+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 15, October 5, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 15 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: COLOR. 03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: TOOLS. 08: USABILITY. 09: XML. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Disability Rights Advocates Case: NFB v. Target The order from Judge Marilyn Patel. http://dralegal.org/downloads/cases/target/target-order.txt Suit Against Target Over Access By Kevin Kingsbury. "A federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit alleging that Target Corp. is breaking California and federal law by making its Web site essentially unusable for the blind..." http://tinyurl.com/33jszq National Federation of the Blind vs. Target - An Important Decision By Jim Thatcher. "...Why is the ruling important? First, every avenue that the Target Corporation has taken to try to defuse the case has been turned down; the suit should move forward to be decided on the merits - the accessibility of the Target.com web site, at the time the action was filed (February 2006). Second, as has been suggested to me by someone familiar with the case, the Judge let the complaint move forward based on California laws (The Unruh Civil RIghts Act and the Disabled Persons Act) independent of any physical store. In other words, a resident of California, who saw themselves injured by the inaccessibility of a web site of a U.S. company could sue that company for damages under California law - independent of whether or not there is a related physical store and independent of where the company is located." http://www.jimthatcher.com/law-target2.htm Target Lawsuit Goes Ahead By Mel Pedley. "The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has been given the go-ahead to proceed with a class action against Target Corp. over the inaccessibility of their web site, target.com. The NFB initially approached Target in 2005 to try and resolve the site's problems but, when discussions failed to reach a mutual agreement, filed a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)..." http://blackwidows.co.uk/blog/?p=150 Court Ruling Says California Disabled Rights Law Applies to the Web By Sandra Clark. "One step forward for disability rights, another step backwards for Target. An interesting aspect of this ruling, besides the fact that it opens the door to a class action lawsuit, is the finding of the judge that Web sites such as target.com are required by California law to be accessible..." http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=180 Suing Companies Over Inaccessible Websites By Christian Montoya. "...Let's talk about suing companies over inaccessible websites..." http://tinyurl.com/24tbxj Accessibility Is About Minimizing Requirements By Jesse Skinner. "What are the minimum requirements for using the web?..." http://tinyurl.com/yqo6mz Hearing Loss Group Says Apple Didn't Ensure the iphone Works with Hearing Aids, Violating Disabilities Laws By Gregg Keizer. "A group representing people with a hearing loss filed complaints with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month, accusing Apple Inc. of not making its iPhone compatible with hearing aids." http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137433-c,iphone/article.html +02: COLOR. The Mother of All Color Charts By Texas Precancel Club. "This chart's objective is a comparison of hue names..." http://tx4.us/mr/mr000.htm +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Requirements Analysis By Chris Baker. "There is, as Ansel Adams is supposed to have said "nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept". Requirements analysis is the bit of a project in which we try to reach a coherent and complete vision of what the finished project will be like, and ensure that we all have the same image! It is very hard to do well and very easy to discover later that document describing the requirements has something important missing or some error, for all that everyone was willing to sign it off at the time. This post examines some of the problems and suggests a tool or two..." http://tinyurl.com/2bf93p Surveys - What is an Acceptable Response Rate? By Caroline Jarrett. "It's been a while since I ranted on about response rates on surveys. In that article, I took the view that "2% is a terrible response rate" and had a few reasons why and tips for doing better. Recently, I've had a couple of challenging questions on the topic. So here goes at trying to answer them..." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4209.asp Ten Steps to Personas By Leone Nielsen. "Any project that uses personas does not necessarily need to follow all 10 steps as long as the responsible party knows the consequences of skipping a step." http://www.hceye.org/HCInsight-Nielsen.htm +04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Information Design of the New Web By Melissa Kris. "People are changing the way that they consume online information, as well as their expectations about its delivery. The social nature of the Web brings with it an expectation of interaction with information and modern Web design is reflecting that. There are now alternate forms of navigation including the ability to browse by user, tag clouds, tabbed navigation etc. Advances in technology along with these shifts in user expectations are affecting the way that information is laid out on a web page. Today's websites are aiming for intuitive and usable interfaces which are continuously evolving in response to user needs. Website designers are approaching information design differently and designing simple, interactive websites which incorporate advancements in Web interface design, current Web philosophies, and user needs. Information design for the New Web is simple, it is social, and it embraces alternate forms of navigation." http://tinyurl.com/22pq3q Building Block Definitions (Containers) By Joe Lamantia. "Joe Lamantia dives deep into the components of the building block system. Each has a place in his design framework for dashboards and portals. Get full coverage on how you too can use these same elements in your work." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/building-block +05: JAVASCRIPT. AJAX, Accessibility and the User By Henny Swan. "Early in September I presented at the Irish Design for All e-Accessibility Network on accessibility and AJAX. It was a great opportunity to meet people and discuss issues as well as a chance to listen to presentations given by Steve Faulkner from The Paciello Group, Joshua O'Connor from National Council for the Blind of Ireland and Des Traynor from iQcontent. I was going to forward the presentation to the delegates and thought I may as well also post it here as well. Read the presentation on screen or get the full text transcript here..." http://tinyurl.com/2yw26m +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Interviews: Roger Johansson By Gene Crawford. "This is the first in a series of interviews that we'll be doing. Focused on design and web professionals, hopefully this will serve as an educational and informative insight into how people work, what inspires them and how they got where they are. We'll start off with Roger Johansson, of www.456bereastreet.com, web standards and usability expert..." http://tinyurl.com/2ugz8n Opinions Seem to Change Once You're Hired by a Large Company By Robert Nyman. "I would sincerely like to give these people an advice: Step back. Get some perspective. Try to see it from another person's or company's opinion. Another angle. Get some distance. If you don't, your credibility and the value of your work will soon diminish. So, are you with us 'ordinary' people or against us?..." http://tinyurl.com/yous2c +07: TOOLS. CSS Sprite Generator By Ed Eliot and Stuart Colville. An automated Generator for CSS Sprites. Upload a zip of graphics and it will spit out a single image and a block of CSS. http://spritegen.website-performance.org/ +08: USABILITY. Seven Usability Guidelines for Websites on Mobile Devices By Abid Warsi. "Usability and page design for websites on mobile devices is very different to that on PCs. Webcredible has conducted research amongst mobile phone users to uncover 7 key usability guidelines for websites on this medium. Ensure your site adheres to these important guidelines and watch its usability on mobile phones soar!" http://tinyurl.com/27gr49 Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill? By Jakob Nielsen. "Introductory text on Web pages is usually too long, so users skip it. But short intros can increase usability by explaining the remaining content's purpose." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/intro-text.html Killer Web Content Examples By Gerry McGovern. "...'99 cents per download, no restrictions' is the essence of what people want today. They want an immediate answer to the question: What's in it for me? They want brutal, pared down content that gets to the point immediately. Your website is not a murder mystery. It is certainly not a place for we-we content. Short, sharp, second person and active; that's web content. Get to the point. Then stop." http://tinyurl.com/ywqlhw Web Form Design in the Wild, Part I By Luke Wroblewski. "In this week's UIEtips, we're publishing the first part of an article written by Luke Wroblewski, a Principal Designer at Yahoo!, where he discusses tips for improving web forms and impacting user success." http://www.uie.com/articles/forms-fairmont-hotel/ +09: XML. When Did People Stop Caring About Application/xhtml+xml? By Robert Nyman. "Remember a couple of years ago, when serving XHTML with a text/html MIME type was the worst you could do if you were serious about your trade?..." http://tinyurl.com/2fcgso [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. 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.]