+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 25, December 14, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 25 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TOOLS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Instructions for Commenting on WCAG 2.0 Documents By WCAG Working Group. "The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group invites you to review the second WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft published on 11 December 2007. WCAG 2.0 explains how to make Web sites, applications, and other content accessible to people with disabilities. Please submit any comments on the following document by 1 February 2008." Instructions for Commenting on WCAG 2.0 Documents: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/comments/ WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft By Jared Smith. "WCAG 2.0 has been recommended for Last Call. While this will be the second last call for the document and (by my count) the 13th formal draft since January 2001, the document is currently shaping up rather nicely..." http://webaim.org/blog/wcag2-last-call/ Is WCAG 2.0 Almost Done?! By Shawn Lawton Henry. "...Is it better for web accessibility overall for the community to continue to debate, or is it better to polish and accept WCAG 2.0? ...I say, onward. And I hope that the community can also soon say go forward with WCAG 2.0..." http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/12/is_wcag_20_almost_done.html OZeWAI Presentations http://www.ozewai.org/2007/program.html Headwand in Action By Russ Weakley. "Roger Hudson and I recently had the please of interviewing Judith who has cerebral palsy. In the video below, Judith talks about her passion - Second Life. This video was used in a presentation at OZeWAI on Web 2.0 and accessibility..." http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2007/12/11/headwand-in-action/ Introducing AIA (Accessibility Interoperability Alliance) By Andrew Kirkpatrick. "A group of IT and assistive technology companies have formed a group designed to address engineering challenges around accessibility issues. The group's name is the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance, or AIA. Adobe is part of this group because it is important to have improved methods to provide straightforward interoperability between IT products and assistive technology tools..." http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2007/12/introducing_aia.html Accessibility 2.0: How Accessible are UK Newspaper Websites? By Laura Oliver and Oliver Luft. "This is the first article in a series of 10 looking at the accessibility of UK newspaper websites..." http://www.journalism.co.uk/5/articles/530590.php None of the Papers Have Grasped the Fundamental Difference Between the Internet and Print By Richard Warren. "...The result is a collection of cluttered pages that are not very user-friendly and make little, or no, concession to disabled users..." http://www.journalism.co.uk/6/articles/530811.php CSS for Accessibility By Ann McMeekin. "CSS is magical stuff. In the right hands, it can transform the plainest of (well-structured) documents into a visual feast. But itŐs not all fur coat and nae knickers (as my granny used to say). Here are some simple ways you can use CSS to improve the usability and accessibility of your site. Even better, no sexy visuals will be harmed by the use of these techniques. Promise..." http://24ways.org/2007/css-for-accessibility +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Case-Insensitivity in CSS By Elika Etemad (fantasai). "Case-insensitivity in CSS is currently not precisely defined. The meaning of 'case-insensitive' is pretty obvious in ASCII, but it's not so obvious in Unicode. Some characters map differently based on the locale, some characters can't round-trip a case mapping operation so you get different matches depending on whether you map to lowercase, uppercase, or 'case-fold' case, etc." http://www.w3.org/blog/CSS/2007/12/12/case_sensitivity Back To The Future of Print By Natalie Downe. "By now we have weathered the storm that was the early days of web development, a dangerous time when we used tables, inline CSS and separate pages for print only versions. We can reflect in a haggard old sea-dog manner ('yarrr... I remember back in the browser wars...') on the bad practices of the time. We no longer need convincing that print stylesheets are the way to go1, though some of the documentation for them is a little outdated now..." http://24ways.org/2007/back-to-the-future-of-print Matrix: HTML 4 Elements and CSS 2 Properties (Beta) By Jens Meiert. "Neat overview of HTML 4.01 Strict elements and CSS 2.1 properties plus additional remarks. Created by Adrian Christen, converted by me, and kindly asking for feedback." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20071208/html-css-matrix/ Creating Sexy Stylesheets By Jina Bolton. "Being a CSS expert is more than just memorizing selectors. It's also working to improve the maintainability and efficiency of your stylesheets, planning for the future and mastering your workflow. In this article Jina Bolton gives 10 CSS tips culled from surveys with 12 top designers." http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/creating-sexy-stylesheets Do We Still Need Bulletproof Layouts? By Blair Millen. "Am I alone in thinking that the new pagezoom feature that will accompany Firefox 3 is an unwelcome addition? Having used this zoom-everything feature in Internet Explorer 7 and Opera for a while now and I can safely say I hate the results. The problem is that, as you zoom in, the page quickly expands to unreadable proportions, you get a horizontal scrollbar, pixelated images and more often than not a page that is near impossible to navigate round, especially with just a keyboard. And what does this mean when it comes to producing bulletproof layouts?..." http://tinyurl.com/27lvsk Collected CSS Wisdom: 9 Points of Debate By Chris Olberding. "Over the years I've come to adopt many practices while working with xhtml/css and I thought it might be of use to others to document some of them and of use to me to open things up for discussion..." http://tinyurl.com/2cho7f +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Personas of Persons with Disabilities By Christopher Phillips. "I recently presented on disability awareness in building accessible websites to a group of interaction designers. At the end, I was asked about examples of a specific person with a disabilities as well as design considerations for that person. This is what I found..." http://curbcut.net/accessibility/personas-of-persons-with-disabilities/ +04: EVENTS. Compostmodern 08 January 19, 2008. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://compostmodern.org/ Interaction 08 February 8-10, 2008. Savannah, Georgia, U.S.A. http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Computing, Communications and Control Technologies (CCCT 2008) June 29 - July 2, 2008. Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. http://www.infocybereng.org/imeti2008/website/default.asp?vc=3 Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC '08) September 16-20, 2008. Herrsching am Ammersee, Germany. http://vlhcc08.cs.unibw.de/ Human-Computer Interaction 2009 July 19-24, 2009. San Diego, California, U.S.A. http://www.hcii2009.org/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Internationalisation By Matthew Somerville. "...or: Why Rudolph Is More Than Just a Shiny Nose..." http://24ways.org/2007/javascript-internationalisation Javascript Based Encryption By Gareth Heyes. No this isn't a lame post on how I explain to encode your Javascripts :) It's something I've done for a bit of fun really, I wanted to figure out a way to pass data across the network encrypted with Javascript and have it automatically decrypted. I doubt this technique would ever be used in the real world because the key is passed between windows in plain text. http://www.thespanner.co.uk/2007/12/10/javascript-based-encryption/ I Learned to Stop Programming and Love the DOM By Christian Montoya. "Yesterday I added a couple features to Construct, my visual layout editor based on Blueprint and powered by jQuery, which I first announced here. It was at version 0.2 and I was happy with what I had; you could add containers and columns, move around with keys or the mouse, expand and contract containers, etc. A decent start to a grid-based tool. The next step was adding the ability to delete containers and columns. This had me a bit concerned, and it started to show that my current implementation was not very robust. As best as I can explain it, this is what I was doing: I treated the layout as an array of arrays, with a counter for the containers and an array of counters for the columns in the containers. I gave an ID to every new container..." http://tinyurl.com/26m7w8 Choosing a JavaScript Framework By Roger Johansson. "If you've read my article Learn JavaScript before tasting the library kool-aid you may think that I am completely opposed to using JavaScript frameworks or libraries, but I am not. I use them when they will help me achieve a better end result. I'm not particularly attached to one specific framework, however. So far I have ended up using YUI, jQuery, and DOM Assistant, mainly depending on the project requirements and what suits other members of the project team. Of those three, DOM Assistant is by far the easiest for me to use. It is also the smallest and the one with the least number of features (though a number of very useful additions are in the works). Maybe there is a connection, I don't know..." http://tinyurl.com/yo56zn Unobtrusively Mapping Microformats with jQuery By Simon Willison. "Microformats are everywhere. You can't shake an electronic stick these days without accidentally poking a microformat-enabled site, and many developers use microformats as a matter of course. And why not? After all, why invent your own class names when you can re-use pre-defined ones that give your site extra functionality for free?..." http://24ways.org/2007/unobtrusively-mapping-microformats-with-jquery Javascript for Hackers, part 2 By Gareth Heyes. "In my second part of Javascript for hackers I shall be showing how pointless it is to ban the use of document, location etc within form variables..." http://www.thespanner.co.uk/2007/12/12/javascript-for-hackers-part-2/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. 