+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 48, May 19, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 48 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TOOLS. 11: USABILITY. 12: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. The Quagmire of Web Accessibility By Chris Hofstater. "The other day, a comment posted to B.C. (Blind Confidential) pointed out that I had side stepped a question about automated testing tools that could simulate a specific screen reader. This caused me to think about automated test tools and the problem of screen readers in general..." http://tinyurl.com/s7cwn ONOFF: Another Failed Redesign By Roger Johansson and Robert Nyman. "...this makes us wonder: how hard can it be? It's only HTML coding we're talking about, not rocket science. But apparently HTML is much more difficult than the people who built this site realize. ONOFF's accessibility claim has no merit. If we talk about the term accessibility in a broader sense, it's just pathetic that people can't navigate to their website without adding a www prefix..." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200605/onoff_another_failed_redesign/ More Than a Set of Rules: Consider Human and Social Factors Alongside Technical Guidelines By Glenda Watson Hyatt. "...creating an accessible website means simply following a set of rules. Unfortunately, it is not quite that straightforward, not quite that clear-cut..." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n3/index.php?view=champion Graphic Testimony: It's Possible to Provide Long descriptions for Dynamically Generated Graphs By Stan Berman. "Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to individuals without disabilities. Static images on the web, such as pictures or logos, can generally be easily described with an Alt tag (for a short description) or a longdesc (for a long description). Even a small number of graphs can be described in a similar fashion. But how does one handle a large number of graphs that are generated dynamically, or 'on the fly', based on criteria selected by the user?" http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v2n1/index.php?view=graphs Cornerstones of a Successful 508 Program By Fred DiFiore. "Creating an accessibility program can be challenging. I think, however, you will find that challenging does not equate to impossible." http://tinyurl.com/kougw CAPTCHA: The FAQs CAPTCHAs are Gotchas for Some Users By Glenda Watson Hyatt. "The International Telecommunications Union estimates nearly 80% of all email in the United States is spam. CAPTCHAs are increasing in popularity as a way to combat this abuse of internet resources. However, CAPTCHAs are gotchas for many people..." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v2n1/index.php?view=captcha Developing a Customized Business Case, Making Anti-Robot Tests: Accessible, Sharing Accessibility with Newbies By Shawn Lawton Henry. "The web is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, recreation, and more. It is used for receiving information as well as providing information and interacting with society. Therefore it is essential that the web be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. An accessible web also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging..." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n3/index.php?view=w3c +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS 2.1 Properties Reference By Cultured Code. "We have created a web reference that aims to present the 95 CSS 2.1 properties and their possible values in a clear and easy to navigate way. The reference is realized as a lightweight JavaScript application which makes it possible to present all the information in a single compactly sized window. The reference can be navigated with mouse or keyboard and behaves as responsive as a desktop application." http://www.culturedcode.com/css/reference.html CSS 'Float' Makes Watery Site Usable Rally Competitor Wins Big with Water Sports Nonprofit By Erik Fruin. "...I've described here just a few of the ways our team found to push the envelope of accessible design. I encourage you to try out these techniques to see if they meet the needs of your audience before you add them into your next project." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v1n3/index.php?view=taasports I Vote Conditional Comments By Jonathan Christopher. "Many developers agree that CSS hacks are not the way to go. Personally, I am on that side of the fence and have been for a long time. I will spend time reworking the style of a document so that it will be cross-browser compatible with no CSS hacks in place. I do this because using CSS hacks is taking a step back..." http://www.mondaybynoon.com/2006/05/15/i-vote-conditional-comments/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Persistent Page Indicator By Stephanie Sullivan. "When developing Web sites using good principles of usability, it is good practice to use an indicator showing what page the person is on as they surf through your site. Some people use bread crumbs as well as a persistent page indicator (many times like the down state of the button) indicating that "you are here." This page indication can be achieved by simply placing a class on the proper navigation item (and changing the item it's placed on from page to page). However, when using server-side includes, templates or library items in Dreamweaver, since the same menu is used on each instance of the page, it can be a more challenging process. Don't worry though -- CSS and the descendant selector handle the challenge quite nicely. Come along as we walk through the steps needed to create this effect." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=F1394 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Variability in User Performance By Jakob Nielsen. "When doing website tasks, the slowest 25% of users take 2.4 times as long as the fastest 25% of users. This difference is much higher than for other types of computer use; only programming shows a greater disparity." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/performance_variability.html Are You Using the Wrong Web Metrics? By Gerry McGovern. "Do you base success on measuring the volume of visitors and page impressions? Such measures may in fact reflect the failure-rather than the success-of your website." