+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 47, May 12, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 47 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. 13: XML. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Techniques for WCAG 2.0 By W3C. "This document provides information to Web content developers who wish to satisfy the success criteria of "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0" [WCAG20] . General Techniques in this document are applicable to all technologies while HTML, CSS, Scripting, and SMIL techniques apply only to those technologies." http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20060427/ PDF Post to the WebAIM list By Wayne Dick. "...I would just like to read my information at a comparable level of quality, effectiveness and price. That is not too much to ask. Right now the PDF community does not make that possible. There is the responsibility of document authors and publishers, but there is also significant responsibility from manufacturers of PDF authoring tools and user agents. Finally, there is the responsibility of the author of PDF. If Adobe wants PDF to be a standard then it should treat it like a real standard. PDF should be as accountable as HTML and it should not provide easy ways for incompetent or cheap authors and publishers to evade their accessibility obligations..." http://www.webaim.org/discussion/mail_message.php?id=8213 PDF and WCAG 2.0 By Shawn Lawton Henry. "For this special PDF issue of Accessible Content Magazine, we'll use the WAI Update column to address the question of how WCAG 2.0 relates to PDF." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n2/index.php?view=w3c Anatomy of a PDF: Why Making Them Compliant Has Been Challenging By Mark Gavin. "The Portable Document Format (PDF) is an increasingly popular way to distribute content over the Internet. While PDF offers many advantages compared to HTML or native word processing formats, most people don't understand the fundamental nature of the beast. This brief introduction to the internals of PDF will help you understand how it differs from other file formats." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n2/index.php?view=pdfanatomy PDF Files are a Curse By Tim Seifert. Making people unnecessarily read PDF files is a major pain. They're slow to load, require a large and cumbersome program to read them, and they don't fit into the model of making pages that are most suitable for the needs of the person reading them. What you typically get are documents with fuzzy text and images, documents that aren't easily navigable, pages sizes that don't fit the screen, and they're often partially unreadable with the user's current version of their PDF reader (mangled text, missing images, etc.)." http://evpc.biz/personal/soapbox/morons_in_webspace#PDFs_are_a_curse Playing Tag: Creating Accessible PDF Files By Jonathan Whiting. "In the past, Adobe PDF files were completely inaccessible, especially to people using screen readers. This began to change with Acrobat 5, when Adobe introduced a series of "tags" that could be used to enhance PDF accessibility. Although PDF tags could not be manipulated as easily as HTML tags, they made the content more accessible to some users with screen readers. With each version of Adobe Acrobat, PDF accessibility has increased and it has become easier to create tagged PDF files. This article will introduce how to view, edit and create tagged PDF file in Acrobat 7 Professional, but many of the features mentioned in this article are available in version 6. Even though you can create tagged PDF files in Acrobat Standard, you can only edit tags in Acrobat Professional." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n2/index.php?view=pdftags How Adobe Reader Can Help: Improvements in Acrobat Reader 7.0 By Greg Pisocky. "When it comes to accessibility, PDF files have had a mixed reputation. Earlier versions of Acrobat posed severe obstacles to accessibility (for an explanation of why, read "What is a PDF" on page 5). With each new version of Acrobat and PDF, there came improvements in accessibility." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n2/index.php?view=reader +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Rock Solid CSS Layouts By Dan Shafer and Rachel Andrew. "If creating standards-compliant, cross-browser compatible page layouts using CSS has you stumped, let SitePoint's resident CSS gurus show you that way. In this comprehensive, step-by-step tute, Rachel and Dan show you how to create a slick, flexible, and solid 2-column layout that will stand the tests of time and evolving technology!" http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1523 CSS: Double Lists By Mike Cherim. " I've been wanting to make some 'Double Lists' using CSS and basic markup, but until now I just haven't made the time to investigate. Never had the need, until recently. On a site I've been working on the client has a long list of short terms. Ordinarily putting these items in an unordered list makes the most sense. That would be the proper thing to do. Problem is it takes so much vertical space. Since the list items are all going to have short names, it'd be much better to stretch in out horizontally, doubling the terms, thus saving