+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 40, March 23, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 40 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. Why Bother With Web Accessibility? By Accessites.org. "This presentation will help you see the value of web accessibility and why it makes sense for you, as a web developer, and why it is a must-have for your clients. Web clients may wonder why they should care and choose to spend a little extra to ensure their site is accessible. This presentation will hopefully provide the needed guidance, understanding, and motivation." http://accessites.org/why/index.php Now You See It, Now You Don't By E-Access Bulletin. "So just what is a decorative image? It seems to me that one person's eye candy is another person's emotional link to a website..." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=106 IBM Tool 'Reads' Web Video for Blind By Candace Lombardi. "IBM has made a tool for Web browsers that will help the blind and visually impaired access streaming multimedia on the Web..." http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6166491.html South by Southwest 2007 Accessified Presentation Slides By Patrick H. Lauke and Ian Lloyd. "Practical accessibility fixes any web developer can use." http://accessify.com/sxsw2007/ Irl-Dean Seminar Presentation Materials By Irish Design for All e-Accessibility Network. "The presentations can now be found at the links below.." http://tinyurl.com/264dkb Choosing an Accessible CMS By Joshue O. Connor. "How do you go about choosing an accessible content management system (CMS)? What are the main criteria for success? And how to ensure ease of use for authors including screen reader users?..." http://juicystudio.com/article/choosing-an-accessible-cms.php Open Document Format (ODF) Accessibility Evaluator By Jon Gunderson. "Computer Science students at the University of Illinois are working on an web based Open Document Format (ODF) accessibility checking and repair tool for improving the accessibility of ODF documents to people with disabilities. They have just added some repair features and would love your feedback on the features and usability of the tool." http://odf.cita.uiuc.edu +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Why Screen Readers Don't Support Aural CSS By Colin Lieberman. "In theory, aural style sheets are cool; lots of us have been excited about them for a long time. But screen readers don't support them..." http://www.cactusflower.org/why-screen-readers-dont-support-aural-css CSS Practice: Pseudo-Namespaces in Complex Projects By Jens Meiert. "Working in complex projects or in projects that don't provide a good overview of forthcoming page types and elements may require a defensive strategy for writing CSS. Such a defensive strategy strives for certain security measures to ensure better maintainability, and one tactic is CSS 'pseudo-namespaces'." http://tinyurl.com/2b7ht2 Internet Explore and Column Collapse By Russ Weakley. "So, you have built a beautiful CSS layout. It looks sexy. You feel powerful, knowledgeable and wise. Then you start adding real content to the layout - images, lists, links etc. Suddenly you layout does not look so sexy in Internet Explorer. For some reason columns are suddenly wider. In some cases the column width increases so much that the entire layout breaks and the column drops below the rest of the content. Your confidence is shattered. You curse CSS and think about table-based layouts. At least they 'work' in IE. Of course, there is a solution." http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/column-collapse/ +03: COLOR. Colorblindness - A Usability Guide for Commercial Applications, Part 2 By Anthony Mitchell. "There are restrictions against colorblind people holding certain positions in our society, but colorblind people sometimes get around those restrictions. Low and no-cost common-sense modifications can be made, and should be made, to reduce the impacts on society from a minor handicap that is often no more than a fashion inconvenience for those afflicted with it." http://www.technewsworld.com/alert/56107.html Color Shades By Christopher Schmitt. "During my brief talk at SXSW Interactive, I mentioned that you could use color shades. Color shades are small PNG images filled with a black or white color set to a certain opacity which can be used for tinting background colors or images..." http://www.christopherschmitt.com/2007/03/16/color-shades/ Color Commitment By Natalie Jost. "Within a given design, I'm seeing 15-20 different colors. That doesn't mean a wild color scheme consisting of each band of the rainbow; more often it's simply varying shades of the same color. I won't pick on any site in particular, but I'll give a fictional example so you can see what I mean." http://www.standardsforlife.com/color-commitment +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. User Research Doesn't Prove Anything By Steve Baty. Recently, I was reading through a sample chapter of a soon-to-be-published book. The book and author shall remain nameless, as shall the book's topic. However, I was disappointed to read, in what otherwise appeared at first glance to be an interesting publication, a very general, sweeping statement to the effect that qualitative research doesn't prove anything and, if you want proof, you should perform quantitative research. The author's basic assumption was that qualitative research can't prove anything, as it is based on small sample sizes, but quantitative research, using large sample sizes, does provide proof. This may come as a shock to everyone, but quantitative research does not provide proof of anything either." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000180.php +05: EVENTS. Real World Accessibility for Ajax and Web Apps May 7, 2007. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. http://furtherahead.com/workshops/texas/ CSS and Accessibility Workshop with Russ Weakley and Roger Hudson May 3 and 4, 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. May 14 and 15, 2007 in Sydney, Australia. May 21 and 22, 2007 in Canberra, Australia. May 28 and 29, 2007 in Brisbane, Australia. http://www.maxdesign.com.au/workshop2007/ Adobe MAX 2007 September 30 - Oct 3, 2007 in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. October 15 - 18, 2007 in Barcelona, Spain. November 1 - 2, 2007 in Tokyo, Japan. http://www.adobemax2007.com/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Wireframing With Patterns By Lindsay Ellerbyns. "When you're starting out as an information architect (IA), being part of a strong community of fellow practitioners helps immensely. A little over a year ago, on Sunday, February 22, 2006, I participated in an informal workshop on wireframing techniques that took place here in Toronto. Bryce Johnson, Director of User Experience Design at Navantis Inc., facilitated and hosted the workshop at his workplace. The knowledge sharing and the wireframing best practices that emerged from the workshop, plus the sense of community I experienced there, helped me build a foundation as an information architect and got me started on developing my own design workflow. Now, I'd like to share the techniques I've learned with a broader community of information architects." