+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 9, Issue 24, December 11, 2010. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 24 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Ranking Schools by Web Accessibility Summary Score By Illinois Center for Information Technology Accessibility. "The data in this study was collected with the Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator..." http://webaccessibility.cita.illinois.edu/data/schools/ Cornell - Sites Will Be Upgraded for Disabled By Jeff Stein. "After rejecting policy in 2009, University afÞrms commitment to disabled..." http://www.cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2010/12/03/cornell-sites-will-be-upgraded-disabled Will Penn State be the Next Test Case? By John Eric Brandt. "I am still waiting for the definitive legal case which affirms that the websites of all institutions of higher education (IHE) be accessible to people with disabilities. There was a celebrated case in California a few years back where the entire state university system was ruled to be out of compliance. The net result was the development of strong guidelines and rules for UC campuses..." http://jebswebs.net/blog/2010/12/will-penn-state-be-the-next-test-case/ Canadian Government Loses Milestone Web Access Case By Tristan Parker. "A blind accessibility consultant has won her case against the Canadian government for the lack of accessibility on its websites, the country's Federal Court has announced..." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=511 BSI (British Standards Institute) Boosts web accessibility with latest standard By Phil Muncaster. "BS 8878 Will Help Organisations Make Their Sites More Digitally Inclusive..." http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2273584/bsi-accessibility-web-site Five Accessibility Myths Demolished By Tom Stewart. I was pleased my grumpy old man blog post on usability myths really sparked some interest, with most people agreeing, although a few seemed eager to point out that I'd just 'critiqued' them rather than 'demolished' them. http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/6913-five-accessibility-myths-demolished +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Defaults/Mere Suggestions By Niels Matthijs. While css defaults are a useful necessity guaranteeing the separation of content and style, you should not be afraid to change them around to better match the layout you need to create. It all starts by realizing that the basic browser styling is just some simple default css hidden away in a separate file. If you get to that point, overwriting it is just the next logical step. http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/css-browser-defaults The Fifth Position Value By Peter-Paul Koch. Web developers are quite annoyed that position: fixed doesn't work on mobile browsers, but mobile browser vendors cannot afford to support it. This dilemma is unsolvable by the means we presently have at our disposal. http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/12/the_fifth_posit.html Three-Sided Border By Chris Coyier. "If you need to put a border on only three sides of an element, there are a bunch of ways you can do it..." http://css-tricks.com/three-sided-border/ Why Percentage-Based Designs Don't Work in Every Browser By Scott Gilbertson. "Here's a rule any web designer can live by: Your designs don't need to look exactly the same in every browser, they just need to look good in every browser...There are also some workarounds. For example, you can use ems instead of percentages, which render much more consistently across browsers..." http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/12/why-percentage-based-designs-dont-work-in-every-browser/ CSS3 Gradient Backgrounds and Controlling Their Height By last-child.com. "Let's assume you want to create a gradient background that starts at the top of the page and finishes at the bottom of your page header, i.e. is 100px tall. You can do this with a combination of CSS3 rules and avoid those ugly background images..." http://www.last-child.com/gradient-backgrounds-height/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Drawbacks of Talk Aloud Usability Testing By Gerry McGovern. "A primary rule of web management is: 'Do as I do, not as I say'. So why do we ask people to say what they're doing during usability tests?" http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2010/nt-2010-12-06-Drawbacks-talk.htm +04: EVENTS. Introduction to SVG January-February 2011. Online course. http://www.w3.org/2010/09/intro_svg_course_description.php Creating Web Site Indexes February 1-28, 2011. Online course. http://www.simmons.edu/gslis/careers/continuing-education/workshops/online.php Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium April 8-9, 2011. Duluth, Minnesota U.S.A http://www2.css.edu/mics/ Web Directions @Media May 24-27, 2011. London, United Kingdom. http://atmedia11.webdirections.org/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The Enemy Within By Karen McGrane. "I remember the first time I heard the phrase 'information architecture.' It was in the technical communication program at RPI, in a conversation with the department chair about my enthusiasm for combining my love of clear writing, making outlines, and labeling my file folders with what I was then just discovering: a whole new world of spatial design, how people translate cognitive information into physical tasks, how visual and tactile cues help make verbal communication more clear." http://52weeksofux.com/post/2094540762/ux-the-enemy-within +06: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript for PHP Developers By Stoyan Stefanov. "Hopefully, you've been a good geek in 2010. You've followed last year's advice and learned some JavaScript. Now, let's kick back with a glass of wine by the fireplace and take a moment to review what you've