+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 30, January 12, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 30 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: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 13: USABILITY. 14: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Mobile Web May Help Bridge the Digital Divide: Workshop Report By W3C. "W3C has published a report from the Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries, held in Bangalore, India in December 2006. Workshop participants discussed the needs and challenges facing people in developing economies who use a mobile phone as the primary and often sole platform for accessing the Web. Participants included mobile handset manufacturers, browser developers, software companies, local Indian companies and universities, and organizations working on information technology projects in rural communities in India and Africa. The report presents their findings and proposed next steps. You are invited to join the public forum for discussions about the future: public-mwi-ec@w3.org (archive)..." http://www.w3.org/News/2007#item1 Apple iPhone is Cool, But Where is My Keypad? By Roger Johansson. "...I have two eyes that work reasonably well, so for me the lack of tactile feedback isn't a problem I can't overcome. But what about people who are not as lucky? If this phone is 'revolutionary', it should also work for people who can't see or are using it in less than ideal conditions, right?..." http://tinyurl.com/yh7rr5 Over the Horizon: Potential Impact of Emerging Trends in Information and Communication Technology on Disability Policy and Practice By National Council on Disability. "...Science and technology are moving forward, rapidly opening up new opportunities and posing new challenges. In many cases, they will redefine both the problem being addressed and the fundamental tools to address them..." http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/2006/emerging_trends.htm +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Styling Form Controls with CSS, Revisited By Roger Johansson. "...I spent way too much time creating a total of 224 screenshots showing the effects of various CSS rules applied to form controls. The screenshots are taken from 8 browsers on 4 operating systems, for a total of 14 different browser + OS combinations. I have created a demo page for each type of form control..." http://tinyurl.com/yz8yow Centering an Image, Part 2 By Mauricio Samy Silva. "..In this article we will focus on centering a background image using CSS..." http://bitesizestandards.com/bites/centering-an-image-part-2 Tip: Retrain your HTML 3.2 Brain to Think in CSS By Virginia DeBolt. "How HTML attributes translate into CSS properties..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2007/01/tip-retrain-your-html-32-brain-to.html Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007 By Kevin Yank. "If support for web standards in browsers is improving slowly, then support in email clients is moving at a glacial pace. Attempts to document things like CSS support in the major email clients have revealed a depressing state of affairs, but with recent desktop clients like Thunderbird now sitting on solid rendering engines, things have been looking up..." http://tinyurl.com/y5fxq5 Designline - A Design Timeline By Dylan Bennett. "To create this designline, I took a screenshot basically every time I saved my HTML file. I'm one of those people who impulsively hits Ctrl-S after every tiny little change, so you end up seeing every little change made to the file as it goes. I started out with a blank text file and I go all the way to a completed site design. Check it out..." http://mboffin.com/post.aspx?id=1619 An Appeal to Fellow Developers, Webmasters and Website Owners By nomoreiehacks.org. "...What I am advocating is simple, developers, webmasters and website owners, you can help make the Internet better by simply removing your 'IE Hacks' and have your sites run using their essential HTML, Javascript and CSS codes..." http://www.nomoreiehacks.org/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Creating Accessible Tables for Data Using Dreamweaver 8 By Laurie Brown. "With a host of new features, Dreamweaver 8 makes it easier than ever to build accessible tables for data. Using the Accessibility preferences, Dreamweaver 8 prompts designers and developers to provide captions, headers, and summary information as the table is inserted..." http://tinyurl.com/y8uml2 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The User is in the Numbers By Jeff Sauro. "Measuring usability is an important topic that very much needs to be discussed. Being part of the conversation usually requires reading peer-reviewed journal articles in HCI. This, in turn, requires knowledge of the techniques and the jargon of statistics and experimental design (the foundation of numerical precision in empirical disciplines). To help move the discussions along, I've attempted to provide some clarification and explanations on statistical concepts you'll encounter: p-values, power, and confidence intervals. The examples come right from papers published in HCI proceedings. I've kept the discussion high-level and left out formulae, as it is more important to understand the concepts than to plug values into a formula..." http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1167971 Sample Size Calculator for Discovering Problems in a User Interface By: Jeff Sauro, Formulae By James R. Lewis. "Use this calculator to determine the number of users you'd need to test given the probability of detecting a problem. If the probability of detecting the problem is unknown, this calculator also allows you to estimate the problem occurrence (p) from sample data." http://www.measuringusability.com/samplesize/problem_discovery.php +05: EVENTS. IE Web Casts and Expert Chats for Web Designers and Developers Microsoft Online Events Every Thursday at 10 am Pacific Standard Time, January 11 - March 8, 2007. http://tinyurl.com/yh8qr5 Webcredible Training January-March, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.webcredible.co.uk/services/training.shtml WebDD Conference Reading, United Kingdom February 3, 2007. http://www.webdd.org.uk/ @media 2007 (teaser) May 24-25, 2007 in San Francisco, California, U.S.A. May 31-June 1, 2007 in Hong Kong. June 7-8, 2007 in London, United Kingdom. http://www.vivabit.com/atmedia2007/ Where 2.0 Conference 2007 May 29-30 , 2007. San Jose, California, U.S.A. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/where/ HCIL (Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory) Symposium May 31-June 1, 2007. College Park, Maryland U.S.A. http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/soh/ Advanced Usability Topics and Latest Research, 2007 June 19-20, 2007. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/wpezb NECC 2007, National Educational Computing Conference June 24-27, 2007. Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2007/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Documenting Interaction Design: Wire Frames with Visio and Word By interakt.nu. "There are many ways to document an interaction design and the level of details needed is dependent on what your documenting and for what purpose. There has also been a lot of discussions on what the best tool for creating interaction designs and/or prototypes is...The tool you choose is of course also dependent on what you are documenting and for what purpose. It is also much of a personal taste what tool one prefers to work with..." http://www.interakt.nu/home/visio/ Wireframes: Unpacking the Boxes By Ian Curry. "As with any marriage, designers and information architects put a lot of effort into making it work. There are highs and lows - ultimately, we need each other. But set us down together on the therapist,s couch, or the project post-mortem meeting, and the same old grievances are aired. It,s goes something like this: clients want to see something they can sink their teeth into as early as possible; IA,s need to organize information on and across pages. Wireframes result, and despite even the most earnest admonitions against doing so, clients begin to get attached to the wires. By the time visual designers come in, the job has been stripped down to not coloring too far outside the lines. Someone turns a crank, and on a spigot towards the back of this rusty machine, a middling design drips out. Shrugs ensue. That,s just how it is, right? Wrong!..." http://www.frogdesign.com/?p=286 Wireframing With InDesign and Illustrator By Todd Warfel. "There are a variety of tools used for interaction design. I've used them all and have settled on a framework using InDesign and Illustrator. It will require a series of articles to fully describe the framework I've developed. So, in this article, I'm going to focus on what led to the development of this framework and give you a brief overview." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000161.php +07: JAVASCRIPT. Ajax is Squeezed as Adobe Builds up Rival Flex Toolset By Cliff Saran. "Forrester Research is predicting a shake-up in the market for rich internet application development tools as Ajax battles with Adobe's rival Flex toolset..." http://tinyurl.com/y2hnct Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability in Versions 7.0.8 and Earlier of Adobe Reader and Acrobat By Adobe. "A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in versions 7.0.8 and earlier of Adobe Reader and Acrobat 7.0.8 could allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary JavaScript into a browser session. Exploitability depends on the browser and browser version being used." http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa07-01.html DHTML Leaks Like a Sieve By Joel Webber. "...If you've ever built a really complex site using lots of JavaScript, you've probably seen this problem. You may even have some idea of where it comes from. Well, I'm writing this explanation because (a) I think I fully understand the problem and (b) there are a lot of confused (or simply wrong) explanations out there..." http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/01/dhtml-leaks-like-sieve.html Your Own Personal Library By Jeremy Keith. "...I have a very cautious attitude when it comes to the wholesale use of third-party libraries. Let me clarify something , though: I am not anti-library. I just think that they need to be used correctly by people who know how they work...Building up your own library, on the other hand, is something I wholeheartedly approve of. I'm pretty sure it's something that just about every developer does anyway, but it really is a great way of accumulating wisdomÉ wisdom being knowledge over time. The danger, then, is knowledge without the benefit of personal experience..." http://domscripting.com/blog/display/94 +08: MISCELLANEOUS. The Access 2.0 Interview - Liz Bal By Paul Crichton. ..."Liz Ball is deaf-blind and accesses the internet on her PC using the JAWS screenreader with a Braille display. How does she use the internet?..." http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/access20/2007/01/post_2.shtml Thumbnail: Rolf Molich By Cliff Anderson. "Rolf Molich is 'curious'. He cites that curiosity as the impetus behind his CUE, or Comparative Usability Evaluation, studies (www.DialogDesign.dk/cue.html). These now-world-famous studies look at how usability tests and expert reviews are actually carried out in practice - and about how reproducible they really are. There's a lot more to Rolf, though, than his CUE studies..." http://tinyurl.com/y8qq9e Interview with Chris Hofstader: Search Engines and Accessibility By Matt Bailey. "The following