+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 7, Issue 01, July 3, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 01 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TYPOGRAPHY. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Why PDFs Suck! By Henny Swan. "PDFs get a rough press when it comes to accessibility and understandably so as most PDFs on the web today are not accessible. I thought I'd turn the spotlight on the much maligned thorn in many a web site owners side, and look at some of the reasons why PDFs are inaccessible. What follows is a list of some of reasons behind why PDFs suck that are not about the technology itself but how we (the web designer, the content author, the content commissioner, the manager, the policy maker) use it and what we can do to start changing PDFs on the web..." http://www.rnib.org.uk/wacblog/pdf/why-pdfs-suck/ Accessibility of Visual and Auditory Captchas By Web In Sight. "Welcome to the Accessibility of Visual and Auditory Captchas web survey. We are conducting this study to determine the usability and accessibility of captchas on the web. A captcha is a computer-generated challenge-response test that is intended to be easily solved by a human, but difficult for a computer to solve. Captchas are often used to prevent automated software from performing unauthorized actions, like creating user accounts or downloading software..." http://webinsight.cs.washington.edu/webeval/captchas/ Poetry, Punctuation, Markup; Screen Readers By Jon Gibbins. "...I've done some brief tests of poetry with screen readers to see how these two semantic constructs are handled..." http://tinyurl.com/4dz8na Opinion - Web Accessibility. Life In the Post-Guideline Age. By Julie Howell. '...If we really want equality on the web, it strikes me that we must adopt the language that businesses are using when they talk about creating websites that maximize profit. Right now, businesses are really interested in how the web can quickly deliver return on investment through increased sales. They are looking to web usability techniques to achieve the creation of excellent user experiences for everyone because they know this leads to increased sales. We need to make sure that businesses understand that disabled people have a right to excellent user experiences too and to view disabled people as simply another target audience. If we can do this, our goal of online inclusion and equality really could become reality." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=195 Spam vs. Accessibility By Joe Dolson. "...I'm not aware that there's any solution which has 100% success at differentiating humans from bots. Any barrier put in place to spam will also create a barrier for somebody. However, this is a decision that must be made for any site: when you're receiving thousands of spam messages a day through an insecure contact form, is it better to stop the occasional human or massively reduce your daily spam-killing time commitment? Ultimately, there isn't a real answer. Spam is too great of an issue to simply ignore. However, any time you create a CAPTCHA - of any sort - just remember this: provide an alternative. If you provide a phone number to those who have failed your little test, they may be able to reach you. If somebody needs to reach you, make it possible: even if they'll have to write you a letter in order to post a comment on your blog." http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/06/spam-vs-accessibility/ Update on the ADA By Cyndi Rowland. "There have been some confusing messages coming out recently regarding changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). WebAIM readers may want additional information so they can provide comments and feedback on an issue that continues to be conspicuously absent from the ADA, namely the Internet. Let me review what has happened in the past couple of weeks. " http://webaim.org/blog/update-on-the-ada/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Nesting Specifics - When CSS Misbehaves By Niels Matthijs. "There are plenty of css bugs one can write about. Some are worth tracking because they are annoying and have a huge impact on our every day work, others are interesting because they haven't received too much attention yet. But most interesting are the ones that allow us to touch upon deeper, underlying problems. This article will focus on a css issue that will allow us to do just that..." http://css.dzone.com/news/css-nesting-specifics-when-css CSS Variables News By Daniel Glazman. "Dave Hyatt and I are finalizing a new version of our CSS Variables specification based on both readers' feedback and implementation..." http://tinyurl.com/44u57q Flexible Layouts: Challenge For The Future By Dirk Jesse. "This article is a guest post written by Dirk Jesse, the developer of YAML (Yet Another Multicolumn Layout), an (X)HTML&CSS framework which explains his motivation for YAML in the last paragraph of the article. This article is supposed to initiate the discussion about the need for more flexible layouts in modern web design and explain why flexible designs are still important - even despite the Full Page Zoom-functionality implemented in most modern browsers." http://tinyurl.com/676uwb Creating Scalable Layouts By Craig Grannell. "Craig Grannell is a master of getting around varied screen sizes and resolutions that affect how users view websites. This issue, he shows you a flexible method..." http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/creating-scalable-layouts From Pixels to Print By Aron. "Print stylesheets are an excellent way of providing refined content to your readers without having to maintain multiple versions of the site..." http://tinyurl.com/6br8l3 HTML vs CSS part 3, Heading Headaches By Niels Matthijs. "In this article I'll be continuing my quest for leaner css at the expense of slightly more convoluted html. I hope last week's example on navigation lists was clear enough as to remove any remaining confusion. Today we'll be looking at html headings (