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2006/nt-2006-05-15-web-metrics.htm +05: EVENTS. Card Sorting for Navigation Design June 8, 2006. London, United Kingdom http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/cardsortworkshop.shtml Web Design World Seattle July 10-12, 2006. Seattle, Washington U.S.A. http://www.ftponline.com/conferences/webdesignworld/2006/seattle/ The 24th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication October 18-20, 2006. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina U.S.A. http://www.sigdoc2006.org/ ASIST 2006 Information Realities: Shaping the Digital Future for All November 3-8, 2006. Austin, Texas U.S.A. http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM06/am06call.html +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Recyclable Information Architecture By Nick Finck. Nick discusses XHTML wireframing and use and reuse of deliverables. http://tinyurl.com/ru5pf +07: JAVASCRIPT. Javascript Closures By Richard Cornford. "Closures are one of the most powerful features of ECMAScript (javascript) but they cannot be property exploited without understanding them..." http://jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/closures.html AJAX is Cleaning Up Rich Web Applications Amplify Accessibility Needs By Kelsey Ruger. "There is no doubt that AJAX is going to change the way we use the web. It is highly likely that the W3C, browser manufacturers, screen reader vendors, and developers will all have to make changes to help AJAX reach its full potential. It'll require good common sense, but as the old saying goes, sometimes common sense just isn't that common." http://www.accessiblecontent.com/online/v2n1/index.php?view=ajax Hijax: Progressive Enhancement with Ajax By Jeremy Keith. Here are Jeremy's slides form at XTech 2006. http://domscripting.com/presentations/xtech2006/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Communicating Design Concepts Without Getting Skewered By Steve Calde. "Communicating your team's design vision before diving into details is a crucial - and challenging - milestone. In this article, design communicator Steve Calde describes some strategies for successfully presenting an early-stage design and getting the appropriate level of feedback." http://tinyurl.com/mxzrn Future Tense By Tristan Louis. Tristan Louis has a six part article on a of trends that will influence the events of the next 10 years. http://www.tnl.net/blog/entry/Future_Tense_-_Intro Podcast: Web 2.0 Show - Episode 18 - Eric Meyer By Josh Owens. "...we sat down and talked with Eric Meyer about book writing, css, and running events like An Event Apart." http://tinyurl.com/pbhyg Will the Standards Battle Ever be Won? By Vitamin. An interview with Molly Holzschlag. http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/the-battle-for-web-standards +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Microsoft, IE and the Web Standards Project By Chris Wilson. "...From ten years of experience in championing standards and web development inside Microsoft, I think it's actually critically important that the reasons for supporting standards in our products - particularly IE - be business ones. Business reasons stand the test of time. Pure altruistic 'ethical' reasons are hard to defend to shareholders. I personally believe there is a business case for implementing standards, and I consider it my job, among other things, to make that case internally..." http://blogs.msdn.com/cwilso/archive/2006/05/11/595536.aspx Microsoft and Internet Explorer vs. Web Standards By Roger Johansson. "...let me explain why I'm not exactly shouting out my support for Microsoft now that Internet Explorer is finally being updated..." http://tinyurl.com/n9kuk +10: TOOLS. Total Validator (Firefox extension) By Andy Halford. "Perform multiple validations and take screen shots in one go rather than using separate tools. This 5-in-1 validator uses the online Total Validator service. Provides true HTML validation using the official DTDs. So you no longer have to put up with mistakes in the W3C validator and tools such as Tidy which interpret the standards incorrectly. Also performs accessibility validation, checks for broken links, spell checking, and takes screen shots so you can validate your pages with different browsers." https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2318/ Total Validator By Andy Halford. Free online version of the tool listed above. http://www.totalvalidator.com/validator/ValidatorForm Website Spell Check By Andrew B. King. "Our new free spell checking service scans your site for spelling and grammatical errors and sends you a free report. We've teamed up with TextTrust to offer webmasters this free trial of their website scanning service. To demonstrate the new service we provide a sample report of a spell-checked WhiteHouse.gov site." http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/spell-check/ +11: USABILITY. More on Starting with the Intranet Homepage By James Robertson. "Iain Barker's article this month on starting with the homepage has generated some excellent discussion and debate. First there was Peter Van Dijck who suggested that starting with the homepage will send us straight to politico-hell. To quote: 'I have a lot of respect for James, but that's the WORST advice ever. Starting with the homepage is a direct road to political hell in any company..." http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002107.html Why the Tech Industry Needs to Change Its Language By Jonathan Follett. "...Descriptive language has never been seriously considered as an asset in the world of high tech. At best, it has been an afterthought, a layer added to better market products to consumers. However, if this is to be the decade for design and innovation, if we are to humanize high tech, we need to first address the issues of language so that all those people out there-the ones 'using' high-tech products-will know what in the world." http://tinyurl.com/qrwnq +12: XML. Why XHTML Can Save Internet Explorer By Kurt Cagle. "...One thing that I realized, however, was that the Internet Explorer team has an amazing opportunity if they seize it now. Through a number of circumstances, one piece of technology that was never incorporated into the IE browser was a module capable of handling XHTML. Now, this may seem to be a fairly trivial omission - XHTML isn't exactly blazing through the commercial sky yet as a must have technology (though its getting there) - but I've come to believe that in fact XHTML may be the key to one of the biggest problems that they face with IE - the problem of vendor legacy..." http://tinyurl.com/fnjmb [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.]