+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 15, October 5, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 15 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: COLOR. 03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: PHP. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TOOLS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility for Blind People By James Bowskill. "For most of us, using a computer and surfing the web is an almost entirely visual experience. We move cursors around the screen, click buttons and menus, read text and look at pictures. But although most of us rely on monitors to use computers, blind and visually impaired users haven't been left out. James and Uleshka talked to blind programmer Masafumi 'Max' Nakane to find out more about usability both on and offline for those who can't see." http://www.pingmag.jp/2006/09/29/accessibility-for-blind-people/ The Great Accessibility Camp-Out By Gez Lemon and Mike Cherim. "Since the dawn of Internet time the meaning of web accessibility has sparked some minor wars. We hope to change that. We aren't trying to clear up the disparity of meaning, but we hope to put an end to the random battles as they are, like most skirmishes, senseless..." http://accessites.org/gbcms_xml/news_page.php?id=24#n24 Accessibility In Trouble 2: Standards By Mike Davies. "The web accessibility community is in deep trouble. Its a train-wreck waiting to happen. Unfortunately when the collision eventually happens, disabled people lose out. Its time to get web accessibility back on track. Take it back from the zealots with their own private agendas and grudges..." http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/access/AccessibilityInTrouble2Standards The Future of Web Accessibility By Trenton Moss. "Accessibility is currently in a great state of change - find out what the future hold for web accessibility and how this may affect your website." http://tinyurl.com/m2o5q The Practicalities of Accessible, Commercial Web Design By Leonie Watson. "Accessible design is a far wider issue than catering for a single disability. As a visually impaired person myself, I am well aware of the difficulties we face, but unquestionably the needs of hearing, cognitive and physically impaired people should not be dismissed as a consequence. What further concerns me is the ease with which amateur user-testing can be invalidated. Without taking into account factors of experience, technical ability and environment, the results of amateur user testing are notoriously inaccurate and misguiding. Especially at a time when many testing facilities still believe that a two way mirror is an acceptable method of hiding viewers from testing participants. Amateur testing is simply foolhardy and a waste of time and money. Finally, I come onto the use of automated tools as a means of checking how accessible your site is. Some are free to use. Excellent; isn't it? Well let's think about this: of the 65 checkpoints within Web Content Accessibility Guide 1.0 (WCAG 1.0), only 5 can actually be checked fully using an automated tool such as WebXact, for example, and only 8 more can be partially checked. That means that barely 8% of WCAG 1.0 checkpoints can be tested by an automated tool with complete accuracy." http://tinyurl.com/k6muy Too Much Accessibility - Tabindex By Bim Egan. "A prime suspect in the crime of allowing 'too much accessibility' has to be the tabindex attribute. How many web authors realize that if you give the tabindex attribute to just a few form fields or links on a web page, you could ruin the logical tab order for the entire page? I'm afraid the answer is: far too few. To be frank, I've rarely seen the tabindex attribute applied without it creating more problems than it solves..." http://tinyurl.com/e5svh +02: COLOR. Does W3C Get It's Contrasts Wrong? By Mel Pedley. "What I am suggesting is that, if a colours theme is chosen that does conform to the W3C algorithm, an alternative, low contrast stylesheet should be provided as standard. If that's not an option, consider lowering the contrast slightly. Yes - I mean drop the color difference below that recommended by W3C to 400 instead of 500. This would be in accordance with the range used by Hewlett Packard which recommends a colours difference limit of 400..." http://blackwidows.co.uk/blog/?p=68 +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Metrics for Heuristics By Andrea Wiggins. "Web analytics typically provide intelligence for executives and marketers, but the real value comes from evaluating the online experience. Andrea Wiggins shows how designers can use analytics to quantify the user experience." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/metrics_for_heu Competitive Analysis, Part 2 By Dan Brown. "Websites don't exist in isolation, of course--the competition is always just a click or two away. How can you make sure yours is the site that wins the hearts, minds, or dollars of visitors? An insightful, detailed competitive analysis can make the difference between a site that delivers or one that sits unused. In Part Two of the excerpt from his book Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning, IA and user experience expert Dan Brown continues to show us how to create an effective analysis." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/competitive_analysis_part_2/ +04: EVENTS. ETech Conference 2007 March 26-29, 2007. San Diego, California U.S.A. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etech/ SITE 2007 Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference March 26-30, 2007. San Antonio, Texas U.S.A. http://site.aace.org/conf/ Gel (Good Experience Live) 2007 April 19-20, 2007. New York, New York U.S.A. http://gelconference.com/c/gel07.php +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Prototyping Beyond the Sunshine Scenario: How to prototype derivations from the main flow By Henrik Olsen. "Prototypes often model one flow of interaction n the path that users are most likely to take. But when we create interaction designs with dynamic and complex flows, we often need to include deviations from the sunshine scenarios to see whether they work. The Q4 2006 issue of GUUUI takes a look at how to do this in Visio and Axure." http://www.guuui.com/issues/04_06.php In-Browser Wireframe Prototyping with Frametastic By Christian Romney. "...What I've really longed for is an ultra-lightweight, simple tool for producing wireframes right inside the browser. No flash, no java, darn it - no server even - just a pure HTML / CSS / Javascript solution. I wanted something where I could draw a few colored boxes titles, then screenshot and print if necessary. So, without further adieu, I present Frametastic 0.1..." http://tinyurl.com/f4y6l +06: JAVASCRIPT. Bloglines Is Broken (for me, at least) By Ian Lloyd. "...it amazes me that developers are unaware that their web apps can be fundamentally broken by some firewall security policies (I was speaking to PPK at this year's atmedia about this very topic and how so many JavaScript developers don't know of this). They need to test these JavaScript-dependant pages/apps against more scenarios, and that includes instances like this where firewalls stop what they believe might be harmful pieces of code..." http://tinyurl.com/nomrf +07: PHP. PHP: Image Randomizer By Mike Cherim. "Indecisive about what images you want to show your site's visitor when they first drop by? This script will take that choice right out of your hands by offering all of your great images in a completely random fashion ? a new one every time the page is loaded. Like magic." http://mikecherim.com/experiments/php_image_randomizer.php Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form By Mike Cherim. "Highly accessible, very usable, and extremely secure with 14 anti-spam, anti-abuse counter-measures. Easy to install, easy to set up. Valid XHTML Strict, or HTML Strict, you configure your choice. Free to download." http://green-beast.com/blog/?page_id=71 +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Survey Reveals Only 14 Percent Of America's Best Colleges Compliant With Web Standards By Enterprise Content Management Connection. "Hannon Hill Corporation, makers of Web content management solutions, today announced survey results revealing only 14 percent of America's Best Colleges ranked by US News and World Report are compliant with HTML/XHTML Web standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The key benefits to maintaining a W3C standards-compliant Web site include having better accessibility for a wide range of disabled users and improved search engine rankings..." http://tinyurl.com/fshpq +09: TOOLS. Markup Maker - XHTML Templates at the Touch of a Button By Ian Lloyd. "A small techie announcement: I built a tool that lets you type in a whole bunch of sections that you'd have on a page (that would relate directly to ids on the page) including the nesting of each section and quickly create an XHTML template from it..." http://accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/developer-tools/markup-maker/ FireBug By Joe Hewitt. "FireBug lets you explore the far corners of the DOM by keyboard or mouse. All of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax are brought together into one seamless experience, including a debugger, an error console, command line, and a variety of fun inspectors." https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/ +10: TYPOGRAPHY. In Continuous Text Mark All Paragraphs After the First with an Indent of at Least One en By Richard Rutter. "Ornaments [...] drop lines [...] outdented paragraphs [...] and others, have their uses but the plainest, most unmistakable yet unobtrusive way of marking paragraphs is the simple indent." http://tinyurl.com/pvzhk +11: USABILITY. Inferences from Mouse Movement By Jared Spool. I don't disagree with Andrew's observations. I wasn't there and have no way of knowing what users did or didn't do. Plus, I too have seen some users move their mouse around the screen, waiting for the browser to give them the 'finger' and looking for additional clues. However, I do think his inference (as I interpreted it) could be faulty." http://tinyurl.com/mrhcy Why Your Web App Sucks By Paul Scrivens. "The reason it is so hard to make a great web application is because it is so easy to make it suck. The greatest ideas do not always translate into the greatest applications because of poor execution. What makes them so bad though? Let's take a look..." http://wisdump.com/design/why-your-web-app-sucks/ The Intranet Homepage, Protect it with a Policy By Cairo Walker. "An intranet homepage policy is a tool that can provide welcome support to intranet managers as well as providing a clear direction to business units and senior managers." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_homepagepolicy/index.html [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.]