+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 28, December 29, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 28 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: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: FLASH. 08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 09: JAVASCRIPT. 10: MISCELLANEOUS. 11: NAVIGATION. 12: PHP. 13: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 14: TOOLS. 15: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. The U.S. Needs Exemplary Accessibility By Mike Cherim. "Why should US businesses make their sites accessible? Especially considering it's not toothy law and where the law does apply, there is little to no compliance to serve as a worthy example. For instance, since 1998, sites affiliated with and for the US government are supposed to comply with Section 508 guidelines. But many, if not most, don't. I suspected this was simply due to aged designs that would be made accessible when refurbished. After yesterday morning, though, I realize the US isn't even close. I don't particularly want to criticize my own country's government, but the failings in the area of web accessibility is undeniably pathetic. Get with the program Uncle Sam!..." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=152 Making Forms Accessible By Adrian Rayfield. "Forms play an important part in any web site. They can be used to allow your visitors to contact you, to order items or so you can collate information. If these forms are not usable or accessible your user will not be able to have this interaction with you. This article will explain some key points in making forms accessible..." http://www.rayfields.co.uk/valid_forms.html Creating Accessible Forms By Stanford University. "Forms are an important part of any web site. Forms allow for interaction between a site and people visiting or using the web site in the shape of information collection - either for dynamic re-processing (aka AJAX), or simply used as a submission tool (feedback or reporting form). In order to ensure the widest possible usage of forms on your web site, the forms must be created with accessibility and usability in mind." http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=48 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Intricate Fluid Layouts in Three Easy Steps By Nate Koechley. "Nate Koechley demonstrates how the compact and powerful YUI Grids stylesheet can be used to conjure up all manner of layouts from the simple to the complex. Take it easy over the festive period, and let the YUI Grids do all the hard work for you." http://24ways.org/2006/intricate-fluid-layouts Gravity-Defying Page Corners By Dan Cederholm. "Dan Cederholm is a skillful designer who's attention to pixels could ne'er be finer. He brings technique for good boys and girls of how to create nice graphical curls. So on the night before Christmas all through your house, get your page curling by stirring your mouse." http://24ways.org/2006/gravity-defying-page-corners Keeping CSS File Sizes Lean for Practicality and Sport By Ask The CSS Guy. One of the benefits touted by separating style from structure is smaller html file sizes. But with many sites, the accompanying CSS file(s) can offset the savings in size, with CSS declarations that can quickly add up. Doug Bowman's site, for example, has 50 KBs worth of CSS. Since CSS is cached, and therefore only downloaded once, and since a growing number of people are on broadband connections, some developers might not see this as a problem. http://tinyurl.com/ydj2lc Internet Explorer and the CSS Box Model By Roger Johansson. "...If you already know how the different box models work and how to handle Internet Explorer, there is nothing new for you here. If you get different box dimensions in IE and other browsers without knowing why, keep reading..." http://tinyurl.com/w322t +03: Color. Cheating Color By Jason Santa Maria. "Jason Santa Maria continues our mini series looking at colour as he trips the light fantastic with your corporate brand guidelines. When is a colour not a colour? Read on and find out why old Saint Nic's collars don't match his cuffs." http://24ways.org/2006/cheating-color Photographic Palettes By Dave Shea. "Dave Shea casts a critical eye over the process of choosing a color palette - in particular, techniques for picking tones from a photograph. As Santa found one foggy Christmas eve, choice of color can be absolutely critical to success." http://24ways.org/2006/photographic-palettes +04: DREAMWEAVER. Migrating from Microsoft FrontPage 2003 to Adobe Dreamweaver 8 By Cheryl D. Wise. "FrontPage users: Get the skills you need to move up to Dreamweaver for your web development needs." http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/frontpage_to_dw8.html Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 By University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Tutorials cover Environment, Basics, Lists, Links, Images, Tables, Cascading Style Sheets, Templates, Local and Remote Sites, Forms, Find and Replace, and Maintaining a Website. http://www.uwec.edu/help/dw8.htm Creating and Applying Templates in Dreamweaver By University of Virginia. "Dreamweaver