+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 38, March 12, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 38 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility First! A New Approach to Web Design By Brian Rosmaita. "This paper proposes an accessibility first pedagogy for web design, in which the course is organized around the requirement of implementing web pages accessible to visually impaired computer users. This approach and its advantages are discussed in detail." http://tinyurl.com/pcsx7 Evaluating Website Accessibility Part 1, Background and Preparation By Roger Johansson. "In more and more countries across the world it is becoming required for government and other public service websites to be based on standards and follow accessibility guidelines. That in turn is making it necessary for the people involved in building and maintaining these sites to be able to build accessible websites and evaluate website accessibility...This three-part article series is intended to make it easier for non-experts to perform a basic accessibility check. I hope it will be helpful enough to make at least a few websites more accessible..." http://tinyurl.com/gn6fc Introduction to Web Accessibility By Patrick Kennedy. "One of the hot topics of recent years has been web accessibility. And for good reason. The industry is finally accepting responsibility for providing access to information for anyone using a website, or indeed an intranet. Despite this trend, a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding continues to surround the subject, and this may be stopping many from taking the necessary action. This paper is not a step by step guide to making an accessible website, but rather a quick overview to point readers in the right direction..." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_introtoaccessibility/index.html CATS (Creating Accessible Teaching and Support) "The CATS Project has established a framework for good practice that provides information and resources to assist universities to create equitable access for students with disability and to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act and the Disability Standards for Education..." http://www.adcet.edu.au/cats/default.aspx Google's Doors Still Shut to Blind By Susan Kuchinskas. "Accessibility advocates have accused Google and Yahoo of shutting out the blind. The door is still closed..." http://asia.internet.com/news/article.php/3586166 Sign-Language Takes to the Web By Phil Muncaster. "Malcolm Wright explains how systems are developing to help firms reach more people." http://www.whatpc.co.uk/itweek/analysis/2151441/sign-language-takes-web Podcasting and Accessibility WebAim list Thread. http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=2703 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Layout Gala By Alessandro Fulciniti. "In November 2005 I presented on pro.html.it a three-part article on creating CSS layouts using techniques like negative margins, any order columns and in some case opposite floats. The main goal of the article was getting the maximum number of layouts based on the same markup, each with valid CSS and HTML, without hacks nor workaround and a good cross-browser compatibility. The result is a set of 40 layouts that we've thought worth sharing: on each of them you'll find also a download link (if you want, you can download the entire collection, 40 HTML pages in a single zip file). Further details can be found below the gallery..." http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/ Three Steps to a Two Column CSS Layout By Virginia DeBolt. "I certainly did not originate this method of creating a two column layout, but I will summarize it for you. Step one: create a wrapper or container div and give it a CSS rule: position:relative..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2006/03/tip-three-steps-to-two-column-css.html CSS Link Styles By Chris Jason. One of the easiest, yet most interactive, elements you can add to your Web site is dynamic link text-links that change their appearance once the user puts their cursor over them. http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/css-link-styles/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Outliers and Luck in User Performance By Jakob Nielsen. "Six percent of task attempts are extremely slow and constitute outliers in measured user performance. These sad incidents are caused by bad luck that designers can -- and should -- eradicate." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/outlier_performance.html Interview-Based Tasks - Learning from Leonardo DiCaprio By Jared M. Spool. "What they didn't know -- what they learned later -- is they had done everything right, almost. They'd recruited the right users, facilitated the test properly, and analyzed the results effectively. There was only one problem: the tasks didn't match what real users do with the site. That one problem was the source of their current pain." http://www.uie.com/articles/interview_based_tasks/ Determining Usability from Analytics By Jared Spool. "Can you assess the usability of a site or page by looking at the reports from you analytics tool? Jared thinks not..." http://tinyurl.com/fe8u5 +04: EVENTS. UPA 2006: Usability Through Storytelling June 12-16, 2006. Broomfield, Colorado U.S.A. http://www.upassoc.org/conferences_and_events/upa_conference/2006/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Just