+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 26, December 20, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 26 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: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: TYPOGRAPHY. 13: USABILITY. 14: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities By Nielsen Norman Group. "75 Best Practices for Design of Websites and Intranets, Based on Usability Studies with People Who Use Assistive Technology...is free as our holiday gift to our loyal readers, as our thanks for your support over the years." http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility/ Using JAWS to Evaluate Web Accessibility By WebAIM. "Evaluating the screen reader accessibility of web content is important. Screen readers, however, can be complex and difficult to use, especially for novice users. This article provides an overview for beginners on how to use screen readers for evaluating the accessibility of web content." http://webaim.org/articles/jaws/ Overdoing Accessibility By Roger Johansson. "Sometimes when people first learn about Web accessibility they look for quick ways of improving the sites they build. This often leads to misuse or overuse of certain HTML features that are meant to aid accessibility, but when used wrongly have no effect and can actually have the opposite effect by making the page less accessible and less usable..." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200712/overdoing_accessibility/ Accessibility is Part of Your Job By Roger Johansson. "To many people who make a living from designing or programming websites, accessibility is something unknown. Something frightening even, and something that is only ever taken into account (as a bolt-on after the site is finished) if a client specifically requires it..." http://tinyurl.com/2sypsp Passive Accessibility By Mike Cherim. "A cornerstone of web usability is passivity. In other words, web interface elements should be found where expected and must work as expected. Accessibility, like usability, should also be passive. As said of usability, web interface elements should be found where expected and must work as expected, but I wish to offer this addendum: to everyone! People have said accessibility is essentially usability for the disabled. It's an interesting perspective ? one I won't dispute. I know accessibility and usability are so closely joined, discerning one from the other is often difficult due to the sometimes indistinct boundaries. I, for one, happen to think they're actually codependent in most instances..." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=236 Web Usability and Accessibility Are As Important As Search Engine Prominence By Eugene Mulligan. "So you've optimized your website, done the keyword research, got the backlinks and everything is ethical. You're sitting proudly on the first page of the search results. Or you've set up a pay per click campaign, bid on your keywords, created some ads and performance tracking is in place. Again, you're at the top of the pile. Either way, you're visible and people are visiting your website. But visitors aren't converting into leads, prospects or customers. What's going wrong? Well your website may be visible, but is it connecting?..." http://tinyurl.com/2blj6z Is Your Web Site Handicap-Accessible? By Karen E. Klein. "Making online access easy use for blind and other disabled users is gaining attention because of class actions against companies like Target..." http://tinyurl.com/2f7g6v +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Unworking Group By Andy Clarke. "...Opera's decision to take on Microsoft in the European courts, and CSS Working Group member Hakon Wium Lie's personal backing of it, calls into question whether we can trust browser vendors and their representatives with the development of our future tools. It calls into question whether or not their representatives can, or are allowed by their employers to work together with their competitors in a spirit of cooperation. It calls into question the fundamental basis on which the CSS Working Group has operated up until this point. I suggest that Opera's action now makes the CSS Working Group unworkable and that immediate and sweeping changes are necessary...browser vendors can no longer be trusted with our future tools, nor to work together to develop them on our behalf. I propose that instead of actively participating in the development of new CSS standards as part of the CSS Working Group, that browser vendors instead form a Technical Advisory Group that is attached to the new CSS Working Group. Their role should be to advise on the technical limitations or requirements of the proposals that the new group creates. Along with the formation of this new group, new processes for communication and participation are needed, plus a clear strategy, with dates attached for the delivery of the new standards..." http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/malarkey/more/css_unworking_group/ Re: CSS Unworking Group By Jeffery Zeldman. "I'm glad you're expressing your concerns so forcefully; the web standards movement is painfully in need of leaders. But like others I don't see a connection between Opera's lawsuit and your call for the disbanding of the CSS working group...The web standards movement needs leaders who are passionate, but their leadership must also make sense. Proposing change when the change makes sense is good. Proposing