+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 8, Issue 41, April 10, 2010. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 41 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Text Alternatives: WCAG 2.0 for Content Writer By Rachel McAlpine. "...Nobody else can write your ALT-text. You're the only one who knows why you've added that image, and what information you want it to convey..." http://tinyurl.com/yfzl3vu When Should You Provide Transcription? By Tom Babinszki. "...I'd like to end this post by stating that I'm not encouraging transcription over closed captioning. Both of these are excellent tools specifically in terms of accessibility. I nonetheless believe that in certain cases, transcription is sufficient, and it can be a more affordable option too." http://www.evengrounds.com/blog/when-should-you-provide-transcription Word Doesn't Do Section 508, PDF Gets the Blame By Duff Johnson. "...The solution? There is no good solution Ð for now. At the present time, Word can't make a Word file that complies with Section 508, paragraphs (g) and (h), so don't expect it to make a compliant PDF either. Were you hoping that Open Office might do better? Me too. Think again; OO 3.1 slavishly follows Word, and includes the exact same limitations..." http://www.appligent.com/talkingpdf-worddoesntdo508 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Deal-Breaker Problems with CSS3 Multi-Columns By Zoe Gillenwater. "I've been playing around with the new multi-column properties of CSS3 (column-count, column-width, and so forth), and I've come to the conclusion that they're sadly not ready to really use..." http://zomigi.com/blog/deal-breaker-problems-with-css3-multi-columns/ Inline-Block vs Float - Thinking Horizontal By Niels Matthijs. With display:inline-block finally ready for everyday use across the most popular browsers (in all honesty, it has been for a while now), I quickly hit a pretty big dilemma. When comparing inline-block to floats, it wasn't immediately clear what the exact differences were and what method to prefer. I looked online but couldn't find a source listing the difference between the two. Guess that's a good reason for keeping a blog then. http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/inline-block-vs-float Building Sites Without using IDs or Classes By Harry Roberts. This morning, for one reason or another, I decided to have a go at coding up a page without using any IDs or classes in my markup, and therefore none in my CSS. I'm not sure why I tried it, I guess I just did...In order to make it a fairly painless job I dove straight into the browser and coded up a simple header, footer, two column layout. View the demo and be sure to view the source." http://tinyurl.com/y9yo8pj Annoying Opera CSS3 Bug - INPUT border-radius By Anders Tornblad. When styling form input fields using CSS3, be aware of an annoying bug in Opera 10.50 and 10.51. If you add border-radius to an INPUT element, and you also hide the default border, Opera forgets to render the element's background. http://tinyurl.com/yl8wgsd Browser Support Checklist By findmebyip. Browser support charts for CSS3 properties and selectors as well as HTML5 embedded content codecs, form inputs, and form attributes. http://findmebyip.com/litmus +03: COLOR. Colour Your Blog to Maximize Readability By Glenda Watson Hyatt. "...how do you measure colour contrast? How much contrast is sufficient?..." http://tinyurl.com/y2oe8dp +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Power of Personas By Charles B. Kreitzberg and Ambrose Little. "In this installment, we took somewhat detailed tour of personas. First, we covered how to make them-the processes and techniques involved in developing, validating, and maturing the personas themselves, which has a big benefit to the whole team involved in getting a much better understanding of whom the solution is being developed for. Then we discussed some different uses of personas, how not to use them, as well as how to-chiefly to gain empathy to inform what and how you build so that it makes sense for your target audience as well as a valuable communication tool to keep team members on the same page, speaking the same language, and collaborating in terms of people rather than in terms of technical or hierarchical terms." http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd569755.aspx Eye Tracking and Web Usability - A Good Fit? By Nick Gould and Jesse Zolna. "Since its inception, eye tracking has been employed by cognitive scientists to study reading, learning, attention, and neurology; by marketers to examine the effectiveness of ad and package designs; and by human factors engineers to guide automotive and airplane cockpit design. These and other disciplines have had great success leveraging eye tracking as a behavioral research method and to inform the design of communications and interactions. Recently, as eye tracking technology has become more affordable and accessible, academics, research suppliers, and eye tracking equipment makers have been experimenting with applying eye tracking to behavioral research in new domains..." http://uxmag.com/technology/eye-tracking-and-web-usability-a-good-fit +05: EVENTS. FutureMidwest April 16-17, 2010. Royal Oak, Michigan, U.S.A. http://www.futuremidwest.com/ 2010 UIC Digital Accessibility Expo April 19, 2010. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/yct36t7 +06: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Variable Scope: Local and Global Variables By Estelle Weyl. "In writing JavaScript functions, variable functions can trip you up. A common error is overwriting a global variable because the variable in a function didn't have local scope. If that last sentence didn't make any sense, then this article is for you." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=4E137 John Resig on Advanced Javascript to Improve your Web App By Keir Whitaker. "In February 2010 John Resig, the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library, spoke at the annual Future of Web Apps Miami conference..." http://tinyurl.com/yll9xcn Eloquent JavaScript By Marijn Haverbeke. "Eloquent JavaScript is a digital book providing a comprehensive introduction (tutorial) to the JavaScript programming language. Apart from a bookful of text, it contains plenty of example programs, and an environment to try them out and play with them..." http://eloquentjavascript.net/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. 14 Ways to Be the World's Worst Web Project Manager By Chris Roane. "There are a great number of ways to manage website projects, but regardless of your management style, there are behaviors that you should learn to avoid as much as possible. Steering clear of these pitfalls will not only allow you to get through projects on time and on budget, but will leave a very good impression on your clients, and win you more work in the future..." http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/14-ways-worst-project-manager An Interview with Andy Budd By 52WeeksOfUX. "This weeks post is an interview with Andy Budd, a founding partner and Managing Director of Clearleft. He also goes by the title of User Experience Director depending what mood he's in. Andy is the founder of the dConstruct and UX London conferences and has always had an interest in the way design affects human behavior..." http://tinyurl.com/yyj6ny4 +08: NAVIGATION. An Ode to Click Here By Heidi. "On most web pages, I scan to see What might be there that interests me. Click here, Click there...in every link It's enough to drive me to drink. "'Click here' doesn't tell me what the linked page is about And seeing it there makes me want to shout. Where are you sending me? Why should I go? My stress is clearly beginning to grow. "Thank goodness I am not visually impaired From the pain you cause, I am thus spared Since screen readers don't include the context I would be left completely perplexed. "They are nothing more than needless words Feeling the urge to insert them is absolutely absurd Does telling me to 'click here' really work? It actually makes me think of you as a jerk! "I'm really not as dumb as you might think It's time to stop telling me how to operate links. So next time you think click here is a 'win' Please, I beg you, think again!" http://liveux.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/an-ode-to-click-here/ +09: PHP. Getting Started with OOP & PHP5: Part 1 By Lorna Jane Mitchell. "Since the introduction of PHP 5 in 2004, PHP has had an object model worthy of that description and became a truly modern language for use on the web. Earlier PHP scripts would have been of the kind where, to quote from Alice's Adventures, you would 'Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop'." http://carsonified.com/blog/dev/getting-started-with-oop-php5/ Getting Started with OOP and PHP5: Part 2 By Lorna Jane Mitchell. "This time around we'll look at some more advanced concepts and some more practical examples of building code, covering use of constructors and how to add access modifiers in to control how calling code can operate on your objects. We'll also show off how to create static methods and properties and, perhaps more importantly, illustrate applications of these features." http://carsonified.com/blog/dev/getting-started-with-oop-php5-part-2/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML5 and the Myth of WAI-ARIA Redundance By Steve Faulkner. Will HTML5 make the use of WAI-ARIA in HTML redundant? the short answer is definitely not. There are many ARIA roles and properties that are not provided by native elements and attributes in HTML5. Also developers still have the desire to roll their own interactive controls even though they have been available in HTML as native elements for 11 years, why would this suddenly change when HTML5 arrives? http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=585 Clean Markup Plea By Anne van Kesteren. "Yesterday there was some noise surrounding HTML5 and the myth of WAI-ARIA redundancy..." http://annevankesteren.nl/2010/04/clean-markup-plea HTML5 Details Element, Built-In and Bolt-On Accessibility By Bruce Lawson. "Now that the HTML5 spec is settling down, we're seeing a resurgence of people attempting to cut good bits out. One of the latest targets is the very useful details element..." http://tinyurl.com/yl39eqt Your Questions Answered #6 By Richard Clark. "Doctor treating a patient illustration We're back with another round of patient questions about HTML5. In this article, we'll discuss using multiple

s, audio codecs, microformats, post bylines, and the