+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 02, July 7, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 02 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: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: PHP. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TOOLS. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Improving Accessibility for Motor Impaired Users By Trenton Moss. "The unique requirements for motor impaired web users can often be overlooked or poorly implemented. Motor impairments can be caused by a stroke, Parkinson's disease, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a physical disability or even a broken arm. This group of users essentially have limited or no ability to use a mouse." http://tinyurl.com/ywasx3 Jaws, Window Eyes, Parallels, and Boot Camp By Jared Smith. "Screen readers and my HP laptop have never been friends. JAWS causes major stability issues. Window Eyes stutters a lot. Now that I have an Intel-based Mac with Parallels and Boot Camp for running Windows, I have found the perfect screen reader testing system. Parallels is a program that allows Windows to run within a window under OSX. Boot Camp allows you to boot into Windows on a Mac computer. Both of these applications work with Intel-based Macs only and support the most popular screen readers - JAWS and Window Eyes. Below are a few tips to ensure they install and function well..." http://webaim.org/blog/2007/06/29/screenreaders_on_mac/ London 2012 Olympics Branding Film Causes Epileptic Seizures By Roger Johansson. "One thing to keep in mind when introducing any kind of flashing on the Web is the possibility of it causing seizures in people who have photosensitive epilepsy. It's one of the basics of Web accessibility, and the fact that flashing or strobing can trigger epileptic seizures is widely known even among people who do not work in the field of accessibility..." http://tinyurl.com/2zoukc Web Accessibility Guidelines Update By Shawn Henry. Shawn's presentation at Yahoo is available on video. http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?ei=UTF-8&b=0&vid=677211&gid=133414 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS: Using Percentages in Background-Image By Alex Walker. "...I thought I'd share some of my research on CSS background images..." http://tinyurl.com/yt7eqt +03: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver CS3 CSS Templates By Meryl Evans. "Dreamweaver CS3 adds pre-designed CSS layouts with inline comments to help you understand the CSS. If you start with a blank page using HTML, you have a choice of over 30 templates -- all based on CSS. The templates range in the number of columns and can be liquid (site adapts to browser window size), fixed/absolute (does not resize), elastic (changes based on text size, not browser window size), and hybrid (combo of any other options)..." http://tinyurl.com/2rrcrb +04: EVENTS. Zend PHP Conference October 8-11, 2007. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://www.zendcon.com/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. Drag and Drop By Peter-Paul Koch. "Here's a simple accessible drag and drop script. It works with both mouse and keyboard." http://www.quirksmode.org/js/dragdrop.html Shortening JavaScripts with Math By Christian Heilmann. I just went through an exercise for a DOM scripting course with the YUI and had the task to write a function that takes any element and centers it at the current cursor position. I also wanted to make sure that the displayed object never causes scrollbars or gets cut off when the cursor is too high up the document..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=461 +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Websites: Designed by Dogs, Managed by Cats By Gerry McGovern. "A key danger in website design is over-ambition. We need to design a website we can professionally manage." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-07-02-dogs.htm Let There be Web Divisions By Jeffery Zeldman. "We are still crunching numbers on the Web Design Survey-with over 32,000 responses to 36 questions, there's a lot to crunch. But in one area, preliminary data supports what anecdotal experience led us to expect: almost no one who makes websites works in their company or organization's web division. That's because almost no company or organization has a web division. And that void on the org chart is one reason we have so many bloated, unusable failures where we should be producing great user experiences. Ponder. No matter how critical the web experience may be to the organization's mission, the people who design and build those mission-critical sites work in divisions that have nothing to do with the web, and report to leaders whose expertise is unrelated to web design and development. It's a startling fact with profound implications-and as such has gone unnoticed by the business community and press..." http://www.zeldman.com/2007/07/02/let-there-be-web-divisions/ +07: PHP. AJAX and PHP Part 2 - XML Communication/Processing By Jon Campbell. "AJAX and PHP 5 both have powerful features for processing and using an XML document. XML is a method of formatting data often for communication purposes between different computer systems. In this article, we will show you how to access an XML document with AJAX!..." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/jon_campbell_20070627.php3 +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Standards for Skeptics By Michael Montgomery. Slides from Michael RefreshMiami presentation. http://webstandardsforskeptics.com/refreshmiami_16may07.html +09: TOOLS. iPhoney By marketcircle. "Looking for a way to see how your web creations will look on iPhone? Look no further. iPhoney gives you a pixel-accurate web browsing environment-powered by Safari-that you can use when developing web sites for iPhone. It's the perfect 320 by 480-pixel canvas for your iPhone development. And it's free...Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later..." http://www.marketcircle.com/iphoney/ Optimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone By Apple. "The following guidelines will help you prepare web content and design a website or web-based application for iPhone. If you are a seasoned web developer, there are probably just a few refinements you can make to ensure that your site looks great and works best on iPhone. You'll need to read only those guidelines that are unique to iPhone. If you are fairly new to web development, you'll want to make sure that you understand web standards and established web design best practices before following any iPhone-specific guidelines..." http://developer.apple.com/iphone/designingcontent.html [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +10: 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. 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