+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 5, Issue 52, June 14, 2007.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development.

++ISSUE 52 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: EVENTS.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TOOLS.
11: TYPOGRAPHY.
12: USABILITY.

SECTION TWO:
13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

A Review of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, May 2007 Working Draft
By Patrick Lauke.
"...There are many more aspects of the guidelines that have changed since last year's version - I'd strongly recommend that interested readers go through the summary of changes and compare the last two versions of the guidelines side by side. Overall, things may still not be perfect, but this latest draft can, without a doubt, be seen as a marked improvement. Though it will still be a while before we see WCAG 2.0 become a stable and official W3C Recommendation, the signs are good that it's on course and heading in the right direction..."
http://tinyurl.com/235tte

WCAG Samurai Errata
By Joe Clark with an Independent Group of Developers.
"These errata do not cover WCAG 2.0 in any respect. The WCAG Samurai Errata are published as an alternative to WCAG 2. You may comply with WCAG 2, or with these errata, or with neither, but not with both at once..."
http://wcagsamurai.org/errata/

WCAG Samurai Peer Review
By Gian Sampson-Wild.
An independent peer review: "...In summary I believe that the WCAG Samurai Errata, with some changes, is a set of errata that can be both technically accurate and easy-to-use. Unlike WCAG2 these errata are short and written in clear and simple language. I believe these errata are a preferable alternative to both WCAG1 and WCAG2."
http://samuraireview.wordpress.com/

WCAG Samurai Errata Review
By Alastair Campbell.
Another independent peer review: "...Overall, there is much more to agree with than disagree with, and much of it is well over due. The 'until user agent' checkpoints are gone or settled, and there is an explicit requirement to actually learn HTML properly..."
http://reviewsamurai.wordpress.com/

WCAG Samurai: Draft Errata Released
By Joe Dolson.
"...My first impression: this is an excellent supplement to WCAG 1. When creating a standard HTML/CSS based website, these errata should absolutely be addressed and considered. I don't agree 100% with every decision made: but there is absolutely no question that a project following these revisions to WCAG 1 will posses a superior level of accessibility..."
http://tinyurl.com/2q3uh4

WCAG Samurai Peer Review: Part 1
By Mel Pedley.
"I've been reading through Gian Sampson-Wild's technical review of the WCAG Samurai Errata and he seems to have picked up on most of the points that I noticed but is perhaps over-critical in other areas. In this post, I'll confine myself to looking Gian's comments under Accessible Technologies..."
http://blackwidows.co.uk/blog/?p=130

WCAG Samurai Peer Review: Part 2
By Mel Pedley.
"Further to my previous post, I'm continuing to read through Gian Sampson-Wild's technical review of the WCAG Samurai Errata. This time, I thought I'd look at the issues facing users with cognitive disabilities..."
http://blackwidows.co.uk/blog/?p=131

Samurai Attack
By Tommy Olsson. 
"Joe Clark's WCAG Samurai have released the first draft of their supplement to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, which they have labeled 'errata'. Also, Joe delivers the sad news that he is retiring from the field of web accessibility..."
http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2007/06/13/samurai-attack

Comments on WCAG Samurai Errata
By Steve Green.
"...In most respects I agree with the contents of the Errata and comments by the peer reviewers, so the following comments reflect where I disagree with the reviewers or make additional points..."
http://www.accessibility.co.uk/wcag_samurai_errata.htm

Introduction to Screen Magnifiers
By Karo Caran and Victor Tsaran.
"With the goal of better understanding how people interact with the Web via various types of Assistive Technology (AT) - and what that might mean for developers and designers - Karo Caran takes us on a 16 minute overview of screen magnification software (in this case ZoomText) and how it is used by partially-sighted users to interact with the Web. Karo shows you the basic toolkit and then applies those tools to some typical web sites to give you some perspective on how she uses magnification software while she browses the web..."
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/06/12/video-intro-to-screen-magnifiers/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Who Ordered the Link States?
By Eric A Meyer.
"Thanks to everyone who shared their thinking on the ordering of link states. It looks like a minority of people were in favor of my preferred ordering, which is: Link-Visited-Hover-Focus-Active. The reasoning is fairly straightforward, and starts with the assumption that a person who uses solely a keyboard to navigate won't ever encounter a hover effect. Thus, for such users, the states might as well simply be LVFA. For them, the placement of the hover styles is irrelevant..."
http://tinyurl.com/22ddso

CSS Tutorial
By html.net.
"...This tutorial will get you started with CSS in just a few hours. It is easy to understand and it will teach you all the sophisticated techniques..."
http://www.html.net/tutorials/css/introduction.asp

E-mail is Not a Platform for Design
By Jeffery Zeldman.
"All these years of internet use later, HTML mail still sucks. You may think I mean 'HTML mail doesn't work properly in some e-mail clients.' And that statement is certainly true. Companies spend hours crafting layouts that may not work in Eudora or Gmail, or may no longer work in Outlook. Even in programs that support the crap code used to create these layouts, all that hard visual work will go unseen if the user has unchecked 'View HTML Mail' in their preferences. As for CSS, it is partially supported in some e-mail applications and in web apps like Gmail, but only if you author in nonsemantic table layouts and bandwidth-wasting inline CSS. Which is like using a broken refrigerator to store food at room temperature..."
http://www.zeldman.com/2007/06/08/e-mail-is-not-a-platform-for-design/