space vertically on the page. I came up with this solution a lot faster than I imagined..." http://mikecherim.com/gbcms_xml/news_page.php?id=4 Giving Markup Some Class By Jonathan Christopher. "One of the great things about CSS is the ability to give elements a class or id. The trouble is, like many other elements of XHTML/CSS, they can be abused. I know when I first began using CSS, I would give just about anything a class just because I could. I would then style elements based on their class, completely disregarding semantics. What resulted was cluttered markup filled with far too many class declarations, and a stylesheet that could use a trim..." http://www.mondaybynoon.com/2006/05/08/giving-markup-some-class/ Grids CSS By Yahoo. "Grids CSS is a suite of seven web page templates and the ability to nest grids of one to four columns within the content area of those templates. Together, the combined template and grid system offers these features..." http://com1.devnet.scd.yahoo.com/yui/grids/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. How Personas and Scenarios Can Change Your Website For The Better - Part 2 By John Wood. "In part one of this article, I discussed the core concepts of personas, how they are created and what advantages they offer over other ways of modeling user needs. Here in part two I want to provide a similar overview of scenarios, which help you explore how people will use your website. I'll also provide a couple of examples of how we applied personas and scenarios in our work and the benefits they delivered to our clients." http://www.iqcontent.com/publications/features/article_77/ Website Competitive Analysis - A Visual Approach By Maish Nichani. "This article describes a simple visual approach to competitive analysis that can be used to quickly gain insights into what's being used and what's interesting at your competitor websites." http://tinyurl.com/merkn Five days: Dixons.co.uk By Etre. "Over the next five days, we'll be publishing Eye Tracking heat maps from five websites. We'll give you our thoughts on each and hopefully you'll give us your questions, comments and analysis." http://www.etre.com/blog/2006/05/five_days_dixonscouk/?nl=1243 +04: EVENTS. Website Accessibility 2006 June 13, 2006. Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom http://www.parallel56.com/accessibility2006.aspx NordiCHI 2006 October 14-18, 2006. Oslo, Norway http://nordichi.net.dynamicweb.dk/ Assets 2006 The Eighth International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility October 23-25, 2006. Portland Oregon U.S.A. http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/assets06/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Task Oriented Information Architecture By Michael Andrews. "Most discussion of information architecture relates to finding information. There are articles people want to read, or catalog items people want to browse. What receives less attention in information architecture is how to organize user interfaces to perform tasks, particularly tasks involving complex, drawn-out processes. After recently working on an enterprise application, I have concluded that task-oriented information architecture involves unique issues." http://tinyurl.com/k622c Front-End Architecture: Markup is the Technical Foundation By Garrett Dimon. Markup as the technical foundation of a good front-end architecture. http://tinyurl.com/kz99z Why You Shouldn't Start IA with a Content Inventory By Leisa Reichelt. "I get the feeling that there are some people out there who think that one of the first things you want to do, when starting an Information Architecture project, is a detailed Content Inventory. (Want to get into a discussion about what terms to use and what they mean, go to the IA Wiki..." http://tinyurl.com/oqz6w The Guided Wireframe Narrative for Rich Internet Applications By Andres Zapata. "Wireframes. We've all done them. We've all had to make sure our clients look at placement, labels, flow, and real estate distribution-but ignore color and design at all costs because, after all, they are wireframes." http://boxesandarrows.com/S/2537 Know Your Place By Nathan Curtis. "Popular wireframing tools allow for reuse of repeated elements: change a centralized module once and have it update across all your screens. Nathan Curtis offers practical tips for increasing wireframing efficiency in this story." http://boxesandarrows.com/S/2437 +06: JAVASCRIPT. AJAX and Screenreaders: When Can it Work? By James Edwards. "Over the last few months (and earlier) I've been involved in researching how the leading screen readers and other assistive devices respond to JavaScript: what kinds of events they generate or respond to, and under what circumstances. The research is based at Access Matters , and coordinated by Bob Easton, Derek Featherstone, Mike Stenhouse and myself. In addition to that, I did a great deal of primary research for my recently published book, The JavaScript Anthology . The research was designed to find out how assistive devices respond to scripts that update the DOM periodically or asynchronously, such as the items in a scrolling news-ticker, or responses to an XMLHttpRequest...I'm forced to conclude that, unless a way can be found to notify screen readers of updated content, AJAX techniques cannot be considered accessible, and should not be used on a production site without a truly equivalent non-script alternative being offered to users up-front..." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/ajax-screenreaders-work Joe Clark on AJAX Accessibility By Joe Clark. "I had the honor of addressing Iceweb 2006 in Reykjavik, Iceland's first Web-development conference. My topic was Ajax accessibility. I knew nothing about it, so I ran some user tests and presented original research...The conclusion I have from my testing is that Ajax has problems. Maybe not fatal problems, but problems nonetheless. What I think is going to happen is that Web accessibility and Web standards will be replicated in microcosm: A tiny few people know how to make accessible Web sites and know how to code to Web standards, and everybody else does everything exactly the wrong way. It'll be the same thing here, except the people doing the wrong things are hip upstarts like 37 Signals rather than giant corporations hiring community-college grads trained in table layouts and the font 'tag.' .." http://joeclark.org/ice/ Ajax and Screenreaders By Jeremy Keith. "The intersection of DOM Scripting and accessibility can be confusing. There are plenty of opinions, beliefs and myths circulating. WhatÕs really needed are some hard facts backed up by good old-fashioned testing..." http://domscripting.com/blog/display/64 Accessibility Issue Comes to a Head Target lawsuit could be a test case; new wave of apps concerns blind users By Carol Sliwa. "The move from text-based to visually oriented Web content has been tough on the blind, and now there's a new threat on the horizon. The shift to dynamic 'Web 2.0' technology, which Gartner Inc. predicts will be pervasive by the end of next year, could exacerbate the problem of inaccessible sites. A Web 2.0 application might make use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and Dynamic HTML to update information in a table without having to refresh an entire Web page. But screen readers, magnifiers and other assistive technology may not know which parts of the page have changed unless developers take steps to make sure the tools can glean that information.'It's very, very, very scary,' said Jeff Bishop, an application systems analyst at the University of Arizona in Tucson. 'Before, so what? You had a missing [alternative-text] tag, but at least you knew there was an image. You could click on it, and maybe you could figure out what it was. Now, you don't even know where to click. You don't know how to interact.'..." http://tinyurl.com/rwftj Web Design with Ajax By Brett McLaughlin. Here is a book excerpt from 'Head Rush Ajax' by Brett McLaughlin. "If you're tired of clunky Web Interfaces, check out Ajax. Ajax - asynchronous JavaScript and XML is the key to building rich Internet applications that are more interactive, responsive and easy to use. Here, you'll learn about the newest thing to hit the Web." http://www.webreference.com/programming/hra/ Ten Good Practices for Writing JavaScript in 2005 By Chaohan. "1. Make sure your JavaScript code is in balance with its environment..." http://www.blog.edu.cn/user1/9876/archives/2006/1279315.shtml Ease Your JavaScript Testing and Debugging Load By Tony Patton. JavaScript development tools have been slow to materialize, but there are various options available today. Learn more about debugging JavaScript and related tools in this Web Development Zone column. http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6067987.html +07: MISCELLANEOUS. The Future of HTML, Part 1: WHATWG The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group's approach to improving HTML By Edd Dumbill. "In this two-part series, Edd Dumbill examines the various ways forward for HTML that Web authors, browser developers, and standards bodies propose. This series covers the incremental approach embodied by the WHATWG specifications and the radical cleanup of XHTML proposed by the W3C. Additionally, the author gives an overview of the W3C's new Rich Client Activity. Here in Part 1, Edd focuses primarily on two specifications being developed by WHATWG: Web Applications 1.0 (HTML5) and Web Forms 2.0." http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-futhtml1/ +08: NAVIGATION. A-Z Indexes: A Painful Exercise in Mind Reading By Brian Donohue. "Lots of people think they like A-Z indexes on websites. Why? They have the allure of simplicity. Users think the index will cut through the confusion and bring them quickly to where they want to go. We've come across the issue of A-Z indexes with four of our clients in the last several months. And we say the same thing each time: A-Z indexes almost always problematic." http://www.iqcontent.com/publications/features/article_78/ Nine Ways to Fix Intranet Search By James Robertson. "This article outlines nine steps that can be taken by all intranet teams to improve the effectiveness of search, covering both design and under-the-hood changes." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_fixingsearch/index.html Search Engine Indexing Limits: Where Do the Bots Stop? By Serge Bondar. "Ever wondered how much of each of your pages is being crawled by the search engines? Serge has, which is why he conducted an experiment to test the exact page size that could be crawled by the search bots, and identify the indexation limit of each. Here, he reveals the results of his study." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1525 Do You Really Need Search on Your Website? By Gerry McGovern. "You need to decide whether the value of having search on your website is greater than the cost of making sure that you do it well." http://tinyurl.com/owyb6 Clickstream Project By David Koch. "The Clickstream Project is a scientific study of web-user navigation...The study is part of my MSc thesis work...You can contribute by providing some navigation data. Download and install the Firefox ClickStreamRecorder (CSR) PlugIn. Close and re-start Firefox. A message may prompt you to allow transfer of data to our server. Removing the CSR PlugIn is a matter of one click. I put up a small FAQ. To make this interesting, I'll ask you to play a game called 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The rules are simple: You start on the profile page of actor A and have to get to actor B's profile page by clicking on movie/actor links. Here is an example for connecting Kevin Bacon to Michael Douglas..." http://www.ipsi.fraunhofer.de/~dkoch/ +09: PHP. Loopy Control Structures By Tim Huegdon. "If ever there was a case for RTFM, it would be in conjunction with control structures in PHP (and Javascript too, since most of them are identical). I've recently learnt a thing or two about loops in both of these languages and thought I would share it with the blog-o-sphere; in case you, like me, didn't bother to read the manual properly" http://nefariousdesigns.co.uk/archive/2006/05/loopy/ PHP vs. Ruby By Stefan Mischook. "With all the buzz about Ruby these days (because of the web application framework ÔRuby on RailsÕ) Zend (the people who manage PHP) are feeling the pressure." http://www.killersites.com/blog/2006/php-vs-ruby/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Built Like a House By Mike Cherim. "I was explaining web standards, compliant mark-up, and web accessibility to my wife. I used a 'house' analogy. Not 'House MD' like the television show (which is very good by the way), but like the structure some people live in. I equated a house to a website. I told my wife some sites can look great on the outside yet be very poorly built on the inside. The outer walls can be nothing more than a thin veneer. A website can have a great looking design, yet it may be built of straw on the inside and not able to withstand the huffs and puffs of the big, bad wolf of technology. It's hard to tell by just looking I explained." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=97 CSS - Why Use Modern Design Techniques? By Andrew Faulkner. "This article aims to demonstrate the advantages in learning modern web design techniques, focusing on CSS. We'll learn what CSS is, explore the business factors in building websites in a modern way and find out how much easier and beneficial it is to design using CSS. What this article isn't is a guide on how to make websites with CSS." http://tinyurl.com/fcgyu +11: TOOLS. Browser Size By Ates Goral. "Browser size related resources for web designers" includes "a nifty online tool for setting your browser size while doing Web design". http://browsersize.com/ Batch Website Link Popularity Checkers By Right Scripts. "Check how many pages indexed and how many back links to your site on search engine of Google, Yahoo, Msn, alltheweb,altavista and sympatico. You can input lists of domain names and download check report free." http://www.rightscripts.com/linkpopularity/ +12: USABILITY. Full Site Redesign - Start by Addressing the Home Page By Iain Barker. "Rather than embarking on a major project at the first sign of problems, consider tactical solutions such as the redesign of the home page." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_fullsiteredesign/index.html If yuo can raed this yuor brian wroks By Kath Straub. Kath Straub, shows how too much educating is not always the best way to get your point across. http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/apr06.asp#kath Salary Trends for Usability Professionals By Jakob Nielsen. "Over the last several years, entry-level salaries have dropped, while pay for experienced usability staff has been more stable." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/salaries.html Calling All Designers: Learn to Write! By Derek Powazek. "You know all that copy that goes around your forms and in your confirmation e-mails? Who's writing it? Derek Powazek explains why it's important for user-interface designers to sharpen up their writing skills." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/learntowrite +13: XML. Learning XHTML By Simon Jessey. "The goal of this tutorial is to get the beginner up and running creating XHTML as soon as possible. Superfluous information is kept to a minimum, and some concepts are deliberately explained simplistic terms to guarantee that the novice is not overwhelmed. Each lesson is accompanied by links to further reading, if more information is desired. Each lesson builds on the last, so skipping a lesson is unwise." http://jessey.net/simon/xhtml_tutorial/ [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.]