+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 43, April 13, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 43 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TYPOGRAPHY. 13: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessible Web 2.0 Applications with WAI-ARIA By Martin Kliehm. "Our web applications can suffer from inaccessibility problems due to inherent markup limitations. Martin Kliehm helps us sort through the WAI specs for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) to increase usability." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/waiaria IBM Helps Blind 'See' Web Video By Geoff Adams-Spink. "Technology giant, IBM, is soon to launch a multimedia browser to make audio and video content accessible to people with vision impairments..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6507189.stm WAI Handouts and WAI Flyer By W3C. "The following two handouts are available for you to print and distribute at conferences, presentations, and other outreach opportunities. You may use these as is, according to the W3C copyright and document use policies. Make sure to include the link to the online version for updates to the information..." http://www.w3.org/WAI/flyer/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. How to Clear CSS Floats Without Extra Markup: Different Techniques Explained By Robert Nyman. "When using floats in CSS, without a doubt you have encountered the interesting effects it will have on the following content. Here I will show you different ways to clear floats without any extra mark-up." http://tinyurl.com/2avopo How I Use CSS Background-Color for Layout Corrections By Sean Fraser. "I don't know if you ever happen to do this but it occurs when Sleepyheadedness sets-up or Stygian Deaths Rays Hypnotically emanating from Venus by way of your monitor have rendered you Brain Dead. Style sheet errors. I find that CSS 'background-color' property fixes things..." http://tinyurl.com/yqm6m7 How To Attack An Internet Explorer Display Bug - Revised for IE7 By John Gallant, Holly Bergevin. "Many authors who desire to make the switch to tableless design can be brought up short when they encounter various browser bugs. Internet Explorer for Windows can present some significant challenges to this switch, exhibiting a variety of display problems. Although a full understanding of how IE 'gets it wrong' may not be within reach for everyone, it is possible to get by with a few key bug fixing tools. The original article was written with IE6 and lower browsers in mind, but there's a new player in the arena, IE7. While many of the display problems have been dealt with, this new browser may still need some special treatment. So, we've revised, updated and rewritten this article, with a focus on how to bring IE7 along when it needs bug fixing like its older siblings. This is information you need to know!" http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=7A8DF Use Class with Semantics in Mind By W3C. "Often people use class names like bluetext, or redborder. A much better way to name your classes is with the role a certain HTML element of that class has..." http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/goodclassnames +03: DREAMWEAVER. Introducing CMX JumpStart Detroit By Sheri German. "We are pleased to introduce our latest CMX JumpStart: Detroit. Created by Adrian 'JoJo' Senior, it has all the trademarks of his designs: clean with no-fuss CSS, easy to modify, and always professional looking. This two-column, centered, fixed-width layout includes a shadowed, tapering background image on the main column that gives the effect of a raised platform for the content. Like all JumpStarts, Detroit uses valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 markup and follows WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=97B68 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users' Verbal Comments By Isabelle Peyrichoux. "...Observing a user perform a task provides more reliable information than simply asking the user how easy it would be to perform the task..." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000183.php +05: EVENTS. What's New in Creative Suite 3 Web Premium Adobe Online Event. April 17, 2007, 11:00-12:00 Pacific Time. http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=860577 The Creative Professional Association (CPA) Annual Conference May 8-11, 2007. Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. http://www.creativeprofessional.org Web Video Summit 2007 June 27-28, 2007. San Jose, California, U.S.A. http://www.webvideosummit.com Flashforward 2007 September 19-21, 2007. Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. http://www.flashforwardconference.com +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The No-Knead Approach to Information Architecture, 3 of 5 By Lou Rosenfeld. "...Determine who your most important audiences are. Many organizations -- academic institutions, for example -- already have an excellent grasp of who their primary audiences are, but you'd be surprised at how many don't. Ask yourself right now: do you know who they are?..." http://tinyurl.com/yt9kcd Visio - The Interaction Designer's Nail Gun (3rd edition) By Henrik Olsen. "This is a third edition of my article on using Visio for rapid prototyping for the web. The new edition includes a minor update of the GUUUI Web Prototyping Tool that eliminates a major shortcoming: the inability to create scrolling pages. The update also includes brand new sketchy interface widgets..." http://www.guuui.com/issues/02_07.php +07: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Language Essentials By Tom Negrino and Dori Smith. "This week you'll learn about the basic elements of JavaScript such as loops, arrays and functions. You'll see how you can use JavaScript to write your Web pages for you, how JavaScript handles user errors and much more." http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/essentials/ A Detailed Explanation: How to Create a Maintainable Dynamic Slide Show in JavaScript By Christian Heilmann. "Following the workshop in Singapore I promised to send out a more detailed explanation how to create a simple slide show in JavaScript that can be fully maintained in HTML, redesigned in CSS and all dynamic labels changed without having to change the main script. The trick is once again separation, and if you care to learn more about this, check the 5 step example how to create a maintainable slideshow..." http://icant.co.uk/articles/maintainablejavascriptslideshow/ JavaScript Hijacking Vulnerability Detected By Fortify Software. "Fortify Software's Security Research Group has announced a new class of vulnerability: JavaScript Hijacking. This is the first class of vulnerability that specifically affects Web 2.0 AJAX-style web applications. Download Fortify's advisory detailing the risk and how developers can make their code secure..." http://www.fortifysoftware.com/advisory.jsp +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Web Directions North 2007 Resources and Podcasts "Every one of our in depth sessions was packed with new ideas and techniques to help designers and developers build more usable, more accessible, and simply better web solutions. We want to make as much of this as we can available to those who simply couldn't be there. Over time we'll be releasing podcasts, as well as speakers notes and slides as they come to hand..." http://north.webdirections.org/wdn07-resources/ EASI's (Equal Access to Software and Information) Conference Podcasts The latest addition to the EASI podcast page is "Update on U.S. Accessible Web Litigation and Global Law and Policy" by Cynthia Waddell, Executive Director, ICDRI. http://easi.cc/podcasts/conference/conference.htm Gel (Good Experience Live) Videos They have added videos of the Gel 2007 conference speakers." http://gelconference.com/videos.php Microsoft is Dead By Paul Graham. "...Everyone can see the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web -- not just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop..." http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html Keeping Up By Andy Rutledge. "...Education is not a first step in our profession. It is an ongoing process that is a vital part of our profession every day of the week. Like programmers, if we rely on our current grasp of the world, of our endeavor, and of our professional landscape, we're falling behind. Like programmers, we have an obligation to keep up." http://www.andyrutledge.com/keeping-up.php +09: NAVIGATION. Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful By Jakob Nielsen. "Breadcrumbs use a single line of text to show a page's location in the site hierarchy. While secondary, this navigation technique is increasingly beneficial to users." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/breadcrumbs.html Using NOODP and NOYDIR By John S. Britsios. "When one of your web site's pages shows up in a list of results on a search engine, what do people see? Often the contents of the description tag of your pages are displayed in the search results. At other times the search engines will display portions of your page's content which contain words used in the search query. This helps people to see if your page is relevant to their search request. Sometimes, if you are listed in DMOZ (ODP), the search engines will display snippets of text about your site taken from them instead of your description meta tag. You can force the search engine to ignore the ODP information by including a robots meta tag like this..." http://tinyurl.com/2hmxvc +10: PHP. Making a Font Selector By Mike Cherim. "We recently made a font selector for this site to offer visitors the option of changing the type-face to something they're more comfortable with. This font selector was made with a PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) script which, unlike JavaScript, is a server-side utility, meaning users don't need to have any special add-ons or plugins for their browser to use it. We figured you might like to know how we made it in case you want to employ such a thing on your site..." http://accessites.org/site/2007/04/making-a-font-selector/ PHP Month of Functions By Rodolphe Eveilleau, Julien Pauli, and Damien Seguy. "The month of PHP function aims at introducing PHP developers to a new PHP function every