+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 9, Issue 46, May 12, 2011. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 46 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: MISCELLANEOUS. 04: NAVIGATION. 05: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 06: TOOLS. 07: TYPOGRAPHY. 08: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Longdesc and Other Long Image Description Solutions, Part 2 of 2 By Dennis Lembree. "...The longdesc image attribute is easy to implement but is not supported well. Other methods such as text links and ARIA can be used to achieve a similar result but may not be fully supported either or may not be aesthetically pleasing. Today, the best way to implement a long description for an image, when needed, is to use a hybrid technique with text link, longdesc, and ARIA. Other techniques have surfaced (especially for charts), but until the W3C, browser vendors, and web authors play nice together, there will continue to be fragmented and partially supported solutions which is a loss for everyone." http://designfestival.com/longdesc2/ WYSIWYG Support for @longdesc Today By John Foliot. "...I thought I would investigate Tantek's assertion with regard to WYSIWYG editing tools, complete with screen captures. While this is by no means a complete list, it does cover environments and situations that I personally encounter almost daily, and is, if nothing else, a good representative sampling..." http://john.foliot.ca/wysiwyg_longdesc/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Clipping Text With CSS3 text-overflow By Roger Johansson. "When you need to display an unknown amount of text in a constrained space you may need to somehow hide text that doesn't fit. One way is to use overflow:hidden to quite brutally hide it. Doing this works, and it works cross-browser, but it can be difficult for the user to realise that text has been hidden since there is no visual indication of it. A property from the editor's draft of the CSS Basic User Interface Module Level 3 that can help improve the situation is text-overflow..." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201105/clipping_text_with_css3_text-overflow/ The Ever-Increasing Uses of a Zoom Layout (Part 1) By James Edwards. "If I were to point at a page and describe it as a zoom layout - would you know what I was talking about? The term was popularized by Joe Clark, one the foremost advocates of accessible web development, to describe a page that's been formatted (or re-formatted) to make it easier for low-vision users - people who navigate with extremely large text, or using magnifying software..." http://blogs.sitepoint.com/the-ever-increasing-uses-of-a-zoom-layout-part-1/ The Ever-Increasing Uses of a Zoom Layout (Part 2) By James Edwards. "...So what do we need to do to make this happen? It all comes down to two simple things..." http://blogs.sitepoint.com/the-ever-increasing-uses-of-a-zoom-layout-part-2/ Outer Border Radius Tabs By Chris Coyier. "Imagine a real-life tabbed folder. The tabs on those aren't only rounded at the top of the tab, but they also connected to the folder with a rounded edge. Top corners, easy, just border-radius. Bottom corners, not so easy. Steve Smith has a published a neat technique utilizing pseudo elements to do it." http://orderedlist.com/blog/articles/flared-borders-with-css/ +03: MISCELLANEOUS. How To Get Sign-Off For Your Designs By Paul Boag. "'How did you do that?' My colleague Leigh sounded impressed. He had been working with a problem client for weeks trying to get design approval. Then I came along and was able to get signed-off in a single conference call. 'Can you teach me how you did that?' he asked. I mumbled something about years of experience, but the truth was I didn't have a clue. It just seems I can find design approval easier than most." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/06/how-to-get-sign-off-for-your-designs/ +04: NAVIGATION. Opening Links in New Windows By Glenda Watson Hyatt. "You know the sites: the kind where clicking on a link opens a new window (or a tab, depending upon your browser). The back button doesn't take you back to the previous page because a new window opened instead. By the time you are finished with the site, you have several windows open that you must now close before carrying on with whatever you were doing. How annoying..." http://blogaccessibility.com/sin-6-opening-links-in-new-windows/ Mooer's Law and Findability By Tom Johnson. "I was recently reading about Mooer's law in Peter Morville's Ambient Findability. Morville contrasts Moore's law with Mooer's law. Moore's law (much more familiar) asserts that the number of computer transistors that you can fit on an integrated circuit doubles every two years. We're all familiar with the ever-increasing amount of storage space, processing power, memory, and other rapid advance with technology. But Mooer's law is perhaps both more interesting and relevant to technical writers and findability. In 1959, Calvin Mooer, a computer scientist, observed the following..." http://idratherbewriting.com/2011/05/09/mooers-law-and-implications-for-findability/ +05: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. This Could be Big - Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C By Marshall Kirkpatrick. "Imagine a web where our browsers connected directly to each other to do voice, video, media sharing and run applications, using P2P and real-time APIs, rather than going through centralized servers that controlled traffic and permissions. That's a potent idea and if implemented properly could future-proof a part of the web from authoritarian crack-downs, disruptions by disasters and more. It could also establish a permanent lawless zone of connected devices with no central place to stop anyone from doing anything in particular..." http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/his_could_be_big_decentralized_web_standard_under.php The hgroup Hokey Cokey By Jack Osborne. "As you may well have heard this week, hgroup has been in, out and in the spec again, while members of the W3C and others have truly been shaking it all about. If you've missed this latest merry dance then please head on over to the W3 bug report page to help get a clearer indication. http://html5doctor.com/the-hgroup-hokey-cokey/ +05: TOOLS. KeyTitle extension By Charles McCathieNevile. "It's an (Opera) extension so you can navigate a page by keyboard, and have the title tooltips shown just as they would if you mouseover something with a tooltip. This is another step to bing keyboard use to match what happens when people are working with a mouse, and vice versa..." http://my.opera.com/chaals/blog/keytitle-extension +07: TYPOGRAPHY. Typographically Correct Punctuation on Web Sites By Stephen Morley. "While many web designers settle for the simplified punctuation of the ASCII character set, using typographically correct punctuation shows the professionalism and attention to detail of the designer and the web site owner. This page explains the differences between superficially similar punctuation marks and lists the character entity references used to represent them..." http://code.stephenmorley.org/html-and-css/typographically-correct-punctuation/ +08: USABILITY. The Goodall Technology Reading Ease Index - How Complex is Your Marketing Copy? By Danny Goodall. "...as part of the REPAMATron project which looks to automatically create competitive marketing intelligence studies by inferring the marketing strategy behind a vendor's marketing copy, I've decided to try to rate the ease with which technology marketing copy can be read..." http://www.lustratusrepama.com/2011/the-goodall-technology-reading-ease-index-how-complex-is-your-marketing-copy/ Utilize Available Screen Space By Jakob Nielsen. Websites and mobile apps both frequently cram options into too-small parts of the screen, making items harder to understand." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/screen-space-use.html Bad Interfaces - Getting Dates Wrong By Gary Barber. "When you use an interface it's the little things that help make it either a pain or just outstanding..." http://manwithnoblog.com/2011/05/09/bad-interfaces-getting-dates-wrong/ Heretical Idea - Stop Redesigning By Gary Barber. "...Something to consider using transforming design, instead of the usually slash and burn redesign." http://manwithnoblog.com/2011/05/12/heretical-idea-stop-redesigning/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html Association Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html Book Listings. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html Cascading Style Sheets Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html Color Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html Dreamweaver Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.html Evaluation & Testing Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html Event Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html Flash Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.html Information Architecture Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html JavaScript Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html Miscellaneous Web Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html Navigation Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html PHP Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html Sites & Blogs Listing. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html Tool Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html Typography Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html Usability Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html XML Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/xml.html [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/itss/training/online/webdesign/webdev_listserv.html 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.]