+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 49, May 25, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 49 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: 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. Call for Review: Updated WCAG 2.0 Working Draft By Patrick Lauke. "The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) invites you to comment on an updated draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0), published on 17 May 2007. WCAG 2.0 addresses accessibility of Web content for people with disabilities..." http://tinyurl.com/yuw5ea Summary of Issues, Revisions, and Rationales for Changes to WCAG 2.0 2006 Last Call Draft By W3C. "This document provides an overview of the changes made to WCAG 2.0 since the Last Call Working Draft, and the rationale for making or not making suggested changes..." http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/05/change-summary Overview of WCAG 2.0 Documents http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20 WCAG 2.0 Comments http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/issue-tracking/ Updated Luminosity Colour Contrast Analysers By Gez Lemon. "The Juicy Studio Luminosity Contrast Ratio Analyser and the example luminosity contrast ratios have been updated to match the latest version of the draft Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. The draft Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 were updated last Thursday, and one of the things that was updated was the algorithm to determine whether the contrast between foreground and background colours is sufficient. As well as updating the algorithm itself, the thresholds have been changed to consider large and bold text (at least 18 point or 14 point bold). The new thresholds are..." http://tinyurl.com/223phh How To Make Your Web Applications Accessible - The Human Way By Christian Heilmann. "One of my biggest annoyances when talking about accessibility and web development is the argument of some developers that what they develop are web applications and not web sites which is why they don't need to care about accessibility. The arrogance of that statement aside it also does not make any sense whatsoever. If anything, web applications should be even more accessible than web sites. A blind or a keyboard user not being able to learn about the new sports range of a certain brand is less problematic than the same user not being able to do a money transfer or apply for council benefits. " http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=444 Why We Use Headings By Grant Broome. "...The problem with headings is that nobody seems to be able to agree on which heading needs to start the page, and whether it's OK to skip a heading or not. The problem is further compounded by automated tools which will fail you if you use more than one H1 or if you skip a heading element (say H2 to H4). I've put something together here to try and illustrate how JAWS users use headings and why these main concerns may or may not actually be that important..." http://grantbroome.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-we-use-headings.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Backgrounds By Paul O'Brien. "In the second part of our series of articles on the basic building blocks of web design, we're very lucky to be able to bring you SitePoint's resident CSS guru, Paul O'Brien, who takes a detailed look at working with CSS backgrounds. There is nothing that Paul doesn't know about CSS, so both newbies and experienced developers should be sure to bookmark this exhaustive resource." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_design_101_backgrounds/ Rediscovering the Button Element By Kevin Hale. "Creating a consistent interface for your users is a constant struggle for every application designer. Building consistency on the web is especially tough because the visual rendering differences across browsers and operating systems are wildly different and almost arbitrary in what can and cannot be done. No where does this become more apparent than when you're dealing with form elements and the biggest loser of them all in the battle for a standardized look is the infamous Submit button..." http://particletree.com/features/rediscovering-the-button-element/ Introducing CMX JumpStart Tahoe By Sheri German. If you've been around a while, you may remember the CMX JumpStart Vegas that was released in the summer of 2005 by Stephanie Sullivan and Linda Rathgeber. As one of our most popular JumpStarts, it inspired some CMX subscribers to request a fluid version of this fixed-width design. Zoe Gillenwater, one of our great CSS gurus, happily complied with our newest CMX JumpStart Tahoe, a JumpStart modification. Tahoe, like Vegas, is located in Nevada, and because it shares many of the same kinds of entertainment centers, seems like a fitting city for a permutation of the Vegas design..." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=59039 Creating Bulletproof Graphic Link Buttons with CSS By Roger Johansson. "A CSS problem I have been wrestling with lately is how to create a bulletproof shrink wrapping graphic button. By that I mean an image-based button that will expand and contract to fit the amount of text it contains. It is a very useful technique for CMS-driven sites that allow the client to change the text that is displayed on buttons, as well as for multilingual sites..." http://tinyurl.com/24cva7 +03: DREAMWEAVER. Feed Tools in Dreamweaver CS3: RSS and XSL By Tom Muck. "Adding an RSS feed to a web page is a piece of cake with the new XSL features of Dreamweaver CS3. This article will show the new features of XSL transformation using the freely available Community MX RSS feed, or any other of your choice. The tutorial will require PHP, ColdFusion, or another of the available server models in Dreamweaver CS3, as the XSL functionality uses a server-side file to parse and transform the XML news feed." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=B0F45 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Why 'How Many Users' Is Just The Wrong Question - Rethinking The Requirements For Valid Usability Tests By Kath Straub. "...other things being equal (e.g., quality of recruiting), the better predictor of the productivity of usability testing is the number of tasks participants (try to) complete, not the number of participants who try to complete them." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/may07.asp#kath Three Important Benefits of Personas By Jared M. Spool. "...Personas are becoming a regular staple in many of the development teams we talk to. The method helps teams make a smooth transition between requirements and design, resulting with much cleaner designs. The benefits of preventing grounding, encouraging story telling, and enhancing role playing are rarely discussed, yet very present when you see the method in full force. It's these benefits that guide our belief that personas will be a trusted method for many years to come." http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/2007/articles/benefits_of_personas/ +05: EVENTS. WebJam June 7, 2007. Sydney, Australia. http://webjam.com.au/ WebTech 2007 June 29-30, 2007. Varna, Bulgaria. http://www.wtconferences.com/2007/?q=node/1 An Event Apart Chicago August 27-28, 2007. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://www.aneventapart.com/events/chicago07/ d.Construct September 7, 2007. Brighton, United Kingdom. http://2007.dconstruct.org/ Information Architecture Summit September 21-22, 2007. Barcelona, Spain. http://www.euroia.org/ Design Research Conference September 21-22, 2007. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://www.id.iit.edu/events/drc/2007/index.html Oz-IA/2007 September 22-23, 2007. Sydney, Australia. http://oz-ia.org/2007/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. IA One Sheeters By Leah Buley. "One-Sheeters are quick and easy marketing tools for information architects. They're like mini brochures to advertise IA deliverables and promote the IA practice in your company. One-Sheeters help people envision what deliverables you produce and where they fit into a project. They're quick to produce and easy for anyone to understand..." http://www.iaonesheeters.com/iaonesheeters.asp +07: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript, Accessibility, Microformats By Bruce Lawson. "Last Wednesday I was down in the Big Smoke, so went to the Web Standards Group JavaScript Meetup to see Steve Faulkner talk on De-Mystifying Screen readers. I've admired Steve's work for a while, because he actually tests real examples on real screenreaders (which is a horrible job). Here's what I learned..." http://tinyurl.com/2gh6l4 +08: MISCELLANEOUS. An Interview with Mike Kuniavsky By Tamara Adlin. "Today I am speaking with Mike Kuniavsky. He is a founding partner of Adaptive Path. Mike left Adaptive Path in 2004 to follow other pursuits, including designing experience of tangible technology-which sounds very cool and I'm looking forward to hearing more about it. Mike has been developing commercial websites since 1994 for lots of different people. He is also the author of Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research, published by Morgan Kaufmann. Mike's book is one of my personal favorites. When John and I were writing our book, we referred to your book a lot..." http://www.adlininc.com/uxpioneers/new_pioneers/interview_mike_kuniavsky +09: NAVIGATION. Are Sitemaps a Thing of the Past? By Jonathan Christopher. "The goal of many Web professionals is to produce high quality work that makes the most of their medium. Products are designed to be both aesthetically pleasing as well as elegantly useful. There are many tools and techniques that can be used to make using any website that much easier to use. One thing I don't find myself running across very often any more are sitemaps. Have sitemaps become a thing of the past?..." http://mondaybynoon.com/2007/05/21/are-sitemaps-a-thing-of-the-past/ +10: PHP. Getting PHP to Talk to MySQL By Michele Davis and Jon Phillips. "In this first part of a three-part series. you will begin learning how to use PHP to display and modify data from a MySQL database." http://www.devshed.com/c/a/MySQL/Getting-PHP-to-Talk-to-MySQL/ Failover Database Connection with PHP + mySQL By Stephen Belue. You want to connect to a mySQL database? Well, then it's likely you already know how. But how about connecting a second database if the first one fails? No? This could be a life saver. http://evolt.org/failover-database-connection-with-php-mysql +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. What Are Web Standards? By Robert Nyman. "The term Web Standards is featured prominently all over the web, in meetings with customers and amongst web developers in general. However, the problem is that people have different views on what it actually means and encompasses. Therefore, I will try to explain my views on it and what most people actually mean when they refer to Web Standards..." http://tinyurl.com/26f2bu 24sata.hr Goes Non-Standards By Marko Dugonjic. "24sata, the first Croatian news portal ever designed with web standards was moved from carefully structured, web standards compliant to a non-valid inaccessible web site. Unfortunately, it does happen..." http://tinyurl.com/2ds7a6 What I Want From a New Markup Spec By Ben Buchanan. "So it has come to pass that the W3C has decided to take the WHATWG's HTML5 on board. It will form the basis of the W3C's HTML5. The goal is to have a public draft by June - yes, this year. Given that the spec now has to endure the full process of the W3C we'll see how that goes. Anyway, this got me to thinking..." http://weblog.200ok.com.au/2007/05/what-i-want-from-new-markup-spec.html Wasting Resources By Anne Van Kesteren. "One of the reasons it takes browser vendors a long time to implement new specifications is that they have to invest lots of resources into reverse engineering behavior the web depends on..." http://annevankesteren.nl/2007/05/wasting-resources +12: TOOLS. Contrast Analyser 2.0 By Paciello Group. "It is primarily a tool for checking foreground & background color combinations to determine if they provide good color visibility. It also contains functionality to create simulations of certain visual conditions such as color blindness..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/contrast-analyser.html +13: TYPOGRAPHY. Top Ten Tips for Web Typography By Richard Rutter. "The latest issue of Design Edge Canada magazine - a publication for Canada's graphic design industry ? was a web typography special for which I contributed the following top ten tips for web typography..." http://www.clagnut.com/blog/1949/ +14: USABILITY. The Effects of Line Length on Reading Online News By A. Dawn Shaikh. "...This study examined the effects of line length on reading performance. Reading rates were found to be fastest at 95 cpl. Readers reported either liking or disliking the extreme line lengths (35 cpl, 95 cpl). Those that liked the 35 cpl indicated that the short line length facilitated faster reading and was easier because it required less eye movement. Those that liked the 95 cpl stated that they liked having more information on a page at one time. Although some participants reported that they felt like they were reading faster at 35 cpl, this condition actually resulted in the slowest reading speed..." http://tinyurl.com/295tuh [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.]