change because you are disappointed and frustrated isn't good enough. Anger can be brilliantly motivating; but anger is not a strategy." http://www.zeldman.com/2007/12/15/re-css-unworking-group/ CSS Working Group Proposals By Andy Clarke. "My entry of last week, where I called for the current W3C CSS Working Group to be immediately disbanded, has generated some serious debate, and a few raised voices. I'm glad that is happening. Now, after a little more consideration, I thought I would outline some concrete proposals for how the CSS Working Group could change for the better...." http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/malarkey/more/csswg_proposals/ Behind the Scenes: What is the CSS Working Group Doing? By Elika Etemad (fantasai). "Lately there's been a lot of talk about the CSS Working Group and about how we're closed, out-of-date, slow, and/or dysfunctional. I'm acknowledging Andy Budd's post here and other comments. It's not very clear what we're working on or why it's taking so long, so I decided to write couple posts, from my perspective as a CSS Working Group Invited Expert, on where we are, why we're here, and where I think we should be going." http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/weblog/2007/css-wg-q-and-a/ Conditional Love By Ethan Marcotte. "...we do have an out for those little inconsistencies that crop up when dealing with cross-browser testing: CSS patches." http://24ways.org/2007/conditional-love ID Your Body For Greater CSS Control and Specificity By Chris Coyier. "Let's say you want to change the color of your links on just your contact page to red. They are blue on every other page, but it just makes sense for them to be red on your contact page (for some reason). There are a couple ways you could go about this..." http://tinyurl.com/368mmg CSS Drop Shadows By Elika Etemad (fantasai). "I'm working on the CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders module with Bert Bos, and I'd like to start a new Q&A series because I think we need some help: This time I'll ask the questions, and you give me answers..." http://www.w3.org/blog/CSS/2007/12/17/css_drop_shadows Diagnostic Styling By Eric Meyer. "We're all used to using CSS to make our designs live and breathe, but there's another way to use CSS: to find out where our markup might be choking on missing accessibility features, targetless links, and just plain missing content..." http://24ways.org/2007/diagnostic-styling Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone By Dean Hachamovitch. "As a team, we've spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8. Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the 'Acid2 Face' correctly in IE8 standards mode..." http://tinyurl.com/3bawvm Yes Ladies and Gentleman, We Have a Smiley By Molly E. Holzschlag. "During the past week's drama related to Microsoft's lack of transparency and problems with working groups and browser vendors, it literally pained me so to have to keep my mouth shut when I knew there were some very good things happening." http://tinyurl.com/yptlej +03: COLOR. Understanding CSS Colour Modes By Kilian Valkhof. "CSS 2 and 3 offer a number of different ways to pick colours. While everyone knows the hexadecimal notation, fewer people know the RGB notation and colour keywords, and the new colour modes that CSS3 introduces are still a riddle to most. In this article I'll walk through all the different options we (will) have to define our colours..." http://kilianvalkhof.com/2007/design/understanding-css-colour-modes/ +04: EVENTS. WebAIM Training February 20-21, 2008. Logan, Utah, U.S.A. http://webaim.org/training/ CSUN Conference 2008 Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference March 10-15, 2008. Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/ Ausweb 08 April 5-9, 2008. Ballina, Australia. http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/ webDU 2008 May 7-8, 2008. Sydney, Australia. http://www.webdu.com.au/ HighEdWeb 2008 Conference October 5-8, 2008. Springfield, Missouri, U.S.A. http://highedweb.org/2008/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Open Source Usability, and the Modified Delphi Card Sorting Method - an Interview with Celeste Lyn Paul By Gerry Gaffney. "Gerry Gaffney spoke to Celeste Lyn Paul about the state of usability efforts in open source software, and about her card sorting method - the Modified Delphi." http://www.uxpod.com/index.php?post_id=286820 The Many Faces of Information Architecture By Patrick Kennedy. "A lot of confusion surrounds the term 'information architecture' (IA). This article explores the various labels that might be used to describe IA work." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_iafaces/index.html +06: JAVASCRIPT. Keeping JavaScript Dependencies At Bay By Christian Heilmann. "As we are writing more and more complex JavaScript applications we run into issues that have hitherto (god I love that word) not been an issue. The first decision we have to make is what to do when planning our app: one big massive JS file or a lot of smaller, specialized files separated by task." http://24ways.org/2007/keeping-javascript-dependencies-at-bay Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous... By Jakob Nielsen. "AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/web-2.html Documenting the Design of Rich Internet Applications: A Visual Language for State By Richard F. Cecil. "Ajax and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have revolutionized the way users interact with Web sites. However, documenting the design of any page that uses Ajax is a challenge, because the page-and, more importantly, components on the page-can have different states, depending on how users interact with the page's components..." http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000251.php Sample Chapter - Pro JavaScript Design Patterns by Ross Harmes and Dustin Diaz By Eric Miraglia. "Fellow Yahoo Ross Harmes and former Yahoo (current Googler) Dustin Diaz have collaborated on a new book from Apress, Pro JavaScriptª Design Patterns. As the title suggests, this volume focuses on the implementation of common object-oriented design patterns in the JavaScript language..." http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/12/17/projsdesignpatterns/ Deck the Halls with Unobtrusive JavaScript By Ara Pehlivanian. "...A key component in a JavaScript programmer's arsenal is the methodology of unobtrusive JavaScript - the idea that a web page's behavior should remain separate from its structure. The idea for unobtrusive JavaScript grew out of the Web Standards movement, which advocated that web pages should be separated into three layers - structure (HTML), presentation (CSS), and behavior (JavaScript) - and that each additional layer should enhance the previous one..." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/unobtrusive-javascript Yahoo Theater - Julien Lecomte: 'High Performance Ajax Applications' By Eric Miraglia. "Julien Lecomte, author of the YUI Compressor and the YUI Browser History Manager, recently gave a talk at Yahoo on the creation of high-performance DHTML applications." http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/12/20/video-lecomte/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Collaboration is About People By James Robertson. "This article will explores the human face of collaboration, touching upon a range of enterprise issues and considerations." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_collabpeople/index.html Web History: Middle of the Beginning By Gerry McGovern. "The Web has only just begun to make its mark. As we approach 2008, we are only in the middle of the beginning of a revolution that is transforming humanity." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-12-17-web-history.htm peterme and 'The Don' Norman in Conversation By Peter Merholz. "I really enjoyed this chat. If we did The Believer-style keywords for it, they would read: adaptive cruise control, ubiquitous computing, human plus machine, 'user experience', 'affordances;, asking the right questions, coupling design with operations, busting down silos, TiVo has never made any money, Palm, many reasons for the Newton's failure, boss as an absolute dictator, Henry Dreyfuss and John Deere, design evolving from craft to profession, systems thinking, 'T-shaped people,' observing the world, water bottle caps. Sound interesting? Take a listen!" http://tinyurl.com/35xetq The Dave Shea Interview By Christopher Schmitt. "...Today, however, I'm happy that Dave Shea joined me for an interview to discuss what's on his mind. We talk about design, clients, the upcoming Web Directions North conference and whether or not he considers himself a foodie..." http://www.christopherschmitt.com/2007/12/20/the-dave-shea-interview/ +08: NAVIGATION. Good URL Bad URL By Aaron Goldman. "am a nerd. I'm that guy who pronounces URL like the Duke of. I clap when I see a good URL and I cringe when I see a bad URL. My mission here is to give businesses some guidance when choosing and promoting their URLs so they don't waste the money they've already spent on this here Internet fad..." http://www.goodurlbadurl.com/ Get In Shape By Dave Shea. "Pop quiz: what's wrong with the following navigation?..." http://24ways.org/2007/get-in-shape The Importance of Using Lists for Navigation By Dustin Brewer. "It is important to use lists in navigation for semantics, accessibility, aesthetics and flexibility. Not using lists for navigation can lead to confusion, inaccessibility and unclear markup..." http://dustinbrewer.com/the-importance-of-using-lists-for-navigation/ Usability Tools Podcast: Mouseovers in Navigation By Jared Spool. "It's tempting to spend a ton of time creating slick flyout, dropdown, or pop-up navigation on our site, but is it worth the effort? This week, Brian Christiansen and I discuss interactive mouseover techniques for navigation. Are they a good idea when it comes to actually using your site? Based on our testing, we don't think so." http://tinyurl.com/2obj2j Following User Navigation Paths By Joe Dolson. "An interesting thread at Cre8asiteforums, titled 'When lots of your visitors go straight to search?' discusses a member's curiosity about navigation patterns after noticing that a significant percentage of his visitors - 25% - go directly to search after arriving at his site..." http://tinyurl.com/yqy9v9 Cool URIs for the Semantic Web W3C Working Draft 17 December 2007 http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-cooluris-20071217/ +09: PHP. The State of Functional Programming in PHP By Troels Knak-Nielsen. "With the rise of Javascript, and languages like Python and Ruby, functional programming is becoming more mainstream. Even Java seems to be getting closures in the next version, so does this leave PHP lacking behind or is there an unrealized potential hidden within?" http://tinyurl.com/2a82f8 Intro to PHP By Stirling Hughes. "In this article we'll introduce you to one of the Internet's hottest and fastest growing server side programming languages, PHP. PHP (or Personal HomePage Tools) was created by Rasmus Lerdorf over three years ago to track visitors to his homepage. PHP has since evolved into a powerful server-side markup language with syntax that resembles a mix between Perl and C..." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/20071217stirling_hughes.php3 Improving Exception Throwing when Auto Loading Classes in PHP 5 By Alejandro Gervasio. "This is the third article in the series on how to auto load classes in PHP 5. This article will demonstrate how to trigger exceptions in a way that can be caught by the corresponding "catch()" block..." http://tinyurl.com/25bywq +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. On Considering the Role of W3C Members in Working Group Decisions By Ian Jacobs. "On 29 November 2007, Dan Connolly, co-Chair of the HTML Working Group pointed me to an IRC log of discussion about HTML 5 which prompted this question: is it acceptable to take into consideration the role of each W3C member organization in the overall deployment marketplace when we make decisions (in a Working Group)? The question led to a request for interpretation of this phrase from section 2.1 of the W3C Process Document: "The Team must ensure that ... no Member receives preferential treatment within W3C." As editor of the document, I forwarded the request to the W3C Advisory Board (AB), the body elected by the W3C Membership that manages the evolution of the W3C Process. Here was their reply, based on the consensus reached at their 10 December meeting..." http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/12/on_considering_the_role_of_w3c_1.html Conversation with Opera on Web Standards By Vlad Alexander. "In this article, Vlad Alexander from xhtml.com interviews Hakon Wium Lie, Chief Technology Officer at Opera Software, regarding the Web standards aspect of Opera's complaint to the European Commission." http://xhtml.com/en/web-standards/conversation-with-opera/ Complaint Update By Hakon Wium. "Last week, Opera filed a complaint with the European Commission. The story has been reported widely in the news and many people have voiced their opinion in the matter. I've received lots of messages in support of Opera's stand in my mailbox, especially on the issue of web standards. Many of the writers are frustrated web designers who spend too much time trying to work around the bugs and limitations of IE. Some people miss the Swedish Chef in our arguments. I wish humor would trump in all big battles..." http://people.opera.com/howcome/2007/msft/update.html Opera Files Antitrust Complaint Against Microsoft By Joost de Valk. "...after reading the press release by Opera and Hakon Wium Lie's open letter to the web community, I quickly emailed him with a few questions, and he was kind enough to respond..." http://www.css3.info/opera-files-antitrust-complaint-against-microsoft/ Opera Files a Complaint to the European Commission About Internet Explorer By Robert Nyman. "...Tread lightly, Opera. Are you sure you're entitled to cast the first stone?..." http://tinyurl.com/2xd9d8 Opera vs Microsoft By Andy Budd. "...The first part of the complaint seems fairly reasonable, at least from a certain perspective...However the issue has less to do with software bundling and more to do with the market effect...." http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2007/12/opera_vs_micros/ Bad Timing By Eric Meyer. "...It's the wrong move at the wrong time, sending precisely the wrong signal to Microsoft about the importance of participating in development and support of open standards, and I can only hope that it comes to a quiet and unheralded end." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/12/13/bad-timing/ Opera's Lie Blasts Microsoft on IE and Web Standards Support By Mike Paciello. "...I think all of us in the accessibility world know the importance of harmonized web standards. Let's hope that Microsoft steps up to the plate and does the right thing..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=14 Opera CTO Talks About Opera's Antitrust Complaint Against Microsoft (Video) By Daniel Goldman. "Opera CTO Hakon Wium Lie, who earlier today wrote an open letter to the Web community, spoke on camera about Opera's antitrust complaint against Microsoft. Hakon also spoke with ZDNet blogger Larry Dignan." http://tinyurl.com/2rau44 Reigniting the Browser Wars By Stuart Langridge. "...Standards bodies aren't really there to think up ideas, although that's what they seem to have evolved into. They're there to say, now, hang on a second, if you do that then what about all the people with no working eyes / some other operating system / touchscreens / no money for patent licenses. They're there to make sure that the web, which is meant to be there for everyone, isn't separated into the haves and the have-nots, where the have-nots is everyone who won't or can't jump on the latest bandwagon. This is precisely why Silverlight is trying to supplant the web: to divide us into haves and have-nots. It's why Flash is trying to supplant the web: to divide us into haves and have-nots. It's why XUL as an application-development language for web apps was doomed..." http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2007/12/17/reigniting-the-browser-wars When Will HTML 5 Support