+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 33, February 11, 2010.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. 

++ISSUE 33 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: NAVIGATION.
08: PHP.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TYPOGRAPHY.
11: USABILITY.

SECTION TWO: 
12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Testing Moodle for Accessibility
By Randall Hansen.
"...The vast majority of Moodle is technically accessible: blind and vision-impaired users can accomplish nearly all the tasks set before them. However, much work remains to prevent Moodle from being a frustrating experience for these users. Many details that make sense to sighted users, or are entirely ignorable, are stumbling blocks for users of screen reading or magnification software. Brian Charlson at the Carroll Center for the Blind is fond of saying that sighted users go from the macro to the micro. That is, we scan pages rapidly, building an increasingly accurate mental model as we narrow in on the details. Blind users go from the micro to the macro. They experience only the details, and have to infer relationships between them in order to build a larger picture. It is in these details that Moodle needs the most attention..."
http://randall.test.opensourcery.com/clients/cannect/

Inclusive Universe - Wendy Chisholm
Wendy Chisholm's Next Ignite Seattle Presentation: "Most designers are taught to design for the average user and as a society, we hold many assumptions about the characteristics of those users. However, products are used in unexpected ways and by unexpected audiences. Challenging your assumptions and designing for non-average users can result in innovative products that can lead to a more inclusive, just society. And eventually, world peace."
http://www.igniteseattle.com/2010/02/inclusive-universe-wendy-chisholm/

Tools for Conducting an Accessibility Review
By Angela Colter.
"As part of my usability consulting practice, IÕm sometimes asked to conduct accessibility reviews of client web sites. The purpose of the review is to identify barriers on the page that would prevent someone who has a disabilityÐor who is using an assistive technologyÐfrom using or understanding the content on the web page..."
http://angelacolter.com/tools-for-conducting-an-accessibility-review/

Social Inclusion for the Web
By Roger Hudson.
"We no longer think it is acceptable to discriminate against people on grounds of gender or race and, as a community, we expect provision to be made for people with disabilities in public transport and building design. However, when it comes to making sure web content is accessible to all users of the web, including people with disabilities, some designers, developers and clients just ''don't get it', to borrow a phrase popular with the geekerati..."
http://www.dingoaccess.com/accessibility/social-inclusion-for-the-web/

Accessibility Jargon Decoded
By The Enabled Web.
"Accessibility specialists tend to sprinkle their conversations with acronyms, abbreviations, and other unique terms just as readily as do computer scientists, plant growers, jazz musicians, or members of any other "in" group. Here are the ones that are most important for a general understanding of the topic."
http://www.theenabledweb.com/jargon.html

Web Accessibility: 6 Reasons Why Its Important
By Holly Lamarche.
"Many designers and developers wonder, ÒWhy should I worry about making my site more accessible?Ó Well as you will see below, there are a multitude of reasons, which should be considered when you design or develop your next site..."
http://tinyurl.com/yzclnsz

Ken Harrenstein Helps Bring Captions to Online Video
By Marc Hertz.
An engineer at Google who's been deaf since childhood is trying to improve the accessibility of online video.
http://www.tonic.com/article/ken-harrenstein-online-video-captioning/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Forgotten CSS Selectors
By Roger Johansson.
"Due to lack of support in Internet Explorer 6, web developers have been avoiding some very useful CSS 2.1 selectors. It's time to start using them."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201002/forgotten_css_selectors/

sIFR Default CSS Hides Content From at Least One Screen Reader
By Roger Johansson.
"Just a heads-up to anyone using sIFR to render text: the default CSS that comes with sIFR hides the replaced text from the VoiceOver screen reader. I don't know if any others are affected - VoiceOver is the only screen reader I have been able to verify this problem in."
http://tinyurl.com/y88vb5p

Liquid Layouts Explained - The Fold 
By Alastair Campbell.
"This is the first of two articles aimed at explaining screen resolution and liquid layouts for non-developers / designers. As part of that I'll cover what the fold is, why it shouldn't matter, but often does. With the next article I'll release a little presentation anyone can use to explain these concepts..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2010/liquid-layouts-explained-the-fold/

We're Ready for CSS3, but are we Ready for CSS3?
By Jonathan Christopher.
"We're all smitten with CSS3. It's reinvigorated that sense of newness that CSS and Web Standards brought our way just a few years ago. We're able to more easily replicate the set of design standards that has become nearly universal much faster than before with just a few CSS declarations. There are a number of CSS3 rules I'd be writing for each and every project, but I'm just not sure it's as ready for prime time as many designers are making it out to be..."
http://tinyurl.com/ybopl6h

How nth-child Works
By Chris Coyier.
"There is a CSS selector, really a pseduo-selector, called nth-child. Here is an example of using it..."
http://css-tricks.com/how-nth-child-works/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Clean Metrics from Quick and Dirty Assessment: The SUS
By John Sorflaten. 
John Sorflaten discusses an easy method for "grading" your interface design with "System Usability Scale".
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/jan10.asp#research


+04: EVENTS.

Usability Testing
July 16, 2010.
Brighton, United Kingdom. 
http://workshopsfortheweb.com/usability/ 

MERLOT Conference - Emerging Technologies for Online Learning
July 20-23, 2010.
San Jose, California, U.S.A.
http://et4online.merlot.org/

HighEdWeb
October 10-13, 2010.
Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A
http://www.highedweb.org/

EDUCAUSE 2010
October 12-15, 2010.
Anaheim, California, U.S.A
http://net.educause.edu/e10

Nordi CHI '10
October 16-20, 2010.
Reykjavik Iceland
http://www.nordichi2010.org 

Accessing Higher Ground
Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference
November, 2010.
Westminster, Colorado, U.S.A.
http://www.colorado.edu/atconference/


+05: FLASH.