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) and why they are such a drag to style..." http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/html-vs-css-pt3-headings Nifty Navigation Tricks Using CSS By Rachel Andrews. "...an article that is still popular for beginners looking to create visually interesting site navigation elements that are based on semantic markup." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/navigation-using-css Breaking Out of the Box With CSS Layouts By Jina Bolton. "...example of what can be done to dispel the myth that all CSS layouts are boxy." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/breaking-out-of-the-box Warning: This Secret CSS Technique Will Surprise You! By Alex Walker. "...just when you thought you'd seen everything that could be done with CSS, Alex, comes up with this crazy effect." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/css-animation-technique Fancy Form Design Using CSS By Cameron Adams. "...consistently the most popular article on SitePoint, month upon month upon month" http://www.sitepoint.com/article/fancy-form-design-css +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 10 Measures for Continuous Website Maintenance By Jens Meiert. "Website maintenance and quality assurance mean the backbone of high quality offers of information, and they represent the difference between an amateurish or professional approach to web design and development. Consequently, guidelines for quality web design define maintenance and quality assurance as important process ingredients which have to be applied continuously. But let's see what this really means for our work..." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20080624/continuous-website-maintenance/ +04: EVENTS. Scripting Enabled September 2008. London, United Kingdom http://scriptingenabled.org/ The Ajax Experience September 29 - October 1, 2008. Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. http://ajaxexperience.techtarget.com/east/index.html User Interface 13 Conference October 13-16, 2008. Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/2008/ +05: FLASH. SWF Searchability FAQ By Adobe. "...Adobe is providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines..." http://tinyurl.com/4tcbxa Improved Flash Indexing By Ron Adler and Janis Stipins. "We've received numerous requests to improve our indexing of Adobe Flash files. Today, Ron Adler and Janis Stipins - software engineers on our indexing team-will provide us with more in-depth information about our recent announcement that we've greatly improved our ability to index Flash..." http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. More on Wireframes By Chris Baker. "Since composing my last post on wireframes I came across a couple of articles on the subject which reinforce the point of needing to keep wireframes simple - in terms of what they are for as well as how they look..." http://tinyurl.com/42l359 An Activity-Theory-Based Model To Analyze Web Application Requirements By Lorna Uden et al. "Few proposals for modeling and developing Web applications, deal with how to properly elicit and represent Web application requirements. Web applications introduce unique characteristics such as navigation that are not properly considered at the requirements level. In this paper, we seek to improve on improve on existing methods through the use of cultural-historical activity theory." http://informationr.net/ir/13-2/paper340.html +07: JAVASCRIPT. Getting Out of Binding Situations in JavaScript By Christophe Porteneuve. "Every wonder who you really are? Congratulations! You have a lot in common with JavaScript. Learn once and for all how to train your JavaScript to remember who it is and what it's doing." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/getoutbindingsituations ARIA Slider, Part 3 By Hans Hillen. "After covering a basic ARIA slider as well as a more complex slider component, we will take a closer look at how a slider can be used to create a more obscure but very powerful widget: the double slider (or 'range slider'). We will discuss what to think about when creating a double slider, and what changes to make to your slider's ARIA properties..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=76 +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Building and Managing Virtual Teams By Chris Nagele. "I constantly get the same question, 'How do you manage a virtual team and actually get stuff done..." http://tinyurl.com/5953uo Luke Wroblewski On Web Form Design (Interview) By Reshma Kumar. "...how do we ensure that in creating web forms, we get them right? I am speaking with Luke Wroblewski, Senior Principal at Yahoo! and author of a new book 'Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks'..." http://www.webguild.org/2008/06/yahoos-luke-wroblewski-on-web-form.php +09: PHP. PHP Security By Daniel Egeberg. "Writing PHP applications is pretty easy. Most people grasp the syntax rather quickly and will within short time be able to produce a script that works using tutorials, references, books, and help forum forums like the one we have here at PHP Freaks. The problem is that most people forget one of the most important aspects that one must consider when writing PHP applications. Many beginners forget the security aspect of PHP..." http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/php-security Three Quick Tips To Make Your PHP Understandable By Nick Miller. Producing code that clearly conveys a developer's intent is key to any well written application. That not only applies to PHP, but every programming language. Developers who emphasize the creation of legible code tend to create applications which are easier to both maintain and expand upon. After seven years of programming in PHP I've worked on a variety of projects where well organized and legible code were set aside for numerous reasons. Some of those reasons include time constraints, lack of experience, lost enthusiasm, misdirected pre-optimizing, and the list goes on. Today we'll look at three simple methods which are commonly ignored by developers for some, if not all of the reasons described above." http://tinyurl.com/4gqntq +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Removing Microformats from bbc.co.uk/programmes By Michael Smethurst. "...Unfortunately there have been a number of concerns over hCalendar's use of the abbreviation design pattern...Until these issues are resolved the BBC semantic markup standards have been updated to prevent the use of non-human-readable text in abbreviations..." http://tinyurl.com/6d44vz hAccessibility Redux? By Patrick Lauke. "...Here's hoping that high-profile announcements like the BBC's (and those less public, but nonetheless significant ones) will help create some momentum and a concerted effort to find a robust substitute for ABBR. And, once that's happened, can we finally take this flawed design pattern out of circulation, educate the early adopters of microformats about the new and improved pattern(s), and move on to bigger and better things?" http://www.webstandards.org/2008/06/23/haccessibility-redux/ ABBR Pattern Accessibility By Alastair Campbell. "...The bottom line is that the BBC's decision to ditch hCalendar is a reasonable one, and every UK/US organization has to (by law) consider the accessibility of what they produce. For me it's similar to the table accessibility issues with HTML5. Although using multiple layers of headings (and other 'edge cases') are difficult to do without more complex markup like header/ids, it has to be possible to achieve it accessibly. Even if it doesn't pave a cow-path, or it is difficult for any regular developer, it has to be possible. Otherwise large organizations will have to look elsewhere when producing that type of content (e.g. PDF)." http://alastairc.ac/2008/06/abbr-pattern-accessibility/ +11: TYPOGRAPHY. Better CSS Font Stacks By Nathan Ford. "One aspect of designing for the web that almost immediately offends designers is the lack of fonts that are considered safe to use. While it is true that there are only a handful of web safe fonts, the ones we do have at our disposal can be quite powerful and diversely useful. On top of that, CSS gives us a nice little thing called a font stack..." http://unitinteractive.com/blog/2008/06/26/better-css-font-stacks/ +12: USABILITY. Extreme Usability: How to Make an Already-Great Design Even Better By Jakob Nielsen. "The 1% of websites that don't suck can be made even better by strengthening exceptional user performance, eliminating miscues, and targeting company-wide use and unmet needs." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/extreme-usability.html Designing Ethical Experiences: Understanding Juicy Rationalizations By Joe Lamantia. "Designers rationalize their choices just as much as everyone else. But we also play a unique role in shaping the human world by creating the expressive and functional tools many people use in their daily lives. Our decisions about what is and is not ethical directly impact the lives of a tremendous number of people we will never know. Better understanding of the choices we make as designers can help us create more ethical user experiences for ourselves and for everyone." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000304.php The State of the UX Community By Jonathan Follett. "Over the past three decades of computer/human interaction, we've seen digital technology evolve from a curiosity to a convenience to an integral part of our everyday lives. For UX professionals, the demand for our skill sets and the opportunities to practice seem only to grow, whether we be designers or developers, usability specialists or information architects, working in fields as diverse as Web, mobile, desktop, and embedded software systems. The UX professions are at a stage that could very well be a tipping point where the rapid rise of digital devices, services, and connectivity converge to create a massive need for UX professionals. The mobile space alone could generate demand that we can only begin to imagine." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000305.php Interaction Design - It's All About the Subtleties By Jared Spool. "Pop-ups have earned a bad reputation, mostly because design teams often use them to distract users with unwanted advertising. However, a well-designed pop-up with useful information can add real value to a web experience..." http://www.uie.com/articles/subtle_interaction_design/ Why Does the OK Button Say OK? By Gerry McGovern. Words are critical to task completion on websites and in applications. Yet they are still chosen carelessly." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-06-30-ok.htm Reduce Bounce Rates, Fight for the Second Click By Jakob Nielsen. "Different traffic sources imply different reasons for why visitors might immediately leave your site. Design to keep deep-link followers engaged through additional page views." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/bounce-rates.html The Future of Usability is Mobile By John S. Rhodes. "About 10 years ago I would have told any new usability specialist to spend time learning about the Internet. I might have even encouraged that person to learn about web site hosting, HTML, and JavaScript. I would have made these recommendations because the web ushered in such a profound change. These days, I would not talk about the web that much..." http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/The_Future_of_Usability_is_Mobile.html Usability and Security: Unlikely bedfellows? By Mrudula Kodali. "Any website that requires users to logon or provide sensitive information (e.g. credit card details) has to have some level of security. With people getting more and more overwhelmed with the number of usernames, passwords and PINs they have to remember, it's becoming a challenge to ensure that online security remains usable and safe. This month's feature article provides some top tips to help your customers remember their passwords and continue using your website in the long-term..." http://tinyurl.com/5l67yq Should Links Open In New Windows? By Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz. "No, they shouldn't..." http://tinyurl.com/6zj4mt [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]