+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 46, May 8, 2008. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 46 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: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Action 54: First Draft By Steven Faulkner, Joshue O Connor, and Laura Carlson. "The following draft text is based on the February 6, 2008 PFWG finding that the HTMLWG: "...re-work the element section to bring it into line as techniques for implementing WCAG 2.0.We say 2.0 because of the strong likelihood that WCAG 2.0 will precede HTML5 to Recommendation status..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/misc/uc/ Related email: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008May/0121.html @alt and the Flickr Defense By Matt May. "Alt text matters to users. When an image is not visible, due either to a user's own visual or cognitive disability, or their use of a low-bandwidth or intermittent connection to the web, @alt is there to provide the necessary, missing semantics. This is a good thing. So good, in fact, that @alt is a required attribute in HTML 4.01 and all flavors of XHTML. If you omit alt text, your code is not valid HTML. However, as of today, alt is not a required attribute for the img element in HTML5..." http://tinyurl.com/5mozpz Best Practices: Writing for Accessibility By Joe Dolson. "...Disregarding issues concerning the use of abbreviations, typography, headings, and other semantic structures in HTML, the simple use of punctuation can be a significant barrier. This is a problem which applies to all text content for any user of a screen reader, in particular, although following these suggestions will benefit any reader of your content..." http://tinyurl.com/3fgtc5 WCAG 2 Requirements at Risk By Lisa Herrod. "Since April 30, when the WCAG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation (CR) was released, there has been a ton of posts across the web telling us the WCAG 2 is almost, almost complete. I'm not here to do that. The news is 5 days old and I have no intention of clogging up your RSS by regurgitating the same contentÉ as important as it is. What I do want to highlight is that there are a number of WCAG 2 requirements at risk..." http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/05/04/wcag-2-requirements-at-risk/ Accessibility Evaluators Aren't Worthless By Mike Cherim. "As seen on our Resources page, there are a number of web accessibility evaluation tools available to developers. Most accessible web developers fall into three groups as it pertains to the value of these tools. Either they love them, hate them, or don't really understand how to use them. The purpose of this article is to encourage those who love them to not overly depend on them, those who hate them to stop being haters, and those who don't understand them to come away with an open mind." http://tinyurl.com/5w2bxu +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Improving Code Readability With CSS Styleguides By Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz. "This article presents 5 coding techniques which can dramatically improve management and simplify maintainability of your code. You can browse through the references listed under the article Ñ they contain further information about how you can achieve a well-organized and well-structured code." http://tinyurl.com/6n6a3w Using CSS to Do Anything By noupe. "CSS can powerfully open the doors to a lot of rich and unique techniques. Today we are presenting a round-up of CSS coding, creative approaches and techniques. Definitely worth taking a very close look at! We also included some basic techniques you can probably use in every project you are developing. This is just the third article in this series , the forth part will be coming soon, stay tuned and Enjoy!..." http://tinyurl.com/3w3r6p Understanding CSS Positioning, part 1 By Kilian Valkhof. "Without a doubt, positioning, or the layout, is the hardest part of CSS. Not only because it ever so often varies between browsers, but also because CSS has a lot of ways to position an element, all with various (dis) advantages. This series of articles will thrive to explain the possibilities you have in positioning. It doesn't only cover positioning, but also properties that define layout such as display and float, and a preview of the new CSS3 layout modules..." http://tinyurl.com/5d7gfo +03: DREAMWEAVER. Use Dreamweaver CS3 Templates to Save Time By Stefan Mischook. "Dreamweaver has a nice collection of bare-bones web templates. One thing I found cool about these templates, is that they contain a lot of notes that describe why they (the web-nerds at Adobe) have certain things in place - like the specific code they used to deal with a given CSS layout issue...." http://www.killersites.com/blog/2008/dreamweaver-cs3-templates/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Are Your Website Metrics Reliable? By Gerry McGovern. "Not only do many websites have unreliable metrics; they're usually measuring the wrong things." