+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 27, December 20, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 27 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: COLOR. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: FLASH. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 13: TOOLS. 14: TYPOGRAPHY. 15: USABILITY. 16: XML. SECTION TWO: 17: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. The Twelve Days of an Accessites Christmas By Jack Pickard. "On the first day of Christmas, my website gave to me DOCTYPE va-a-lidity!..." http://accessites.org/gbcms_xml/news_page.php?id=30#n30 ATWiki By CATEA (Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access) "CATEA's ATWiki serves as a collaborative, online encyclopedia on AT, allowing for dynamic online organization and editing of a wide variety of content related to AT. It includes complete articles, research briefs, definitions, demonstrations of AT and links to other resources. It also includes discussions and opinion of AT." http://atwiki.assistivetech.net/ATWiki Making Compact Forms More Accessible By Mike Brittain. "Space constraints can put the squeeze on accessibility and usability. Mike Brittain shares his method for making itty-bitty forms more accessible and easier to use." http://alistapart.com/articles/makingcompactformsmoreaccessible Most Websites Flunk Basic Standards for Disability Accessibility, Says UN survey By United Nations News Center. "Only three out of 100 leading websites around the world meet the needs of persons with disabilities, such as the visually or manually impaired, according to a United Nations-commissioned report unveiled today..." http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20851 Quarter of Web Sites Investigated Could be Made Accessible Quickly, Says Expert By Government Technology. "As reported yesterday, only three out of 100 leading Web sites around the world meet the needs of persons with disabilities, a disability expert told the United Nations, but business is stepping up to the challenge..." http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/102729 Making the Internet More Disability-Friendly is Good Business, Experts Tell UN Panel By United Nations News Center. "Making Internet sites accessible to persons with disabilities is not just a moral issue but also a business opportunity to tap into a larger share of the global market, according to business executives speaking at events marking the International Day of Persons with Disabilities at the United Nations today..." http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20843 97 Percent of Websites Still Inaccessible By Roger Johansson. "...It is a sad fact that most Web 'professionals' still do not even try to make the sites they build accessible. I have performed similar surveys, focusing on Swedish websites, with similar results. Public sector sites are generally slightly better than those in the private sector, but only slightly. A couple of years ago I believed that by now, the majority of people who make their living from designing or developing websites would have realized the importance of accessibility. I was wrong. Unfortunately the majority are simply not interested in creating high quality work as long as they can produce junk and still get paid." http://tinyurl.com/y4jltq Completing the Windows Accessibility Picture - IAccessible2 By Peter Korn. "Pretty much the entire computing industry has come to recognize that the best way to meet the needs of people with disabilities is through supported programming interfaces for accessibility. With a rich, extensible, programming interface for accessibility, assistive technologies can get everything they need from applications (and applications can provide full support for accessibility). Today, IBM has announced their contribution of the IAccessible2 accessibility programming interface for Microsoft Windows...." http://tinyurl.com/trtlq Making Web Accessibility Accessible By Mike Cherim. "...If a senior developer really wants people to practice web accessibility, they themselves should be accessible, or approachable I guess. Being a guru got you down? Sorry, questions and whatnot come with the territory. Try to remember back when you didn't know stuff. Web accessibility and the people who know it best need to be friendly and willing to put it into bite size chunks if need be. If web accessibility is in itself accessible, more people will try it on for size. Once it's realized sites don't have to look like crap or remain function-free, it will meld into mainstream development more quickly and more readily..." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=142 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. A Message To You, Rudy - CSS Production Notes By Andy Clarke. "Andy Clarke details an approach for embedding production notes inside your document - a useful aid to project management and team communications throughout the development phases of any project. Sounds like Santa isn't the only one who'll be getting notes this Christmas." http://24ways.org/2006/css-production-notes Styling hCards with CSS By John Allsop. "John Allsop applies a little bit of style to exhibit how life can be breathed into any instance of the hCard microformat. Like the wrapping on a good gift, add a little sparkle to your pages with this handy step-by-step tutorial." http://24ways.org/2006/styling-hcards-with-css The Mobile Web, Simplified By Cameron Moll. "Cameron Moll eases us into the idea of developing for the mobile web with four quick tips to get you started. Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane someone has a mobile device and they're trying to get to your content. Hark!" http://24ways.org/2006/the-mobile-web-simplified Switchy McLayout: An Adaptive Layout Technique By Marc van den Dobbelsteen. "The introduction of new mobile and computing devices challenges us to look beyond the liquid layout. Marc van den Dobbelsteen offers a way to bring appropriate layouts to a wider range of screens and devices." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/switchymclayout CSS Advisor By Adobe. "Welcome to CSS Advisor public beta. Use this site to: Find solutions to CSS and browser compatibility issues; Share solutions and workarounds you've discovered with the community; Comment on and improve existing solutions..." http://tinyurl.com/yk27l5 New CSS Commands for Internet Explorer 7 By Trenton Moss. "There are a small handful of new CSS commands that you can now use for Internet Explorer 7. Well, they're not really new - most other browsers have supported them for a long time and IE is only just catching up. These new commands basically give you more control over HTML elements and eliminate the need to use classes or ids in a lot of instances. Once IE6 becomes outdated you'll be able to use the commands outlined in this article. Actually, that's not strictly true - provided that your website doesn't rely on these commands and is still legible in IE6 and before then there's no problem using them..." http://tinyurl.com/y4hymn Cascading Style Sheets: Current Work By Cascading Style Sheets Working Group. "This page contains descriptions and a rough schedule of what the CSS WG (Cascading Style Sheets Working Group, formerly 'CSS & FP WG') is working on. If you want to follow the development of CSS3, this page is the place to start..." http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work +03: COLOR. Colors and Accessibility Issues By Stanford University. "It is not the use of color that is an issue in terms of accessibility - rather, it is the use of colour as the only means to convey information or insufficient color contrast that poses potential problems." http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=53 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Fast and Simple Usability Testing By Natalie Downe. "Natalie Downe describes a simple approach to usability testing for those of us working to tight timescale's or budgets. That'd be nearly all of us then. Learn how to make the most of your available user testing time, and perhaps this year you'll not end up quizzing auntie as she stuffs her face with turkey." http://24ways.org/2006/fast-and-simple-usability-testing Site Testing with Text Based Browsers By Jonathan Christopher. "...If you don't currently give your sites a quick run through with a text based browser, it's a good habit to get into. It really helps you keep an eye on the semantics of your document, and it also gives you a new look into the usability of your website as a whole. At the same time, you're able to see how your documents behave without all that fancy Ajax you have going on." http://tinyurl.com/y8rw9n +05: EVENTS. Easy7 India's 7th annual national conference on Advanced User Interface Practices January 5, 2007. Bangalore, India http://www.chi-si.org/easy7.htm Future of Web Design April 18, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.futureofwebdesign.com/ WebVisions 2007 May 3-4, 2007. Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. http://webvisionsevent.com/ eduWeb Conference July 22-24, 2007. Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. http://www.eduwebconference.com/ SIGGRAPH 2007 August 5-9, 2007. San Diego, California, U.S.A. http://www.siggraph.org/s2007/ Mobile HCI September 11-14, 2007. Singapore, Republic of Singapore. http://www.mobilehci2007.org/ ASSETS 2007 October 14-17, 2007. Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A. http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/assets07/ +06: FLASH. Flash, AJAX, Usability, and SEO By Shari Thurow. "Get with the program, developers and marketers. Don't assume your target audience wants an enhanced experience, not even advanced Web users. Analyze your target audience's search behavior. Don't skip SEO's usability aspect." http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624207 +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Usability and IA are Core Skills for Intranet Teams By James Robertson. "Usability and information architecture (IA) are core areas of expertise for intranet teams, and all organizations should take steps to build this expertise internally." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_coreskills/index.html +08: JAVASCRIPT. Is this Overrated? By Jonathan Snook. "In many of the JavaScript tutorials, there's plenty of concern over this. The this keyword is used to reference the current function/object context. The problem is, a function can easily be 'detached' from the object it was originally defined as a method of. As a result, the this keyword no longer references what you thought it should and errors occur..." http://snook.ca/archives/javascript/is_this_overrated/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Cameron Moll (Interview) By .Net. Cameron Moll is one of the world's leading figures on the future of mobile web. .net caught up with him to find out exactly where the mobile web is headed, and why we'll all be using it." http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/cameron-moll Design Inside Yahoo!: Luke Wroblewski (Interview) By Joshua Kaufman. "...I interviewed Luke Wroblewski, Principal Designer for Social Media. I talked to Luke about the role of design vision at Yahoo!, the tools he uses to communicate ideas, Yahoo!'s personality and more..." http://tinyurl.com/ym8r55 Personas and Outrageous Software - an Interview with Alan Cooper (Podcast) By Gerry Gaffney. "I asked Alan Cooper (over a rather echoing connection) why he is outraged by bad software, and how he developed the concept of 'personas'. I was interested to hear the 'father of Visual Basic' say 'What I need is a computer that doesn't make me feel bad and a cell phone that doesn't make me feel stupid'." http://uxpod.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=160220 The Task Analysis Grid By Todd Warfel. A usable and efficient alternative to the requirements doc. http://toddwarfel.com/?p=16 10 Years of CSS By W3C. "In 2006, the World Wide Web Consortium proudly celebrates the ten years of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the technology designers use to create attractive, economical, and flexible Web sites. In these pages you will find history and highlights from 10 years with style..." http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS10/ +10: NAVIGATION. Boost Your Hyperlink Power By Jeremy Keith. "Jeremy Keith appraises the humble hyperlink and highlights some of the more interesting, and perhaps lesser-known attributes that can be used to enrich the semantic value of your links. Consider it something to mull over whilst you polish off that gingerbread." http://24ways.org/2006/boost-your-hyperlink-power Where Are All the Visited Links? By Lisa Herrod. From an Accessibility perspective, visited links act in the same way. Imagine a user who has an acquired brain injury, or someone with a cognitive disability. Reducing the memory load of a user by highlighting visited links improves the accessibility of a site and is also one of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. http://tinyurl.com/y8ozf2 Google Accessible Web Search for the Visually Impaired By Dan Johnson. "In recognizing the benefits of providing their resources to the visually impaired, as well as other handicapped individuals, Google Labs is developing a product known as Accessible Search." http://www.seoworkers.com/seo-articles-tutorials/accessible-search.html Seeing the World in Symbols: Icons and the Evolving Language of Digital Wayfinding By Jonathan Follet. "Of all the objects that occupy our digital spaces, there are none that capture the imagination so much as icons. As symbols, icons can communicate powerfully, be delightful, add to the aesthetic value of software, engage people's curiosity and playfulness, and encourage experimentation. These symbols are key components of a graphic user interface-mediators between our thoughts and actions, our intentions and accomplishments." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000154.php +11: PHP. Introduction to Creating Command Objects with PHP 5 By Alejandro Gervasio. "In this article, the first part of a series, you'll learn the basics of applying the command pattern with PHP 5. As always, plenty of hands-on examples are included." http://tinyurl.com/wexxa PHP and RSS: Getting It Together By Tracy Peterson. "RSS Syndication is virtually ubiquitous these days, so it's imperative that a PHP developer at least understand RSS and how it works. This article explains the basics of RSS, some of its many uses, how to use PHP to create an RSS feed from a database, and how to use the XML_RSS module to read an existing RSS feed and translate it into HTML." http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-phprss/ Automatic Merging and Versioning of CSS/JS Files with PHP By Ed Eliot. "Most sites include a number of CSS and JavaScript files. Whilst developing it's usually easier to manage them as separate files but on a live site it makes sense to merge files to reduce the number of HTTP requests the browser has to make. For JavaScript this is particularly important as browsers block rendering whilst downloading. It's also important to version your files to ensure that browsers download the latest copies when you've made changes. I hate maintaining this stuff manually so I've written a PHP script which takes care of merging