+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 52, June 20, 2008. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 52 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 04: JAVASCRIPT. 05: MISCELLANEOUS. 06: PHP. 07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 07: TOOLS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. WebAIM Hosting TEITAC Content By Jared Smith. "Though our partnership with the National Center on Disability and Access to Education, I had the great opportunity to sit on the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC). The committee made recommended changes to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act..." http://webaim.org/blog/webaim-hosting-teitac-content/ Web Excessibility By Mike Cherim. "They say too much of a good thing isn't all that good. It's true, and this fact remains as the statement is applied to web development..." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=249 Digital Divide: Mobile Elite Emerges as Ruling Class in Business By Joanna Bawa. "The UK may be ahead of most of Europe when it comes to the universal provision of flexible working, but still barely a fifth (22%) of companies have made provisions for all of their employees to work flexibly on a daily basis. This is an ever-increasing risk in a country where nearly a third (31%) of employees say they would definitely change jobs to get access to flexible working conditions, all other factors remaining equal." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4799.asp Is alt Text Necessary for Photo Sharing Sites? By Bruce Lawson. "There is an argument raging right now about the HTML5 spec's proposal that alt text on the img element be optional..." http://tinyurl.com/6ljdn2 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Faux Absolute Positioning By Eric Sol. "CSS layout is awesome, except when your layout calls for a header, a footer, and columns in between. Use float, and content changes can cause columns to wrap. Use absolute positioning, and your footer can crash into your columns. Add the complexity of drag-and-drop layouts, and a new technique is needed. Enter "faux absolute positioning." Align every item to a predefined position on the grid (as with absolute positioning), but objects will still affect the normal flow (as with float)." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxabsolutepositioning Firefox Developers Accelerate CSS Implementation By Peter Gasston. "Firefox 3 isn't quite out yet, but already there are some exciting plans for CSS implementation in future versions..." http://tinyurl.com/3l3nfj Some new CSS Features in Firefox 3 By David Baron. "Our developer documentation already has a list of the new CSS features in Firefox 3. I'd like to talk in some more detail about some of the more interesting or useful ones..." http://dbaron.org/log/20080613-firefox3-css HTML vs CSS, Part 2, Navigation Lists By Niels Matthijs. "Last time I talked about the balance between html and css, today it is time to give you a solid example as to illustrate my point. Hopefully this will clear up any remaining doubt left from the first article. This article will take a closer look at navigation lists and how an extra span + optional extra class can make our css work easier..." http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/html-vs-css-pt2-navigation-lists +03: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Wireframes: Struggles and Solutions, Part 1 By Sarah Harrison. Sarah talks about some of the problems with using wireframes to document design decisions and makes a call for examples. http://sourjayne.com/uxblog/?p=38 Demystifying Information Architecture By Patrick Kennedy. "This afternoon I presented my session at WebDU on the topic of information architecture for designers and developers. In the particular case of WebDU, these designers and developers mostly specialize in Flex and Flash." http://tinyurl.com/5kzwtc Sketching in Code: the Magic of Prototyping By David Verba. "The rise of Ajax and rich internet applications has thrown the limitations of traditional wireframing into painful relief. When you leave the world of page-based interactions, how do you document all but the simplest interactions? Flowcharts and diagrams don't work. Prototyping saves the day by focusing on the application and conveying its 'magic.' Prototypes can help you sell a decision that is fundamentally or radically different from the client's current solution or application. Sit a stakeholder down in front of a working prototype and show him or her why your approach is compelling." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sketchingincode +04: JAVASCRIPT. A Style All Their Own By Luke Smith. "Modifying a DOM element's style during user interaction is one of the pillars of creating DHTML interfaces that transition from state to state in a smooth, and (hopefully) intuitive way..." http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/06/12/a-style-all-their-own/ ARIA Slider, Part 2 By Hans Hillen. In my previous post I gave an example for a very minimalistic ARIA slider, with the intention of demonstrating how simple it is to add ARIA using only a few attributes. I know there are some developers out there who wishfully think that, in order to make their rich interface widgets accessible, all they have to do is add ARIA to it. Others are skeptical about ARIA for that very reason. The truth is of course that ARIA is only part of the effort, and work is required to make any widget accessible (whether you're using ARIA or not). In this post I want to cover some of those issues and give an overview of what else to think about when creating an accessible slider." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=69 Progressive Enhancement with Ajax By Jeremy Keith. "When I was originally writing the DOM Scripting book, its scope was very clear - it was to be an introductory work on JavaScript and the Document Object Model, with an emphasis on best practices. I made a conscious decision not to cover advanced topics like XMLHttpRequest. But as the writing of the book progressed, Ajax really began to explode..." http://www.uie.com/articles/hijax/ +05: MISCELLANEOUS. The Education of Geeks and Freaks By Tom Green. "The official title on my business card is 'Professor, Interactive Multimedia', and I teach at the School of Media Studies and Information Technology at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto. I am willing to bet that a fair few of you reading that title will be thinking: 'Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach.' I thought I would deal with that one right off the top. I'm used to it and it really doesn't bug me. What is bugging me, though, is that if Post Secondary Educators don't change their attitude towards you-and soon-you are going to find it really hard to find trained staff for your businesses..." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/education_of_freaks_and_geeks Managing People: Easy, 1-2-3 By Tiffani Jones. "...If you boil good management down to its essential components, I'm sure the following tips would be included. They're not exhaustive, but I've found them very helpful over the course of my career. Here goes nothin..." http://blueflavor.com/blog/2008/jun/18/managing-people-easy-1-2-3/ +06: PHP. Basic Pagination By Crayon Violent. "...A basic pagination routine seems long and scary at first, but once you close your eyes, take a deep breath, and look at each piece of the script individually, you will find it's actually pretty easy stuff..." http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/basic-pagination +07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. When Validation Becomes Unimportant By Jens Meiert. "Validation becomes unimportant once you're ahead of the game, and not a second earlier. Even then, truly mastering HTML and CSS, it will usually be best to stick with valid markup and styling, but fighting latency might then mean a by all means legitimate reason to stretch a little bit..." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20080616/validation-unimportant/ @media 2008 Presentation Slides By Lachlan Hunt "I have published the slides from my @media 2008 presentation in London. Overall, I think the presentation went very well. James Graham and I managed to speak for almost an hour about HTML 5..." http://lachy.id.au/log/2008/06/atmedia-slides +08: TOOLS. Surf Right Toolbar By Royal National Institute of Blind People and Web Accessibility Tools Consortium. "We're very excited to release a beta version of our Surf Right Toolbar. The Surf Right Toolbar is designed to make adjusting certain options within Internet Explorer quicker and easier, using either the mouse or keyboard. Developed by RNIB and the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium (WAT-C) the Accessibility Toolbar is a free download and currently in beta version. We'd love to hear what you think of it and any ideas for additions that you'd like to see by emailing us at webaccess@rnib.org.uk." http://tinyurl.com/63sq49 Tool for Checking HTML Compatibility Guidelines in XHTML By Olivier Thereaux. "I am happy to announce the first release of a library/tool which helps web authors check for issues of compatibility with legacy HTML agents..." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2008Jun/0007.html +09: TYPOGRAPHY. The Paragraph in Web Typography and Design By Jon Tan. "Paragraphs are punctuation, the punctuation of ideas. After selecting a typeface, choosing the right paragraph style is one of the cornerstones of good typography. This is a brief inquiry into paragraph style for the Web..." http://tinyurl.com/6r2zq5 Text Prefs By message.uk.com. A text preferences survey "...which aims to answer some fundamental questions about usability on the web to put some hard facts into the subject, rather than rely on anecdotal evidence and received wisdom from the book publishing world." http://www.message.uk.com/textprefs/ Details: http://www.message.uk.com/index.php?page=86 +10: USABILITY. Smart Defaults in Registration Forms By Luke Wroblewski. "Ever get an invitation to join a Web site in your Inbox? With the increasing popularity of social Web applications, it's getting hard to find people who have not. So chances are you know the drill. Get invited by a friend via email, then go to the Web site and fill in a registration form so you can join. Here's an example of that progression on MySpace..." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?690 User-Centered Design and Usability: Its Role in a Project By Marco Battilana. "The role of the User-Centered Design (UCD) process is vital to the success of site and/or application development yet it remains something of a foreign concept. It is also frequently bundled in with "Usability" and tacked on to the end of a project instead of taking its proper place as the underlying foundation. So, what is User-Centered Design and how should it be applied?..." http://tinyurl.com/3g6k52 What Color Do You Like? The Usability of Look and Feel (Strategy With Icons, Images, Branding Elements) By Frank Spillers. "...The graphical or visual aspects of an interface are the most easily recognizable. They require no methodology (Graphic design vs usability) or design distinctions, (What is design?). Everyone from CEO to programmer can understand an interface by it's visual treatment. For some the interface is "eye-candy" and for others representative of organized emotional response and visual perception. Oftentimes, the confusion over who dictates the design can lead to confusion and often a gratuitous use of..." http://tinyurl.com/4ukv3k [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: 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.]