10 Tips for Successful Development Projects By Blue Flavor. "When you're juggling four active projects, talking with clients and debugging thousand-line classes, being a developer can be stressful at times. Luckily, by planning a little here and there and working on your process, things can be much more manageable..." http://tinyurl.com/2acfpl 10 Ways To Get Design Approval By Paul Boag. "...How can you get the client to sign off on your design? Below are 10 tips learnt from years of bitter experience..." http://24ways.org/2007/10-ways-to-get-design-approval The Key to Success is Failure By Hannah Donovan. "Hannah Donovan, Last.fm's head of creative, provides five tips for building a successful web application. Her top tip? Make mistakes..." http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/the-key-to-success-is-failure Interactions 08 in the Garden of Good and Evil An Interview with Dan Saffer By Chris Baum. "...Dan discusses the context of the organization, how the conference emerged and formed, what the conference will be like, and how one might get a flavor even if attendance is not an option." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/interactions-08-in +07: NAVIGATION. The Collaborative Web By Gerry McGovern. "...Every link that is built on the Web strengthens the Web and strengthens all of us involved in the Web. Nobody is in charge of the Web. We all are. And we all can link." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-12-10-collaboration.htm Improving Your Process: Sitemaps and Design Preparation By Jonathan Christopher. "Sitemaps aren't exactly a popular topic for conversation as of late. Given the improvements both in site architecture as well as search engine intelligence, it seems as though sitemaps have taken a backseat as far as priority is concerned. I've written specifically about sitemaps and whether or not they're applicable today. With client work, I'm constantly asked for a sitemap to be implemented before the launch of the site. More often than not, the site navigation itself is as detailed as any sitemap can get, but there are still many people expecting to see a page dedicated to outlining which documents are available on a website..." http://tinyurl.com/2p9uya +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Opera Files Complaint - An Open Letter to the Web Community By Hakon Wium Lie. "...Opera has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in its Web browser, Internet Explorer. We believe that Microsoft has harmed Web standards by refusing to support them; Microsoft often participates in creating Web standards, promoting them, and even promising to implement them. Despite their talent, however, they refuse to support Web standards correctly..." http://people.opera.com/howcome/2007/msft/ Opera Files Antitrust Complaint with the EU By Opera. "Urges Microsoft to give consumers a genuine choice of standards -compliant Web browsers." http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2007/12/13/ ISSUE-24 (ogg-delete): Request to delete 'should support Ogg' clause before publishing FPWD [HTML 5 spec] By Mikko Honkala; Issue tracked by Michael Smith. "we see benefit to publish a first WD of the HTML5 spec. To avoid any patent issues we request deletion of the following clause from the spec before it is published. We support publication under the condition this change is made." http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/24 Removal of Ogg Vorbis and Theora from HTML5: An Outrageous Disaster By Manuel Amador. "Nokia and Apple have privately pushed to give Ogg the noose treatment (and so far succeeded) in HTML5. This destroyed all hope of having free (as in freedom) media embedded in HTML5 in an interoperable way..." http://tinyurl.com/yp5zm6 Removal of Ogg is Preposterous By Ian Hickson. "...Apple, Nokia, Microsoft and other large companies have stated that they will not support Theora purely based on the requirement in the spec. Having or not having this requirement in the spec thus makes no difference to independent authors. In the meantime, having this requirement is causing difficulties for those of us actually trying to find a true solution to the problem. I assure you that your needs are not being forgotten. Indeed, the very first requirement now listed in the spec is directly related to catering for independent authors..." http://tinyurl.com/3a9k8r Summary of the Video (and Audio) Codec Discussion By Dave Singer. "I was asked to write up the discussion on codecs we had. Here are my notes..." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Nov/0153.html Video Element and Ogg Theora By Chris Double. "...The issue seems to have gained some attention since the position paper Nokia submitted to the W3C Video on the Web workshop which made it clear they didn't want Ogg included. The reference to Theora and Vorbis has since been removed from the WHATWG specification and replaced with the wording..." http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/12/video-element-and-ogg-theora.html Theora vs. h.264 By Eugenia Loli-Queru. "A lot was said lately about the Vorbis/Theora vs h.264/AAC situation on the draft of the HTML5. As some of you know, video is my main hobby these days (I care not about operating systems anymore), so I have gain some experience on the field lately, and at the same time this has made me more demanding about video quality. Read on for a head to head test: OGG Theora/Vorbis vs MP4 h.264/AAC. Yup, with videos. And pictures..." http://www.osnews.com/story.php/19019/Theora-vs.