+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 35, February 16, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 35 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: FLASH. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 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. Questioning WCAG 2 By Mike Davies. "...What web developers need is a document that replaces WCAG 1. A set of guidelines that takes into account the significant improvements in web technologies since WCAG 1 was first published. I think WCAG 2, by itself, will fail to deliver that replacement. I can't see myself using, or recommending, WCAG 2.0 until its complemented with guidelines about making Flash accessible, making Dom Scripting accessible. I feel I'm left to my own devices on these technologies with WCAG 2. Since we are already left to our own devices now, how is a War and Peace sized abstract recommendation going to improve things?" http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/access/QuestioningWcag2 Should alt Text Be Used To Paint A Thousand Words? By Sharon Perry. "We've all been told that alt text is an essential part of web accessibility, but how much detail do we actually need to include and who should do it?" http://tinyurl.com/yr3s85 US Organizations Liable Under UK Law? By Mel Pedley. "Until recently, it was assumed that the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) only applied to organizations, and web sites, within the UK. However, a recent successful complaint brought under the DDA might just change that assumption." http://blackwidows.co.uk/blog/?p=92 The Petition, the 'Prat' and a Political Ideal By Tom Geoghegan. "A (UK) government minister has labeled the controversial online petitions on Downing Street's website as an own-goal thought up by a 'prat'. So how does the man behind the site defend it? And does the petition reliably reflect national mood?" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6354735.stm Web Accessibility - What is It? What are the Benefits? By Paul Walsh. "It's time we started talking about Web accessibility and the benefits it can bring to you and your business. It is after all, a specialist subject for us. We are in the process of documenting the benefits specifically for blogs, but the contents of this post are contextual enough for normal Web sites and blogs..." http://tinyurl.com/2ymztw Why 'left: -9999px;' is Better For Accessibility Than 'display: none;' By Nick Fitzsimons. "...So there you go: use one of the off screen methods and the screen reader will treat your content as being there; use the display or visibility method and the screen reader will discard it, meaning that this is a reliable way of concealing content from both a normal user and a screen reader user, should you have a reason to do so. But armed with the information above, you'll at least know why you're using whichever method you apply." http://tinyurl.com/25t75o +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Tabs 2.0 By Joshua Kaufman. "...They're the same, simple cross-browser tabs, but they use a different CSS technique that allows them to work in 17 browsers across Windows, Mac and Linux. And they no longer have the ugly alignment bug that was caused when the text size was changed..." http://unraveled.com/projects/css_tabs/ Extra White Space in Lists By Christian Heilmann. "...The problem is that you most likely have line breaks and tabs in between the closing LI and the next opening LI..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=392 +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Long Live the User (Persona): Talking with Steve Mulder By Liz Danzico, Steve Mulder. "More companies are doing user research than ever before, but what is becoming of all the information? Steve Mulder talks about strategies for getting research into shape so real people can actually use it. The key: user personas." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/long-live-the-user +04: EVENTS. CS547 Human-Computer Interaction Seminar Spring 2007. Weekly speakers on topics related to human-computer interaction design. The talks are also available on the Web via Stanford OnLine. http://hci.stanford.edu/seminar/ International PHP Conference 2007 May 21-23, 2007. Stuttgart, Germany http://phpconference.com/ UIST 2007 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology October 7-10, 2007. Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A. http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2007/ +05: FLASH. Flash's Weaknesses: Then and Now By Jonathan Nicol. "While big steps have been made in certain areas (video, printing, plugin upgrades), search engine visibility and accessibility still elude Flash. I would like to think there will one day be a 'magic' solution to the issue of search engine visibility, but I don't hold much hope. What makes Flash powerful is the almost limitless approaches developers and designers can take to presenting content, and of course this is also what makes it so unfriendly to search engines. Without a standardized method of presenting content, I don't see how search engines have any hope of making sense of the internal complexities of a Flash movie. I guess only time will tell whether this shortcoming can be