+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 10, September 1, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 10 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: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: USABILITY. 11: XML. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Computer Science Majors Get Tools To Build Accessibility Into Software By K. C. Jones. "IBM has announced a program to give computer science majors the technical skills to develop or adapt computer programs for people with special needs. The program aims to improve access to Internet and workplace technologies for people with disabilities, the aging, and non-native language speakers. IBM's new Web-based lecture teaches techniques to make electronic documents and the Web more accessible..." http://tinyurl.com/hagfh Accessibility: Standards Versus Testing By Jonathan Kahn. "...I argue that the state of adaptive technology today can be compared to the state of the 4.0 web browsers. I'll attempt to demonstrate this with two examples: image replacement and Ajax..." http://lucidplot.com/2006/08/29/standards-vs-testing/ Accessibility Testing Methodology By Sandra Clark. "Part of the problem with testing for web accessibility is the fact that while people want an easy way to do it, so much of accessibility is subjective that it is impossible for a program to test correctly for everything. This is why using online testers like 'Bobby' were such a nightmare. While you can use Bobby to tell you that every image tag has an alt attribute, there is no way for an automated testing program to tell whether the information in the alt tag conforms to what the image actually presents...s" http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=149 HTML Compatibility Chart By Ian Lloyd. Partial list of HTML elements with user agent support notes. http://juicystudio.com/wcag/html/ Accessibility Follow-Up By Jeff Croft. "...I just want to reiterate my original points, remove the extraneous ranting, and see if I can't make myself perfectly clear. Please do read on..." http://www2.jeffcroft.com/2006/aug/24/accessibility-follow-up/ Welcome to Accessibility Club By James Bennett. "...Web accessibility is a deep and complex subject, and - pardon the pun - not always a very accessible one. There are lots of things which can impair someoneÕs use of the web, in lots of different ways, and some are more common than others. A lot of accessibility guidelines have been propagated over the years based on anecdotal evidence or on hypothetical considerations...What solid research there is on the topic can be hard to find at times, and hard to understand when you do find it. Many of the laws regarding web accessibility are horrendously vague. And no matter how hard you try to get it right, thereÕs probably going to be an *** somewhere who will be all too happy to crucify you over a particular trade-off you decided not to make. But that doesn't mean we should give up. It means we should be willing to adapt, willing to share what we know in a civilized manner, willing to make the trade-offs we can afford to make, willing to ignore the inevitable rogue...and, above all, willing to learn." http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2006/08/25/lets-talk-about-accessibility Math Description Engine By National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "The Math Description Engine Software Development Kit can be used by software developers to make computer-rendered graphs more accessible to blind and visually-impaired users. It has a simple API that lets you easily add alternative text and sound descriptions to your graphs..." http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/mde/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Create Columns with Floats By Zoe Gillenwater. "Floating is the primary method for laying out pages using CSS. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create the look of columns using the float, width and margin properties. You'll learn the principles for creating both liquid and fixed-width layouts of as many columns as you like." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=F41AE CSS Mastery: Page Layout By Andy Budd, Cameron Moll and Simon Collison. "One of the major benefits of CSS is the ability to control page layout without needing to use presentational markup. This week you'll learn how to horizontally center a design on a page, create two and three column float based layouts and more." http://www.webreference.com/authoring/style/sheets/css_mastery/ IE7, Web Standards and CSS Support By Jesper Ronn-Jensen. "The Internet Explorer team is preparing to ship the next major version of the world's most popular browser. The IE team has written an update on which CSS bug fixes that will make it into the final release..." http://justaddwater.dk/2006/08/28/ie-7-web-standards-and-css-support/ Advanced HTML Tables and CSS Tutorial By Mark Lynch. "People new to HTML should be able to follow this tutorial from start to finish and learn how to use tables effectively in your websites. Advanced users can probably skim the 1st few pages but will hopefully learn something from the later parts..." http://www.lynchconsulting.com.au/go/articles/advanced-tables-tutorial/ Unitless line-height Bug in Mozilla and Firefox By Roger Johansson. "When Eric Meyer posted Unitless line-heights (you do not need to use a unit when specifying line-height in CSS) earlier