+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 29, January 5, 2007. 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 13: TYPOGRAPHY. 14: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility Audit vs. Accessibility Testing By Trenton Moss. In last month's feature article we compared expert usability reviews with usability testing. This month, we do the same with accessibility, comparing accessibility audits with accessibility testing. What's the difference between the two and which one's different? There's only one way to find out - read this month's feature article!" http://tinyurl.com/y2j7up Phong - It's Awful, Isn't It? By Brian Kelly. "...Poor usability, bad for accessibility? Yes. And when you get to a page, the interface is similarly flawed. But, OTOH, might this not be fun as a game? Mind this not be entertaining for children? Might not an interface in which animated links move as you try and chase them be fun for some people?Or to put it another way, isn't the goal of universal accessibility a pipe dream? In some cases (e.g. informational resources) this approach may be an appropriate one, but in others, it may result in pleasing solutions being discarded, even if, ironically, particular audiences may prefer them...if such sites can be accessible, usable and pleasurable to certain groups (I'm not saying Phoing is, BTW) , doesn't this devalue an automated approach to accessibility checking. What then are the boundaries to automated checking? How should we go about developing or commissioning Web sites for such groups? And when is it legitimate to discard WAI guidelines?" http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2007/01/03/phong-its-awful-isnt-it/ Web Accessibility Learning Modules By Joan Van Duzer, AnnMarie Johnson, Paul Nozicka and Candace Egan. A learning resource to help people understand web accessibility. http://www.csufresno.edu/webaccess/learningmodules/ Web Accessibility: Access For All Videos By California State University, Fresno. Videos include 'What is Web Accessibility?', 'How do users access the Web', 'What are the problems?', 'How do we solve the problems?','Why is Web accessibility important?'. http://www.csufresno.edu/webaccess/materials/videoclips.htm Disabled Seek Equal Unlimited Web Access By Adam Phillips. "Although many governments have passed laws mandating that public places be made accessible to the disabled, equal access to cyberspace has lagged far behind. The director of the Web Accessibility Initiative at the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets technical standards for the Web, says things must change..." http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/2006-12-26-voa32.cfm PDF Web Cast By Brad Kadel and Andrea Olson. "This (Window Media Player) video is a Web Cast that the Web Accessibility for All group gave on PDFs and accessibility. The video is 54 minutes long." http://www.cew.wisc.edu/accessibility/videos/PDFWebCast.asx +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Bug: IE7 Absolutely Positioned Italics By Stuart Colville. "I recently discovered a rather bizarre bug that only seems to affect IE7. If you absolutely position italic text of any kind (text made italic through authors styling or something that is styled via the default browser stylesheet such as ems.) IE7 seems to screw up the rendering and ends up creating a horizontal scroll bar..." http://tinyurl.com/ygv63b Centering an Image, Part 1 By Mauricio Samy Silva. "There are two techniques for placing an image within a block level element..." http://bitesizestandards.com/bites/centering-an-image-part-1 Build a Better Web Site by Understanding Floated Elements in CSS By Melonfire. "One of the most important concepts a Web developer can understand about CSS are floated elements, which serve a valuable function in aligning and positioning elements relative to each other on a Web page. A brief introduction to these floated elements is presented, explaining the CSS float and clear directives and providing some examples of how you can use them to better position HTML elements on a Web page." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6146768.html Real-World CSS Zen for Your Site By Mani Sheriar. "...I suggest that we begin to code our XHTML first, independent of what we plan for the layout to be. Let's code our XHTML as if we plan to have 10 different designers apply their own unique layouts to it. If we can do it that way, then we will be able to execute minor or even major design overhauls without touching a single page in the site. And what's more, any other developer will be able to do the same..." http://tinyurl.com/tw4lu Washi: A CSS Layout by PVII By Project Seven. "The Page Layout is offered free of charge. Download a zip archive containing the finished page, assets, and an editable Fireworks image document..." http://www.projectseven.com/csslab/layouts/washi/index.htm +03: COLOR. Five Simple Steps to Designing with Colour Part 3: Colour Combinations By Mark Boulton. "Colours chosen from different spokes on the Colour Wheel will provide a variety of colour combinations. Deciding upon and selecting a colour combination that works for you will very much depend upon the job at hand. Will it communicate what