+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 7, Issue 18, October 31, 2008. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 18 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: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: XML. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Web Accessibility Guidelines 2.0: Better Than a Poke in the Eye With a Stick? By Bill Weye. "The World Wide Web Consortium is planning to implement a new version of the Web accessibility guidelines this year, and it seems like many people have had negative things to say about the version 2.0 update (not official yet). These guidelines affect the way designers and developers build sites for the disabled, so it's more important than ever as the Web becomes the de facto repository for information, commerce and entertainment..." http://tinyurl.com/6r8vqj W3C: Global Standards Giant Gears Up For Battle By Dan Jellinek. "With the long-awaited appearance of version 2 of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) now expected in December, the spotlight is set to fall once more on the workings of this key international standards body..." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=208 Accessibility in Web Design Provides a High Degree of Usability By Atil. "Accessibility in web design provides a high degree of usability for people with disabilities. Mostly based on general design principles, with some specific extra facilities, accessible design ensures that you do not deliver a restricted or exclusionary message and therefore image. Full accessibility design guidelines are provided by the W3C, the standards body for the Web (http://www.w3.org/WAI). While the focus of this section is largely on design for blind users who access the web page via a screen-reader, if you make pages accessible in the ways suggested you will improve clarity for all users. The BBC has developed a script called Betsie, which will convert pages to plain HTML." http://tinyurl.com/5htsa4 Test Case: Speaking Special Characters By Bob Easton. "A visitor, Ben Boyle, recently wrote that he was surprised when OSX Voiceover announced a series of three periods as 'elipsis.' It is a surprisingly accurate interpretation of a simple character string..." http://tinyurl.com/5tdsa8 Creating an Accessible Online Tutorial Using Adobe Connect By Julie Shen. "This AIM resource is an exemplar tutorial on how to create accessible online tutorials. Utilizing Adobe Connect, this AIM offers a 'behind the scenes tour' on how to create online tutorials while adhering to common accessibility practices. Essentially, this high quality resource both guides and models the user on how create an accessible online tutorial by discussing the proper use of story boards, video/audio features, screen casts, and handouts given different learning preferences." http://connect.csupomona.edu/accessiblehowto Have You Got the X Factor? Building websites for mobile and disabled users By Henny Swan. "Last weekend saw the first ever online conference for web professionals . Spread over three days roughly 80 speakers from different time zones hung out with delegates in virtual rooms speaking on just about any topic you can think of that is web related..." http://tinyurl.com/6e2kwj Image Use Cases That WCAG Doesn't Address WCAG 2.0 Comment 2615. "...As for the other one you cite above, we think that WCAG currently draws the line in the right place and changing the standard would create problems for accessibility." http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/issuereports/issue_ind.php?id=2615 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. A CSS Sticky Footer that Just Works By Ryan Fait. "We've all tried to use a sticky footer one time or another, but they never seem to come out right, do they? Well, the days of a hard to understand CSS-based sticky footer are thankfully over. In just a few simple CSS classes with minimal extra HTML markup, I've fashioned a sticky footer that even beginners can get a handle on. It's been tested in IE 5 and up, Firefox, Safari and Opera..." http://ryanfait.com/sticky-footer/ +03: COLOR. Is CSS3 RGBa Ready to Rock? (screen cast) By Andy Clarke. "...Run a Google search for RGBa and you'll find that it stands for Red, Green, Blue, Alpha; a colour space or model with a fourth channel, an alpha channel, which describes transparency. CSS3 adds this transparency information to other CSS color properties, enabling you to not only specify colours in RGB values but (most interestingly) the alpha-transparency value of that colour..." http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/is_css3_rgba_ready_to_rock/ +04: DREAMWEAVER. Working with Images in Dreamweaver CS4 By Sheri German. "In this tutorial I will show you how to use the Fireworks and Photoshop image editing integration tools in Dreamweaver using the Birdland website as an example. You can download the support files and follow along to create the design for the website." http://tinyurl.com/5katdg +05: EVENTS. Web Design World Boston December 8-10, 2008. Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. http://webdesignworld.com/2008/boston/default.aspx California Web Accessibility Conference January 12, 2009. Long Beach, California, U.S.A. http://www.knowbility.org/calwac/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Namespacing - An Alternative to JavaScript Inheritance By Robert Nyman. "When talking about JavaScript and inheritance, something that often go amiss from the discussion is the alternative of using proper namespacing instead..." http://tinyurl.com/6yxmr5 JavaScript and Screen Readers By Aaron Cannon and Aaron Barker. "In recent months, many web designers have been asking the question, 'How can I make my dynamic site accessible?' Unfortunately, good answers have been slow in coming from the accessibility community. While some articles have touched on the problem, not many have gone into details. Here is our first attempt at rectifying this situation..." http://northtemple.com/2008/10/07/javascript-and-screen-readers +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview with Aarron Walter By Matthew Pennell. "Aarron, thanks for taking the time to sit down for an interview with us, I know you're a busy man so let's get right into the questions. First, give us some insight into your background. How did you get started on the web?..." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/Interview_Aarron_Walter/ Failure Is Not an Option -- It's a Requirement By Jared M. Spool. "...One thing is clear from our research: Failing is hard work. All teams need to get better at it through regular practice." http://www.uie.com/articles/failure_not_an_option/ +08: NAVIGATION. Should Arrows be Placed Before Link Text or After? By Dmitry Fadeyev. "Sometimes we'd like to use an arrow character or icon together with the link text to make it look nicer and attract users' attention. These are little arrows we see often by links such as 'Read more...' at the end of blog post summaries or 'Learn more' for products and services. The two variations look something like this..." http://tinyurl.com/63vtl3 +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. W3C Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee Meetings Week 2008 By Silvia Pfeiffer. "I spent last week in France, near Cannes, at the W3C TPAC meeting. This is the one big meeting that the W3C has every year to bring together all (or most) of the technical working groups and other active groups at the W3C..." http://tinyurl.com/6rh9r7 Audio ga-ga By Jeremy Keith. "Huffduffer is written in HTML5. For the most part, this is no different to writing in any other flavor of HTML, just with a simpler DOCTYPE. For the time being, I'm not using any of the new structural elements like section, article or footer. I am, however, making use of the audio element..." http://adactio.com/journal/1524 +10: XML. Extensibility and Markup, Again and Again By Shelley Powers. "Proving that the issues with extensibility will never go away until faced, and resolved..." http://tinyurl.com/6evc9l [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.]