Build It: HTML Prototyping and Agile Development By Garrett Dimon. "Chances are, you use some sort of prototyping to illustrate Web interfaces for clients and stakeholders, and rely on those prototypes for approval. Whether you're using visual design comps, wireframes, site maps, process flows, page description diagrams (PDDs), or a combination of these, your goal is always the same. You want to mitigate the cost of making changes..." http://tinyurl.com/j2k6p +06: JAVASCRIPT. A (Re)-Introduction to JavaScript By Simon Willison. "I gave a three hour JavaScript tutorial at ETech this morning, aimed at people with previous programming experience who hadn't yet dived deep in to JavaScript as a programming language...I'm posting the slides here..." http://simon.incutio.com/slides/2006/etech/javascript/js-tutorial.001.html Script Smarter: Quality JavaScript from Scratch By James Edwards and Cameron Adams. "If you've avoided JavaScript, or only knew it in its previous 'toy language' incarnations, now's the time to step up and get to know the newer, smarter JavaScript. This hands-on tour will get you started with JavaScript before illuminating the ways in which the DOM can be utilized via JavaScript, the practicalities of pop-up windows, and how JavaScript can work within a web page to produce slick DHTML effects." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/javascript-from-scratch How to Auto Include a Javascript File By Mark Kahn. "Many developers have a large library of JavaScript code at their fingertips that they developed, their collegues developed, or that they've pieced together. If you've ever wanted to easily find any JavaScript file this article will show you how." http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/mk/ Ajax/DHTML Library Scorecard: How Cross Platform Are They? By Leland Scott. This article reviews and categorizes DHTML/AJAX/JS libraries and grades how cross-browser they are. http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2006/03/ajax-dhtml-library-scorecard.html Getting Started with Ajax By Aaron Gustafson. "In this excerpt from O'Reilly's Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition, ALA's production editor would like to take you aside for a little chat about the birds and the bees. Or maybe about Ajax." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/gettingstartedwithajax JavaScript Arrays: Combining and Splitting By Jagadish Chaterjee. "This series of articles mainly concentrates on working with JavaScript arrays. This is the second article in the series and mainly concentrates on working with arrays effectively..." http://tinyurl.com/rnro3 +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview with Web Design God, Steve Krug By Anne Holland and Scott McDaniel. "n honor of the newly released 2nd edition of his 100,000 copy bestseller, 'Don't Make Me Think,' Steve graciously allowed MarketingSherpa's Publisher Anne Holland and Internet Director Scott McDaniel to grill him for an hour on what works (and what doesn't.) Here's an audio MP3 for you to listen to plus atyped transcript if you prefer reading: " http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3165 Tearing Down the Factory By Matt May. "...no one stakeholder should ever have a veto -- not a creative, not a coder, not an IA, not QA, not marketing, not an executive. Nobody. No project can be successful without communication and respect on all sides...the factory model is not viable. It has to be something more organic, something more specific to the team. We have learned a lot about each other by working together, and found that each of us has some skills that complement another partner. Which is why you might see the creative director handling the IA, the director of strategy banging out CSS, or yours truly talking to a marketing team about the paradox of choice. Each of us has a unique combination of knowledge and experience, and we need to be able to use all of it." http://blueflavor.com/ed/process/tearing_down_the_factory.php Leadership Tips for Intranet Teams By James Robertson. "This article outlines a range of practical tips that can be applied to help intranet teams operate more effectively in this leadership role. These are all small (but important) steps that can be taken immediately by any intranet team." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_leadershiptips/index.html Intranet Authoring: a Hobby? By James Robertson. "The goal of many intranets is to deliver high quality, up-to-date, accurate and useful information to staff. In practice, however, this can be challenging to achieve. Much is expected of intranet authors, and they are vital to delivering an intranet that is useful (and used). Yet, in many cases, intranet authoring is treated as a hobby within organisations. This briefing looks at the role of intranet authors, and challenges organisations to either take intranet authoring seriously, or to let go of unrealistic expectations regarding content quality and timeliness." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_authoringhobby/index.html +08: NAVIGATION. Ambient Findability By Bruce Stewart. "Findability is the quality of being locatable or navigable, and 'ambient' means surrounding, encircling, and enveloping." http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/03/ambient_findability.html +09: PHP. Improve Your Dev Skills With an Intimate Knowledge of PHP's Date and Time Functions By Mellonfire. "Whether they're being used to display the current server time or record the exact instance of a database entry, PHP's date and time functions are a critical part of any Web developer's toolkit. Any tool, however, is only as good as the craftsman wielding it; and that's where this document comes in..." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6044704.html +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Standards and the Educations By Faruk Ates. "In a very crude way, you could say that there are three types of people on the Web: there are those who just use it in their daily life without it having any particular meaning to them; there are those who love the Web and have learned all about one or more of its infinitely many aspects. The third group consists of people who have completed an education of one kind or another which helps them have a profession on the Web. These people can be designers, online marketeers, back-end programmers, you name it. They can be anything that involves the Web in some way, but as far as profession is concerned, this third group overlaps entirely with the second. Nevertheless, there are vital differences between the two, differences that play out against our educated group. Why is this?..." http://kurafire.net/articles/web-standards-and-educations Web Standards Quiz - Test Your Knowledge of CSS, XHTML, AJAX... By khmerang. "...The quiz is multiple choice test, with only one correct answer per question. The questions are of varied difficulty, but to get all correct you really need to know your stuff..." http://www.khmerang.com/webstandardsquiz/ Microsoft IE7 Progress: Sneak Preview of MIX06 Release By Molly E. Holzschlag. "I'm sitting here with Malarkey and Markus Mielke in Mandelieu, a beautiful town in the south of France. We're here attending the W3C Technical Plenary and Markus has been kind enough to give us a sneak preview of the IE7 release that's expected for the MIX06 event." http://tinyurl.com/nup9h Breaking the Web Wide Open! By Marc Canter. "Even the web giants like AOL, Google, MSN, and Yahoo need to observe these open standards, or they'll risk becoming the 'walled gardens' of the new web and be coolio no more." http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=12412_0_1_0_C How to Create a Standardized Web Site Development Workflow By Smiley Cat. "As far as possible, we try to use a standard process for our web projects. Although it can seem like overkill for smaller projects, one thing I've discovered is that when it comes to building web sites for large organizations, there really are no shortcuts..." http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000222.html +11: TOOLS. E-Speaking This free speech recognition application for Windows XP, 2000, Me, NT 4.0 does not interact with the JAWS screen-reader, locking out screen-reading hotkeys. However, E-Speaking may be an option for individuals with carpel-tunnel, RSI, or temporary medical conditions. http://www.e-speaking.com/ +12: USABILITY. Two-Column Forms are Best Avoided By Caroline Jarrett. "...Don't do two-column forms...users will frequently fail to notice the second column altogether with consequential confusion and annoyance..." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article2992.asp Web Forms: Death By a Thousand Textboxes By Jeff Atwood. "Why do HTML forms have to be death by a thousand tiny textboxes?..." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000532.html Usability in One Easy Step (First Draft) By Joel Spolsky. "...The point is, does the UI respond to the user in the way in which the user expected it to respond? If it didn't, the user is going to feel like they can't control the interface, and they're going to be unsuccessful. That's all there is to it. Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected..." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/design/1stDraft/03.html Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction By Nick Usborne. "You want your users to do something-buy things, beg you to work for them, learn how they too can achieve inner peace. So how do you get them to do what you want? Try getting out of the way." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flywheelsandfriction How Product Teams Benefit from Usability By John Rhodes. "Product teams can leverage usability in three simple ways. First, usability can disambiguate requirements. Second, it can push a product closer to perfection with a small investment. Finally, usability helps product teams inform the organization about potential and expected support issues..." http://tinyurl.com/h2pgk The True Cost of Content By Gerry McGovern. "Most content will never show a return on investment. The Web is overflowing with low-quality content. Sooner or later, senior management is going to pay serious attention to all this waste. An organization that had a 4,000 page public website decided to do a major audit of content quality. As a result, it got rid of 1,000 pages. It didn't get one single enquiry for the deleted pages. A 100,000 page intranet deleted 60,000 pages. There was not one single enquiry for the deleted pages." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2006/nt-2006-03-06-content-cost.htm Usability and Games: 17 Excellent References By John Rhodes. "All resources in this list are freely available..." http://tinyurl.com/k5223 [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.]