w+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 7, Issue 34, February 20, 2009. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 34 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: PHP. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TOOLS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 11: USABILITY. 12: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Call for Review: ATAG 2.0 Working Draft By Shawn Henry. "The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group invites you to comment on the updated Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 Working Draft..." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2009JanMar/0033.html ATAG, HTML5 Canvas, Accessible Social Networking and You By Henny Swan. "...As a developer or site owner make sure you source authoring tools with accessible interfaces so that colleagues can also safely use them. Often the back-end is left behind and forgotten when procuring new software so getting ATAG 2.0 written into procurement contracts and tenders is essential and in my opinion as important as WCAG..." http://www.iheni.com/put-in-a-good-word-for-atag-20/ Adding Captions to YouTube: Resource Links By Bill Creswell. "ProudGeek Reviews of some captioning methods..." http://billcreswell.wordpress.com/tag/youtube-captions/page/2/ Example Canvas Element Use - Accessibility Concerns By Steven Faulkner. "The recently released code editor Bespin...is a great example of the utility of the canvas element, its also a worrying example of the barriers to accessibility its use will produce. " http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0425.html Use and Abuse of @summary By Steven Faulkner. "In conclusion: @summary is well supported by AT, its misuse at whatever level (though I would say claims are overstated) has little effect upon users. Therefore I suggest that it would be useful to talk to the screen reader users (its intended audience) that are on the W3C HTML working group and the W3C WAI groups and heed their advice on the utility of the @summary." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0420.html The Importance Of Headings In HTML By SAWSAG. There is currently a real conflict and many discussions going on regarding heading in HTML5 and XHTML2 and this is for good reason. Using headings in HTML, and using them correctly, to mark-up your content can make a huge difference to how screen reader users access the content on your site. http://www.sawsag.co.za/2009/02/11/the-importance-of-headings-in-html/ Accessibility Beyond the Screen Reader By DuctTape. "Accessibility is always in the front of our minds when we embark on a Web project. But as we start to consider our features, accessibility starts to slip by the way side. 'As long as a screen reader can read it, we'll be fine, right?' Not really..." http://www.olmblog.com/?p=5652 A Cloak of Accessibility By Brian Panulla. "I don't know if you've ever noticed, but Twitter.com is not the most accessible site on the Web. I find that somewhat odd, give the relative simplicity of the user interface..." http://ghostednotes.com/index.cfm/2009/2/16/A-Cloak-of-Accessibility Accessible Twitter By Nick DeNardis. "...A great site created by Denis Lembree which is currently in alpha stage aims to fix these issues. Using purely the public twitter API Dennis has created an accessible version of Twitter..." http://doteduguru.com/id2215-accessible-twitter.html WebAIM Survey Shines Light on Screen Reader Usage By Victor Tsaran. "...The recent WebAIM screen reader survey of 1121 screen reader users is a great step towards understanding how blind, deaf-blind, or visually impaired users *actually* interact with the web..." http://yuiblog.com/blog/2009/02/12/webaim-survey/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Wanted: Layout System By Eric A. Meyer. "...Turning a bunch of divs or list items or whatever into table-role boxes is no better than just using table markup in the first place, and it's arguably worse. Using element names other than table and td to create layout tables, and then claiming it's not using tables for layout, borders on self-deception. Not to mention doing things that way means you're doing your layout in a highly source-order-dependent fashion, which was one of the things about table layout we were trying to get away from in the first place..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/17/wanted-layout-system/ CSS3 Feedback: Selector Blocks By Eric A. Meyer. "Out of all the selector feedback, selector blocks was the part that really caught my attention..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/12/selector-blocks/ CSS3 Feedback: Layout By Eric A. Meyer. "In this round, layout. Not all of it, but the bits that struck me as either really useful or really, really way too long overdue..