+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 41, April 4, 2008. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 41 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: JAVASCRIPT. 04: MISCELLANEOUS. 05: PHP. 06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 07: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 08: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Cognitive Accessibility Survey By Jared Smith. "As part of WebAIM's Steppingstones of Technology project, we have performed an extensive literature review to identify elements that are often cited as having an impact on users with cognitive and learning disabilities when accessing web content. To further inform us, we invite you to complete a short survey...." http://webaim.org/blog/cognitive-accessibility-survey/ JAWS, Window-Eyes and Character References By Jason Kiss. "These test results present the spoken output from JAWS, version 8.0, and Window-Eyes, version 6.1, when reading the 252 character references specified in HTML 4.01. Though JAWS 9.0 was not tested, I'm assuming, based on correspondence with Freedom Scientific, that its results would be identical with those of JAWS 8.0..." http://www.accessibleculture.org/characterReferences/index.html Captioning Sucks! By Joe Clark, Open and Closed Project. Now let's fix it! http://captioningsucks.com/ The John Slatin Fund Accessibility Project By Knowbility. "The John Slatin Accessibility Fund Project is an independent volunteer collaborative effort of many individual and business accessibility experts who are generously donating time..." http://www.knowbility.org/business/john-slatin/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. IE9 to Include Alternative 'CSS.2012' Standard By Peter Gasston. "The Internet Explorer team announced on their blog today that they are unhappy with the slow progress and differing implementations of the various CSS3 modules, and will not be including any CSS3 functionality in IE8; instead they will be producing their own, alternative standard, which they are codenaming CSS.2012 (after the planned year of launch of the subsequent browser)..." http://www.css3.info/ie9-to-include-alternative-css2012-standard/ CSS: Margins and Padding By James Payne. We learned how to work with borders and apply them to the various elements in our last tutorial. In this article we will go over setting margins and working with padding to give your web pages a seamless look. There is as always a lot of ground to cover so let s get started.... http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Style-Sheets/CSS-Margins-and-Padding/ CSS Tutorial By Nellie Jones. "Comprehensive CSS course materials " http://www.learn-css-tutorial.com +03: JAVASCRIPT. ARIA Toggle Button and Tri-state Checkbox Examples By Steve Faulkner. "It is an exciting time for proponents of WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications). With support introduced in IE 8 (beta), better support in Firefox 3, planned in Opera and mooted in Safari, coupled with the recent changes to the specification making it easier to develop and deploy ARIA based widgets..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=53 SXSW Core Conversation By Gez Lemon. "Martin Kliehm and I were both very pleased with our core conversation about WAI-ARIA at SXSW. The idea behind core conversations is to formalize conversations that take place in the corridors." http://juicystudio.com/article/sxsw-core-conversation.php ARIA in HTML5 Integration: Document Conformance (Draft, Take Two) By Henri Sivonen. "Now a runnable suggestion." http://hsivonen.iki.fi/aria-html5-bis/ +04: MISCELLANEOUS. Chatting with Rasmus (part one) By Lukas Kahwe Smith. "Lukas Smith got a chance to catch up with Rasmus Lerdorf (and others in #php.pecl) and 'talk shop' about topics including handling large libraries and maxclients settings." http://pooteeweet.org/blog/0/1038#m1038 Videos By Roger Hudson. "Before I was captured by the Web, I spent many years working in the film and television industry. I am now combining these two areas of interest to prepare videos about web-related issues...Interview with Shawn Henry...Conversation with Molly Holzschlag...Wheeling in Second Life..." http://www.usability.com.au/resources/videos.cfm +05: PHP. Working With Forms By William Steinmetz with Brian Ward. "Forms are how your users talk to your scripts. To get the most out of PHP, you must master forms. The first thing you need to understand is that although PHP makes it easy to access form data, you must be careful of how you work with the data..." http://www.webreference.com/programming/php/working_with_forms/ PHP Tutorial By Richard Martin. "Learn PHP with this tutorial" http://www.learnphp-tutorial.com/ +06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The Evolving Web By Roger Hudson. "The Web today is very different to what it was in 1994, when the World Wide Web Consortium was established. This article looks back at the early history of the Web and uses Pace Layering theory to consider some recent developments and the role of the W3C in the process of change..." http://www.usability.com.au/resources/evolving-web.cfm Acid (3) Drops By Charles McCathieNevile. "...This week's tempest in geekland was about the Acid3 test - we were first to announce we had got to 98/98, and just afterward first to score 100/100 on the test (with Webkit in each case hot on our heels). Now you can get a special preview testing build (for Windows or Linux) that gets the right rendering and 100/100 on the test. But what does that really mean...?" http://my.opera.com/chaals/blog/2008/03/28/acid-3-drops Acid Redux By Eric A. Meyer. "...What I disagree with is the idea that if you cherry-pick enough obscure and difficult corners of a bunch of different specifications and mix them all together into a spicy meatball of difficulty, it constitutes a useful test of the specifications you cherry-picked. Because the one does not automatically follow from the other..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/03/27/acid-redux/ Misstep By Shelley Powers. "It's disappointing to read the stories on Acid3 today. The whole point of the Acid tests, at least originally, was a celebration of standards. A friendly competition between peers who have one thing in common: an open, strong commitment to standards." http://realtech.burningbird.net/standards/misstep/ Grace in Winning By Shelley Powers. "Now, this is what I hoped to see when the Acid3 test was first announced. Not the macho posturing I saw yesterday..." http://realtech.burningbird.net/standards/grace-in-winning/ Why Use Semantic HTML? By Joe Dolson. "I've seen a lot of articles discussing the importance of HTML and XHTML semantics. I've seen articles describing what it means for a document to be semantic. Most of these articles, however, don't provide a serious overview of what HTML elements actually may be considered semantic - and what those semantic elements actually mean. And, even more particularly, why it matters..." http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/04/why-use-semantic-html/ +07: USABILITY. Middle-Aged Users' Declining Web Performance By Jakob Nielsen. "Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year - mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/middle-aged-users.html Aging and Accessibility By Matt May. "You know what I think should cause everyone to give at least some thought to accessibility? Your thirties..." http://www.bestkungfu.com/archive/date/2008/03/aging-and-accessibility/ Short Introductions on Web Pages By Meryl Evans. "...We writers have learned that we need to have an opening, body, and conclusion. But we also know that writing for the web breaks many standard writing rules. Whether a site should have an intro depends on its purpose and audience (You've heard this a thousand times, I'm sure)..." http://meryl.net/2008/03/31/short-introductions-on-web-pages/ Expectations and Usability - Introduction By Peter J. Meyers. "I've been reviewing a lot of small business websites lately, and as I see the same usability issues popping up over and over, it occurs to me just how many of those problems are a result of violating visitors' expectations. So, I've decided to write a short series (3-4 installments) on the role of expectations in usability, and how we can better anticipate those expectations to help website visitors accomplish their goals." http://tinyurl.com/24z28t The Web Beyond the Desktop By Dave Shea. "When you think of the people who use your website, where do they use it? At work or a home office? What about a mobile phone? What about even more diverse devices like Amazon's Kindle or the Nintendo Wii? Dave Shea asks us to reconsider how and where people use our websites, and how best to tackle the demands of building sites for a wide array of devices." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_beyond_the_desktop/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +08: 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.]