+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 41, March 30, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 41 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: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 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. WCAG 2.0, Validity and The Holy Trinity By Jack Pickard. "...it is my contention that in order to ensure that your content is robust enough to work with unknown future user agents, it must be constructed in a predictable manner so that these unknown future user agents can render it predictably, otherwise someone using the as-yet-unknown user agent could encounter problems that would impact upon whether or not users with disabilities were able to use the site. Did I mention the user agents would be unknown? Validity is a concept that, whilst related to universality, if not achieved may result in accessibility problems with a particular user agent. If you want to ensure - as the WAI do with WCAG 2.0 - that content has to be robust enough to work with unknown future technologies, then you simply must tie down the structure of that content to an agreed specification of some sort, so that the future user agent can understand how it is meant to work with it. So we need validity included. Maybe not at level 1, but it needs to be there..." http://tinyurl.com/36hkz4 Automated PDF Accessibility Testing By Alastair Campbell. "The report showed: It's not tagged, the most basic form of applying accessibility to PDFs. The security settings actively prevent accessibility. No images have alternative texts. The language is not set. Now I would be the first to admit that accessifying PDFs can be real pain, and to do so you currently have to pay an Adobe tax, because no one else will create the tools (even though it's a published format and anyone can). However, I don't understand why you would actively prevent accessibility?" http://alastairc.ac/2007/03/automated-pdf-accessibility/ Setting and Retrieving Accesskeys with JavaScript and DOM By Ian Lloyd. "I've written an article which is published on Think Vitamin about the thorny subject of accesskeys. Love 'em or loathe 'em, they can be useful to some people, but not necessarily when they are forced on people. In the article I demonstrate how JavaScript and the DOM can be used to set and recall chosen accesskeys, but all done unobtrusively and with an evil factor of zero." http://tinyurl.com/2675a6 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. When Readers Choose to Use Their Own Style By Jonathan Christopher. "When taking into consideration the average person browsing the Web, there isn't much cause for concern regarding user style sheets interfering with your intended CSS. Many people are not aware of the fact that you're able to control virtually every aspects of any document rendered in your own browser. This can be attributed to the fact that in order to take advantage of such a feature, a working knowledge of CSS is required..." http://tinyurl.com/2gwcsa 10 Quick Tips for an Easier CSS Life By search-this.com. "As with most things, a logical and structured approach is the best way to go. Therefore I have put together 10 quick tips (in no special order) to help make your CSS coding as pain-free as possible." http://tinyurl.com/2yvbtq +03: COLOR. CSS Values for Colors By Mauricio Samy Silva. "In this article we will explain how to specify colors for a CSS property that accepts color values." http://bitesizestandards.com/bites/css-values-for-colors +04: DREAMWEAVER. CS3 Launch Event Webcast By Adobe. The video is up in case you missed it. http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/launchevent/webcast/ CS3 Sneak Preview: The CSS Panel. By Adrian Senior. "Not everyone can create the right CSS rules, in the right place, on the first try. To get things right, it's often necessary to move, rename, or otherwise change the structure of your CSS. Additionally, many people like to introduce CSS changes incrementally to a site, first by getting the CSS working on a single page, and then working on the entire site. Others prefer to step back further and get the CSS working on a single element before trying to make it work for a whole page. The Manage CSS feature makes it easier for you to move CSS rules from document to document, from the head of a document to an external sheet, between external CSS files, and more. You can also convert inline CSS to CSS rules, and place them where you need them-just by dragging and dropping." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=C4592 CS3 Sneak Preview: Device Central By Adrian Senior. "Integrated with Dreamweaver CS3 as well as throughout the family of Creative Suite 3 software, Adobe Device Central simplifies the creation of mobile content with built-in mobile device skins and regularly updated device profiles. Besides the ability to quickly access essential technical specifications for each device, Adobe Device Central displays HTML content and allows you to scroll using the buttons on the device. The Small Screen Rendering (SSR) mode will shrink the text and images to show accurate rendering as it would appear on the device. Now you can easily design, preview, and test engaging mobile content and rich user interfaces..." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=EBE2E +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Inside Your Users' Minds: The Cultural Probe By Ruth Stalker-Firth. "Drawing on the field of ethnography, Ruth Stalker-Firth introduces a method for studying user behavior and motivations outside the lab." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/culturalprobe +06: EVENTS. Web Workflow and CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 (Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis) April 26, 2007. Atlanta Georgia, U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/29zvy7 Knowbility AccessU May 8-9, 2007. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. http://www.knowbility.org/conference/ Introduction to Web Accessibility July 3, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/webintroaccessibility Web Design World July 9-11, 2007. Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. http://www.ftponline.com/conferences/webdesignworld/2007/seattle/home.aspx O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2007 July 23-27, 2007. Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2007/ World Usability Day (2007 date set) November 8, 2007. http://worldusabilityday.org/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Cross-Browser Scripting with importNode() By Anthony Holdener. "Anthony Holdener explores the world of XML DOM support for web browsers and presents a new technique for cross-browser scripting." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/crossbrowserscripting The Ajax/Flash Continuum By Jeremy Keith. "Whenever I'm talking or writing about Ajax I'm at pains to point out one of the biggest issues that I see with a lot of big Ajax apps out there. The problem in a lot of cases is that they are using Ajax at all. Let me explain. The whole reason for using standards like (X)HTML, CSS and JavaScript, in my opinion, is that they allow you to build sites using progressive enhancement. Fancy browsers get the fancy experience; simple browsers get the simple experience. Ajax can fit quite nicely into this mix. By adding some unobtrusive Ajax enhancements, you can enrich the user experience without sacrificing universal access to your content But this doesn't scale up..." http://domscripting.com/blog/display/102 +08: MISCELLANEOUS. The Top 5 Dumbest Things Web Developers Do Today By Christopher Jason. "The Web is certainly much different in 2007 than it was in 1997 when I created my first Web site. There were things back then that were really annoying (under construction .gifs, blinking text, and ugly frames)- I certainly contributed to the ugliness. But 2007 has its share of terrible Web practices too. That got me thinking: what bothers me the most about Web pages today? Here's my top 5 list of the poorest things Web developers are doing in 2007. If you find some of your methods on this list, don't get angry. Leave some comments and get the discussion going.." http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/dumb-web-design-2007/ How Much Does a Web Page Cost? By Sean Carton. "...The bottom line is Web development is expensive, involves lots of people, lots of management, and lots of back-and-forth with the client...Unfortunately, few of us walk our clients through really understanding the process (and the hours) that make it all happen The next time you encounter someone with sticker shock when handing him an estimate, don't dismiss him. Walk him through what needs to be done and see if he still thinks that page can be whipped out in a couple of hours. It's an educational opportunity that shouldn't be missed." http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625267 Dean Hachamovitch Interview By Oliver Lindberg. "It's taken Microsoft half a decade to come up with a major upgrade to its browser. Why did it take so long and is it too little too late? Oliver Lindberg grills Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer team." http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/dean-hachamovitch YUI Theater - Doug Geoffray: 'From the Mouth of a Screenreader' By Eric Miraglia. "We held our annual internal front end engineering conference at Yahoo! earlier this month, and one of our invited guests was Doug Geoffray of GW Micro. Doug came by to teach Yahoo! front end engineers about the history and current state of screen-reader support in software, including the nature of the current challenges we face developing screen-reader-accessible dynamic web pages. While this talk is historically comprehensive and covers a lot of ground related to how screen readers have evolved on the desktop, the context is important for us on the front end as we begin to confront the same challenges that desktop software developers have been addressing for many years..." http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/03/28/video-geoffray/ +09: NAVIGATION. Don't Click Here - Avoid Verbs? By Hal Goodtree. "...Here at Online Copywriter, we're sensing a sea change when it comes to links using verbs..." http://tinyurl.com/ysxmzv +10: PHP. PHP Security Tip Number 15 By Cal Evans (editor). "As developers, most of us are very messy. I've worked on countless projects and at each either run across or left a trail of diagnostic files laying around." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1849 PHP Security Tip Number 16 By Cal Evans (editor). "This idea was originally posted as a comment to a previous PHP Security Tip. I believe that this is an important issue, and worth being a tip itself." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1857 PHP Security Tip Number 17 By Cal Evans (editor). "Application security should not be a 'when all else fails' situation. It's not something you can "put in later". As we've mentioned before, there is no single silver bullet to solve your application security issues. Security is something that should be rolling around in the back of your dead in the design phase, the coding phase, the testing phase, even after you've rolled your code into production." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1866 PHP Security Tip Number 18 By Cal Evans (editor). "When you allow users to upload files, your system may be at risk. Handle file upload scripts with care. Without proper security precautions, you can leave a gaping hole in your system." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1867 PHP Security Tip Number 19 By Cal Evans (editor). "Sometimes, the best application security you can install is simply disconnecting the network cable from your server." http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1871 +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Webpatterns Wiki By John Allsopp. "WebPatterns is a place to discuss, document and collaborate on patterns for web design and development. The primary focus of the webpatterns project is to intelligently name the main constructs or components that web designers, developers, Information Architects and other web professionals use to build web pages, web sites and web applications. This wiki is for collaboratively documenting these patterns, which will hopefully develop collaboratively into a 'pattern language' that is tentatively named 'webpatterns'." http://webpatterns.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Re-Starting the HTML Engine By Kurt Cagle. "A couple of weeks ago, the W3C made an announcement that caught a great number of people by surprise. After nearly a decade of inactivity, the HTML working group was being restarted, in order to handle the fairly significant amount of development that has occurred on top of the HTML standard since HTML 4.3 became the last formal HTML standard prior to the introduction of XHTML..." http://www.understandingxml.com/2007/03/restarting_the_html_engine.html ESW Wiki By W3C HTML Working Group. "A view of issues in the development of HTML." http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ HTML Issue: Abbr and Acronym By W3C HTML Working Group. "There has been a discussion of: Eliminating one of the two elements: abbr and acronym. Eliminating both abbr and acronym elements and adding SHORT. Others have suggested adding initialism. Still others have suggested adding a @type attribute to abbr with values such as 'acronym', 'initialism', 'truncation', and "other"." http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/AbbrAcronym01 HTML Design Principles (Proposed) By W3C HTML Working Group. "Don't Break The Web...Degrade Gracefully...Solve Real Problems...Avoid Needless Complexity...Priority of Constituencies...Don't Reinvent The Wheel...Pave The Cowpaths...Evolution Not Revolution...Media Independence...Well-Defined Behavior...Handle Errors...Universal Access...Support World Languages...Secure By Design...Visible Metadata...Mostly Semantic Markup..." http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ProposedDesignPrinciples +12: TOOLS. SpamCheck By SiteSell. "...Submit your planned newsletter/ad/etc. (via SpamCheck Form or via e-mail). In seconds, we'll return a Spam Score and recommendations on how to reduce the likelihood of your e-mail being filtered..." http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/ +13: TYPOGRAPHY. Arial or Helvetica? (A Quiz) By Derren Wilson. "Once there was a typeface called Helvetica. It was extremely popular. Later came a software company called Microsoft. They 'borrowed' Helvetica for their operating system and called it Arial. This inferior typeface is now on millions of desktops all over the world. Can you tell the difference between the original and the rip-off in these ten examples?" http://www.iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/ How to Spot Arial By Mark Simonson. "Many of the characters in Helvetica and Arial are very similar to each other, although none are quite identical. Other characters are quite a bit different, and they are the key to telling which is which. Here are some of the most obvious ones..." http://www.ms-studio.com/articlesarialsid.html +14: USABILITY. Designing for "Mature" Users By Mark Hall. "...research-based guidelines that you should know when designing sites that are visited by older users. " http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/mar07.asp#kath Does User Annoyance Matter? Jakob Nielsen. "Making users suffer a drop-down menu to enter state abbreviations is one of many small annoyances that add up to a less efficient, less pleasant user experience. It's worth fixing as many of these usability irritants as you can." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/annoyances.html Ruining the User Experience By Aaron Gustafson. "...There's a lot we, as designers of the web experience, can learn from something as simple as a water glass..." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/ruininguserexperience Keep It Simple, Stupid! By Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz. "Let's put it straight - simplicity is more complex than you probably think it is..." http://tinyurl.com/2aasms Photos Make Websites More Credible By Jens Meiert. "One finding of Stanford University's important work concerning web credibility is that photos [can] make websites more credible...." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20070328/photos-make-websites-more-credible/ [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.]