+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 28, January 3, 2008. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 28 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: EVENTS. 04: JAVASCRIPT. 05: MISCELLANEOUS. 06: PHP. 07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 08: TOOLS. SECTION TWO: 09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. 10 Common Errors When Implementing Accessibility By Trenton Moss. "Web developers attempting to build accessible websites often make the same mistakes time and time again. Although they're trying their hardest sometimes their overzealousness gets in the way and actually hinders the accessibility of their websites..." http://tinyurl.com/yrvtw5 ADA Restoration Act of 2007 By American Association of People with Disabilities. "The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) is the largest national, nonprofit, cross-disability member organization in the United States, dedicated to ensuring political empowerment and economic self-sufficiency for the more than 50 million Americans with disabilities." http://adarestoration.blogspot.com/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Best Bets for Browser Bug Bashing By Molly E. Holzschlag. "One of the most frustrating, time consuming and challenging aspects of managing cross-browser rendering of CSS is dealing with bugs along with incomplete implementations. Examining helpful resources such as position is everything and QuirksMode, it becomes profoundly clear that today's front end web designer and developer must be pretty adept at dealing with this core problem..." http://www.molly.com/2007/12/28/best-bets-for-browser-bug-bashing/ How to Create Drop Shadow Boxes with Minimal Markup By Thierry Koblentz. "Two solutions..." http://tjkdesign.com/articles/drop-shadow_and_AlphaImageLoader.asp +03: EVENTS. CUSEC 2008 Canadian University Software Engineering Conference January 17-19, 2008. Montreal, Quebec, Canada http://2008.cusec.net/en/index.php PHP CakeFest February 6-8 2008. Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/cakefest-2008-02-06-orlando-fl LIFT 08 February 6-8, 2008. Geneva, Switzerland http://www.liftconference.com/lift08-homepage Design and Emotion Conference 2008 October 6-9, 2008. Hong Kong, China http://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/de2008/ +04: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript: It's Just Not Validation! By Colin Morris. "The term 'JavaScript validation' is misleading! As Colin explains, JavaScript really provides input assistance, and that assistance is best achieved if it's tied closely to the back-end code that actually performs the validation." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/javascript-just-not-validation JavaScript Functions are Variables By Jesse Skinner. "JavaScript functions are variables, and this is a big difference between JavaScript and many other programming languages. It can be a bit of a paradigm shift for people new to JavaScript, but it allows for some really cool things you can't do in many other languages..." http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/blog/javascript-functions-are-variables Let's Make 2008 the Year of Embracing the Server Side with Ajax By Christian Heilmann. "I am always fascinated by the amount of Ajax tutorials and examples out there that totally ignore the backend part of an Ajax app. A lot of times you'll find page-long ravings about the 6-7 lines of JavaScript that allow the client to make an HTTP request but when it comes to talking about the proxy script needed to allow for cross-domain requests a lot is glossed over as 'you don't need to know this, just use this script'..." http://tinyurl.com/2xcg6p +05: MISCELLANEOUS. The Life and Times of Cool By Ron Scott. "As a visual trend, Web 2.0 had a slightly immature look to it. But the decline of this style has helped the design world to mature and increase in depth...Whether knowingly or unknowingly, we have modeled and treated the internet like our lives outside of computers - where fads come and go, but certain things remain..." http://fadtastic.net/2008/01/02/the-life-and-times-of-cool/ Interview with Luke Wroblewski By WebGuild. "Visual organization is the deliberate prioritization of meaning within a visual design. It's the process of applying the principles behind perception - how we make sense of what we see - to illuminate relationships between content and actions." http://www.webguild.org/2007/05/thanks-luke-for-doing-this-follow-up.php +06: PHP. Secure and Accessible Contact Form v3 By Mike Cherim. "I'm happy to announce the availability of version three of my GBCF-v3 Secure and Accessible Contact Form..." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=238 Why PHP Should Never be Taught By Ka-Ping Yee. "Suppose A equals B, and also B equals C. Any reasonable person would expect that A equals C, right? Oh yeah?..." http://zestyping.livejournal.com/124503.html Why Should PHP Ever be Taught in School? By John Lim. "This posting by Ka-Ping Yee on why PHP should never be taught is precisely why PHP should be taught. If something is popular but hard to understand then we need an education process. To just shake our heads and give up is simply immature (or trolling). Otherwise we might as well say that English (or any other spoken language for that matter) should not be taught, because spoken languages are illogical, imprecise and therefore useless..." http://phplens.com/phpeverywhere/?q=node/view/244 +07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The W3C Cannot Save Us By Alex Russell. "...Put simply, Zeldman is hurting you and only you can make it stop. Neither the CSS WG nor the HTML 5 WG nor, indeed, any W3C working group can define the future. They can only round off the sharp edges once the future becomes the past and that's all we should ever expect of them. As much as they tell us (and themselves) that they can, and as much as they really would like to, the W3C cannot save us." http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/?p=642 Alternative Text for Significant Images By Joe Dolson. "In the comments from my most recent article, 'Supporting Standards that Support Accessibility,' a number of interesting thoughts were raised concerning the requirement (or lack thereof) of the alt attribute in HTML 5." http://tinyurl.com/27qyvq Opera vs Microsoft Reprise By Andy Budd. "...The issue isn't about supplying a PC to end users that doesn't come with a browser pre-installed. That would obviously be stupid. The issue is about allowing computer manufacturers, and by extension their end users, to choose what browser or browsers come pre-installed. Whether people choose to exercise that right is another matter." http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2008/01/opera_vs_micros_1/ Web Icon Set to be Discontinued By BBC. "Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said. In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers have slipped to just 0.6%..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7163547.stm +08: TOOLS. IE Tab By mozdev.org. "IE Tab is a Firefox extension that allows you to switch to a new tab to see how a website looks in Internet Explorer. If you like to develop websites with Firefox then this useful add-on allows you to quickly view how your site is looking in Internet Explorer as you develop." http://ietab.mozdev.org/ iPhone Test Simulator http://iphonetester.com/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +09: 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.]