[webdev] Web Design Update: September 22, 2006

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 5, Issue 13, September 22, 2006.

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

++ISSUE 13 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: ASSOCIATIONS.
03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
04: EVENTS.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: PHP.
10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
11: TOOLS.
12: TYPOGRAPHY.
13: USABILITY.
14: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Are You Google's Gopher?
By Alan Connor.
"For all the elaborate projects that computers are working on, there 
are still some things these machines are very poor at. One of these is 
seeing. A computer will recognize that something is an image, but will 
have no idea what it is an image of. So a project to, say, label all 
the images on the web will need to get humans to pitch in and help. But 
who is going to sit around saying what they see for hours at a time? 
Enter Dr von Ahn, with a new game. ...For his part, Dr von Ahn talks of 
better browsing for the visually impaired, and better cataloguing of 
data..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5336284.stm

Google Image Labeler
By Google.
"Welcome to Google Image Labeler, a new feature of Google Image Search 
that allows you to label random images to help improve the quality of 
Google's image search results."
http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

Is Legally Mandated Accessibility a Benefit?
By Joe Dolson.
"Although I'm an enthusiastic supporter of the principles of 
accessibility, the practical definition is challenging to really pin 
down. Given the widely criticized WCAG 2.0 and the sometimes 
questionable expectations of Section 508 accessibility guidelines, I'm 
have to wonder whether a legal accessibility requirement is really 
practical."
http://tinyurl.com/hkmq2

Accessibility vs. Visual Design - Why Can't We All Just Get Along?
By Jared Smith.
"...The goal of both design and accessibility is to improve the user 
experience. Designers must understand that accessibiliters will never 
stop asking them for high levels of accessibility. Asking them to do so 
would be similar to them asking designers to stop using color because 
it's just too darn colorful. Accessibiliters must stop demanding every 
new fangled accessibility widget, tool, and guideline implementation 
that comes around. As long as designers understand the issues of 
accessibility and provide as much accessibility as is feasible within 
the constraints they are truly faced with, I believe that most in the 
accessibility community will respect and understand that decision. They 
should be happy that the wooden wheelchair ramp is available, even 
though deep inside they know that the golden, motorized ramp would be 
wicked cool. If they still criticize, then they should be ignored as 
they do not understand the constraints most designers are faced with. 
This does not, however, mean that they will stop being proponents for 
better accessibility, just like designers will never stop being 
proponents for better design."
http://webaim.org/blog/2006/09/13/access_vs_design/

Accessibility, Law and Target.com
By Jim Thatcher.
"...In her ruling, Judge Patel stressed the importance of the 
connection between the bricks and mortar Target stores and the web 
site, dismissing the NFB complaint 'To the extent that Target.com 
offers information and services unconnected to Target stores, which do 
not affect the enjoyment of goods and services offered in Target 
stores.' This strongly suggests to me that the entire suit would have 
been dismissed had the defendant been Priceline.com or Amazon.com. 
However, even the issue of the nature of the relationship between the 
bricks and mortar store and the web site will be addressed as the suit 
moves forward; the Court had this to say in Endnote 4: 'It appears from 
a review of the web site in question-which the court notes is not in 
evidence but nonetheless does raise some questions-that Target treats 
Target.com as an extension of its stores, as part of its overall 
integrated merchandising efforts. See www.target.com. This suggests to 
the court that perhaps with more evidence, the court's determination of 
what may be covered under the ADA in this kind of integrated 
merchandising may be subject to amendment. The web site is a means to 
gain access to the store and it is ironic that Target, through its 
merchandising efforts on the one hand, seeks to reach greater numbers 
of customers and enlarge its consumer-base, while on the other hand it 
seeks to escape the requirements of the ADA.' So the NFB vs. Target 
suit will play out. Perhaps there will be a settlement without a final 
court decision. In any case the question of legal support for the 
fundamental idea that access to the web is a civil right is still being 
formed."
http://jimthatcher.com/law-target.htm

Web Accessibility Evaluation of Target Website
By Jon Gunderson.
This is Jon Gunderson's report generated with the Functional Web 
Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) on the top 32 pages of the Target 
website.
http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu/report.php?id=w45117cc9aae0f&pc=32&type=summary

National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corporation
By Wikipedia.
The case made it into Wikipedia.
http://tinyurl.com/hlynp


+02: ASSOCIATIONS.

Web Industry Professionals Association Incorporated (WIPA) of Australia
http://wipa.org.au/


+03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS: Text Shadows
By Mike Cherim.
"This Text Shadows experiment isn't something that I think I would ever 
actually use, but I was intrigued by it..."
http://mikecherim.com/gbcms_xml/news_page.php?id=13#n13

BIR (Bob Image Replacement)
By Neal Venditto.
"..My technique involves the use of the z-index property. Basically, I 
encase the text of a header element in a span element, thus having 
semantic markup. I give the header element a background, and give the 
span element a negative z-index so that it is placed behind this 
header. Should the image not show, the text is perfectly visible. I 
have to add a z-index of 1 to the body for the text not to be 
completely buried, however. So, this is an excerpt from an HTML 
document utilizing the method..."
http://neal.venditto.org/articles/12/bir

Ryan Rollovers
By Ryan Roberts.
"This is an example technique for using image replacement CSS buttons 
which are fully accessible for users with images disabled."
http://www.thevisualprocess.com/dev/rollover/


+04: EVENTS.

