+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 51, June 8, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 51 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: FLASH. 08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 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. WCAG 2.0 Lite By Jack Pickard. "...if you just want 'the checkpoints' in a smidge over 1000 words, then here's WCAG 2.0 Lite..." http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200706/wcag-20-lite/ Berners-Lee Applies Web 2.0 to Improve Accessibility By Out-Law.com. "...'marshalling the community' to improve accessibility. He continued: 'The Semantic Web lets you build a browser that is optimized for a particular disability.' A browser of the future would understand the raw data it is dealing with, rather than just displaying it. It would know how to make it accessible..." http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/26/web_accessibility_seminar/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Ordering the Link States By Eric A. Meyer. "Assuming we're going to avoid chaining pseudo-classes for a while yet, but that we want to introduce link-focus styles, where should it fit in link-state rules ordering?" http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/06/04/ordering-the-link-states/ Create Complex Borders with Multiple Classes By Kate Bolin. "Styling a data table or other fancy piece of code and need complex border beauty?..." http://tinyurl.com/yrmgn9 The CSS Working Group is Irrelevant By Ian Hickson. "...Someone really needs to do to CSS what the WHATWG has been doing to HTML..." http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1181118077&count=1 +03: COLOR. WCAG 2.0: Do You Have Enough Color Contrast on Your Web Site? By Justin Thorp. Ever go to a Web site where you feel you have to squint to read the text because the color contrast is so bad. Having appropriate color contrast on your Web site is very important. You may lose a chunk of your audience if they can't adequately read the text because of not enough contrast between background and foreground colors. http://tinyurl.com/yv5xys A New Web-Based Colour Vision Test By City University London. "...The movie below displays a moving 'colored' square that is buried in flickering luminance contrast noise. The square changes colour as the movie plays. You may be able to see the colour for some or all of the time. If you have some form of severe colour deficiency, you will have difficulty in seeing the 'colored' square moving all the time..." http://www.city.ac.uk/avrc/colourtest.html +04: DREAMWEAVER. What's New in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 By Donald Booth. "Donald Booth of the Dreamweaver quality engineering team talks about his favorite features in Dreamweaver CS3." http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/videos/new_dreamweaver_cs3/ Format Web Pages With CSS in Dreamweaver CS3 By Betsy Bruce. "There are three types of CSS rules, also called CSS styles, and in this sample chapter you'll learn how to use Dreamweaver CS3 to create styles that use all three. In just an hour's time, you'll learn the basics of CSS styles, how to use the CSS Styles panel, and how to create styles that apply to text." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=760959&rl=1 +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Eye Tracking - Eye Candy vs. I Can Do By Mark McElhaw. "Eye tracking has become more and more popular recently. But is it anything more than just 'eye candy' or does it offer something that's actually quite valuable? Our feature article this month explores the pros and cons of eye tracking, showing you when you should and perhaps shouldn't use it..." http://tinyurl.com/28dmps Usability Testing is Really Design Research By Iain Barker. "If I could do a bit of time travel I'd go back and change the term "usability testing". Although the title is quite descriptive, it is ultimately too close to "user acceptance testing". And the use of the testing word is definitely a problem." http://tinyurl.com/24428e Impediments to Seeing Information as a Task By Gerry McGovern. "Those who created information rarely had to worry about the impact of what they wrote. Until the Web." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-06-04-web-writing.htm Field Research Fundamentals: An Interview with Kate Gomoll By Ashley McKee "Kate Gomoll is a recognized expert in the area of Field Research and Usability Testing. UIE's Ashley McKee recently had the opportunity to talk with Kate about how she and her team at Gomoll Research and Design conduct field studies. Here is what Kate had to say about her experiences..." http://www.uie.com/articles/gomoll_field_studies_interview/ Don't Ask -- Observe By Jeff Atwood. "...Don't get me wrong. I love users. Some of my best friends are users. But like all of us humans, they're unreliable at best. In order to move beyond usability guesswork, there's no substitute for observing customers using your product. Wouldn't it be liberating to be able to make design decisions based on the way your customers actually use your software, rather than the way they tell you they use it? Or the way you think they use it? Whether you're observing users in low-fi usability tests, or collecting user action data so you can observe users virtually, the goal is the same: don't ask -- observe." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000880.html +06: EVENTS. Writing for the Web with Ginny Redish (UPA event) June 12, 2007. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/26wky5 Universal Design Workshop July 10-11, 2007. Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A. http://www.cita.uiuc.edu/courses/2day/ Voices That Matter Web Design Conference October 22-25, 2007. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://www.voicesthatmatter.com/webdesign2007/ +07: FLASH. Captions for Video with Flash CS3 By Tom Green. "Flash video can bring so much life to a web page, whether it's a personal message from a CEO or customer, a tutorial, or examples of products. The possibilities are virtually endless--unless, of course, you can't hear what's being said. Flash video expert Tom Green reports that the latest version of Flash makes captioning amazingly simple, compared to methods available in the past. He spells out the steps for one of two captioning methods in part one of this series, and will follow up later with details on an alternative approach." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/captions_flash_video/ +08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Card Sort Analysis Spreadsheet By Donna Maurer. "I have just uploaded something I've been working on for many years: the spreadsheet I use to analyses card sort data. My spreadsheet is great for analyzing open sorts - it manages participant results, helps you explore the data and does some basic statistical analysis..." http://www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/archives/000760.html +09: NAVIGATION. Google Page Rank: What Do We Know About It? By Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz. "Everybody is using it, but (almost) nobody really knows, how it works. Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web..." http://tinyurl.com/yvn5e8 +10: PHP. PHP Abstract Episode 1 - PHP Security Tips "PHP Abstract, the new PHP centric podcast is here. Sit back, relax, and let the funky beat wash over you. While you are at it, grab a nugget of information." http://tinyurl.com/29gyf7 +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Headers Attribute Issue in HTML 5 By W3C HTML Working Group. "Issue: The 'headers' attribute currently is not in the HTML 5 specification." Pros and cons plus some research and advice. http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueTableHeaders Headers Attribute Debate By WAI and the PFWG (Al Gilman chair). "One of your participants asked about the accessibility relevance of the 'headers' attribute as supported in HTML 4.01. Here is a review of that issue..." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0145.html The HTML Scope/Headers Debate By Gez Lemon. "The HTML working group have decided not to include the headers attribute in the HTML 5.0 working draft, as they believe the scope attribute is sufficient for associating header cells with data cells. With simple and most complex tables, this is a reasonable assertion, but doesn't work with overlaid and irregular tables, where the associated headers aren't in the same column or row..." http://juicystudio.com/article/html-scope-headers-debate.php +12: TYPOGRAPHY. Improving Accessibility Through Typography By Joe Dolson. "Among the many decisions you need to make when designing accessible web sites, typography seems to frequently be only shallowly addressed. Typography is rarely completely ignored --- but it is greatly simplified, to a point that the issues raised don't always complete the picture of accessible text. Accessible typography is commonly simplified to these three questions.." http://tinyurl.com/2wf3ty +13: USABILITY. Content and Usability: Writing for the Web By Trenton Moss. "Writing for the web is totally different to writing for printed matter - find out how to write content for this medium with these eight guidelines." http://tinyurl.com/bb6sw Homepage Usability and Credibility Survey By Andrew B. King. "A usability survey revealed that high growth companies are not evaluating and improving their home page designs in a systematic way. By comparing the home pages of the Fortune 30 against Inc Magazine's fastest growing companies, researchers from State University found the Fortune 30 had a usability score over 36% higher than the fast growing companies." http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/homepage/ What Does Rich Mean? By Uday Gajendar. "Amid the current hype of Web 2.0, rich has become the de facto buzzword suggesting fresh, sexy digital products, often marked by glossy buttons with AJAX-driven behaviors. But what does rich mean to a UI (user interface) designer who wants to craft intelligent, compelling, and memorable interactions? Given current digital and technological trends, today's UI designers must deepen their understanding of richness. Such an effort will strengthen designers' vocabularies (adding legitimacy and weight to client discussions), and enable designers to temper judgment when it comes to applying rich capabilities..." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/what-does-rich-mean [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.]