+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 33, February 2, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 33 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: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: TYPOGRAPHY. 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. Summer Internship at Google, Inc: Accessibility Experiences By A.D. Shaikh and P. Strain. "This paper summarizes some of the major lessons learned about conducting usability tests with visually impaired participants while working as interns at Google, Inc. The lessons were in four major areas: (1) recruitment and scheduling, (2) preparing the usability lab for testing sessions, (3) using think-aloud protocol with screen readers, and (4) helping observers to get the most out of the test sessions." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/91/accessibility.html The Hard Facts About Heading Structure By Kevin Yank. "...Because assistive technologies like screen readers allow users to navigate through a document by its heading structure, your headings need to form a sensible structure independent from the rest of your document markup..." http://tinyurl.com/3c3mv9 Web Accessibility Presentation By Dennis Lembree. Dennis Lembree's presentation on web accessibility from the January meetup for Refresh Detroit. Topics included the definition of the term, general issues, guidelines and law, and advocates. http://www.checkengineusa.com/ce/pres_2007_01_24/default.htm Proceedings Web Accessibility Capacity Building Institute Proceedings are available for the Web Accessibility Capacity Building Institute (CBI), held November 29 - December 1, 2006 in Seattle. http://www.washington.edu/doit/cbi/webaccess/proceedings.html Writing an Accessibility Statement By Leonie Watson. "The article explains the use and importance of accessibility statements, and provides a template for download." http://tinyurl.com/2v4ld9 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Css Collection By Meryl Evans. "I've been ironing the kinks (still has a few left) and polishing up CSS Collection. It's a showcase of good quality sites using CSS for layouts. As I sort the previously submitted sites into categories, you'll be able to see examples in categories that interest you or just browse the screen shot thumbnails. There are many CSS galleries and we all have similar features. One thing that makes CSS Collection stand out is that it's the first gallery (May 2001). The gallery is a great way to get inspiration. I find when I'm struggling to come up with design ideas and suggestions, I browse through the gallery and look for specific features. Not copy the site ... but look for examples of well done buttons, navigation and so on." http://www.csscollection.com/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. CSS Design Basics with Dreamweaver - Part 3: Margins and Padding By Adrian Senior. "Learn how margins and padding values affect your design layouts and how you can set your margin values to maintain a consistent relationship between your elements..." http://tinyurl.com/yq4xop +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Eye Gaze Patterns While Searching vs. Browsing a Website By S. Shrestha and K. Lenz. "This article discusses users' visual scan paths of web pages containing text and/or pictures while conducting browsing and searching tasks. User performance on three usability tasks on an e-commerce website is described. Results show that users follow a fairly uniform scan path when browsing through pictures, and a more random path while specifically searching through them. Additionally, users appeared to follow Nielsen's F pattern (2006) while both browsing and searching through text-based pages." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/91/eyegaze.html A Review of Morae for Usability Testing By S. Shrestha. "TechSmith's Morae is a powerful tool that is useful for any usability study. Its simplicity, efficiency, cost effectiveness and portability has redefined the data collection process and allows researchers to focus on the user experience rather than the data collection tools. This article discusses some of the features of this tool and proposes some enhancements to make it even more powerful to usability practitioners." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/91/MoraeAnalysis.html Behind the Mirror - Usability Testing Musings (Day One) By Chris Heilmann. "I spent the day today in some usability testing of a product I am involved in at the moment. We sat in a small room with coffee, soft drinks and far too many chocolately nibbles and watched people through a one-way mirror remark on our wireframes and try to solve tasks given to them. I've done this in the past, but had a bit of a break in between, so it was fun coming back to it. The most interesting part is that in the year or so I have been out of that loop not much changed..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=387 Testing Incentives: The Best Way to Pay By Cliff Anderson. "Recently, I informally surveyed the members on a popular usability listserv to see how other usability professionals compensate their participants. I heard from 37 respondents. Here's how you compensate your participants, by the numbers." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/testing-incentives +05: EVENTS. AbilityNet Training February 5, 2007. February 19, 2007. March 5, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/webopencourses IUE 2007 Internet User Experience February 19-22, 2007. Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. http://www.internetuserexperience.biz/ Human Factors International Training February 19-March 2, 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. March 19-30, 2007 in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. May 7-18, 2007 in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. July 30-Aug 10, 2007 in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. August 13-24, 2007 in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. September 17-28, 2007 in Minneapolis, Minneapolis, U.S.A. http://www.humanfactors.com/training/fasttrack2007.asp Portal Conference 2007 June 5-8, 2007. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania U.S.A. https://biz.gettysburg.edu/it/portal06/index.cfm E-Learn 2007 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education October 15-19, 2007. Quebec City, Canada http://www.aace.org/conf/elearn/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. WAI-ARIA Live Regions By Gez Lemon. "Many of the accessibility issues associated with AJAX will be solved by the live regions concept from the WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications) suite. Live regions allow assistive technologies, such as screen readers, to be informed of updates without losing their place in the content..." http://juicystudio.com/article/wai-aria-live-regions.php A Note About Event Bubbling By Peter-Paul Koch. "Just now I delivered a project during the making of which I noted a feature of event bubbling that, though totally logical, came as a surprise to me. No doubt someone else will be surprised, too, and may even be able to use it in a project..." http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2007/01/a_note_about_ev.html Create Data Structures with JavaScript Arrays By Tony Patton. "The JavaScript array object provides powerful support for assigning multiple data values to one variable, but you can also use it to utilize stack and queue data structures in an application. Get more information about JavaScript stacks and queues." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6153912.html Learn JavaScript Before Tasting the Library Kool-Aid By Roger Johansson. "...Unfortunately it seems that when libraries or frameworks enter the room, best practices regarding usability, accessibility, and unobtrusive scripting are very easily thrown out of the window. In most cases this is not the fault of the libraries themselves, but of badly written demos (which will be copied and used as-is, no matter what you say), lack of documentation, and developers who use the libraries and their accompanying demos recklessly, without considering the consequences...whether you swear by libraries or not, make sure that all your JavaScript is accessible and unobtrusive, and remember that You cannot rely on JavaScript being available. Period." http://tinyurl.com/2d8kjz +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Streamlining the Design Process with Paper Prototyping: An Interview with Carolyn Snyder By Ashley McKee. "Ashley McKee recently sat down with Carolyn Snyder, author of Paper Prototyping, and founder of Snyder Consulting, to get answers to some of the most pervasive questions surrounding paper prototyping." http://tinyurl.com/ypmktf Access 2.0 Interview - Richard Cranfield By Paul Crichton. "Richard Cranfield has dyslexia. It is often called the 'hidden disability' because it can go undiagnosed despite the problems that it causes with reading and writing. For web developers, too, it presents challenges on how they design pages, and unlike other accessibility issues, relatively little material is available to help. For example, whilst most are aware that contrast is an issue, not everyone knows that an off-white background can be better than white, or better even the yellow on black as established as the typical 'high visibility' colour scheme by Betsy..." http://tinyurl.com/3dtoya +08: NAVIGATION. The Importance of Link Highlighting By Grant Broome. "...This all really boils down to two things: 1. Make sure that all links are visible when they receive focus. 