Eight Points for Better E-mail Relationships
By Jeffery Zeldman.
"Campaign Monitor has taken me to task, and I find it hard to dispute their primary contention..."
http://tinyurl.com/22g54l

Keep HTML and CSS out of My Inbox. Please.
By Roger Johansson.
"Sending me HTML-based e-mail messages without a clearly formatted plain text alternative is like calling me on the phone and refusing to speak clearly. It's as annoying as the phone salespeople who like to call when you're having dinner. It is also a great way of making messages get caught in my spam filters."
http://tinyurl.com/25kyk2


+03: COLOR.

How the Color Deficient Person Sees the World 
By Color Vision Testing.
Demonstration of how various forms of colour-blindness affect color perception.
http://colorvisiontesting.com/what%20colorblind%20people%20see.htm


+04: EVENTS.

Usability Training (Human Factors International)
Fall 2007.
Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. 
Des Moines, Iowa, U.S.A.
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
New York, New York, U.S.A.	
http://www.humanfactors.com/training/fasttrack2007.asp


+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Being Shallow
By Grant Campbell. 
"Information architecture at its best is not about the cool, the newest, or the latest. Information architecture is about the breath, the pause, the stillness in the eye of the information hurricane. I've experienced that stillness in many places. I feel it when I play Bach, and sense those incredible structures that stand like cathedral arches within the myriad notes that I'm trying to play. I feel it when I'm programming, and I sense the logic of the program I'm struggling to create emerge out of all my false starts and stumblings. I feel it whenever I see someone, from whatever walk of life, come down from the heights to figure out patiently what's happening between A and B. IA is history, and a part of history: one class of those timeless moments in human life when we've stopped chasing about, one of those moments when we've stopped to"
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/being-shallow


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

YUI Theater: Douglas Crockford - "JavaScript: The Good Parts"
By Eric Miraglia.
"...This talk, now one of five talks from Douglas up on the YUI Theater, is the most reflective one we've covered. Douglas takes you on a journey through the lens of his own personal experience with JavaScript - a journey from deep skepticism about a flawed, half-baked scripting language in the earliest days to a growing affection for what is now a still-flawed but surprisingly beautiful and powerful language that has 'radically changed my way of thinking about programming languages'..."
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/06/08/video-crockford-goodstuff/

Web 2.0 Affecting Accessibility?
By Paul Crichton.
"A report published on 4th June 2007 by the Customer Respect Group (CRG) found that as high-tech companies adopt Web 2.0 features, accessibility levels declined by 38% on the websites covered in their survey."
http://tinyurl.com/24p397


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Five Pertinent Questions for Scott Berkun About Innovation
By Tiff Fehr.
"Innovation is both a buzz word and an elusive goal these days for many companies and web professionals. After writing her review of Scott Berkun's new book The Myths of Innovation, DW staff member Tiff Fehr decided to dig a little deeper by asking him these five pertinent questions."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/5_questions_scott_berkun/

Interview with Luke Wroblewski, Senior Principal Designer,Yahoo Inc.
By Reshma Kumar.
"Although there are established design and usability best practices and standards, there are also varying standards within companies' definitions of good design and usability and the role design should play in the product development process. Some companies value form as well as function whereas others appear to value function only. Is form still a valuable element in usability?..."
http://tinyurl.com/3cxmtw

Podcast: Jared Spool Interviewed by Carolyn Snyder at STC 2007
Topics included: How do you break into the usability field? How has the field of usability evolved? What's the future of technical writing? How do you handle difficult clients? What role should user testing play in design?
http://tinyurl.com/2gc8uu

You Are Not a Robot
By Jonathan Kahn.
"Are we not (wo)men? Cut us and we bleed. Present us with a problem and we solve it-using judgement, experience, and the ability to generalize. Learn why machines will never be able to do our jobs, and how knowing that fact can build respect for the profession."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/youarenotarobot

Frameworks for Designers
By Jeff Croft.
"Frameworks like Rails, Django, jQuery, and the Yahoo User Interface library have improved web developers' lives by handling routine tasks. The same idea can work for designers. Learn how to harness the power of tools, libraries, conventions, and best practices to focus creative thought and energy on what is unique about each project."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/frameworksfordesigners


+08: NAVIGATION.