files on the fly whilst also versioning the merged file automatically as the various component files change..." http://www.ejeliot.com/blog/72 Security Specialist Leaves PHP Security Team By Heise Security. Stefan Esser, PHP security specialist and member of the official PHP Security Response Team has, he says, had enough - in his blog he has announced his immediate resignation from the PHP Security Response Team. He states that he has various reasons for doing so, the most important of which is that his attempt to make PHP safer 'from the inside' is futile." http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/82500 PHP Security By Zeev Suraksi. To set things right about a misquote on Slashdot, Zeev Suraksi has posted this long statement mentioning what he really said and a few other things. http://suraski.net/blog/index.php?/archives/17-PHP-Security.html PHP Cookies vs Sessions - The Breakdown By Mike Bernat. "Knowing the basics of cookies and sessions is essential to any successful PHP programmer. It is useful to store pieces information on the users computer for later use. Things like when they last visited, language of choice, age, etc. Cookies and Sessions are the perfect solution to our needs. Now it is important to understand that while these two are very similar, one is not better than the other. Many times, both can be used side by side without any problem. Lets start with Cookies and how they work." http://tinyurl.com/yxbn2v Dynamic XML Document Construction with the PHP DOM By Melonfire. "When working with XML-based applications, developers often find themselves facing the requirement to generate XML-encoded data structures on the fly. This tutorial introduces you to the main functions in PHP's DOM API, showing you how to programmatically generate a complete well-formed XML document from scratch and save it to disk..." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6141415.html +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Who Questions Bill Gates' Commitment to Web Standards? By Molly E. Holzschlag. "On a rainy Wednesday in Redmond, Washington, 14 invited bloggers and industry leaders gathered at building 20 of the Microsoft campus for a full day of discussion regarding Microsoft's outreach to its communities via the upcoming MIX07 conference. The very interesting and productive meeting was topped off with an hour spent with none other than Bill Gates, during which we had the fantastic opportunity to discuss issues of concern to the industry. We were asked not to publish any audio, video, or photos (except for the group photo here, which you can also see on Flickr for more detail). I wish I could publish the audio, I think folks would enjoy it, but since I promised not to, I'll make good on that and provide you the transcript of my discussion with Bill on the issue of Web standards here..." http://tinyurl.com/yknpp6 Firefox 3.0: Passes Acid 2 CSS Test By Dion Almaer. The latest nightly build of Firefox 3.0 passes the Acid 2 test for CSS standards compliance, joining Opera, Konqueror and Safari. Internet Explorer is now the only major browser not to pass the Acid 2 test. http://ajaxian.com/archives/firefox-30-passes-acid-2-css-test Christmas Quiz - An Answer By Brian Kelly. "In my Christmas Quiz posting I asked which of the following are open standards: Flash, PDF, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, MS Word. Before giving my thoughts on this, I will comment on the responses..." http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2006/12/19/christmas-quiz-an-answer/ The Fuji CSS Validator Release By Karl Dubost. "Did you start to hear here and there songs flowing in the streets? Yes it is Christmas. Olivier Thereaux and Jean-Guilhem Rouel (W3C), and Peter Zhelezniakov (Sun Microsystems) worked hard with help from users, translators, developers to offer a new version of the CSS validator just in time for the 10 years anniversary of CSS..." http://www.w3.org/QA/2006/12/the_fuji_css_validator_release.html +13: TOOLS. Open Document Format (ODF) Accessibility Evaluator By University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The ODF Accessibility Analyzer is a tool to be employed by users of Open Document Format compatible authoring tools to ensure that a document in this format, be it text, spreadsheet, presentation, etc., is accessible to people with disabilities. The Analyzer will adhere to the ODF specification, as put forth by the OASIS organization (http://www.oasis-open.org/). Where possible, the software will also adhere to upcoming accessibility features and standards in forthcoming ODF specifications, such as ODF 1.1. In addition, the Analyzer will check for accessibility issues common to most interactive technologies..." http://odf.cita.uiuc.edu/ +14: TYPOGRAPHY. Knockout Type - Thin Is Always In By Shaun Inman. "Shaun Inman reveals a powerful method for keeping light-on-dark text looking lean, mean and fighting clean. Stay looking trim this Christmas with tantalizing tree-topping typography trick from the internet's Mr Cool himself." http://24ways.org/2006/knockout-type Simple Relative Font Size Equation By