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/16/css3-feedback-layout/ CSS3 Feedback: Animated Shapes By Eric A. Meyer. "The portion of the feedback devoted to shapes had two overarching themes, as I saw it. That makes this entry a bit short, but when I tried to combine it with my feedback on ÒGraphical EffectsÒ, it quickly got too long. So, a little amuse cerveau, as it were..." http://tinyurl.com/bdfww5 CSS Doesn't Suck By Nicole Sullivan. "The cascade is something like a new data structure, and the ways for dealing with it are algorithms you never learned in school. You couldn't have, because traditional engineering school poo-poos the front-end and web engineering in favor of stale (but still valuable) traditional software engineering..." http://tinyurl.com/c3apce When can I use... By Alexis Deveria. Compatibility tables for features in CSS3, HTML5, SVG and other upcoming web tech. http://a.deveria.com/caniuse Pure CSS Line Graph By Alen Grakalic. "...My intention was not only to enable data visualization to people that don't feel comfortable with using various scripting languages but also to demonstrate the power of css and present a way of using css a bit differently. If you are not a fan of line graphs and data visualization in general, you may still read this article and think of it as css experiment and perhaps learn a thing or two about css sprites and positioning..." http://cssglobe.com/post/4175/pure-css-line-graph +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. MIT Tops Rankings of University Web Sites By Steve Kolowich. "The Cybermetrics Lab, a research group based in Spain, has released the latest edition of its biannual Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, which seeks to measure 'the performance and impact of universities through their Web presence.'" http://tinyurl.com/bnojpe Samples and Stats By Lyle Kantrovich. "We have an ethical responsibility to our clients, and to our users, to report accurate statistics from our research. You don't have to kill your clients with stats...just be accurate with the stats you report." http://tinyurl.com/cdkz2b How to Create Effective Personas for Your Projects By Ron Akanowicz. "Creating personas that are a reflection of real people helps us as web designers and developers to empathize with our end users and more easily consider needs, goals, and priorities that may be different than our own. These are critical skills to have since we may not be part of the target audience for the site we're developing." http://tinyurl.com/dkl46c +04: EVENTS. The Multipack Presents Emerging Standards February 21, 2009. Birmingham, United Kingdom http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1502474 Web Tools and Rules April 6, 2009. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. http://www.webtoolsrules.com/ Institutional Web Management Workshop July 28-30, 2009. University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2009/ Designing For All March 17, 2009. London, United Kingdom http://www.headstar-events.com/dfa/ Design Secrets of digg.com's User Interface September 8, 2009. London, United Kingdom http://carsonworkshops.com/2009/danielburka/index.html E-Learn 2009 October 26-30, 2009. Vancouver, Canada. http://www.aace.org/conf/elearn/ ATIA 2009 Chicago October 28-31, 2009. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://www.atia.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3294 +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Industry Trends in Prototyping By Dave Cronin. "Prototype is one of those words that can mean something different to everyone. Before I get too far along in a discussion of prototyping, it's probably worth exploring what I'm talking about." http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/cooper_prototyping.html 20 Steps to Better Wireframing By Clive Howard. "...Wireframing is one of the first steps in your planning process and arguably it's one of the most important ones. This is when the idea starts to take shape as an application, becoming boxes and buttons that users will interact with. This article will take you through a wireframing process; who should be involved, the tools to use and tips to enable you to make better wireframes..." http://thinkvitamin.com/features/20-steps-to-better-wireframing/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Embedding Twitter Status By Jonathan Snook. "In building this iteration of the blog, I decided to follow that trendiest of trends and embed my latest Twitter status on my sidebar..." http://snook.ca/archives/javascript/embed-twitter-status +07: PHP. Fosdem 2009 In Review By Michelangelo van Dam. "On days like these, we're a central point for information and people used the opportunity to ask us a lot of questions regarding PHP. Here is a top 5 of most asked questions..." http://www.dragonbe.com/2009/02/fosdem-2009-in-review.html +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML 5 Working Draft Updated (Feburary 2009) By Shawn Medero. "Once again, the cogs at the W3C have cranked out an updated HTML 5 Working Draft. There's also been an update to the non-normative HTML 5 differences from HTML 4 notes, which are particularly useful for authors new to HTML 5..." http://tinyurl.com/asnhs2 HTML5 (Spec Without All the New Features) By Robert Sayre. http://people.mozilla.com/~sayrer/2009/02/15/html5.html Discussion is Mozilla Bug 478665 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478665 Add a Little HTML5 to Your Websites By Kilian Valkhof. "It will be a while before we can start using real HTML5, but because HTML5 is as much about defining current behaviour as it is about adding new, there is already a very large part available to us today. Here are the parts you can use today..." http://tinyurl.com/cznsm5 The Road to HTML 5: Character Encoding By Mark Pilgrim. "The feature of the day is character encoding, specifically how to determine the character encoding of