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000179.php +07: JAVASCRIPT. Unobtrusive Connected Select Boxes - Yet Another Solution Approach By Christian Heilmann. "...Bradley Wright took it onto himself to solve the issue...His approach was to create a massive dropdown with all the information and then use JavaScript to chunk it up.." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=411 JavaScript: the Big Divide By Peter-Paul Koch. SXSW 2007 Presentation Slides. http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2007/03/javascript_the.html The Perfect Popup was Imperfect... By Ian Lloyd. "But now it's history. The Perfect Popup is dead, long live The Perfect Pop-up..." http://accessify.com/news/2007/03/perfect-popup-unobtrusive-update/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Have Web Conferences, As We Know Them, Played Out Their Role? By Robert Nyman. "From my own experiences, and based on what I've heard from friends, I start to wonder if web conferences as we see them now will lose their charm and become extinct, or at least more rare. Personally, I can't motivate the cost of attending them to myself, since I feel that you don't learn enough..." http://tinyurl.com/yts253 Ten Questions for Sarah Blow By Russ Weakley. "Sarah Blow is a software engineer and .Net developer. She has been working in the industry since 2004 and has a passion for technology, the mobile web and innovation. Sarah founded London Girl Geek Dinners in 2005 and the events have been growing ever since. Sarah talks about her job, the mobile web, London Geek Girls, women in technology, inspirations and more" http://webstandardsgroup.org/features/sarah-blow.cfm +09: NAVIGATION. Best Practices for Stylizing and Customizing Links in CSS By Patrick Griffiths. "Links give the Web its power and interconnectivity. But your links don't have to be blue underlined text. Let the HTML Dog show you how you can stylize and customize HTML links while keeping your site accessible." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=696189&rl=1 The Importance of a Semantic URL By Robert Nyman. "I'm constantly baffled why most companies and web developers don't understand, or care about, the importance of using good semantic URLs. Therefore, I though I'd outline some reasons to help you understand why you really should care..." http://www.robertnyman.com/2007/03/16/the-importance-of-a-semantic-url/ Replicating Browser Behavior: The Top Link By Mike Cherim. "...see no problem with replicating this type of browser behavior on a web page. In fact, after weighing the facts, I think it's beneficial..." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=177 +10: PHP. PHP Security Tip Number 11 By Cal Evans (editor). "I think we can all agree that users are at once the boon and the bane of our applications. On the one hand, if it weren't for users, we wouldn't have security problems. On the other hand, if we didn't have users, we wouldn't need the application to begin with. So we can all agree with the fact that in most cases, users aren't going away." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1817 PHP Security Tip Number 12 By Cal Evans (editor). "We've talked about filtering, we've talked about validating, we've talked about filtering again. Filtering inputs into your application is an important concept and the pre-cursor to many good security practices. However, once you have the input filtered and validated you can't simply sit back and relax. You have to stay vigilant when programming to ensure security throughout your application." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1821 PHP Security Tip Number 13 By Cal Evans (editor). "We've talked about filtering, we've talked about validating, we've talked about filtering again. Filtering inputs into your application is an important concept and the pre-cursor to many good security practices. However, once you have the input filtered and validated you can't simply sit back and relax. You have to stay vigilant when programming to ensure security throughout your application." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1833 PHP Security Tip Number 14 By Cal Evans (editor). "Almost any application running PHP on the back-end uses web technologies for it's front end. Many developers who think hard on PHP security, don't spend a thought on front-end security for their application. Here's a tip to think long and hard about when building your HTML and JavaScript." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1842 +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. in Web- By Virginia DeBolt. "(with apologies to ee cummings)..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2007/03/in-web.html Rules and Context By Andy Rutledge. "Among the more counterintuitive characteristics of art and design is the fact that these endeavors are governed by rules. The rules of artistry (and therefore design) are inviolate and unchanging. If you don't obey the rules, your results will be boring, uninspiring, uncommunicative, and less than compelling. In short: poor art or poor design..." http://www.andyrutledge.com/rules-and-context.php +12: TOOLS. RoboBraille By RoboBraille Consortium. "RoboBraille automates the translation of text documents into Braille and speech. The service is available free of charge to all non-commercial users." http://www1.robobraille.org/websites/acj/robobraille.nsf +13: TYPOGRAPHY. The 100 Percent Easy-2-Read Standard By Oliver Reichenstein. "Most websites are crammed with small text that is a pain to read. Why?..." http://www.informationarchitects.jp/100e2r IE 7 Does Not Resize Text Sized in Pixels By Roger Johansson. "...It partly compensates for that by allowing the user to scale/zoom the entire page, including images (which quickly leads to massive horizontal scrolling because of its bad implementation). But if you choose 'Page/Text Size' from the menu to change the text size, nothing happens if it has been sized in pixels or an absolute unit (points, millimeters, centimeters, inches, or picas)..." http://tinyurl.com/22x3uv +14: USABILITY. Easy to Use: Why the Web Demands Simplicity By Gerry McGovern. "The more sophisticated a society and its economy becomes, the easier it is for its citizens to do what they need to do." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-03-19-easy.htm The Difference Between Usability and User Experience By Jared Spool. "...Usability answers the question, 'Can the user accomplish their goal?'...User experience answers the question, 'Did the user have as delightful an experience as possible?'..." http://tinyurl.com/2xb8fk [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.]