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-05-05-metrics.htm Use Scenarios and Use Cases By Celeste Lyn Paul. "Some of the most common questions I have received in relation to the KDE User Research Profiles have been what are use scenarios, how are they different from use cases, and why do I need them. Hopefully some of this information will clarify the difference between use cases and scenarios and why use scenarios are so important." http://weblog.obso1337.org/2008/use-scenarios-and-use-cases/ +05: EVENTS. An Introduction to W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices May 26 - June 20 2008. Online course. http://www.w3.org/2008/03/MobiWeb101/Overview.html +06: JAVASCRIPT. Syntax for ARIA: Cost-benefit analysis By Henry S. Thompson. "...In preparing this analysis, I have reviewed the available concrete evidence bearing on the matter, and have carried out a considerable amount of work to replicate and, in some cases, correct or extend, testing which has been done in the past. The details are available in a report entitled Some test results concerning ARIA attribute syntax...." http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/05/syntax_for_aria_costbenefit_an.html Safari Gets Support for ARIA By Gez Lemon. "WebKit, the open source application framework behind Safari and other browsers, announced that they have started to add support for WAI-ARIA..." http://juicystudio.com/article/safari-support-aria.php Event Delegation with JavaScript By Robert Nyman. "There has been a fair share about JavaScript and event delegation, but since a lot of people doesn't seem to have read it, I thought I'd re-iterate the point here. The more the merrier, right?..." http://www.robertnyman.com/2008/05/04/event-delegation-with-javascript/ Free Chapter from Douglas CrockfordÕs 'JavaScript: The Good Parts' By Eric Miraglia. "...Douglas and his editors at O'Reilly were kind enough to let us offer a sneak preview of JavaScript: The Good Parts here,,," http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/05/05/crockford-inheritance/ Improve Your Page Performance With Lazy Loading By Jakob Heuser. Today's web applications can necessitate a huge weight of both JavaScript and CSS--but in many application designs huge sections can be delayed, speeding up the total page response time to the user. Jakob Heuser shows us how to create a lazy loading utility, and start cutting down on your load times. http://tinyurl.com/5dyfxe +07: NAVIGATION. Image Replacement + Google By Dave Shea. "...it appears that, short of a set of stone tablets carried down from the hills of Mountain View, we do have a fairly clear answer. Using CSS image replacement in a responsible way, where the image truthfully represents the content itÕs replacing, is safe to use. The simple act of hiding text from users is not enough to get your site banned from GoogleÕs index." http://mezzoblue.com/archives/2008/05/05/image_replac/ Where SEO and Accessibility Collide By Alastair Campbell. "...As an SEO specific cheat sheet, it is doing what it is supposed to. However, I wouldn't give it to a developer or content author without the caveat that keywords should be included where applicable, that is not the purpose of those attributes. (And just skip the title attribute on text links.)" http://alastairc.ac/2008/05/where-seo-and-accessibility-collid/ What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability By Shari Thurow. "...Both website usability and SEO/SEM are iterative processes, meaning that methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a work in progress...At the heart of iterative design is the objective observation of interaction between users and an interface: not focus groups, not web analytics, and not an SEO professional's personal opinion about website usability." http://searchengineland.com/080410-142200.php What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability - Part 2 By Shari Thurow. "...For this installment, website usability guru Jakob Nielsen and Kim Krause Berg share their observations and perspectives..." http://searchengineland.com/080501-115858.php +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. When the Fall is All That's Left By Mark Pilgrim. "...I refer, of course, to the Acid 3 test cooked up by the inimitable Ian Hickson and his motley crew of meddling minions. The test gives a numerical score that purports to rank a browserÕs compatibility with a potpourri of well-established web standards. Of course any such test is guaranteed to be unfair to somebody, but this one was especially unfair to everybody since the makers intentionally sought out bugs in major browsers to highlight their incompatibilities. That, by itself, is not the story...C'mon, guys. ItÕs not the score that matters, itÕs the follow up. ItÕs the conversation you have, the promises you make, the progress you show the next day and the day after that and the day after that..." http://tinyurl.com/62hayc Information Design Patterns By Niceone. "A sophisticated online collection of about 48 design patterns that describe distinct methods for the display of interactive information graphics, their active behavior as well as the forms of user interaction with them." http://niceone.org/infodesign/ +09: USABILITY. How Little Do Users Read? By Jakob Nielsen. "On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html Volume Doesn't Matter By Andy Rutledge. "Despite what you've read, the volume of text on your page in and of itself has no impact on the success of your site. Statisticians will tell you otherwise, because they observe specific behaviors and perceive patterns and think that their perceptions easily translate into concrete conclusions. They're usually wrong on this score. The fact is it doesn't matter what volume of copy you have if the copy is well designed." http://www.andyrutledge.com/volume-doesnt-matter.php Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help? By Jessica Enders. "Just because a design convention exists doesn't mean it works. Our field runneth over with design patterns, but is low on evidence of their utility. Jessica Enders drops some science on the widespread belief that zebra stripes aid the reader by guiding the eye along a table row." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/zebrastripingdoesithelp Layering the Customer Experience By Kath Straub. "Humor helps, but only if it's not funny to start with..." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/apr08.asp#kath [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.]