Why Flash-Only Websites Are a Bad Idea
By Stefan Mischook. 
"I'm a big fan of Flash and it has many uses .. one of them though, is NOT to create an entire website with it..."
http://tinyurl.com/ykp8vkx

HTML5 Versus Flash
By Remy Sharp.
"First of all I wanted to make the title of this post "HTML5 and Flash", but I know it's going to bait more readers if I say verses. I should state for the record that for the foreseeable future I think Flash has a valid place on the web, and I don't personally see it as an us and them web..."
http://remysharp.com/2010/02/08/html5-vs-flash/

Abobe Announces Open Screen Project 2008
by flashmobileblog.
http://tinyurl.com/yhjc34y


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Crockford on JavaScript, Chapter 2 And Then There Was JavaScript
By Eric Miraglia.
"Last Friday, Yahoo!Õs JavaScript architect Douglas Crockford presented the second installment of his Crockford on JavaScript lecture series. In Chapter 2: And Then There Was JavaScript, Douglas surveys the JavaScript language, providing a critical reading of its core features Ñ including new features from ES5..."
http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/02/09/video-crockonjs-2/


+07: NAVIGATION.

Accessibility Hack Number 2: Using Headings to Improve Navigation
By Glenda Watson Hyatt.
"In his review of New York City's website, the esteemed web accessibility expert Jim Thatcher docked the site points for not having headings, which assist readers in navigating the content. WebAIM's Screen Reader User Survey found that headings are the primary mechanism for finding information within a page. A good heading structure is an essential element of web accessibility and usability..."
http://tinyurl.com/yaqj6jo


+08: PHP.

Debug PHP with Firebug and FirePHP
By Louis Simoneau.
"If you're anything like me, you'd sooner forgo water than Firebug when working on a web project. The little 'bug is a fantastically useful HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Ajax debugger. But did you know it can also be used to debug PHP? Yes, thanks to an additional Firefox extension called FirePHP."
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/02/09/debug-php-firebug-firephp/

What Does PHP Stand For?
By Kristen Grubb.
"he acronym "PHP" stands for PHP Hypertext Processor. It is a recursive acronym, which means that the first letter actually stands for PHP. This is a common occurrence in the tech world. Other recursive acronyms are WINE (WINE is not an emulator), GNU (GNU's not Unix), and LAME (LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder). However, PHP didn't always stand for PHP Hypertext Processo..."
http://www.brighthub.com/internet/web-development/articles/62713.aspx


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Introduction to HTML5 Video
By Bruce Lawson and Patrick H. Lauke.
"One of the most exciting new features of HTML5 is the inclusion of the <video> element, which allows developers to include video directly in their pages without the need for any plugin-based solution."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introduction-html5-video/

What Are the Business Benefits of HTML5 Video?
By Bruce Lawson.
"My hubcap-thieving Scally chum Jake Smith emailed, expressing concern about the the fact that the codec impasse means we have to encode video twice, once as Ogg and once as H264 to deliver in HTML5..."
http://tinyurl.com/ybyrlby

The Time Element (And Microformats)
By Bruce Lawson.
"...HTML5 offers one potential addition to the microformats arsenal. Because earlier versions of some microformats presented accessibility problems in the way they encoded dates and times (see an article called hAccessibility that I co-wrote with James Craig), HTML5 offers a new element for unambiguously encoding dates and times for machines while still displaying them in a human-readable way..."
http://html5doctor.com/the-time-element/

HTML5 Part 1 - An Introduction to the New Layout Tags
By Adrian Senior.
"In this article we will be taking a look at HTML 5 and some of the new semantic tags that are available to us for laying out our web pages. We'll compare the new tags and the markup to how we currently write our code and review the differences we can expect to see when we move to HTML 5..."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=B75BB


+10: TYPOGRAPHY.

Revised Font Stack
By Nathan Ford.
"Serious efforts are being made to get more typeface choices on the web to enhance web typography. Still, most of us prefer web-safe fonts like: Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman and Arial. Though choices are limited, yet the number can be increased by exploring other pre-installed fonts..."
http://www.awayback.com/revised-font-stack/


+11: USABILITY.

Numeric Filters - Issues and Best Practices
By Greg Nudelman.
"Faceted search has been around for a long time and has become the de facto standard for search on most ecommerce sites. However, filters with numeric values remain among the most confusing, because many sites have not able to design usable numeric filters that people can use in an intuitive manner. Recently, powerful user interface controls called sliders have become all the rage for specifying numeric attributes in finding user interfaces. Unfortunately, in their rush to implement this latest, greatest feature, many companies have not designed easy-to-use sliders. Rather than solving usability problems, poorly designed sliders create even more issues around numeric filter usability. In my experience, the following three usability issues surface most often with numeric filters..."
http://tinyurl.com/yd3wob5

The Problem with Passwords
By Lyle Mullican.
"Abandoning password masking as Jakob Nielsen suggests could present serious problems, undermining a user's trust by failing to meet a basic expectation. But with design patterns gleaned from offline applications, plus a dash of JavaScript, we can provide feedback and reduce password errors without compromising the basic user experience or losing our visitors' trust."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-problem-with-passwords/

Words that Zing
By Colleen Jones.
"When someone consults a website, there is a precious opportunity not only to provide useful information but also to influence their decision. To make the most of this opportune moment, we must ensure that the site says or does precisely the right thing at precisely the right time. Understanding the rhetorical concept of kairos can help us craft a context for the opportune moment and hit the mark with appropriately zingy text." 
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/words-that-zing/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+12: 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:
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+ 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.]