templates assist web designers in creating and applying a consistent page design and layout across a web site. Using templates also cuts down on site maintenance as changes to these items may be used to globally update the pages in your site..." http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/web/templates.html +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. When Should You Use Personas? By Jared Spool. "Over at the IxDA Discussion list, there's been a interesting discussion about whether or not Personas are a good idea. I think they are extremely useful, but not for all people in all situations. In specific, I've found personas to be very important under the following conditions..." http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2006/12/26/when-should-you-use-personas/ +06: EVENTS. CodeMash January 18-19, 2007. Sandusky, Ohio, U.S.A. http://www.codemash.org/ Gerry McGovern Master Class January 31, 2007. Dublin, Ireland. http://tibus.com/gerrymcgovern/ Microsoft - Designertopia - free your ideas February 1-2, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.designertopia.net/ Future of Web Apps London 2007 February 20-22, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.futureofwebapps.com/ Designing and Writing Forms for the Web March 14, 2007. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/y59qz9 Usability Testing That Gets Results March 22-23, 2007. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/y5h39y Basics of Information Architecture March 28, 2007. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/y5h39y Gerry McGovern Master Class March 6, 2007. Stockholm, Sweden http://www.wpr.se/masterclass/ +07: FLASH. 18 Questions for Niqui Merret and Aral Balkan on Flash and Accessibility By Chris Heilmann. "I was asked by some German friends if I knew something about Flash and Accessibility for a German podcast, and I said yes, but most of it is hearsay and some testing some years ago..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=374 ISO: Funny Acronym for Flash Revival By Jeff Croft. "...Flash needs to have a renaissance the way Javascript has over the past year and a half...Yeah, it's not a standard. Yeah, it requires a plugin. Yeah, it can be abused. Yeah, it requires you to sell your soul to Macrodobe. And yeah, it means you'll have to admit that web standards aren't the be-all-and-end-all of everything. But Flash is incredibly ubiquitous, renders exactly the same in every browser, has a new-version adoption rate that puts every browser's to shame - and you can do some pretty amazing stuff with it..." http://tinyurl.com/y8lff8 Creating Fluid Layouts in Flash - Part 1: The Basics By Joseph Balderson. "This tutorial will explore the basics of creating a flexible stage application..." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=FD491 +08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 2001 to 2006: Five Years of Information Architecture By Karen Loasby. "In 2001, FreePint featured an article on the still-new concept of information architecture (IA) in 'Information Architecture and web Usability Resources'. Five years on, IA may still be an unfamiliar term for many, but it is a booming field bustling with conferences, books and rather desperate recruitment consultants struggling to fill a myriad of vacancies..." http://www.freepint.com/issues/211206.htm#feature +09: JAVASCRIPT. Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) Working Drafts By W3C. "W3C WAI's work on accessibility of AJAX, DHTML, and other application technologies includes the Accessibility for Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) Suite. Updated Working Drafts of the WAI-ARIA Suite documents were published 20 December 2006. WAI encourages you to review these documents and submit any comments." http://www.w3.org/WAI/Overview.html#x20061220b A Scripting Carol By Derek Featherstone. "Derek Featherstone contemplates the effects that the lack of CSS or JavaScript may have on your scripts. Let the spirits of Christmas past, present and future guide you so that your scripts needn't give up the ghost in the face of adversity." http://24ways.org/2006/a-scripting-carol Alert Boxes, Error Messages, and Pop-up Windows By Stanford University. "Don't hide warnings, disclaimers or error messages with JavaScript or other client-side scripting. If a message is important, it is always important. Hidden content in dynamic pages will not be available to Web devices that don't support the particular script language. If you cannot imagine showing a warning or disclaimer before it is necessary, then try to develop a server-side solution that will rebuild and serve a modified page with the warning embedded in it..." http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=47 +10: MISCELLANEOUS. Webdev Radio By Michael Kimsal. "Podcast series on all topics relating to web development." http://webdevradio.com/ Interview with Christian Heilman (Podcast) By Michael Kimsal. "Noted javascript guru Christian Heilman joins us today for a conversation about his new book, 'Beginning Javascript with DOM Scripting and AJAX'. Along the way we discuss the state of Javascript toolkits, including the