this year, I knew that at some point I had run into problems with that..." http://tinyurl.com/kdkz4 +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Why Doing User Observations First is Wrong By Donald Norman. "Usability testing is like Beta testing of software. It should never be used to determine 'what users need'. It is for catching bugs, and so this kind of usability testing still fits the new, iterative programming models, just as Beta testing for software bugs fits the models. I have long maintained that any company proud of its usability testing is a company in trouble, just as a company proud of its Beta testing is in trouble. UI and Beta testing are meant simply to find bugs, not to redesign." http://tinyurl.com/fccgk Page Views are Obsolete By Evan Williams. "...In summary, there's no easy solution. There's a big opportunity (though very tough job) for someone to come up with a meaningful metric that weighs a bunch of factors. But no matter what, there will come a time when no one who wants to be taken seriously will talk about their web traffic in terms of 'page views' any more than one would brag about their 'hits' today." http://evhead.com/2006/08/pageviews-are-obsolete.asp +04: EVENTS. Card Sorting From the Bottom Up (and the Top Down) September 14, 2006. Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A. http://www.upamn.org/minutes/2006/event20060914.shtml Best Practices of Web Design with Web 2.0 for Business Conference October 18-19, 2006. Boston Massachusetts U.S.A. http://www.joinwow.org/community/events/websummit10/ An Event Apart: Deep In the Heart Of Texas November 6, 2006. Austin, Texas U.S.A. http://www.aneventapart.com/news/2006/08/deep_in_the_heart_of_texas.php International Day of Disabled Persons Theme: E-Accessibility December 3, 2006. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/disiddp.htm Illinois Center for Instructional Technology Accessibility Courses http://www.cita.uiuc.edu/courses/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. Event Handling in JavaScript - an Alternative addEvent Solution By Robert Nyman. "Event handling in JavaScript has been an issue for many web developers, and countless of people have made their stab of solving it. When I wrote my post AJAX, JavaScript and accessibility some commenters were asking for a follow-up post explaining event handling in JavaScript. My idea here is to give you a basic background and to also tell you about a new and interesting solution. So, let's take this from the beginning. What's the problem with event handling in JavaScript?..." http://tinyurl.com/gj7an Shortening Strings to a Fixed Length in JavaScript By Christian Heilmann. "I have this function I've used for quite a long time to shorten a string to a fixed amount of characters without breaking in between words..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=324 +06: MISCELLANEOUS. The Paradox of Choice: An Interview with Barry Schwartz By Jared M. Spool. "...Barry is a leading authority on the ways that business, economics and psychology intersect. UIE's Jared M. Spool recently had the chance to talk with Barry about his research on how people make choices. You can listen to the podcast of the interview on the Brain Sparks blog. Here's the transcript of the interview: " http://tinyurl.com/m7c2w The Programmer's Bill of Rights By Jeff Atwood. "It's unbelievable to me that a company would pay a developer $60-$100k in salary, yet cripple him or her with terrible working conditions and crusty hand-me-down hardware. This makes no business sense whatsoever. And yet I see it all the time. It's shocking how many companies still don't provide software developers with the essential things they need to succeed....two monitors...a fast PC...choice of mouse and keyboard... a comfortable chair...a fast internet connection...quiet working conditions..." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000666.html +07: NAVIGATION. Use Old Words When Writing for Findability By Jakob Nielsen. "Familiar words spring to mind when users create their search queries. If your writing favors made-up terms over legacy words, users won't find your site." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search-keywords.html +08: PHP. What are Database Driven Websites (Podcast) By Stefan Mischook. "A quick podcast where I explain the basics behind what database driven websites are. This podcast targets total beginners." http://www.killersites.com/blog/2006/database-driven-websites-podcast/ Uploading Files and Navigating Directories in PHP By Jacques Noah. "In this article we are going to look at how to upload files and also how to navigate through directories. It is the second part of a tutorial that began last week with 'Reading, Writing, and Creating Files in PHP'." http://tinyurl.com/g6849 +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. WaSP Interviews Blake Elshire By Rob Dickerson. "As a student of Interactive Media Design at the Art Institute of Dallas, Texas, Blake Elshire learned CSS as part of his course, then discovered that not all students were quite as charmed by the technology as he was. He shares his thoughts and insights with WaSP EduTF." http://www.webstandards.org/action/edutf/interviews/elshire/ Accessible WYSIWYG Editors, Part 1 - The Problem By Alastair Campbell. "There is an elephant in the corner type of problem in the accessibility world, even worse than the problems with PDFs. I'd like to outline