to implement AJAX functionality without having to worry about web browser differences. The basic idea of it is to implement AJAX without sacrificing those factors and at the same time do it in an unobtrusive way, meaning that there's no need for any event handlers or extra elements in the HTML code. All that is needed is to include the ASK JavaScript file, assign certain class names to the elements one wants to apply the ASK functionality to, and then implement accessible as well as AJAX-enhanced versions of the content that shall be retrieved dynamically." http://www.robertnyman.com/2006/02/08/ask-ajax-source-kit/ Rails is the Devil on Your (client-side) Shoulder By Dan Webb. "It also helped me realize why I don't get on with Rails JavaScript helpers; Rails is the devil on your DOM Scripting shoulder. Brace yourselves... I've always kind of sat astride both the client-side (web standards, accessibility etc) camp and the server-side camp. When Ajax took off and the server-side people got hold of DOM Scripting most of the careful thought by client-side people like Stuart Langridge, Bobby Van Der Luis, and Jeremy Keith got trampled over in the rush for Web 2.0 greatness. While the client-side people are still carefully prodding around the area exploring important areas like usability and accessibility and consolidating good practices like Graceful Degradation and Progressive Enhancement the server-side people are busy trying to shove it all under the carpet (or under several layers of library code anyway). The problem is it's just not that simple though. Graceful degradation and progressive enhancement are practices we must follow if we aren't going to shove Ajax right back into the pit with DHTML. So, what's up with Rails then? Well, on the good side I think the Prototype library that lies underneath the Ajax helpers is a damn good library. It's not too big, it's nicely written on the whole and it's easy to use. The devil lives in the JavaScript helpers. Take this example..." http://tinyurl.com/9utkf Alternate Ajax Techniques, Part 1 By Nicholas C. Zakas. By now, nearly everyone who works in web development has heard of the term Ajax. Most articles on Ajax have focused on using XMLHttp as the means to achieving such communication, but there are other methods which we'll explore in this series of articles. http://www.webreference.com/programming/ajax_tech/ +08: NAVIGATION. SEO For The Big Three By Dave Davies. "Ranking your website highly on one of the 'big three' search engines (Google, Yahoo or MSN) is a daunting task let alone ranking your website highly on all three. Three engines, three algorithms, three different sets of rules - and yet there are websites out there that have first page rankings across them all ? how do they do it?..." http://evolt.org/seo_for_the_big_three If You Have No Imagination, Click Here... By Tim Seifert. "Writing 'click here' for all your links looks very amateurish, looks damn stupid, and ignores the fact that not everybody 'clicks' on a link with a mouse. It's also ignorant of how search engines index pages (they use the words displayed in the link). Printed copies of pages look stupid, and are missing what could be vital information to understanding the document (that's your fault for bad authoring, not the user's fault for printing a page)." http://evpc.biz/personal/soapbox/morons_in_webspace#click_here +09: PHP. Using XML: A PHP Developer's Primer By Adam Delves. "This series of articles will focus on XML, its applications in modern day web development and how PHP fits into this niche. In this article, we will focus specifically on the tools provided to us by PHP which enable us to manipulate XML data sources." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/adam_delves20060206.php3 Abstract Classes in PHP - Working with PHP 5 By Alejandro Gervasio. "In this last part of the series, I'll explain the key points of abstract classes in PHP 5, and additionally provide you with some hands-on examples. This should give you a clear idea of how to utilize them within the powerful Object Model implemented in the latest version of PHP.They start with an overview of the PHP5 object model and how it make abstract classes much easier than before. They continue, mentioning a pointless and unusual practice of calling class methods out of context. Finally, they set up an example of the use of an abstract class in the structure of the PHP5 object model..." http://tinyurl.com/82x8t Debugging PHP By David Sklar. "Whether you're a PHP newbie or a wizard, your programs are going to have bugs in them. Nobody's perfect. This article gives you some techniques for finding and fixing the problems in your programs. It covers three topics..." http://blinduser.blogspot.com/2006/02/debugging-php.html A Beginners Introduction to PHP's File Functions By Dennis Pallett. "Welcome to this beginner's introduction to PHP's file functions. In this article I will take you through all the inbuilt file system functions, and explain them. This article is mainly geared towards beginners, but it could still be useful to more advanced developers as a simple refresher." http://www.phpit.net/article/beginners-introduction-php-file-functions/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. A Message to Clueless Website Authors By Tim Seifert. "...This page has been written, over a few years, as I've encountered website after website which was badly written; with new sections added as I've discovered yet more annoying and stupid sites..." http://evpc.biz/personal/soapbox/morons_in_webspace Don't Be a Beta Hater By Jeffery Zeldman. "...IE7 beta's standards accuracy is already very good and getting better, and, despite what you might have heard to the contrary, Microsoft's engineers are working with the community (and in particular with The Web Standards Project) to identify and fix CSS bugs and errors and to compensate for hacks like the one seen here. Using IE7? Finding bugs? Microsoft and The Web Standards Project want to hear from you." http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0206c.shtml Graded Browser Support By Nate Koechley. "...Expecting two users using different browser software to have an identical experience fails to embrace or acknowledge the heterogeneous essence of the Web. In fact, requiring the same experience for all users creates a barrier to participation. Availability and accessibility of content should be our key priority..." http://developer.yahoo.net/yui/articles/gbs/gbs.html Design Pattern Library By Yahoo. "Welcome to the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. We are very happy to be sharing our library with the design and development community. This is our first drop of what we hope to be a monthly release cycle for the publication of patterns..." http://developer.yahoo.net/ypatterns/ +11: TOOLS. Colour Contrast Analyser Firefox Extension By Gez Lemon. "I've written a Firefox extension that reveals the colour contrast of all elements in the DOM. If you evaluate websites for colour contrast, this extension will be useful for saving you time, and also take out the guesswork required to determine which colours to test." http://tinyurl.com/awlqm AJAX Regular Expression Evaluator An AJAX regular expression evaluator that helps create PCRE, Posix and Javascript regular expressions. http://www.rexv.org/ Quick Lookup By aonic.net. Quick Lookup is an online AJAX enabled tool programming tool. It gives you quick lookup of syntax for PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and CSS. The information page says "Please keep in mind that this service is not meant to replace full-sized references / manuals. This service exists for when you just need a quick syntax check, param list, or function/property name." http://ql.aonic.net/ +12: TYPOGRAPHY. Typography and the Aging Eye: Typeface Legibility for Older Viewers with Vision Problems By Paul Nini. "The population is rapidly aging and becoming a larger share of the marketplace. 13 percent of the population is currently over 65 years old. In 30 years that group will double to 66 million people. People change as they age. Sensory, cognitive and motor abilities decline. The built environment is not typically created with the needs of the aging population in mind. How does the choice of typeface in signage systems, for example, impact the older viewer who is experiencing vision problems typical to that age group? Are certain typefaces more suitable to the aging eye?" http://tinyurl.com/8mhsc +13: USABILITY. 10 Realistic Steps to a Faster Web Site By Alexander Kirk. "I have written my master thesis in computer sciences on this topic and will refer to it throughout the guide." http://alexander.kirk.at/2006/02/02/10-steps-to-a-faster-web-site/ +14: XML. Authoring Webpages: HTML, XHTML and DOCTYPEs By Wikibooks. "An important decision you must make before starting to create a website is the version of (X)HTML that the web pages will conform to..." http://tinyurl.com/atxeq [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +15: 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.]