surmounted!" http://f6design.com/journal/2007/02/10/flashs-weaknesses-then-and-now/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The No-Knead Approach to Information Architecture, 1 of 5 By Louis Rosenfeld. "...Grappling with a large, intimidating information architecture challenge? Here's my new thinking-boiled down to four easy, no-knead steps. I'll be posting them serially in the coming weeks, and I hope you'll find these steps useful: Step #1: Ban the word "redesign" from your meetings. Step #2: Determine who your most important audiences are. Step #3: Determine each primary audience's 3-5 major needs. Step #4: Make damned sure your site addresses each of those needs." http://tinyurl.com/yp49xy +07: JAVASCRIPT. Avoiding Evil JavaScript By Kevin Yank. "Bad JavaScript is worse than no JavaScript at all, because it can prevent some users from accessing your site. There are at least three groups of people that you need to look out for when adding JavaScript to the mix, and I've listed them here in order of increasing difficulty..." http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=158#5 DOM Scripting Essentials in Under 10 Minutes By Christian Heilmann. "...I just recorded one of the sessions on the essentials of DOM scripting and put this 'dry run' screencast on my server for you to check out..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=391 How Can I Track the Change in a Form Field Before the Form Was Submitted By Christian Heilmann. "...A much cleverer version is to run only one loop when the form was submitted and compare each field's defaultValue property with the value property. It is not that known, but every field has a defaultValue property that stores what has been the value in the value attribute when the element was rendered. The value property stores what was entered in the field at the time you read it out. When the two don't match, the user has altered the field..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=393 +08: MISCELLANEOUS. The Village Stew By Nathan Smith. "Some web design projects suffer from lack of leadership. We've all seen the resultsâ - home pages overflowing with everything including the kitchen sink, or sites without focus that, in the end, don't pay off for the client or their visitors. Nathan Smith shares two stories that will help you explainâ to both your clients and your teamâ the importance of leadership, focus, and structure when building a site." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_village_stew/ Web 2.0 Video: Complete Transcript By Jesper Ronn-Jensen. With the help and encouragement of Claude Almansi, I have now transcribed the web 2.0 video 'We are the web'. http://justaddwater.dk/2007/02/08/web-20-video-complete-transcript/ +09: NAVIGATION. The Humble Breadcrumb By Jonathan Nicol. "Recently I designed a site that had two navigation menus: a global navigation bar and a breadcrumb trail. It was the first time I had ever used breadcrumbs as the only form of secondary navigation, and it got me thinking about this humble form of website navigation..." http://f6design.com/journal/2007/02/09/the-humble-breadcrumb/ Search Doesn't Work Out-of-the-Box By James Robertson. "...This briefing outlines some of the activities needed to make search effective, highlighting key steps that can be completed within just a few days..." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_searchdesign/index.html +10: PHP. Using Abstract Factory Classes in PHP 5 to Work with Online Forms By Alejandro Gervasio. "Any PHP developer who has worked with pattern-based programming in PHP for a while knows that the abstract factory pattern is useful for building classes that return (to client code) objects whose type depend on the content where they're used. Welcome to the final installment of the series 'Using abstract factory classes in PHP 5.' If you're interested in learning the key concepts of this helpful pattern, this three-part series will teach you how to apply it by developing numerous educational examples..." http://tinyurl.com/2gt2da Working With Fractions In CSS and PHP By Bernard Peh. "Most of us are uncomfortable with using fractions when witting programs. If we encounter a fraction, we will first convert it into a floating point number (with decimals) and proceed from there. Most programming languages would prefer to use 0.5 as opposed to 1/2 because the later conflicts with the syntax of the languages. In this article, I will discuss an approach to working with fractions in PHP and CSS in one of the projects that I have done..." http://evolt.org/working-with-fractions-in-css-and-php +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Are Teachers the Final Link in the Chain? By Virginia DeBolt. "...education and teacher training are the last link in the web standards chain...The technical people have all figured out that web standards work and make life easier. The corporate interests have all figured out that web standards bring a better return on investment and make good business sense. The accessibility advocates have all determined that web standards promote accessibility. The browser makers have all (finally, mostly) come into compliance with web standards. Everything is in place, everyone is convinced, but new sites are still being created using less-than-standards compliant code. Is education holding us back?...It seems that all those busy, over-scheduled teachers in all the large and small colleges and universities around the country haven't gotten the word yet. They haven't had the training they need. They haven't had time to figure out CSS for themselves. They don't have the textbooks and resources they need. They are hamstrung by outdated requirements and antique regulations for technology education. And, as a result, they are not turning out students trained in standards, ready for industry jobs, who can produce sites based on best practices..