Cleaning Up Code with Semantic Anchors
By Faruk Ates.
" The a element is all too common when building websites. We use it to create hyperlinks to other parts of our site and to external sites. We can also use it to link to specific sections on the current page, so a visitor can click on a link and jump to a footnote or to a specific answer on a Frequently Asked Questions page. This type of link points to anchors on the page?anchors made originally as follows..."
http://tinyurl.com/2ag7hu

The Economics of Classification
By Gerry McGovern.
"Everything that is added to a classification subtracts from what
is already there, prompting the question: Has more been added
than subtracted?..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-06-11-classification.htm


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML 5
By Ian Hickson and David Hyatt (Editors).
W3C editors' draft.
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/spec/Overview.html

HTML 5 Differences from HTML 4
By Anne van Kesteren (Editor).
W3C editor's draft.
http://tinyurl.com/ywmqna

HTML 5 and Accessibility
By Roger Johansson.
"As I touched upon in 'Another look at HTML 5', probably the most worrying thing about the HTML Working Group is the lack of respect for differing opinions that some working group members have. The apparent disinterest in accessibility is another troublesome factor..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200706/html_5_and_accessibility/

Thoughts on HTML 5
By Robert Nyman.
"...in general, I think HTML 5 is a good thing with some sensible goals and ambitions. We need a new standard, and we need a plain text/html version and an XML route. One of the best benefits of it is more and better suitable form elements for various needs...Things that I personally believe can, and should, be improved...For text/html: It allows sloppy code...No version number in the DOCTYPE...font is still in there...Attitude..."
http://www.robertnyman.com/2007/06/07/thoughts-on-html-5/

Authoring HTML 5 - A Call to Web Professionals
By Karl Dubost.
"I'm the current staff contact for the HTML WG as defined by the charter and when something is wrong in the way the Working Group operates, I feel personally concerned. On this matter, arrogance and disdain are no way to work..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/06/html5-call-to-web-professionals.html

How to Contribute to W3C Work? Quick Tips
By Karl Dubost.
"In the next few weeks, I will introduce ways anyone can participate to W3C, without having to become a Member, and will explain how it benefits you and the Web communities. Let's start with the Quick Tips!..." 
http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/05/contribute-w3c-quick-tips.html

How to Contribute to W3C Work? Tutorials
By Karl Dubost.
"We started a series about how you can contribute to W3C work. Last time, we have seen how to create and propose your own quick tips. This week, we will go a step further by looking at tutorials..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/06/contribute-w3c-tutorials.html

Education Task Force Curriculum Survey
By Rob Dickerson.
"...The WaSP Education Task Force and W3C Quality Assurance Interest Group propose the creation of a curriculum framework to help educators teach best practices in Web design and development more effectively. Upon completing modules in such a curriculum, a student should have sound knowledge of best practices and a solid foundation upon which to build. If you are an educator or have influence over curriculum, we would like your input with regard to this subject. We have created a short survey as a first step to accomplish this task. The survey is brief and includes nine questions..."
http://tinyurl.com/yuyxjv


+10: TOOLS.

HTML Entity Character Lookup
By leftlogic.
"Using HTML entities is the right way to ensure all the characters on your page are validated. However, often finding the right entity code requires scanning through 250 rows of characters. This lookup allows you to quickly find the entity based on how it looks..."
http://leftlogic.com/lounge/articles/entity-lookup/

Customer Focus Calculator
By futurenowinc.
"...analysis tool that counts certain words on your site that are key indicators of whether your focus is on the customer or not. As you use it, keep in mind this is nothing more than a handy, but rough guide that will help you focus on something important. There are lots of variables and also remember there are no shortcuts to writing great copy."
http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm

Customer Focus Calculator: Test your Copy
http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewetext.htm

SnapShot
By compete.
"SnapShots are smart profiles of the websites we visit. Simply enter a domain (e.g. amazon.com) and SnapShot will provide traffic history, a trust assessment and a list of all available coupon codes."
http://compete.com/


+11: TYPOGRAPHY.

Font Smoothing, Anti-Aliasing, and Sub-Pixel Rendering
By Joel Spolsky.
"Now that Safari for Windows is available, which goes to great trouble to use Apple's rendering algorithms, you can actually compare the philosophies side-by-side on the very same monitor and see what I mean. I think you'll notice the difference. Apple's fonts are indeed fuzzy, with blurry edges, but at small font sizes, there seems to be much more variation between different font families, because their rendering is truer to what the font would look like if it were printed at high resolution."
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html


+12: USABILITY.

Change vs. Stability in Web Usability Guidelines
By Jakob Nielsen.
"A remarkable 80% of findings from the Web usability studies in the 1990s continue to hold today."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/guidelines-change.html

25 Ways To Improve Your Site Today
By Andrew Faulkner.
Yes, the title may look like this post should be on an amateur blog and that it will be full of references to clip art and animated gifs, but this is serious. I've compiled a list of what I think are 25 ways to improve your website in as little time as possible. All can be done in a matter of minutes. Now, a website is hard work and usually there are no quick fixes but this list should provide you with a few pointers to make some updates today. If you like, it can also be used as a basis for a quality check document..."
http://fadtastic.net/2007/06/10/25-ways-to-improve-your-site-today/

Open New Window Still Has Usability Issues
By Jesper Ronn-Jensen.
"Open new windows is a no-no for several reasons. Frequently readers probably know this already, but since I'm often seeing this on Danish web pages, I think it's time to reopen the discussion with new considerations..."
http://tinyurl.com/yu2hez


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+13: 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.]