this problem, and define what a solution would be, even if it doesn't exist yet...The elephant in the corner, the big problem is that: It is not possible to create an accessible and usable web-based editor..." http://alastairc.ac/2006/08/accessible-wysiwyg-editors/ +10: USABILITY. How to Redesign a Website By net. "Most designers would jump at the chance to revisit their work but what is the right motivation for a site redesign and how should the process actually work?" http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/how-to-redesign-a-website Progressive Development: Stop Postponing Joy! By Steven Champeon. "...Progressive Development is the revolution of evolution. Instead of shocking changes, it provides constant, gradual changes that are better for users and for business. It builds on sound, standards-based construction techniques. And it saves money..." http://tinyurl.com/kw2j2 Ugliness, Social Design, and the MySpace Lesson By Joshua Porter. "I've been attempting the impossible: trying to get a clear picture of the whole MySpace/Ugly issue...Design all about use. Most web sites exist to be used (and many to make money) and if yours doesn't have people using it then it's not designed well...One distinction we can make is between the visual and social design of MySpace. The visual design, though it communicates what it needs to ('this is your social life'), is objectively ugly as it doesn't follow nearly any established visual design principles like balance, symmetry, and harmony. That's OK, as far as it goes. But the design of the social element of the site, the community aspects like the appearance of Tom as a friend in every profile, is amazing. Little touches like that make people feel right at home, as does the site's ability to react to its audience quickly. This is great social web design. Bad visual design. Good social design..." http://bokardo.com/archives/do-myspace-users-have-bad-taste/ Ugly By Ze Frank. "...Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool. Regardless of what you might think, the actions you take to make your MySpace page ugly are pretty sophisticated. Over time, as consumer-created media engulfs the other kind, it's possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability." http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071406.html The Benefits of Footnotes in Webpages By Jesper Tverskov. "Good old footnotes are undervalued in webpages. Even serious commentary and longer articles and reports often use mediocre tooltips made with the title attribute as a poor substitute. Footnotes are much more usable and accessible..." http://www.smackthemouse.com/footnotes The End of Deference and the Rise of Customer Power By Gerry McGovern. "The Web empowers the customer more than it empowers the organization. This shift in power is only beginning to be felt." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2006/nt-2006-08-28-deference.htm Poor Usability Implicated in Rejection of Mobile Internet By Ann Light. How usability can impact mobiles...'Three quarters (73%) of people with access to the Internet through their mobile phone are not taking advantage of it. Amongst the reasons for not using mobile Internet were being frustrated by slow-loading pages (38%), problems with navigating websites from a phone or PDA (27%) and some websites being completely unavailable on mobile phones (25%).'..." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3357.asp How to Write Technical Documentation By Jeff Atwood. "I was browsing around the CouchDb wiki yesterday when I saw Damien Katz' hilarious description of how technical documentation really gets written. You know, in the real world..." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000668.html +11: XML. The Big Picture on Microformats By John Allsopp. "You've heard the buzz about microformats, and you've probably been meaning to use them on your sites--perhaps they're sitting somewhere near the bottom of your list of things to do. In his new article, John Allsopp gives us a snapshot of what's happening with microformats today, and he challenges us all to move them closer to the top of the pile." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_big_picture_on_microformats/ Add Microformats Magic to Your Site By John Allsopp. "Heard of the semantic web? Using Microformats everyone can contribute to the richness of the web. John Allsopp explains how." http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/how-to-use-microformats Microformatique A microformats blog. http://microformatique.com/ Why XHTML is a Bad Idea By Emil Stenstrom. "XHTML is often mentioned when you talk about web standards of different kinds, and many believe that it's the future of the web. I'm of a different opinion and this article explains my reasoning..." http://friendlybit.com/html/why-xhtml-is-a-bad-idea/ IBM Not Happy at All By Daniel Glazman. "...Let me translate that into more human-readable form...if we cannot defeat WebForms immediately, let's use 'guerilla warfare tactics' ourselves and burry it under W3C process and compromises. We'll make XForms percolate into WebForms and in the meantime, XForms implementations will be everywhere and we'll beat WebForms. We're a big company with big power and forces, we surely can do that, we already did it." http://tinyurl.com/fjkky [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: 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.]