SixThings. "For those of you working with relative font-sizes in your CSS, here is a basic equation for getting the exact size equivalent in ems, given a desired px value..." http://tinyurl.com/y7msaw +15: USABILITY. Don't Let the Graphics Grinch Steal Your Christmas By Andrew B. King. "Know what jolly old site owners get when they let their graphics get so plump they shake like a bowl full of jelly? A lump of coal for Christmas. Let our Rudolph guide your way to a merry Christmas and happy New Year with an inspirational rendering of 'Twas the night before Christmas." http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/graphics-grinch/ The Fixed to Liquid Toggle Needs to Die By Christian Montoya. "Have you ever seen those web designs that have a button or link that allows you to switch the fixed width layout to a flexible one? The new Mezzoblue design has one at the very bottom of the 'About Mezzoblue' page, a Jeremy Keith (R) button in honor of my favorite advocate of liquid designs. It's funny and cute and worth a jolly good laugh? and it's about as ridiculous as breaking a walnut with a sledgehammer..." http://tinyurl.com/y52atl Don Norman: Simple Doesn't Sell By Mark Hurst. "Don Norman is technically right that simple doesn't sell, because what people are really buying is a good experience. Sometimes simple is good, and sometimes complex is good, depending on what a good experience is in a given context." http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/archives/001122.php Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part IV: The Blessed Curse of Power Users By Nick Bradbury. "...It really boils down to doing what I recommended in part I of this series: figure out which features - and which options - you need to make obvious and which ones you need to hide. You can hide things that only power users want...Power users can accept that some features need to be buried beneath a menu or obscure setting, and they usually won't complain if they have to spend a minute or two customizing your software to get it to work the way they want. By all means keep your power users happy, but make sure you don't increase your software's complexity in the process. Both sets of customers will be happier for it." http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2006/12/simplicity_aint_3.html Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part V: Combine Features By Nick Bradbury. "In this series of blog posts for developers, I've talked about simplifying your software by hiding non-essential features (or not adding them in the first place). But sometimes you can simplify your software by combining features..." http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2006/12/simplicity_aint_4.html Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part VI: Simple = Secure By Nick Bradbury. "If you want to create software that's used by a lot of people, you already know you've got to make it simple. But if you're designing a desktop application which connects to the Internet, you've also got to make it secure..." http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2006/12/simplicity_aint_5.html The Laws of Simplicity By John Maeda. "I wrote The Laws of Simplicity in late 2005 to early 2006 to get my thoughts down about simplicity. In the course of 100-pages, I outline the Ten Laws as used on this website." http://lawsofsimplicity.com/category/laws?order=ASC +16: XML. Mars By Adobe. "Mars is the code name for technology being developed by Adobe that provides an Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based representation of Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. Adobe PDF is a universal file format for representing documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system used to create them and of the output device on which they are to be displayed or printed. XML is a cross-platform, extensible, and text-based standard for representing data that was created so that richly structured documents could be used over the web...The content on this wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. Macromedia requires no attribution..." http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Mars Adobe MARS: Looks Interesting By Eliot Kimber. "MARS is an XML-based format that is intended as a functional replacement for PDF. It's not really accurate to call it an XML version of PDF because it's not a simple transliteration of PDF into tags (which could be done easily enough) but a ground-up exercise in designing and XML-based scheme for doing what PDF does...MARS tries to use standards as much as it can and it seems to do so to a remarkable level of completeness. It uses SVG for representing each page, supports the usual standards for media objects (bitmaps, videos, etc.). Uses Zip for packaging, and so on...Within Acrobat, the user experience off MARS is identical to that for PDF: all the behavior and functionality is the same. There is a MARS plug-in for Adobe 8 (reader or professional)..." http://tinyurl.com/ygwmls [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +17: 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.]