learned." http://phpadvent.org/2010/javascript-for-php-developers-by-stoyan-stefanov The Anatomy of a JavaScript Design Pattern By James Edwards. "This is a follow-on post to My Favourite JavaScript Design Pattern, which will hopefully answer a few of the questions it raised, and provide more in-depth discussion on some of the pattern's features..." http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/12/08/the-anatomy-of-a-javascript-design-pattern/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. One Web By Jeremy Keith. "...Most of the time, creating a separate mobile website is simply a cop-out...I'm with Team Timbo. One web." http://adactio.com/journal/1716/ +08: NAVIGATION. Examining the Order Effect of Website Navigation Menus With Eye Tracking By Alex J DeWitt. "We analysed the eye-tracking data of 147 participants as they used a total of 15 separate website navigation menus to complete key activities. The hypotheses for this study were that (a) the psychological phenomenon of the order effect would manifest in that items at either end of a menu would be located more quickly than those in the middle and (b) that the items that were relevant to completing the user's tasks would be located more quickly through peripheral visual identification of these items. Although items relevant to the user's task were acquired 1.8 seconds faster on average, both of the hypotheses were rejected as no statistically significant patterns were found. It was concluded that each user was likely to have his or her own searching behaviour and this could be affected by other factors such as the graphic design of the menu..." http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2010november/dewitt1.html Faceted Navigation: Grouping - An UnTapped Potential? By James Kalbach. "Research shows that relevant documents (as judged by a user) tend to be thematically related. That means that if is someone finds a relevant document in a collection, chances are documents with a similar subject are also relevant." http://experiencinginformation.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/faceted-navigation-grouping-an-untapped-potential/ +09: PHP. The Thing with the Two Heads By Ed Finkler. "...In the end, treating your front end(s) and back end as separate apps means each app will be able to do what works best for its given platform. You'll end up with a better development experience, and a superior user experience." http://phpadvent.org/2010/the-thing-with-the-two-heads-by-ed-finkler Bits and PHPieces By Joel Perras. "I like to think of PHP as a mixed bag of tricks. The language itself was born out of some simple, real-world use cases, and that ideology still drives the language forward today. It sometimes isn't pretty, but PHP isn't meant to be pretty - it's meant to solve problems..." http://phpadvent.org/2010/bits-and-phpieces-by-jo%C3%ABl-perras 10 PHP Tricks for Associative Array Manipulation By W. Jason Gilmore. "The associative array -- an indispensable data type used to describe a collection of unique keys and associated values -- is a mainstay of all programming languages, PHP included. In fact, associative arrays are so central to the task of Web development that PHP supports dozens of functions and other features capable of manipulating array data in every conceivable manner. Such extensive support can be a bit overwhelming to developers seeking the most effective way to manipulate arrays within their applications. In this article, I'll offer 10 tips that can help you shred, slice and dice your data in countless ways..." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/associative-array-manipulation/Jason_Gilmore12092010.php3 +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. It's Still Important to Talk about HTML 4 By Joseph Dolson. "...If you think about it, a significant part of web site updating is done by non-experts: the person tasked with maintaining the web site in a small business may not be at all knowledgeable. The beginning blogger may not know anything about HTML. Their learning will still come through basic searches, starting from a task-oriented question which is probably not technology specific. Those are people we need to reach if we seriously want to improve the quality of HTML on the internet." http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2010/12/its-still-important-to-talk-about-html-4 Wrapping Things Nicely with HTML5 Local Storage By Christian Heilmann. "HTML5 is here to turn the web from a web of hacks into a web of applications - and we are well on the way to this goal. The coming year will be totally and utterly awesome if you are excited about web technologies. This year the HTML5 revolution started and there is no stopping it. For the first time all the browser vendors are rallying together to make a technology work. The new browser war is fought over implementation of the HTML5 standard and not over random additions. We live in exciting times..." http://24ways.org/2010/html5-local-storage Recommended: "Wrapping Things Nicely with HTML5 Local Storage" By Tiffany B. Brown. "Keep in mind: local storage can be - and will be, and right now is probably being - used to create hard-to-delete 'super cookies' for advertising, marketing, and other privacy-eroding things..." http://tiffanybbrown.com/2010/12/07/recommended-wrapping-things-nicely-with-html5-local-storage/ HTML5: If You Bang Your Head Against The Keyboard You'll Create a Valid Document! By Brian Kelly. "...In future, it would seem, there won't be a need to bother about escaping &s and closing empty tags, although if Web authors wish to continue with such practices they can do so." http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/html5-if-you-bang-your-head-against-the-keyboard-youll-create-a-valid-document/ "Probably, Maybe, No" - The State of HTML5 Audio By Scott Schiller. "...CSS3's border-radius, box-shadow, text-shadow and gradients, and HTML5's ,