+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 7, Issue 30, January 23, 2009. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 30 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: EVENTS. 04: JAVASCRIPT. 05: NAVIGATION. 06: PHP. 07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 08: TOOLS. 09: USABILITY. 10: XML. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Alt Survey via Twitter By Gez Lemon. Should the alt attribute be required for the img element in HTML5? Why or why not? Gez Lemon is conducting a twitter survey/taking comments for a W3C WAI position paper. He wants to be sure to consider all sides of the debate and is interested in hearing opinions. If you are a twitter user and would like to respond please use the hashtag #althtml5 . http://twitter.com/gezlemon/status/1139666244 Background info: http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueAltAttribute Realtime comments: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=althtml5 2009: The Year Websites Become Accessible To All By Bruce Lawson. "For many years, the goal of making websites accessible to everyone has been pursued generally with little enthusiasm. But now a number of developments are conspiring to move accessibility up the agenda, according to web expert Bruce Lawson." http://tinyurl.com/ant6mu Taking Symbols for Granted By Sharon Perry. "Following on from my post about 'Taking Symbols for Granted', where I reviewed Jonathan Chetwynd's paper entitled 'Communication with symbols: from the web to the internet and beyond', Jonathan has just let me know about the launch of his Icon Chat and Search Engine at openicon.org..." http://tinyurl.com/7dacht Accessibility Comparisons By Douglas T. "This is a work in progress, and shouldn't be relied upon to be perfect. If you have comments or corrections, please feel free to leave them. Based on Comparison WCAG and Section..." http://douglast.com/accessibility-comparisons Closed Captioning Resources By High Tech Center Training Unit. "California community colleges have a legal responsibility to provide equal access to video resources for students, faculty and staff who are deaf or hard of hearing. This is often most easily accomplished through closed captioning of video resources. If you are unfamiliar with the captioning process, you might wish to begin by exploring the definition of some common terms. This list of terms is provided by the National Captioning Institute..." http://www.htctu.net/divisions/altmedia/captioning/cc/ccmain.htm A Larger Discussion (was RE: Inline Images and ALT text) WebAIM Thread initiated by John Foliot. Alt text discourse. http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=3741 Is It Time for Social Networks Grow Up? By Henny Swan. "Site owners would do well to take into account interface design issues for people with disabilities and the aging for reasons that go beyond just inclusion. Disabled users are hardcore user testers with their needs pushing the capabilities and possibilities of what technology can offer users in general. Add to this that having grown up with the web and social networking we fully expect to be able to use our favorite sites later in life as we grow old these two groups are too important to ignore. I certainly don't plan on dying young anyway..." http://www.iheni.com/is-it-time-for-social-networks-grow-up/ Accessify Gets a Long Overdue Facelift By Ian Lloyd. "Finally. At last..." http://tinyurl.com/96sfvf A Sighted Person Testing a Website With a Screen Reader (Tweet) By Lisa Herrod (scenariogirl). "A sighted person testing a website with a screen reader is like asking someone who can't drive to test drive a car." http://twitter.com/scenariogirl/status/1135081580 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008 By Elika Etemad (fantasai). "This document summarizes and comments on feedback collected through the Web Standards Project's Tell the CSS WG what you want from CSS3 blog post..." http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/style/discuss/wasp-feedback-2008 Layout Is Expensive By Elika Etemad (fantasai). "A lot of people complain about limitations in the layout capabilities in CSS. Layout in CSS is a pain, and it's a pain because CSS originally wasn't designed for coarse layout, only for linear documents. The CSS Working Group totally understands that CSS today is totally incompetent at doing layout. We are amazed at the hacks designers have had to come up with and dismayed at how brittle they are. It is very, very obvious to us that CSS needs better, easier, more powerful layout capabilities..." http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/weblog/2009/layout-is-expensive/ +03: EVENTS. European Accessibility Forum March 27, 2009. Frankfurt, Germany http://eafra.eu/ UPA Conference 2009 June 8-12, 2009. Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2009/ Website Makeover: Focusing on Your Visitors' Major Tasks - Janice "Ginny" Redish June 17, 2009. Washington, DC, U.S.A. http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/wmu/spring2009/websitemakeover.shtml ED-MEDIA 2009 June 22-26, 2009. Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A. http://www.aace.org/conf/cities/honolulu/ WORLDCOMP 2009 July 13-16, 2009. Los Vegas, Nevada U.S.A. http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp09/ws Information Architecture 1 April 9, 2009 in Washington D.C., U.S.A. May 21, 2009 in London United Kingdom. June 26, 2009 in San Francisco, California, U.S.A. July 31, 2009 in Sydney Australia. http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/ia.html Information Architecture 2 April 10, 2009 in Washington D.C., U.S.A. May 22, 2009 in London United Kingdom. June 27, 2009 in San Francisco, California, U.S.A. August 1, 2009 in Sydney Australia. http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/info_arch_2.html +04: JAVASCRIPT. Ajax and Accessibility, Part Two By Alastair Campbell. "In the second of a two-part opinion piece, Alastair Campbell explains how ARIA can make JavaScript more accessible..." http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/ajax-and-accessibility-part-two Freedom Scientific Web Cast on ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Application) "Freedom Scientific's Chief Technical Officer Glen Gordon explains ARIA and its benefits. Jonathan Mosen then demonstrates some applications with ARIA enabled for improved accessibility." http://tinyurl.com/7bjfum Free Chapter: 'Advanced Techniques' from Nicholas C. Zakas's Professional JavaScript for Web Developers By Eric Miraglia. http://yuiblog.com/blog/2009/01/16/projs2/ +05: NAVIGATION. Crimes Against Hypertext By Andrew Tetlaw. "...Poor linking practices are common ? editorially and visually ? and it has a direct negative impact on usability..." http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/01/13/crimes-against-hypertext/ Avoiding Search Engine Optimization Madness By Gerry McGovern. "Optimize for the searcher, not the search engine. Focus on your customers, not on the technology..." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2009/nt-2009-01-19-seo-madness.htm +06: PHP. Code Readability Part 2, Code Structure By Shawn Straton. "I've had the pleasure of maintaining a legacy application developed by people who were past deadline the second they had their assignment handed to them in the past and it can get really interesting rather quickly when you see how sloppy you can get when you are in such a hurry. Here are some guidelines I've given myself to ensure that the structure is correct at the end of the day." http://www.shawnstratton.info/code-readability-part-2-code-structure 50 Extremely Useful PHP Tools By Smashing magazine. "This post presents 50 useful PHP tools that can significantly improve your programming workflow. Among other things, you'll find a plethora of libraries and classes that aid in debugging, testing, profiling and code-authoring in PHP..." http://tinyurl.com/7fu33u +07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. How Can I Validate (X)HTML + ARIA? By Steve Faulkner. "An issue with the use of WAI-ARIA in HTML documents is that they don't validate. When you run a HTML document containing ARIA attributes through the W3C Validator it shows errors in the results for any ARIA attributes. More importantly it does not inform me of errors in the ARIA code, for example, if the role value used is incorrect in reference to the WAI ARIA specification..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=107 Elevate Web Design at the University Level By Leslie Jensen-Inman. "Web education is out of date and fragmented. There are good people working hard to change this, but because of the structure of higher education, it will take time. As part of a year-long journey to discover where we are in web education and where we need to go, Leslie Jensen-Inman interviewed 32 web design and development leaders. The consensus: technology moves too fast for college and university curricula to keep up. How, then, can educators create a sustainable foundation for the future?..." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/elevatewebdesignattheuniversitylevel Brighter Horizons for Web Education By Aarron Walter. "No industry can sustain itself if it doesn't master the art of cultivating new talent-an art that requires close ties between practitioners and educators. Yet web design education consists mainly of introductory Flash classes and the occasional 90s-style HTML table layout tutorial. How drastic is the web design education gap, and what can be done to close it? Designer, developer, and web design educator Aarron Walter of The Web Standards Project surveys the state of the curricula..." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/brighterhorizonsforwebeducation Designing Around hAccessibility By Andy Clarke. "At the moment I'm writing a script for a DVD tutorial on microformats that I will be recording for New Riders at the end of February. While designing some shiny new examples for the hCalendar event microformat, I've been revisiting the problems and discussions of accessibility that surround the date design pattern and thinking about possible design solutions." http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/designing_around_haccessibility/ WHATWG FAQ By Sam Ruby. "...Simply put, there needs to be a recourse if a person or a group disagrees with a decision made by the editor of the WHATWG document. That recourse is forking. I realize that is a very high bar, and will say that is intentionally so. Simply put, specs don't write themselves... I don't care how good you think your idea is, either you need to step up and directly write the spec text yourself, or accept that you need to be persuasive..." http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/01/16/WHATWG-FAQ HTML5: Put Up or Shut Up By Shelly Powers. "...Quite simply, that is the most absurd set of statements I have ever read. What Sam is saying, if you don't like it, fork, or shut up..." http://realtech.burningbird.net/web/page-markups/why-i-will-never-support-html5 Respect By Shelley Powers. "I have spent too much time worrying about specifications managed by people who, frankly, don't have a lot of respect for what I have to say. I am not a browser developer, specification author, nor do I fit within the narrow parameters of 'people who are seen to be contributors...'." http://realtech.burningbird.net/web/page-markups/respect Contributions Welcome By Sam Ruby. "What I wish to do (on the list! what you do on your own blog is up to you!) is dampen the first kind of interaction, and encourage the third. I'm still very far from where I would like to be on this. If I ever solve this issue, we should be able to reap the benefit of many more voices. Perhaps that's not enough to get you to point out a specific issue in the spec and describe how it could be addressed. If not, then I'll simply figure out what the next barrier is, and address that. Maybe that will never be enough, but I am committed to try." http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/01/17/Contributions-Welcome Pinky and the Markup Brains By Shelley Powers. "What ended up being the ultimate irritation of my brief foray into HTML5 land, is that I found out, after careful perusal of my original use of RDFa... http://tinyurl.com/a3u4y8 +08: TOOLS. Skip Navigation Builder By Ian Lloyd. "...This tool lets you quickly create one or more skip links on a page, generating all the necessary markup, CSS and JavaScript (unfortunately this does require JavaScript for the effect to work, as there are still many versions of Internet Explorer in use that do not allow us to apply a focus pseudo class in CSS..." http://tinyurl.com/d57gql ARIA Slider Generator By Ian Lloyd. "This tool is reverse-engineered from this ARIA slider example by the Paciello Group. I'm not convinced about its usefulness - it was an experiment, more than anything - but I'm keen to produce some more tools which may make the process of creating ARIA-compliant page elements/features more simple. If you have an idea for an ARIA tool that I could build, please drop me a line." http://tinyurl.com/8qt9sk Quick Page Accessibility Test By Ian Lloyd. "Here's a handy little tool that uses a bookmarklet/favelet to give a quick analysis of any web page, highlighting definite issues, warning about possible issues and also highlighting areas that could benefit from some ARIA enhancements." http://tinyurl.com/a9h389 Extending Web Browser Functionality - Greasemonkey for all web browsers By Robert Nyman. "Ever felt that you have had the need to enhance your web browser, or the functionality of some web site you frequently visit? Here I will explain how to do that..." http://tinyurl.com/8kfy6m +09: USABILITY. New Standards in Usability By David Travis. "2008 saw the release of several international usability standards, many within the influential ISO 9241 series. Two of these standards focus on accessibility and another provides guidelines for usable web sites. This article explains why usability standards are important and summarizes the 13 new parts of ISO 9241..." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/ISO9241_update.html +10: XML. RDFa By ESW Wiki. "RDFa is a syntax that allows for embedding RDF information into (X)HTML documents via attributes. The best starting point to explore RDFa is the official RDFa page at the SWD-WG Wiki..." http://esw.w3.org/topic/RDFa SVG Tutorial By Jakob Jenkov. "SVG is short for Scalable Vector Graphics. It is a graphic format in which the shapes are specified in XML. The XML is then rendered by an SVG viewer. Today (2009) most web browser can display SVG just like they can display PNG, GIF, and JPG..." http://tutorials.jenkov.com/svg/index.html RDFa is to Structured Data, Like Canvas is to Bitmap and SVG is to Vector By Shelley Powers. "...This then returns us to my earlier supposition: To not support RDF/RDFa as the de facto implementation of complex, structured data is not consistent. To continue to do so demonstrates that perhaps other issues are at play in regards to RDF/RDFa. Such inconsistencies are not in the best interest when developing a new specification meant for widespread use on the web. If, as I believe, the inconsistency reflects an underlying bias against the concept behind RDF, which is that true web semantics is based on structured data, not natural language processing, or not exclusively based on natural language processing, then I believe it's important to highlight such bias, and deal with it accordingly." http://tinyurl.com/6tsw27 [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.]