+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 31, January 19, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 31 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: COLOR. 03: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: FLASH. 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. Practical, Entry-Level Web Accessibility By Mike Cherim. "You may have an appreciation of web accessibility but are scared of even going there..." http://accessites.org/gbcms_xml/news_page.php?id=32#n32 Tips and Tools: Web Captioning By National Center on Disability and Access to Education. "The following is a brief introduction to the principles and potential challenges of captioning for the web. It is meant to be a starting point, not a definitive guide to captioning. If you are interested in learning more, read the NCDAE captioning article, WebAIM captioning articles and a list of captioning resources from WebAIM. WebAIM is a partner with NCDAE..." http://ncdae.org/tools/factsheets/captioning.cfm Just What Happened on Those WCAG 2 Conference Calls on Cognitive Disability? By Joe Clark. "The WCAG Working Group has been going out of its way not to document the conference calls it held in late 2006 on accommodation of cognitive and learning disabilities in WCAG 2. Nonetheless, one participant wrote a recollection (lightly copy-edited)..." http://joeclark.org/access/webaccess/WCAG/cognitive/phonecalls.html Create Good, One Alt Attribute at a Time By Kim Krause Berg. "...Maybe all it takes is one new image alt attribute or text link title attribute a day, to get a feeling of accomplishing something positive for somebody. It's a terribly small piece of html code, but a leap forward for humankind..." http://cre8pc.com/blog/archives/193 Style Over Substance? By Paul Crichton. "...So if style matters to most people, why should it not also be a consideration for accessible products? There are some exceptions that prove the rules, but on the whole, accessible devices have a nasty tendency to be big and clunky, with big, brightly colored buttons. Perhaps the answer lies in more inclusive design. After all, whilst some of these gadgets are seen as the tools of the young, they too will be old one day, and have access issues as well. I can just see Steve Jobs trying to make the latest diminutive iPod work with his arthritic fingers in 2067. Apple's new iPhone has got people salivating about how sexy it is. However, it is hard to imagine anything that could make the iPhone less accessible than replacing the keypad with a touch screen - a move that has interestingly brought quite a lot of praise for improving usability. That's fine while there is still choice in the market, but if this becomes the standard mobile, then what will that mean to everyone that has trouble using a touch screen?..." http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/access20/2007/01/style_over_substance.shtml +02: COLOR. Always Specify A Background Colour By Christopher Hester. "Avoid a mix of unwanted colours on your page." http://tinyurl.com/yyoagw Automatic Color Harmony Tools By Andrew B. King. "...This article summarizes the work of researchers from Tel Aviv University and Microsoft who have created a tool that automatically enhances the color harmony of a photograph or image, while remaining as faithful as possible to the original colors..." http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/color-harmony/ Colorblind HomePage By Terrace L. Waggoner. "This web-site defines being colorblind and will educate you about the different types of colorblindness. It explains why you may be colorblind and what teachers, school nurses, and parents should know about being colorblind. You will learn about a new "pediatric" color vision test for early detection." http://colorvisiontesting.com/ Color Vision Testing Made Easy By Terrace L. Waggoner. "This on-line color vision test consists of four cards from the popular color vision test "Color Vision Testing Made Easy"..." http://colorvisiontesting.com/online%20test.htm ColorVision Test By Mike Bennet. This is a series of five color plates which are filled with colored dots. Whether or not you can see certain numbers in those fields of dots lets you know if you are colorvision challenged. http://home.sc.rr.com/mikebennett/colorblind.html +03: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver 8 Tutorials By B. Anderson. "This Dreamweaver tutorial is just what you need to get up to speed using Dreamweaver to create web pages. Whether you're creating a personal page for your family, a school or classroom web site, or one for your small business, Dreamweaver is a powerful tool that will help get the job done. Each Dreamweaver tutorial features text and screen shots, and some include narrated multimedia tutorials in Flash..." http://www.guidesandtutorials.com/dreamweaver_tutorial.html +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. What Do People Think of Your Site Design? Here's How To Find Out By Dan Brown. "Usability testing is an essential part of the web design diet. In a nutshell, it's a technique for soliciting feedback on the design of a web site. Usability testing is usually conducted on one participant at a time, and attempts to have participants use the site in as close to a real-world setting as possible. Different people have different approaches to usability testing but two things remain consistent-the documents describing what you'll do during the test (the plan) and what came out of the test (the results report). This chapter describes the test plan-the document you prepare in advance of testing." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=677438&f1&rl=1 Taking Personas Too Far By Kim Goodwin. "...although personas are essential design tools, we think some people may be losing sight of the fact that they're just tools, and tools with a specific purpose, at that. Lately, we've been seeing a lot of gold-plated hammers - unnecessarily elaborate communication about personas - and some fundamental misunderstandings about the relationships among research, personas, and scenarios..." http://tinyurl.com/yzpk4k +05: EVENTS. Functional Testing of Web Resources for Accessibility February 14, 2007 or February 28, 2007. Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/uwxmx 2 Day Universal Design Workshop March 8-9, 2007. Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A. http://www.fast3.uiuc.edu/workshops/accessibility.htm#universal%20design SXSW Interactive 2007 - Higher Education Meetup March 10, 2007. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. http://upcoming.org/event/136826 AJAX 2007 April 17, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.idgevents.co.uk/events/index.cfm?eventId=9 ED-MEDIA 2007 World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications June 25-29, 2007. Vancouver, Canada http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/ O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) 2007 July 23-27, 2007. Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2007/ Advanced Writing for the Web Practicum June 27, 2007. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/vt8ma +06: FLASH. Developing Flash Websites Using Progressive Enhancement By Bobby van der Sluis. "Although Adobe Flash Player is one of the most widely distributed web clients available, there is still a group of people who are hesitant to use Adobe Flash content. They often describe Flash as a wonderful tool that can make a real contribution to a website's audiovisual appeal and interactivity. But they also warn others not to overdo things because entire websites designed in Flash would both be opaque to search engines and lock out a certain group of potential visitors. In this article I explain that this doesn't necessarily have to be the case..." http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/progressive_enhancement.html SEFFS: To Flash Or Not To Flash By Claus Wahlers. "Macromedia's Flash Player is a remarkable piece of software. It is widely deployed, features a full ECMAScript implementation, an XML parser, audio and video capabilities and an advanced vector rendering engine, and many more. If used appropriately, it can provide visitors of your website with a better, richer and unique browsing experience. However, there are chances that visitors of your Flash enabled website can't or don't want to see Flash content (SWF)..." http://wahlers.com.br/claus/blog/seffs-to-flash-or-not-to-flash/ Faust: Flash Augmenting Standards By blog.space150. "Every web developer faces the problem sooner or later. The client - or the designer - wants to use interactive animation, video or sound to communicate their ideas..." http://blog.space150.com/2007/1/11/faust-flash-augmenting-standards Using Alternate Content as Content in Flash By Geoff Stearns. "I've been going on and on about using progressive enhancement on your pages that use Flash ever since I released FlashObject. The idea is that you build your pages without Flash, then add in the Flash parts later using Javascript if the user has the correct version of the Flash player. One of the really cool side effects of doing this is that Google will then index your alternate content..." http://blog.deconcept.com/2006/02/27/using-alternate-content-flash/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Flash-Only vs. AJAX Sites By Emil Stenstrom. Even though web developers like me have discouraged from building Flash-only sites for as long as I remember, they are popping up all over the place. For no reason! We are ready to make the leap to standards. And our weapon with be AJAX. What kind of sites are built with only Flash? http://friendlybit.com/js/flash-only-vs-ajax-sites/ AJAX Debugging with Firebug By Joe Hewitt. "Firebug, an extension I wrote for the Firefox browser... makes web development fun again. Combined with your favorite text editor, the freely available Firebug...is a highly productive IDE for the complete stack of AJAX technologies..." http://www.ddj.com/dept/debug/196802787 Again JavaScript Libraries By Peter Paul Koch. "In the last days of last year, while I was enjoying a holiday from obtrusive RSS feeds, the JavaScript library discussion seems to have heated up once more. Here's an overview of recent thinking about JavaScript libraries. The remainder of this entry is going to concentrate on the Stuart's and Chris's articles, in that order..." http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2007/01/again_javascrip.html Don't Buy the Pig in the Wig or 'Why Most JavaScript Tutorials Still Suck' Christian Heilmann. "...there is no reason why JavaScript should not be an integral part of web application and web site design - if used in an unobtrusive manner and with maintenance in mind of course. However, lately I've discovered that there are a lot of publications cropping up that have been rightfully forgotten and got a lick of paint and the label Ajax just to be sold again without really looking into upgrading them. You find terrible examples of convoluted JavaScript that was needed in the high time of the browser wars in these books and articles. You also find examples using technologies that are simply not logical to use and actually have proven time and time again to be more destructive than helpful for the usability of your product..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=381 +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Great Minds in Development Video Series By DevSource. Interviews with Jakob Nielsen, Steve Krug, Lou Rosenfeld and others. http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,2024012,00.asp Lee Laughlin Interview By Matt Bailey. "Albinism and Low Vision Search and Accessibility" http://www.accessibilityblog.com/2007/01/16/albinism-and-lowvision/ John Allsopp: Video Interview on Style Master, CSS, Microformats and the Web By Kazuhito Kidachi. "During Web Directions South, Japanese web standards powerhouse Kazuhito Kidachi, who has attended all of our conferences down under, did an interview with John Allsopp about all kinds of things, but with a strong focus on microformats. Part one of the interview is here, and part two, here in English, with Japanese subtitles..." http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2007/01/video_interview.html +09: NAVIGATION. Are You Google-Friendly? By Heidi Bautista. "Is it possible to ensure that Google finds, crawls, and indexes your site? Well, no, there's no way to guarantee your site will be included in Google's index but you can make your site Google-friendly, thus improving your chances. Google even provides the guidelines and tools. This article provides an overview of Google's Webmaster Tools and how you can use them to increase your Google-friendliness and in the process, hopefully, increase your ranking in the search results." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?page=1&cid=3DAB2 +10: PHP. The Building Blocks: Data Types, Literals, Variables, and Constants By Ellie Quigley. "A program can do many things, including perform calculations, sort names, prepare phone lists, display images, play chess, ad infinitum, based on the data given to it. Data types specify what kind of data can be stored and manipulated within a program..." http://www.webreference.com/programming/php/by_example/ Using SimpleXML To Parse RSS Feeds By Stuart Herbert. "...I can fake the multiblog by putting several different blogs on the site, and generating a homepage from the RSS feeds of the individual blogs. Should be simple enough, and it sounds like the perfect nail to hit with the SimpleXML hammer of PHP 5 :) Funnily enough, in work last week we were wondering whether you could use SimpleXML with XML namespaces (alas, we still use PHP 4 at work atm), so armed with the perfect excuse, I set to work..." http://tinyurl.com/yhlpso PHP/Ajax Integration By Douglas Clifton. Douglas Clifton talks about his experience and the information he gleaned from a meeting of the DC area users group concerning PHP and Ajax integration. http://tinyurl.com/yh3z2b +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. It's in the Details: Seven Secrets of a Successful International Website By Huiping Iler. "...Huiping Iler advises us to keep in mind seven factors for designing international Web sites. Her list includes factors beyond language translations, like differences in shopping habits, color usage, interpretation of symbols and (on the design-side) 'text swell' in character rendering. Consideration for the cultures of your Web site users can help you gain new users while you also show them your credibility and respect." http://tinyurl.com/surkb Web Design: 15 Important Research Findings You Should Know By Jens Meiert. "Small selection of web design, usability, and accessibility related results of research, most of them derived from Human Factors International (newsletter). Fortunately, some of them are relatively popular, while others will surely enrich your professional self-conception..." http://tinyurl.com/shspz Beyond Validation By Joe Dolson. "For any qualified web developer, code validation is a step. Usually a step which is repeated frequently through the development process - and an important step, certainly, but just one small step in the process to create a standards-based, accessible web design. Validation, by itself, should never be considered as a primary signifier concerning the quality or accessibility of a website: not all validations are equal, after all. There are a number of important questions to be asked when looking at validation reports - and then there are the vast steps to be taken beyond the validation process. A passed validation demonstrates care and carefulness in the construction of a website - but that validation must be looked at carefully, and you need to also remember that a failed validation does not necessarily indicate the opposite..." http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2007/01/beyond-validation/ +12: TOOLS. LinkLint By James B. Bowlin. "Linklint is an Open Source Perl program that checks links on web sites." http://www.linklint.org/ Link Validation Spider By Dead-links. "Put your website or weblog home page URL in the input box and a little spider will read the html code and check for the broken links. The spider splits links in two categories, internal, from the same host, and external, outgoing link to different domains. Once you have put your start URL the bot will visit your website and follow all links checking for their status. When finish you will see a report showing all the bad links found, not only 404 status." http://www.dead-links.com/ +13: USABILITY. Writing Link and Heading Text By Sarah Horton. "...In this article, we focus on using clarity and key word positioning to facilitate skimming so that users aren't forced to slow their pace. Because we all know what happens when you slow down while surfing, right? You fall in..." http://www.informit.com/guides/content.asp?g=webdesign&seqNum=303&f1 Taking Time to Tour By Jared M. Spool. "The practice of designing web applications is so new to us that a formalized method for studying these works is nonexistent. In order to educate ourselves, we must take tours of various web apps to find out what does and does not work. Jared Spool explores why we should take the time to tour web applications, what web applications we should tour, what we should be looking for, and what we can do with the information we gather." http://www.uie.com/articles/taking_time_to_tour/ The Power of Defaults By Jeff Atwood. "...Defaults are arguably the most important design decisions you'll ever make as a software developer. Choose good defaults, and users will sing the praises of your software and how easy it is to use. Choose poor defaults, and you'll face down user angst over configuration, and probably a host of tech support calls as well..." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000290.html 10 Best Intranets of 2007 By Jakob Nielsen. "This year's winners emphasized an editorial approach to news on the homepage. They also took a pragmatic approach to many hyped 'Web 2.0' techniques. While page design is getting more standardized, there's no agreement on CMS or technology platforms for good intranet design." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/intranet_design.html +14: XML. Xforms.Org "The Nexus for Intelligent Web Apps. http://www.xforms.org/ Thesis Defense on XForms By Henri Sivonen. "...I went to listen to the thesis defense of Mikko Honkala. The title of his doctoral thesis is Web user interaction - a declarative approach based on XForms. The opponents were Jean Vanderdonckt and Dave Raggett. The custos was Petri Vuorimaa. Here are some notes that I scribbled down. I got the heads up about the thesis defense 40 minutes before showtime, so I haven't read the thesis, yet..." http://hsivonen.iki.fi/honkala-xforms/ [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.]