is an interview with Chris Hofstader. Chris is the former VP at Freedom Scientific and is now actively blogging and enjoying life. Chris, interview helped to form a lot of the backbone of the article and helped me to understand how an advanced user can use the internet and search engines. Because each of the people I interviewed were so interesting, and they each had their own stories, I thought it best to post some of their interviews for us all to appreciate and learn..." http://tinyurl.com/yzxt9r Dan Cederholm Interview By Edgework. "Here's a fun conversation with designer Dan Cederholm, where we discuss what we do now that standards-based design rules the world, how developing with Rails is like getting to sculpt a design, the thinking behind Dan's book Bulletproof Web Design, Rollyo, designing with constraints, redesigning Simplebits.com, Cork'd, microformats and accidental APIs, and, most importantly, cheese metal." http://www.brianoberkirch.com/?p=791 Interview with Founder of Fadtastic - Andrew Faulkner By Matt Davies. "I have known Andy Faulkner for a few years now. He is always a pleasure to be with. His eyes glint with excitement whenever we discuss his favorite subject - web design trends. He is a man of enthusiasm, a man obsessed by functionality, usability and aesthetically pleasing websites. A gentleman, a man with a horrendous sense of humor but most of all he is the man behind the web design journal that is Fadtastic - the multi author web design trends journal..." http://tinyurl.com/y552cr +09: NAVIGATION. GoogleBot Crawling CSS Files By Eric Enge. "...Is Google going to start crawling everyone's CSS? Or are they simply going to trigger off of manual or algorithmic flags to do this for some sites? Or for that matter, are they going to start doing some random crawls of CSS on some sites as a spot check?...It may indeed be hard to algorithmically determine an illicit use of display:none or display:hidden, v.s. a legitimate one, but it certainly can be used as a flag..." http://www.stonetemple.com/blog/?p=111 +10: PHP. HTML Forms and PHP By Larry Ullman. "This chapter covers the basics of creating HTML forms and how the form data is transmitted to your PHP script. It introduces several key concepts of real PHP programming, including how to debug and manage errors in your scripts." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=674688&f1=rss&rl=1 Beginning Ajax with PHP: From Novice to Professional By Lee Babin. "This article is excerpted from Chapter 3 of Beginning Ajax with PHP: >From Novice to Professional..." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/beginning_ajax20070104.php3 Top 5 New (and cool!) Features in PHP5 That You Probably Haven't Heard Of By vexxhost.com. "PHP5 has brought so much new features but because of its big syntax changes, a big percentage of the PHP developing base has not made the change. Here are the top 10 new features that could change your mind..." http://vexxhost.com/blog/?p=27 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://tinyurl.com/svdd3 PHP: Email Protector By Mike Cherim. "Offering an email address on a web site is akin to asking for spam in your inbox. This small script protects a single address from 'bots and non-human exploiters while still making it available and accessible to people upon request with the simple click of a button." http://mikecherim.com/experiments/php_email_protector.php OOP Is Mature, Not Dead By Jeff Moore. "...OOP is not on the decline. Quite simply, it has become mature. The discussion may be on the decline because almost every language that anyone actually uses implements a core set of OOP features. OOP has won its arguments. Good luck taking a language mainstream without it..." http://www.procata.com/blog/archives/2007/01/07/oop-is-mature-not-dead/ +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. How to Grok Web Standards By Craig Cook. "For designers who find web standards as easy to grasp as a buttered eel, Craig Cook shows how to stop the hurting and turn on the understanding. Learn how web standards work, and why they are more than simply an alternative means of producing a visual design." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/grokwebstandards/ Built in Semantics in HTML By John Allsopp. "I've been working on some things to do with semantics on the web, in particular in relation to HTML. As part of this, I've put together a list of all the elements and attributes of HTML that I consider have strong semantics associated with them..." http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2007/01/built_in_semant.html Markup as a Craft By Garrett Dimon. "The first week of 2007 is over, and those New Year's resolutions are already starting to nag at your subconscious more than Twitter does. Luckily, we've got just the thing if you want to end the year a better coder than you started. Columnist Garrett Dimon presents twenty-one guidelines that will have you crafting beautiful markup in no time." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/markup_as_craft/ You, Me and the W3C (aka Reinventing HTML) By Chris Wilson. "Some of you may not be aware that the W3C is recognizing that there has been an unfulfilled need for the evolution of HTML, and they are chartering a new HTML Working Group to do this (rather than the XHTML 2 track that the HTML WG has been developing for several years now). Some more of you might also be unaware that I was asked to be the initial chair of this new working group. I've gotten a bit behind over the last few weeks, but thankfully the W3C extended voting on the charter, so this post is still relevant..." http://tinyurl.com/y6sxuj Semantic Formatting for Interviews By Joe Dolson. "...What it comes right down to is that, in my opinion, the lack of any format which can fully support the semantic needs of interview or dialogue means that you shouldn't spend too much effort worrying about how to write them out. I certainly wouldn't recommend just using paragraphs: some manner of differentiating questions and answers is still pretty important, but the level of detail in the HTML and XHTML specifications don't provide anything which is really suitable. Normal use of headings and paragraphs may well be sufficient - a definition list could be better for some interviews, but for others could simply be less effective." http://tinyurl.com/ymrnfs +12: TOOLS. WAEX: Web Accessibility Evaluator in a single XSLT file By Vicente Luque Centeno. "It evaluates many WCAG conditions and also some XHTML restrictions not yet formalized in the XHTML DTD (but in the prose of the specification)." http://www.it.uc3m.es/vlc/waex.html Dreamweaver Additional Tags Extension By Patrick H. Lauke. "As I frequently need access to a few (X)HTML elements not readily available in Dreamweaver's default toolbar/menu, I quickly threw together this simple extension." http://www.splintered.co.uk/experiments/88/ +13: USABILITY. New Year's Resolution By Jeremy Keith. "...The way I see it, the range is growing at both ends of the spectrum. Yes, desktop monitors are getting wider (though that doesn't mean that viewports get any wider above a certain size) but handheld and gaming devices are likely to remain at the lower end of the scale. The Wii, for example, has a resolution of 640 x 480. Mind you, the iPhone turns the whole question on its head with its scalable browsing. At MacWorld, Steve Jobs demonstrated this by visiting the New York Times, an unashamedly wide fixed-width website. On the Apple site, Wikipedia-a liquid layout- is shown fitting nicely on the display. The iPhone deals with both...the idea that liquid layouts automatically means long line lengths on large screens is, I feel, a misconception. The problem is that a lot of the examples of liquid layouts aren't very good and line lengths do expand without limit. But it doesn't have to be that way. In my opinion, the most important addition to Internet Explorer 7 is the max-width property. It means that we can now really start to look at creating fluid layouts within defined parameters..." http://adactio.com/journal/1232 Do the Collapse By Dan Cederholm. "...with a reliable browser on the iPhone (Safari) and all that it brings in terms of standards support, JS, DOM, etc., will we start looking closer at resolution dependent layouts (or other methods) for sites that would or could function as well as their larger screen counterparts? We're essentially talking about a fully-browsable web and everything that comes along with that in Safari. Just on a smaller screen..." http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2007/01/10/iphone.html In Defense of Simplicity By Scott Berkun. "...Great features do not require user interfaces. If the engineers are thoughtful, they can add code that eliminates the need for UI, instead of adding to it. This is much harder and requires smaller egos, but a great v3 needs less UI than v2: eliminating setup, configuration, simplifying designs, automating things successfully so that users don't even need to know of them (not just automating my interaction with things). This is much harder and requires real innovation, but is too selfless and long term a philosophy for most to swallow...Connoisseurs of anything discern between trash and class. They know that understatement is class's hallmark: it's a product, person or design that knows it has substance, and does not need to go far out of its way to prove itself: its core is good..." http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/?p=502 What Comes After Usability? By Kathy Sierra. "...Even if users don't start demanding Flow...it's a huge opportunity and advantage for those whose products support it..." http://tinyurl.com/y4yxwe The Open-Source Solution By Larry Constantine. "...As the code slowly grows in complexity as well as capability, usability suffers, not only because new functions add to the user interface but because such additions are ad hoc and implemented case by case...Open source may be superior in producing robust, reliable code. It can hold its own in providing functionality. But its weakness remains usability, which increasingly is the battle˙ground for competing programs..." http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17997/ +14: XML. RSS Will Not Make the Mainstream By Paul Scrivens. "...While in the past we have lauded RSS as the next great thing after email, it really is nothing more but another way to read sites. In fact, RSS has been around in one form or another for a very long time..." http://wisdump.com/web/rss-will-not-make-the-mainstream/ Relations Between Schema Languages for XML By Janus Dam Nielson. Janus Dam Nielson master's thesis. http://www.daimi.au.dk/~fagidiot/thesis/ Diagram Comparing Schema Languages for XML By Rick Jelliffe. "The simple overlapping Venn-like diagrams that people use to express the relative power of schema languages can mislead as much as they inform. Here,s a kind of diagram with shaded edges: light grey represent capabilities that are possible but inconvenient, and darker grey represent capabilities that are possible but only if you organize your schema in a certain way. XSD extensibility is an example of the darker grey capability: unless you organize your (base) schemas properly, you may easily find it is not possible..." http://tinyurl.com/y9992m Is XML 2.0 Under Development? By Micah Dubinko "Micah Dubinko's return to the XML Annoyances banner, he speculates as to whether the W3C is already considering whether to start work on XML 2.0. Read this piece and decide for yourself." http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/01/10/is-xml-20-under-development.html [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.]