-h.264 What I'd Like to See in HTML 5 By Nicholas Zakas. "There's been a lot of discussion around HTML 5, what it should be, and what it shouldn't be. Crockford's post outlines his perspective on things in typical Crockford-fashion. I also have my own ideas about what I'd like to see in HTML 5. I shared this internally at Yahoo!, but thought I'd put it out there for others to see as well..." http://www.nczonline.net/archive/2007/12/518 HTML5 Timeline By Anne Van Kesteren. An HTML5 timeline marketing effort. http://annevankesteren.nl/2007/12/html5-timeline IE and Standards: Chris Wilson Talks By Kevin Yank. "At Web Directions South this year, I had a chance to talk with Chris Wilson, who needs no introduction. He's the Platform Architect for Internet Explorer at Microsoft..." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/ie-standards-chris-wilson +09: TOOLS. Favikon By favikon.com. Upload images, crop them, and create favicons. http://favikon.com/ +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Typesetting Tables By Mark Boulton. "Tables have suffered in recent years on the web. They were used for laying out web pages. Then, following the Web Standards movement, they've been renamed by the populous as `data tables' to ensure that we all know what they're for. There have been some great tutorials for the designing tables using CSS for presentation and focusing on the semantics in the displaying of data in the correct way. However, typesetting tables is a subtle craft that has hardly had a mention..." http://24ways.org/2007/typesetting-tables Typographic Contrast and Flow By Nick La. "As you have probably know, most online readers don't read line by line, instead they scan (from one point to another). For this reason, designers create typographic contrast and flow by emphasizing certain text. Contrast is important because not all the content within a page have the same value, some have greater significance than the others. By creating contrast, you can direct the reader's attention to the important messages and at the same time enhance the visual appearance. Here are seven basic methods on how you can create typographic contrast..." http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/typographic-contrast-flow/ +11: USABILITY. Fixing Bugs is Not Equivalent to Fixing Design By Russell Wilson. "I love cigars. I smoke about 1 per month as a treat. That may seem like nothing, but I really enjoy it. About 2/3 of the way through a good Rocky Patel, there is a moment of clarity. Greens become greener, blacks become richer and edges become sharper. A little Laphroaig doesn't hurt either. It is usually at this point that I come to some realization. Tonight that moment was defined by frustration regarding misconceptions of software design..." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4370.asp Does Usability Actually Sell Anything? By Bryan Eisenberg. "Recently my ClickZ colleague Sean Carton asked, 'Are Usability Experts Any Use?' I've written before about the need to go beyond usability and focus on persuasive architecture. Nevertheless, Sean's column struck a very public nerve. In recent threads on the I-Sales and I-Design lists, Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering (UIE) posted that he felt several people somewhat misrepresented his position about the value of design and usability..." http://tinyurl.com/yrbgvn Assessing Your Team's UX Skills By Jared Spool. "'I didn't realize it required so many different skills,' the newly-appointed user experience (UX) team manager told us. 'I mean, it seemed so straight forward when we came up with the idea, but once we got into it, we kept realizing all the things we didn't know how to do.' Unfortunately, this isn't the first time we'd heard this from a manager. In fact, we hear it quite often. Managers embark on a project, say a redesign of a critical internal application, only to realize their team, proficient in a few skills, doesn't have the breadth of skills necessary to develop a quality experience. The result is an app that works, but frustrates the users because it doesn't quite meet their needs..." http://www.uie.com/articles/assessing_ux_teams/ Web Writing Exercises Part One By Sheri German. In this series, we'll explore that topic of writing for the web in depth. Each article's download folder will include copy that you can use to experiment with the featured concepts. It will also include my interpretation of how to effectively present the copy. According to statistics, 79% of readers scan text on web pages rather than read every word. Therefore, in this first article, we'll look at how we can help readers more easily scan text by using effective headings, hyperlinks, bolded phrases, and lists." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=C108B Information Design for the New Web By Ellyssa Kroski. "...Information design for the New Web is simple, it is social, and it embraces alternate forms of navigation..." http://tinyurl.com/39d9ye [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: 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.]