day : one that gets too little usage and spotlight, though is highly useful. There are over 3000 functions in PHP, and they all solve different problems. Sometimes, by sheer ignorance, PHP developers reinvent the wheel, and duplicate an existing function. During this month, we'll present one or several function every day : they all deserve more attention. You don't have to search for it : most of the time, it will be available in your PHP installation, especially if you're using PHP 5. Sometimes, those functions are available since PHP 4, they are documented, translated and stable. There are no reason not to know about them." http://www.nexen.net/the_month_of_php_functions.php +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML5, XHTML2, and the Future of the Web By David "liorean" Andersson. "If you're hard at work day in, day out, chipping away at the rock face of professional web development, it's sometimes easy to get lost in the details--and when we're talking about an organization that moves as slowly as the W3C, you can be forgiven for taking your eye off the larger picture. David Andersson gets us up to speed on what may soon be coming our way in the world of HTML." http://tinyurl.com/2nmd9f The Business Case for Web Standards Wiki By Christian Heilmann. "...In order to avoid more misunderstandings and make sure we have the right verbal ammunition to deal with all kind of people when we try to sell the idea of web standards development I set up a wiki on the subject of 'The business case for web standards development'. I hope that by aggregating information there and using it to formulate our presentations and emails in the right manner we can have more impact than we have now. I also hope that reading success stories of others may encourage you to take a stand in your environment and try to get a chance to work in a less random manner than we have to do without sticking to standards..." http://icant.co.uk/webstandardsforbusiness/ Leading By Example By Ben Henick. "The World Wide Web Consortium promotes standards for web markup. But do its members practice what they preach?..." http://www.mikelevicius.info/leading-by-example/ +12: TYPOGRAPHY. Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid By Wilson Miner. "As web designers, we sometimes may feel we're on a relentless journey to bridge the gap between digital and traditional processes. Wilson Miner brings us one step closer by offering up a way to work with typographic baselines on the web..." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/settingtypeontheweb Linux Font Equivalents to Popular Web Typefaces By Jonathan Christopher. "I have written before about my admiration for Web typography, and in that article I touched on the fact that many 'Web safe' fonts can't be applied to Linux. Linux distributions each ship with their own font libraries, but I'd like to focus on similar typefaces you can use within a font-family to help make your design bulletproof." http://tinyurl.com/2a257q +13: USABILITY. New WellsFargo.com Home Page By Jared Spool. "Recently, Wells Fargo launched a new home page. They've come a long way from their original designs. The results? The designers tell us they've seen a 500% increase in the number of loan applications since they made the critical changes. Sounds like it worked for them..." http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2007/04/09/new-wellsfargocom-home-page/ Row Highlights in Web Forms By Luke Wroblewsk. "...In my work I find that people don't particularly like filling in forms. So I often try to get them through the process as fast as possible. However, the 'row highlight' technique might not help in that regard because it doesn't seem to reduce the number of eye fixations required to parse the form..." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?508 Simplicity: The Ultimate Sophistication By Joshua Porter. "Most designers place simplicity above all else. We value simple things because they do all the things we need easily and none of the things we don't. Simplicity is harmonious. Even Leonardo Da Vinci said 'simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.' This is one of my favorite quotes, and it plays on the idea that being simple isn't banal, it's elegant..." http://www.uie.com/articles/simplicity/ Introduction to Agile Usability, User Experience Activities on Agile Development Projects - Part I By Scott W. Ambler. "To address the challenges faced by software developers an initial group of 17 methodologists formed the Agile Software Development Alliance, often referred to simply as the Agile Alliance, in February of 2001. An interesting thing about this group is that they all came from different backgrounds, yet were able to come to an agreement on issues that methodologists typically don't agree upon. This group of people defined a manifesto which defines 4 values and 12 principles for encouraging better ways of developing software; this manifesto defines the criteria for ASD processes..." http://www.uigarden.net/english/introduction-to-agile-usability-part-i [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +14: 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.]