an HTML document. I am never happier than when I am writing about character encoding. But first, here is my standard "elevator pitch..." http://blog.whatwg.org/the-road-to-html-5-character-encoding Web Standards Gone Wild By Joshua Allen. "...that normal people are no longer comfortable reading specs. This is a tragedy, IMO, and the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of specification authors..." http://visitmix.com/Opinions/Web-Standards-Gone-Wild Compatibility View Improvements to Come in IE8 By Scott Dickens. "When users install Windows 7 Beta or the next IE8 update, they get a choice about opting-in to a list of sites that should be displayed in Compatibility View. Sites are on this list based on feedback from other IE8 customers: specifically, for what high-volume sites did other users click the Compatibility View button? This list updates automatically, and helps users who aren't web-savvy have a better experience with web sites that aren't yet IE8-ready." http://tinyurl.com/5ohohw IE8 Compatibility View Controversy Articles: IE8 Blacklist: Forcing Standards Rendering Opt-In By Mike Davies. http://tinyurl.com/anwwtm How I Might Deal with IE6 By Dan Cederholm. http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2009/02/13/iegone.html Pajamas By Andy Clarke. http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/pajamas/ Just The Facts: Recap of Compatibility View By Scott Dickens. http://tinyurl.com/bryprh IE's Compatibility View By Shelley Powers. http://realtech.burningbird.net/web/standards/ies-compatibility-view IE8 Blacklist: Forcing Standards Rendering Opt-In By Mike Davies. http://tinyurl.com/anwwtm The IE8 Blacklist Minefield By Mike Davies. http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/standards/TheIe8BlacklistMinefield IE8: Standards Mode Opt-In is Back From the Dead By Craig Buckler. http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/02/19/ie8-standards-mode-opt-in/ +09: TOOLS. Dublin Core Metadata Generator By Stanford Online Accessibility Program. http://soap.stanford.edu/plugins/dublincore/ +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Font Sizing: em, pixel, point, percent and keywords By Stephanie Sullivan. "When I write and speak, I often talk about using em units to size layouts giving the user the ability to resize the entire layout if they change their font size..." http://www.communitymx.com/blog/index.cfm?newsid=941 +11: USABILITY. Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998 By Jakob Nielsen. "Mobile phone users struggle mightily to use websites, even on high-end devices. To solve the problems, websites should provide special mobile versions." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html Let the Mobile Web Learn From and Not Repeat the Mistakes of Desktop Development By Henny Swan. "...I couldn't disagree with him more on his proposed solution of building a separate .mobi site. To me this just extends the problems of walled gardens for users and leads developers down the road of additional and unnecessary work..." http://www.iheni.com/mobile-desktop-development/ Why the Mobile Web Must Mirror the Desktop By Bruce Lawson. "Opera's Bruce Lawson on the importance of web standards..." http://tinyurl.com/csrg2n Generic Work Process By Bas Leurs, Peter Conradie, Joel Laumans, Rosalieke Verboom. "This toolkit offers an overview of the methods and techniques which can be used throughout the user-centered design process." http://project.cmd.hro.nl/cmi/hci/toolkit/ Why Some Content is Deliberately Complex By Gerry McGovern. "Deliberately complex content still has the power to impress some of us some of the time. But societies are becoming less susceptible to the language of deception, and the Web is at the forefront of that changing reality." http://tinyurl.com/de3km4 Don't Treat your Website Like a Commodity By Andy Budd. "...Because there is little difference between the majority of online products, product managers resort to old school commodity marketing and focus their attention of driving traffic to their site in the hope that a few people will stick..." http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2009/02/dont_treat_your/ In Defense of Readers By Mandy Brown. "Readers flourish when they have space-some distance from the hubbub of the crowds-and as web designers, there is yet much we can do to help them carve out that space." http://alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofreaders Your Target Audience and Your Users By Patrick Kennedy. "...if you have to spend big on marketing to trick people to use your website, there's nothing worth using on that website..." http://tinyurl.com/dzsax7 +12: XML. RDFa is to Structured Data, Like Canvas is to Bitmap and SVG is to Vector By Dan Brickley. Dan Brickley summarizes the origins of RDF. http://tinyurl.com/9jfo32 RDFa in HTML5 By Sam Ruby. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/02/14/RDFa-in-HTML5 A Battle of Beliefs: RDF, Natural Language Processing, and the Future of the Web By Shelly Powers. "...It is a debate about the fundamental nature of the web, at its most general and profound level, while HTML5 is really nothing more then the next generation of HTML. However, we are fighting this macro battle out in the micro lists of HTML5, but deceptively so..." http://tinyurl.com/ah9sue [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.]