you want it to? Or are you just choosing them because you, or the client, like them? These are very difficult questions to answer because any designer or client will let their personal style and preference interfere with their decision-making. Colour combinations tend to evoke certain reactions either by cultural, or personal experience. Understanding these experiences will help you create colour combinations that tell a story. That is what good colour theory can give you; designs that tell a story." http://tinyurl.com/y7rm4n +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Fast, Cheap, and Good: Yes, You Can Have It All By Jakob Nielsen. "The sooner you complete a usability study, the higher its impact on the design process. Slower methods should be deferred to an annual usability checkup." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/fast-methods.html Five Common Errors in Requirements Analysis (and how to avoid them) By Melonfire. "In the traditional waterfall model of software development, the first phase of requirements analysis is also the most important one. There are a number of problems with this theoretical model, and these can cause delays and errors in the rest of the process. This article discusses some of the more common problems that project managers experience during this phase, and suggests possible solutions." http://builder.com.com/5100-6315_14-6146544.html +05: EVENTS. CSS Workshop with Russ Weakley February 8, 2007. Singapore, Republic of Singapore. http://www.pebbleroad.com/events/view/css_workshop_with_russ_weakley/ Computer Using Educators (CUE) March 1-3, 2007 Palm Springs, California, U.S.A. http://www.cue.org/ Museums and the Web April 11-14, 2007. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/index.html Accessibility Guidelines: Why don't they always deliver accessible sites and what can you do about it? April 11, 2007. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/abstracts/prg_320000779.html Hands On Usability Testing April 11, 2007. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/abstracts/prg_325000926.html MySQL Conference and Expo April 23-26, 2007. Santa Clara, California, U.S.A. http://www.mysqlconf.com/ php|tek 2007 May 15-18, 2007. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://hades.phparch.com/ceres/public/tek/page/index.php/ RailsConf 2007 May 17-20, 2007. Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/rails/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The Dark Side of Prototyping By Henrik Olsen. "Are there any downsides of prototyping? Not really. But as with everything else in life, you might stumble and hurt yourself if you don't watch your step. This article points out some of the banana skins to steer clear off." http://www.guuui.com/issues/01_07.php Don't Make the Demo Look Done By Kathy Sierra. "When we show a work-in-progress (like an alpha release) to the public, press, a client, or boss... we're setting their expectations. And we can do it one of three ways: dazzle them with a polished mock-up, show them something that matches the reality of the project status, or stress them out by showing almost nothing and asking them to take it "on faith" that you're on track. The bottom line: How 'done' something looks should match how 'done' something is..." http://tinyurl.com/yjzfc3 +07: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Language Essentials By Tom Negrino and Dori Smith. "Tom Negrino and Dori Smith go into detail about the basic elements of JavaScript and introduce you to other aspects of the JavaScript language, such as loops, arrays, and more about functions." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=677442&rl=1 Adobe Acrobat JavaScript Execution Bug is a Huge Security Issue By Nitesh Dhanjani. "The Adobe JavaScript execution bug recently discovered is a huge security issue for any organization that serves PDF files via its web servers..." http://tinyurl.com/y2lh56 A PHP Developers Guide to JavaScript - Part I By Felix Geisendorfer. "...after the overwhelming interest in me writing a little bit about javascript on this blog, here comes my first post on that topic. It's actually the beginning of a little series (2 or 3 parts) that is going to be targeted at php developers who've only used JS by merging snippets/libraries together without really learning the language itself..." http://tinyurl.com/y3gtjg +08: MISCELLANEOUS. The Line Between Clarity and Chaos: An Interview with Barry Schwartz By Liz Danzico. "Life is full of choices, and making these choices seems more difficult each day. Boxes and Arrows interviews Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, to dig into these decisions-when we make them and when we don't." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/interview-with-barry +09: NAVIGATION. How to Use CSS for Search Engine Optimization By Mikhail Tuknov. "...Another major benefit of CSS is that it makes your Web site SEO friendly. The reason behind this is simple. Search engines spiders are actually lethargic. They don't go through the bundles of HTML code to get to the indexed codes. Font tags and tables make HTML code cumbersome, and thus reduce the accuracy of the results. If you use external CSS files to determine the design attributes, the HTML code will be clean and will create better search engine rankings..." http://www.webreference.com/authoring/css_seo/ Feedthebot.com Patrick Sexton. "...I have been writing a series of articles that introduce each of the Google webmaster guidelines to new webmasters. The Google webmaster guidelines are a list of suggested practices that Google has provided as guidance to webmasters. My goal is to define the terms that are used, explain the concepts, provide examples of common mistakes, and to link to the appropriate resources that govern or cover that guideline." http://www.feedthebot.com +10: PHP. PHP and MySQL By Example - Sample Chapter By Ellie Quigley. "Prentice Hall recently released PHP and MySQL By Example, written by Ellie Quigley. They are so proud of this title that they sent us over a sample chapter to share with you." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1427 Overloading Arrays in PHP 5.2.0 By Matthew Weier O'Phinney. "I'd read about this some months back on the php internals list, but at the time hadn't understood the consequences. Basically, __get() no longer returns a reference and returns values in read mode, which makes modifying arrays using overloading impossible using traditional methods." http://tinyurl.com/y3mxuc +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Bribing Bloggers By Joel Spolsky. "There's an interesting debate going on about whether bloggers should accept gifts from vendors. Lately Microsoft, working through their PR agency, Edelman, has been getting rather aggressive about trying to buy good coverage from bloggers. A few months ago they invited bloggers out to Seattle to meet Bill Gates, with all expenses paid (hotel, airfare, etc). Last week they send out a round of expensive laptops with Vista preinstalled. These are not loans, by the way: they're completely free laptops ('yours to keep!')....Effectively Microsoft has bought publicity and goodwill. And even though the blogger has fully disclosed what happened, their message is corrupting the medium. I've been thinking long and hard about this, and the only conclusion I can come to is that this is ethically indistinguishable from bribery...These gifts reduce the public trust in blogs." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html Opquast Best Practices By Elie Sloim et. al. "Opquast is a repository of best practices for the improvement of on-line services quality..." http://www.opquast.com/bonnes-pratiques/ Who Will Read Your Semantic HTML? By Jesse Skinner. "...We need to think about who or what it is that will actually be extracting the meaning we're adding to our documents by using Semantic HTML. And basically I can think of three groups..." http://tinyurl.com/yyuj9o +12: TOOLS. 28k and 56k Modem Emulator By Dave Child. "Regardless of your connection speed, this will show you how your site loads on PCs with older connections. Update 29 December 2006: It was gone, but now it's back." http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/resources/modem-emulator/ +13: TYPOGRAPHY. Admiration for Typography on the Web By Jonathan Christopher. It's been said that Web design is 95% typography, and I can definitely agree with that. Many times a site design could be improved extensively with a quick change of a font-family. Keeping that in mind, how does one decide on a good looking font-family for their design?" http://mondaybynoon.com/2007/01/01/admiration-for-typography-on-the-web/ +14: USABILITY. Elastic Layout - Wrong Term? By Alastair Campbell. "The top two articles for 'Elastic Design' on Google are Roger Johansson Fixed or fluid width? Elastic! and Alistapart's Elastic design by Patrick Griffiths. Both good articles, and recommended reading (before this article if you aren't familiar with them). So why the post? Well, I think elastic is the wrong term for what the layouts achieve. Also, there is a mistaken assumption about accessibility..." http://alastairc.ac/2007/01/elastic-layout-wrong-term/ Long Pages Rule, Except When They Don't By Heidi Adkisson. "...The problem I've seen in testing with very long forms (particularly when people need to enter information carefully, as with financial data) is that they are difficult for people to check over before submitting. Errors can be hard to find because it requires scrolling up and down the page to locate them. And, if something technically goes wrong, people potentially have a huge amount of re-entry to do..." http://www.iathink.com/2006/12/index.html Do People Need the Gizmos We're Selling? By Paul Zeven. "...To me, simplicity is imperative, not just because products have become more complex over the years, but also because every aspect of our lives continues to get more complex...Rather than simplifying our daily routines, most technology has actually made our lives more complex. Spending hours learning to use a new gadget is the last thing most of us want to do. The ability to take a product out of the box and just have it work, without the need to read a manual for hours, is now high on most consumers' priority lists when deciding on a purchase..." http://tinyurl.com/v6ltt [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +15: 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.]