Yahoo UI toolkit. Additionally, the upcoming codemash conference is mentioned." http://webdevradio.com/index.php?id=42 Six Things That Suck About the Web in 2006 By Roger Johansson. "With 2006 coming to an end I wanted to post a little rant about some of the trends that I find really annoying about the Web this year...1. JavaScript frameworks/libraries...2. Ajax..3. High contrast, light-on-dark designs...4. Headings that aren't real text...5. Accessibility extremists and design zealots...6. Over-wide, fixed width layouts." http://tinyurl.com/vmkha Assertiveness for Software Developers By Jeff Atwood. "As software developers, we're great at communicating with computers. But we're typically not so great at communicating with other people...We present our best estimates, but we aren't assertive enough to stand up for them. Because we don't fight for our estimates, we get negotiated down to an untenable position..." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000752.html +11: NAVIGATION. Hyperlinks By Stanford University. "Clearly indicating the destination of your hyperlink allows all users to decide if they wish to pursue the link now, in the future, or not at all." http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=46 Skip Navigation Link / Skip To Content Link By Stanford University. "By now, most web developers understand that for users of screen reading software, the software reads aloud the page content in the order with which it appears in your source code. While you may be able to style chunks of content on your page to appear in a certain order or place on the page, the screen readers continue to process the information in a linear format, regardless of that visual styling." http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=56 Why Spell Check is Important for Your Web Site By John S. Britsios. "Checking the spelling of the text on your web site is very important; to ensure good content accessibility and readability for your readers, and better crawlability and indexing for search engines..." http://www.seoworkers.com/seo-articles-tutorials/spell-check.html Human Touch By Theresa Regli. "There's often mention of the need for 'people input' or 'the human factor' when creating taxonomies. But what exactly does that mean?...If 'rocket' did mean the same thing to everyone, it would be far easier to sit back and let software create taxonomies and classify content without human intervention. But sadly, we're still picking classification terms out of long drop-down menus and clicking 'submit.' Content managers begin to see cross-eyed, corporate librarians revise and retrain. Is there a happy medium? What amount of 'the human factor' -- the influence that people bring to the process of creating a taxonomy and subsequently, tagging content -- really makes sense? How much should subject matter experts be involved, from the beginning of the process through ongoing maintenance?" http://www.edocmagazine.com/article_new.asp?ID=32215 +12: PHP. Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form Stand-Alone v.2.0 By Mike Cherim "This easy-to-install form has many accessibility, usability, and security features over my old form that used to be offered on this page." http://green-beast.com/blog/?page_id=71 Reading RSS feeds in PHP: Part 1 Ian Gilfillan. "This month, I show you how to create a basic RSS reader yourself..." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/ian_gilfillan20061212.php3 Fluent Interfaces in PHP By Cal Evans. "Fluent Interfaces is not a new programming construct, in fact many of you may be doing it without knowing it's name. In other languages it is commonly known as 'chaining'. However, PHP developers have not been able to use them until PHP 5. Now with PHP 5 and the ability to directly de-reference an object, PHP developers can build objects using fluent interfaces." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1362 +13: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Future of the HTML Working Group By Daniel Glazman. "Given the importance of the subject, given the fact the proposed charter for the 'new' HTML WG is under discussion until the 7th of January, I have decided to make my official comments as a W3C member on that proposed charter public...Important disclaimer: as I said in the comments, I do trust the individual Chris Wilson...he's an excellent choice - if not the best choice - for this WG chair. Unfortunately, after all these years in the W3C I also know very well the Consortium is not only a cool place where friendly geeks meet and co-edit documents, where cool people dedicated to the quality and future of the Web give their time, neurones and energy... More important, it's a battlefield, it's THE battlefield of the Web. Companies join the Consortium to promote their competitive advantage(s), and be the first one, the only one. Because of that, and trust me this is NOT primary anti-microsoftism, I just cannot understand how and why the chair of the HTML WG is given to a major desktop browser vendor, Microsoft in this case. Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla and Apple should be banned from the chair of this new HTML WG to preserve its full independence or an independent co-chair should be added for that purpose." http://tinyurl.com/y4ffkd Comments on the HTML WG Charter By Daniel Glazman. http://tinyurl.com/yxp9zf Reinventing HTML: Update By Dan Connolly. Dan Connolly, previous HTML WG chairman until the release of HTML 4, has posted a some thoughts on the W3C QA blog. http://www.w3.org/QA/2006/12/reinventing_html_update.html Change in Group Lead By Drew McLellan. After three years Molly Holzschlag is stepping down as group leader of the Web Standards Project. Kimberly Blessing and Drew McLellan are stepping up to co-lead the organization into 2007. http://www.webstandards.org/2006/12/20/change-in-group-lead/ Christmas Quiz II - An Answer By Brian Kelly. "...W3C (and, by association) W3C member organizations have been backing XHTML 2.0 (which, as Patrick mentions, is not backwards compatible) whereas the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHAT-WG), which includes Opera and Mozilla browser vendors, are arguing for an evolutionary development to HTML 4 which will provide richer interactivity through a language which is (even more confusingly) referred to as either HTML 5 or XHTML 5 on the WHATWG home page! In the early stages of development of new standards there are often fierce debates to be had. At the end of the process a compromise may be reached (but whether this compromise is a fusion of the best features from both camps or a flawed political fudge is another question). It is to be hoped that a sensible decision is arrived at eventually. But if this doesn't happen, whose camp would you support: W3C and Microsoft's or Mozilla and Opera's?..." http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/christmas-quiz-ii-an-answer/ +14: TOOLS. Operator By Michael Kaply. A microformat detection extension for Firefox 2. "Operator lets you combine pieces of information on Web sites with applications in ways that are useful. For instance, Flickr + Google Maps, Upcoming.org + Google Calendar, Yahoo! Local + your address book, and many more possibilities and permutations. All of these scenarios are possible due to Microformats, an emerging standard for injecting semantics into HTML..." https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4106/ Related Operator Info: http://labs.mozilla.com/2006/12/introducing-operator/ +15: USABILITY. Unfolding the Fold By ClickTale. "...These statistics demonstrate that the vast majority of web designers are designing pages with scrolling, that the majority of users do scroll and that a significant portion of them scroll all the way to the page bottom. While 22% may seem low at first, it is actually quite high as many page-views are repeat views where the visitors have previously scrolled all the way to the page bottom and are already familiar with the page. In addition, visitors often find what they are looking for near the beginning of the page and may not bother scrolling further down..." http://blog.clicktale.com/?p=19 Usability in the Movies - Top 10 Bloopers By Jakob Nielsen. "User interfaces in film are more exciting than they are realistic, and heroes have far too easy a time using foreign systems." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/film-ui-bloopers.html Clash of the Titans: Agile and UCD By Richard F. Cecil. "Agile software development has become fairly popular in the last few years, leaving many UX professionals wondering how user-centered design (UCD) can fit into an extremely fast-paced development process that uses little documentation. User-centered design can involve a variety of techniques that provide insights into users' wants, needs, and goals, including ethnography, contextual inquiry, contextual interviewing, usability testing, task analysis, and others. But all of these take time-time that an agile development process might not allow. There is hope, though. Agile and UCD methods are not completely at odds with each other-and in some cases, agile development can even enable a more user-centered approach. By taking the time to understand the differences and similarities between agile development and UCD, it's possible to devise a process that is both user-centered and agile." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000153.php Design Stories: Character Counters By Robert Hoekman. "Here's a look at the design of character counters (the little text messages used to indicate how many characters can be entered into a text field). Many sites skimp on the grace that character counters can offer and use something that takes the least amount of work to build, but can be quite frustrating for users. For example, an input field with a set character limit should communicate that limit to users, but many sites leave this important element out..." http://rhjr.net/theblog/2006/12/15/design-stories-character-counters/ Writing for the Web By Stanford University. "Preparing content for the web is much more than just copying text from your favorite word processor and pasting it into the framework of a web page." http://soap.stanford.edu/showcategory.php?categoryid=12 [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +16: 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.]