+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 8, Issue 17, October 23, 2009. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 17 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: MISCELLANEOUS. 05: PHP. 06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 06: TOOLS. 08: USABILITY. 09: XML. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Benefits of WCAG 2 Presentation By W3C. "The Benefits of WCAG 2 presentation is available in 2 formats..." http://www.w3.org/WAI/presentations/WCAG20_benefits/ Guidelines for Nested Data Tables? WebAIM Thread. "...Are there any issues/guidelines in regards to nesting data tables?..." http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=3992 Understanding Accessibility By Robert B. Yonaitis. "A Guide to Achieving Compliance on Web Sites and Intranets" http://www.understandingaccessibility.com/html/UA2008_34alabsEdition.htm Guideline 2.3: Be careful with flashing visual content By Olga Revilla. "Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures." http://tinyurl.com/yf8xfa7 Lightboxes and Keyboard Accessibility By Roger Johansson. "...Lightboxes can be very annoying to people who do not use a mouse. The problem with keyboard accessibility isn't launching lightboxes. That part usually works well. But after that the trouble starts..." http://tinyurl.com/ylhrldk Google Accessibility Resources http://www.google.com/accessibility/resources.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Descendant Selectors in CSS By Virginia DeBolt. "Descendant selectors in CSS are both one of the most simple and most sophisticated of the tools in the CSS toolbox. Descendant selectors are simple to understand and grasp. At the same time, using them well and efficiently is one of the more sophisticated skills a designer can possess..." http://www.webteacher.ws/2009/10/16/descendant-selectors-in-css/ Styling Column Backgrounds and Table Borders with CSS By Virginia DeBolt. "With a bit of HTML and a bit of CSS, you can add alternating column background colors and borders to your data table. Here's an example of such a data table, ready to be completed..." http://tinyurl.com/yzxobq8 CSS3 Trials: Box-Shadow And More By Chris Casciano. "I've had the opportunity to try a few bleeding edge techniques as a means of enhancing the look of a site while keeping code and maintenance down..." http://chunkysoup.net/article/372/CSS3TrialsBoxShadowAndMore CSS3 box-shadow By Sam Ruby. "Works fine on elements that are position: fixed (example: my nav bar). When I try to put it on either my articles or my section h2s, scrolling becomes jerky on Firefox 3.5.3..." http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/10/17/CSS3-box-shadow Simplify List Margins with CSS By Zach Dunn. "After working with CSS for a while, it's easy to think that you know every single property available. Today's quick tip in CSS is a reminder that there are still overlooked (but worthwhile) styles out there." http://tinyurl.com/mrqw7l Methodic Approach to CSS Coding: Four Bubbles Model By Antonio Lupetti. "Which approach is better to write CSS code? In general I always prefer to use a methodic top-down approach I want to present you in this post. I called this process Four Bubbles Model." http://tinyurl.com/yjt36j3 Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices By Gyorgy Fekete. "...We searched for some examples and found original and creative ones. Below we present these examples along with a few guidelines that a designer should follow to make a great comment form..." http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/comment-form-styling.html Graded Browser Support "Graded Browser Support provides an inclusive definition of support and a framework for taming the ever-expanding world of browsers and frontend technologies." http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/ Graded Browser Support Update: Q4 2009 By Eric Miraglia. "This post announces an update to Graded Browser Support..." http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2009/10/16/gbs-update-2009q4/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Usability Testing Versus Expert Reviews By Janet M. Six. "Under what circumstances is it more appropriate to do usability testing versus an expert review? What are the benefits and weaknesses of each method that make one or the other more appropriate in different situations?..." http://tinyurl.com/yk8yxec The Myth of Usability Testing By Robert Hoekman Jr. "Usability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team's priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can't discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-myth-of-usability-testing/ Eyetracking: Is It Worth It? By Jim Ross. "It is easy to get excited about eyetracking. Seeing where people look while using your Web site, Web application, or software product sounds like an opportunity to get amazing insights into their user experience. But eyetracking is expensive and requires extra effort and specialized knowledge. The heat maps and other visualizations certainly look impressive, but what can you really learn from them? After using eyetracking for the first time, many find that it is not easy to know how to analyze the visualizations and make conclusions from them. Does eyetracking really provide any additional insights you would not have discovered anyway through traditional usability testing? Does the value of eyetracking outweigh its limitations? This article will discuss and answer these questions." http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/10/eyetracking-is-it-worth-it.php User Testing: You Don't Know Everything By Nathanael Boehm. "...you cannot design and implement a system assuming that because you followed some heuristic design principles that it's all going to be ok..." http://tinyurl.com/yj7wa3g The Essence of Qualitative Research: 'Verstehen' By Sam Ladner. "'But how many people did you talk to?' If you've ever done qualitative research, you've heard that question at least once. And the first time? You were flummoxed. In 3 short minutes, you can be assured that will never happen again..." http://tinyurl.com/yf5xwjg Survey Incentives: Response Rates and Data Quality By National Business Research Institute. "The logical concerns about the effects of incentives on data quality have been disproved by countless studies, leaving only the fact that an incentive is a practical, credible option to increase response rate percentages for your customer surveys without sacrificing the validity of your results." http://www.nbrii.com/Customer_Surveys/Survey_Incentives.html +04: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview with Web Usability Guru, Jakob Nielsen By Walter Apai. "In this article, we'll be focusing on web usability and more specifically, on the views of world renowned usability expert, Jakob Nielsen..." http://tinyurl.com/yejmoyf +05: PHP. Five Cool PHP Array Functions By Brandon Savage. "Here are five of my favorite array functions, along with their signatures and what they do." http://www.brandonsavage.net/five-cool-php-array-functions/ +06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML+RDFa First Draft Manu Sporny, Editor. "This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDF in XHTML: Syntax and Processing (RDFa) specification for use in the HTML5 and XHTML5 members of the HTML family. The rules defined in this document not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but also to HTML4 documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules." http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-rdfa-in-html-20091015/ HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future By Jens Meiert. "Articles with a title consisting of more than 15,000 characters don't need an introduction." http://tinyurl.com/yhvovs4 Dealing with Multi-Track Video (and Audio) By Silvia Pfeiffer. "We are slowly approaching the stage where we want to make multi-track video of the following type available and accessible..." http://tinyurl.com/yhkop4t Video on the Web By Mark Pilgrim. "...HTML5 defines a standard way to embed video in a web page, using a