2. Create links that highlight when they receive focus..." http://tinyurl.com/yohel3 Don't Be The Weakest Link By Paul Boag. "Paul Boag discusses some of the accessibility and usability issues around the way we style up the humble hypertext link..." http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/dont-be-the-weakest-link Is There an Example of a Scalable Taxonomy? By Joshua Porter. "I'm not happy with any taxonomy, really. I can't think of a single one that works well for me, let alone works perfectly. Even a site with as simple a taxonomy as Apple.com confuses me, with some links on the 2nd level nav (like software and hardware) that are clearly a wider scope than those on the top level. I have to remember that this is the case when I want to find the software pageÉI have to remember the taxonomy, which to me is a mark of a poor one." http://bokardo.com/archives/example-of-a-scalable-taxonomy/ Scalable or Usable Taxonomies By Donna Maurer. "Joshua Porter has an interesting blog post titled "Is there an Example of a Scalable Taxonomy?". What I found interesting is that the title is about scalability, and he links to some interesting articles about scalability (comparing taxonomies with folksonomies in the main), but his examples are about usability. These are quite different things..." http://www.digital-web.com/news/2007/01/scalable_or_usable_taxonomies/ +09: PHP. The Building Blocks: Data Types, Literals, Variables, and Constants - Part 3 By Ellie Quigley. "In the last part of this series, we look at creating constants with the define() function, the constant() function, predefined and 'magic' constants." http://www.webreference.com/programming/php/by_example3/ PHP Tutorial By w3schools. "PHP is a powerful server-side scripting language for creating dynamic and interactive websites. PHP is the widely-used, free, and efficient alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's ASP. PHP is perfectly suited for Web development and can be embedded directly into the HTML code. The PHP syntax is very similar to Perl and C. PHP is often used together with Apache (web server) on various operating systems. It also supports ISAPI and can be used with Microsoft's IIS on Windows. Start learning PHP..." http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp Introduction to PHP Classes (OOP) By phpfreak. "Learn how to use PHP Classes for Object Oriented Programming" http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/48/0.php Operators In PHP By fastcreators. "...Today we are going to discuss different types of operators used in PHP...." http://www.phpfreaks.com/articles/2832/0.php PHP MySQL Tutorials By brainbell.com. http://www.brainbell.com/tutors/php/php_mysql/index.html Loops In PHP By haroon. "Let's move towards our today's lecture which is about Loops..." http://www.howtoforge.com/loops_in_php +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Adobe to Release PDF for Industry Standardization By Adobe. "Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)." http://tinyurl.com/24lqk7 Calling Your Bluff on PDF By Joe Clark. "A common lie reiterated by standards ideologues is that HTML is an open standard while PDF is proprietary..." http://blog.fawny.org/2007/01/29/pdf-iso/ HTML Standards Process Returning from the Grave: Comment-17195 By Maciej Stachowiak (Apple). "We declined to participate in the XHTML2 Working Group because we think XHTML2 is not an appropriate technology for the web..." http://webkit.org/blog/?p=89#comment-17195 Working Together for a Better Web By Molly E. Holzschlag. "I'm excited to announce that I've signed on with the Internet Explorer team on a contract basis to work on standards and interoperability issues..." http://tinyurl.com/2tsmal Former WaSP Interoperability Advocate Hired by Microsoft By Scott M. Fulton. "The lady who in September 2005 called Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's claim in a Business Week article that his company would eventually 'win the Web' "deplorable in the light of what the Web means to the world, to users, to designers and developers and to put it into Microsoft parlance, customers," now finds herself working for him..." http://tinyurl.com/2f8xrs +11: TOOLS. Conference Schedule Creator By Dmitry Baranovskiy. Easy timetable generator using correct table markup and microformats. http://dmitry.baranovskiy.com/work/csc/ DOM Tool: Mr T Edition By Muffin Research Labs. Mr. T talks to you about your bad syntax :-) "...Let us hope it encourages developers to pay more attention. In order to trigger an error try using inline style or event handlers (or use link). While Stu, must remain the default Mr T is available in the options. Any suggestions for more characters? Perhaps the hair of Christian Heilmann might make an appearance." http://kid666.com/MuffinDomTool/ +12: TYPOGRAPHY. The Effect of Typeface on the Perception of Email By A.D. Shaikh, D. Fox, and B. Chaparro. "This study investigated the effect that a font has on the reader?s perception of an email. Based on a previous study by Shaikh, Chaparro, and Fox (2006), a sample email message was presented in three fonts (Calibri, Comic Sans, and Gigi). The three chosen fonts represented a high, medium, and low level of congruency for email messages. The least congruent typeface (Gigi) resulted in different perceptions of the email document and its author. However, no significant differences were found between the moderately and highly congruent fonts." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/91/POF.html +13: USABILITY. Comparing the Usability of Three Dual Language School Websites By S. Naidu, V. Hinkle, and S. Shrestha. "This study evaluated the usability of three websites for Spanish-English Dual Language K-8 schools. Twelve participants (6 parents, 6 teachers) reviewed and performed tasks on the three public school websites. Site usability was determined through both objective and subjective measures, including task completion time, first-click, total number of pages visited, task success, perceived task difficulty, user satisfaction, and overall ranked preference. Results indicated that one site was preferred more than the others by both user groups and resulted in more efficient search behavior. Clear navigation, link terminology, and proper use of both languages were found to be critical factors contributing to the sites' usability." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/91/schools.html You Only Get Three Seconds to Make an Impression By Des Traynor. "People have forgotten that the most important thing on a website is the content." http://tinyurl.com/39ro5c Enhance Your (Page) Performance! By Christian Heilmann. "One of the biggest obstacles to tackle in web site and web application design is the initial response time of the product. There is a common feeling among web users that things just don't happen fast enough..." http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/dev/enhance-your-page-performance Mapping Your Website Redesign Strategy By Maish Nichani. "...The Eliminate, Reduce, Raise and Create framework by INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne is a popular technique for analyzing business strategy. They have written an entire book -- Blue Ocean Strategy -- on this technique. We're going to borrow a page from it and map our redesign strategy..." http://tinyurl.com/yo54fv The Changing Face of University Websites By Maish Nichani. "...In a recent project for a local university, I looked at the pages of 25 universities, mostly from the US, UK, Australia - the countries that local students look to for higher education studies. In this respect, the sample size being terribly small, I cannot say for certain that what I've learned is taking place universally. But the areas of change are so fundamental (and exciting) that I just had to write about it..." http://tinyurl.com/foykn The End-User Manifesto By Hugh Macleod. "Hugh Macleod has posted an end-user manifesto for web and application design, originally created by Danny V. The first five items: 1. Don't waste my time. 2. Help me do the right thing. 3. Respect my decisions. 4. Design well, and guide me to make the right decisions by that design. 5. Don't lie to me - if I see something in front of me, then I should be able to act on it unless the interface tells me I can't." http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003583.html Good Headings Help, Bad Headings Hurt By Caroline Jarrett. "Medium frequency headings (about every 200 words): the best. Low frequency headings (about every 300 words): in the middle. High frequency (about every 100 words) and No headings: tied for the worst, with 'No headings' slightly ahead." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3666.asp Headings By Ginny Redish. "...headings need to make connections to the user. Single nouns or noun phrases that have no people and no verbs in them do not do well as headings. However, this does not mean that questions are always the best type of heading..." http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/headings.cfm Creating Effective Headings By arconics.com "On the Web, you live or die by your headings. A good one makes it easier for surfers to find your text, and much more likely that they will read what you have written. A bad heading ensures that few, if any, users will find your text at all, and that those who do will be less likely to read further. During this lesson, you will learn an efficient process for creating effective headings, plus eight quick rules. You will also work through a series of exercises and assignments to hone your skills..." http://tinyurl.com/yokdtp +14: XML. XForms in Firefox By Elliott Rusty Harold. "Using the experimental Mozilla XForms extension, you can process XForms in your browser today. While not yet deployed widely enough for use on the public Internet, XForms may be suitable for some intranet applications. This article demonstrates basic XForms processing as currently supported by Firefox and the Mozilla XForms plug-in." http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-xformsfirefox/ Simple Web Syndication with RSS 2.0 By Nilpo. "RSS was originally created in 1999 by Netscape as a channel description framework for their My Netscape Network. MNN was a portal system that allowed end users to selectively view new content from their choice of content providers. RSS was created as a means of gathering that content. Since its creation, RSS has been updated and expanded to handle a much wider range of content with a far broader range of uses." http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/XML/Simple-Web-Syndication-with-RSS-2/ [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.]