+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 21, November 16, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 21 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: TOOLS. 11: TYPOGRAPHY. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Holistic Approaches to E-learning Accessibility By Lawrie Phipps and Brian Kelly. "...While it is important to consider the technical and resource related aspects of e-learning when designing and developing resources for students with disabilities, there is a need to consider pedagogic and contextual issues as well. A holistic framework is therefore proposed and described, which in addition to accessibility issues takes into account learner needs, learning outcomes, local factors, infrastructure, usability and quality assurance. The practical application and implementation of this framework is discussed and illustrated through the use of examples and case studies." http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/alt-j-2006/html/ Designing for Dyslexics: Part 3 of 3 By Mel Pedley. "In Parts 1 and 2 of this series of articles I've been looking at the issues created by dyslexia and discussed, in detail, how colour contrast can adversely affect page readability. However, there is far more to designing dyslexia-friendly pages than just reducing colour contrast. On the plus side, it is likely that these changes will have a positive effect on page readability for all users." http://accessites.org/gbcms_xml/news_page.php?id=28#n28 IBM Home Page Reader is Dead, Now what? By Sandra Clark. "...With the discontinuation of Home Page Reader, the developer has some options, but they aren't great. The most viable option seems to be that both Jaws and Window Eyes offer demo versions of their software for testing purposes. The bad news is that they are time sensitive (40 minutes for Jaws and 30 minutes for Window Eyes) and require a complete reboot. A more palatable way of dealing with this seems to be to install these programs within a Virtual Machine, thereby giving yourself an option of rebooting the virtual machine instead of your entire computer. I've spent some time doing this in the last weekend and while it wasn't an easy install, it is a solution, since a Virtual Machine will use your sound system..." http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=156 Headings and Lists - Are You Using Them Correctly? By Alastair Campbell. "The main problem is that headings, paragraphs, lists, quotes, and so on are often marked up with inappropriate tags which are then simply styled with CSS to look like headings, paragraphs, quotes, lists and so on. I chose to write about lists and headings because they are easy to implement, provide quick accessibility fixes and yet seem to be something that many sites find difficult to address." http://tinyurl.com/y84bf9 Video with Closed Captions and Audio Description By The University of Texas at Austin. "...Audio description provides essential information about events on screen for the benefit of people who can't see the screen...Captions provide a text transcript of speech and other sounds..." http://tinyurl.com/y273el +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Super-Easy Blendy Backgrounds By Matthew O'Neill. "Gradients: a nutritious part of your Web 2.0 breakfast. Wouldn't it be swell if you could get all that goodness without opening Photoshop every time you needed a little gradient bliss? Matthew O'Neill explains how you can." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/supereasyblendys CSS-Based Forms: Modern Solutions By Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz. "In Web 2.0 registration and feedback forms can be found everywhere. Every start-up tries to attract visitors' attention, so web-forms are becoming more and more important for the success of epy company. In the end, exactly those web-forms are responsible for the first contact with potential customers. Let's take a look, which modern solutions a web-developer can use, designing his/her next css-based form..." http://tinyurl.com/y7rnth Simple Star Rating [4] By Natalie Jost. "So I've been wanting to make an easy 'star rating' for use with my reviews I do occasionally, but I haven't found a simple explanation for how to do it. Most other tutorials go on and on about all kinds of things that are irrelevant to what I'm trying to do. I think it's because they're dealing with a user-controlled rating in which the viewer actually does the rating. I just wanted something I could do myself to simply say '4 stars' and see four little stars appear on my blog..." http://www.standardsforlife.com/simple-star-rating Style Me Challenge Winners By Virginia DeBolt. "I'm pleased to announce the four winning competitors in the Style Me Challenge..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2006/11/style-me-challenge-winners.html IE 7 Supports More CSS Selectors, Whip-e-dee-doo-da By Cody Lindley. "...Here are the CSS selectors we have to use until IE 5.5 and IE 6 are considered to be non-modern/A-grade browsers...IE 7 has added support for the following selectors. Again however, these selectors based on the specifications have varying browser support/quirks." http://tinyurl.com/y7gclf +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Sample Sizes for Usability Tests: Mostly Math, Not Magic By Jim Lewis. "...We know a lot more about how to estimate required sample sizes for usability problem-discovery tests than we did 25 years ago, but I don't believe that this knowledge is very prevalent throughout the usability testing community, nor is it widely taught to graduate students. I hope that recent publications...will change the current situation..." http://tinyurl.com/y5or2l Subjectivity and Objectivity in Practice By Steve Baty. "There has been an interesting dialogue on the IxD Discussion mailing list in recent months, in which some participants have questioned the need for and benefits of doing user research rather than relying on the experience and intuition of designers. These comments led others to voice concerns about the actual quality of the user research companies are undertaking and the validity of any conclusions they have drawn from the resulting data." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000137.php +04: EVENTS. LIFT 2007 February 7-9, 2007. Geneva, Switzerland http://www.liftconference.com/2007/index.php 16th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2007) May 8-12, 2007. Banff, Canada http://www.www2007.org/ Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity? May 7-8, 2007. Banff, Canada http://www.w4a.info +05: JAVASCRIPT. PPK on JavaScript: The DOM - Part 2 By Peter-Paul Koch. "The W3C DOM allows you to create your own elements and text nodes, and add them to the document tree. This week we look at creating and cloning elements, innerHTML, and attributes." http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/ppk2/index.html JavaScript Object Notation: An alternative approach to data interchange By Tony Patton. "JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a very simple way to describe and transport text based on JavaScript's object notation. Find out why Tony Patton says JSON is a viable alternative to XML." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6133290.html Slower Website == Slower Profits Dare Obasanjo. "One big problem with the AJAX craze that has hit the Web is how much slower websites have become now that using Flash and DHTML to add "richness" to Web applications is becoming more commonplace. My mind now boggles at the fact that I now see loading pages that last several seconds when visiting Web sites more and more these days." http://tinyurl.com/tdvng JavaScript, We Hardly new Ya By Douglas Crockford. "...the rule is simple: The only time we should use the new operator is to invoke a pseudoclassical Constructor function. When calling a Constructor function, the use of new is mandatory. There is a time to new, and a time to not." http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/11/13/javascript-we-hardly-new-ya/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview with Jeff Veen By Vitamin. "In this interview, conducted at the Future of Web Apps Summit, Sarah Drew talks to design and UI expert Jeff Veen, Design Lead at Google." http://www.thinkvitamin.com/interviews/webapps/jeff-veen/ In Defense of Difficult Clients By Rob Swan. "...It's only by being forced to question our beliefs that we can be certain they're right. The web is an ever-changing medium, we need to be prepared to accept that there's a possibility that some of our practices are no longer best. Or thatÑand it happensÑthey may never have been best in the first place, but no one thought to question them with enough force when they were first mentioned..." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/difficultclients Bring Me Problems, Not Solutions By Jeff Croft. "A topic of conversation here at jeffcroft.com in recent weeks has been the need to educate the consumers of our services Ñ the clients Ñ on exactly what it is we do..." http://www2.jeffcroft.com/2006/nov/13/bring-me-problems-not-solutions/ +07: NAVIGATION. Is Left-Hand Navigation Evil? By James Robertson. "...The issue is not with the design of the left-hand navigation, but how it's used. In particular, how it ends up being used in a decentralized authoring environment for a large and organically-growing intranet..." http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002264.html +08: PHP. Ten PHP Frameworks Compared By PHPHacks. "New frameworks are being released almost every other day in the PHP community. With over 40 frameworks available it's difficult to decide which framework works best for you, especially as each framework offers different functionality. In this article we will look at ten popular frameworks, and compare them to each other." http://www.phphacks.com/content/view/53/33/ +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Joe Dizon on Starting Your Web Standards Journey By Andrew Faulkner. "Joe Dizon, 25, is a talented young designer based in the UK. His background is in print but would like to chat about his recent involvement in web design and particularly web standards. Joe's hoping to persuade other up-and-coming print designers to embrace web standards when they start out on their web journey..." http://tinyurl.com/ymzamv +10: TOOLS. SEO Analysis Tool By seoworkers.com. "This SEO Analysis tool is to help you analyze and measure the ranking potential of your web pages. It doesn't only analyze the Meta Tags of your pages, rather it tries to use the same spider technology as the search engines spiders them self." http://www.seoworkers.com/tool/analyzer.html Table Integrity Checker By Henri Sivonen. "I am working on a conformance checking service for (X)HTML5. The service is grammar-based for the most part with RELAX NG as the schema language. Some extra-grammatical constraints are expressed as Schematron assertions. Currently, as a Mozilla Foundation grantee, I am working on writing checkers (in Java) for spec features that cannot (practically or at all) be checked using RELAX NG or Schematron." http://hsivonen.iki.fi/table-integrity-checker/ .mobi Mobile Emulator "...check how your site looks to a typical mobile phone user." http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php +11: TYPOGRAPHY. Great Fonts for Web 2.0 By Stuart Brown. "A selection of typefaces for the modern web era..." http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/great-fonts-for-web-2.0 +12: USABILITY. Initial Focus to a Text Field - Good or Bad? By Robert Nyman. "...should we set initial focus to the first element in the form when the page has loaded? Heated debates follow, where people argue very convincingly for their view on it..." http://tinyurl.com/y32wuc Discovering Web App Structure By Jared M. Spool. "Recently, UIE's Jared Spool managed to get a little of Hagan River's time to discuss her newly published report called "The Designers Guide to Web Applications Part One Structure and Flows". Below is an excerpt of their discussion. To keep true to the original discussion, we've only made minor edits..." http://www.uie.com/articles/rivers_interview/ People and Processes Should be Important than Technology By Robert Jaques. "A poll of more than 4,000 information security professionals in more than 100 countries, carried out by IDC on behalf of the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2, found that organizations have traditionally overlooked the role of human behavior in favor of trusting hardware and software to solve security problems." http://tinyurl.com/yxrd9u How Web Influenced US Elections By Gerry McGovern. "...Everybody who writes emails and blogs, or who leaves voicemails, needs to think a lot more about what they are writing and saying. The Web gives the impression of this informal, casual place, but that's a mirage. It's like a court of record, where everything you write can be used for you-or against you-at some future point. Most individuals and organizations have simply not come to terms with the content revolution that has swept through our world over the last twenty years...There is so much pressure today to be reactive and impulsive. Barraged by emails, it's so easy to just stop thinking and just get as busy as possible. Busy is the new addiction, the new false hope, the place where people go who can't cope. Think. Think. Think. In the age of the content record, you can't afford not to think deeply about the content you create, and the situations where you will be recorded." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2006/nt-2006-11-13-elections.htm [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.]