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2007/02/are-teachers-final-link-in-chain.html Standard Compliance has Two Different Meanings By Sean Fraser. "Websites that are standards compliant may not been seen as standards-compliant. It actually makes sense. However, when I was first learning how building websites with web standards was done, it made me crazy. Web standards is Web Standards. Everyone should want websites that are compliant with web standards doctrines. Or, as commonly stated, 'Everyone should have standards complaint sites'. Sites whose (X)HTML and Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS) pass validation, meets Accessibility guidelines and Universality principles. That's simple. Then, you've got 'Standards-Complaint Mode'..." http://tinyurl.com/37tp26 Tutorials on Microformats By Roger Costello. "Microformats enable you to enrich your web pages (HTML, XHTML, RSS, Atom, Blog, XML). They don't affect how your web pages are rendered by a browser. But they have a huge (positive) impact on the ability of web tools to collect, understand, and process the information in your web pages. Microformats are tiny bits of information injected into web pages. When you add together the tiny bits of information over thousands or millions of web pages, you have a mountain of valuable information that can help with searching, understanding, and processing the web. There is a growing collection of microformats..." http://www.xfront.com/microformats/ +12: TYPOGRAPHY. WCAG 2 Response on Relative Units By Alastair Campbell. "I had submitted a comment on WCAG about relative units, and looking through my incoming links with Google's new external links tool, I discovered that they had taken it on, partially...." http://alastairc.ac/2007/02/wcag-2-response-on-relative-units/ +13: USABILITY. Do Government Agencies and Non-Profits Get ROI From Usability? By Jakob Nielsen. "Although the gains don't fall into traditional profit columns, there are clear arguments for improving usability of non-commercial websites and Intranets. In one example, a state agency could get an ROI of 22,000% by fixing a basic usability problem." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/government-nonprofit.html The Ethics of Brain Scanning and Usability By John S. Rhodes. "...consider how functional MRIs might be used in the realm of user experience, usability testing, and information architecture. Assuming that the intention is to increase usability and improve life for users, this presents no real problem. But, if this information is used to profile or stereotype users, especially for certain marketing activities, then we should be concerned." http://tinyurl.com/229kta Designing from Both Sides of the Screen By Kevin Godby. "This week in HCI 522, I presented a number of design guidelines from Ellen Isaacs' and Alan Walendowsk's book 'Designing from Both Sides of the Screen: How designers and engineers can collaborate to build cooperative technology'. The guidelines in the book fall under four basic tenets: On being a butler; Don't impose: respect physical effort; Don't impose: respect mental effort; Be helpful..." http://tinyurl.com/2a87qj How Much Control Should our Users Have? By Kathy Sierra. "...As user capability (knowledge, skill, expertise) increases, so should control -- at least for a lot of things we make, especially software, and especially when we're aiming not just for satisfied users but potentially passionate users. The big problem is that we make our beginning users suffer just so our advanced users can tweak and tune their configurations, workflow, and output...The simple rule we so often forget is: The amount of pain and effort should match the user's perceived payoff. In other words, the user has to think it's worth it...Like everything else, it all comes back to user education. The more we help them learn and improve, the more control they can handle... and appreciate. By putting the user first, it's our job to give them the responsibility they want, but only when we know they're ready to handle it." http://tinyurl.com/25oute +14: XML. Serving Up XHTML With the Correct MIME Type By Keystone Websites. "...For most websites, authoring in HTML 4.01 is perfectly sufficient. Most of the features available in XHTML are available in good old HTML. However, some sites may wish to take advantage of the extensibility of XML, so delivering in XHTML with the correct MIME may be important. For this reason, Keystone Websites has developed a technique that takes advantage of the PHP server-side scripting language. Web pages can be served in one of two ways..." http://keystonewebsites.com/articles/mime_type.php [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.]