Accessibility Summit 2006
October 10-12, 2006.
Cambridge, Massachusetts U.S.A.
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility_Hackfest_2006

Small Talk 1: Jeffrey Zeldman
October 17, 2006.
New York, New York U.S.A.
http://www.amosdesigns.net/myBlog/?p=12

Accessing Higher Ground Conference:
Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference for Education, for 
Businesses, for Web and Media Designers
November 8-10, 2006.
Boulder, Colorado U.S.A.
http://www.colorado.edu/atconference/

International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference
March 19-24, 2007.
Los Angeles, California U.S.A.
http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/index.htm


+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Real Wireframes Get Real Results
By Stephen Turbek.
"Information architects, afraid to step on designers' toes, may 
actually render wireframes unusable. Stephen Turbek talks about 
Verizon, the similarities between wireframes and iPods, and how to get 
real."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/real_wireframes

Whole Lotta IA Survey Results Now Available
By Louis Rosenfeld.
"For the new edition of the polar bear book (almost done!), Peter 
Morville and I conducted five surveys of the information architecture 
community. All of the results are now available via the IA Institute 
web site, and cover the following topics..."
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000478.html


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Objectifying JavaScript
By Jonathan Snook.
"Object-oriented programming techniques can greatly improve both the 
structure and readability of your code, but it can be a little 
difficult to get a grasp on objects in JavaScript's unique 
implementation. Read along as "Behind the Curtain" columnist Jonathan 
Snook presents the foundational details behind creating objects in 
JavaScript, and points out the implications and variations of each 
creation mechanism."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/objectifying_javascript/

Data Validation with JavaScript and Regular Expressions
By Tony Patton.
"Discover how regular expressions offer a simple and elegant way to 
manipulate text within JavaScript. Tony Patton also explores how 
JavaScript's regular expression simplifies data validation."
http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6116248.html

Adventures in JavaScript Testing
By Thomas Fuchs.
"As promised, here are the slides on unit testing JavaScript from my 
talk at RailsConf Europe..."
http://mir.aculo.us/articles/2006/09/16/adventures-in-javascript-testing

Automatic Pullquotes with JavaScript and CSS
By Roger Johansson.
As you may have noticed, there are now pullquotes in some articles on 
this site. I think they can be a nice design element and a good way of 
highlighting important phrases. As with most things there are several 
ways of creating pullquotes, the most straightforward being copying the 
text you want and paste it into a blockquote element. I didn't want to 
do that for several reasons. The main reason is the amount of work 
involved. I could go through my older articles to add pullquotes, but 
what if I should decide that I no longer want pullquotes? I'd have to 
go through every article again to remove the quotes. Lots of work. I 
wanted a way to add pullquotes without having to duplicate text in the 
markup, and came up with a JavaScript based technique."
http://tinyurl.com/qn48a


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Trenton Moss Interview (Podcast):
What is Accessibility and what does it mean to me?
By Roger Kondrat.
"Recently I had the opportunity to sit down and discuss Accessibility 
with WebCredible's Head of Accessibility Trenton Moss. Trenton has been 
doing this sort of work for a number of years and some clients are from 
the FTSE 25. In this podcast Trenton introduces himself, discusses what 
Accessibility is and the value for businesses if they utilize his 
services, as well he discusses the different pricing options for 
companies e.g. large or small enterprise have different cost realities."
http://tinyurl.com/hj2kd

SpoolCast
By Jared Spool.
Casts number 1.1 to 1.4 discuss the new Brown University home page and 
other topics.
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/tag/podcasts/spoolcast/

Web Standards with Imagination (Podcast series)
By Dustin Diaz.
"A JavaScript, CSS, (X)HTML web log focusing on usability and 
accessibility. Podcasts include Dustin Diaz with featured guests for 
discussion and interviews. Expect cheesy jokes and humor as part of the 
weekly show."
http://odeo.com/channel/68201/view

Adobe Interview: Kevin Lynch, VP/Product Marketing, Knowledge Worker 
Business Unit (KWBU)
By Kurt Foss.
"Acrobat Connect has a collaboration-builder SDK for building Flash 
applications that work within real-time meetings. They can be highly 
interactive-can really change the experience of a web meeting. It's not 
just screen sharing anymore; it could be something like a Jeopardy-like 
quiz that you use to train your sales force. Or it could be an 
interactive, real-time inventory system that is tied to a back-end 
system. It's really unlimited in what you could do, and it changes the 
mind set of what can be done inside a real-time meeting."
http://www.acrobatusers.com/articles/2006/09/interview_k_lynch/


+08: NAVIGATION.

The Effects of Lower-literacy on Mental Models to Support Website 
Navigation
By Celeste Lyn Paul.
"...This is a difficult issue, because how do you accommodate both 
higher-literacy and lower-literacy users, especially when your site 
must contain some level of terminology because it is identifiable to 
those who have some kind of exposure to the domain. How can you close 
an educational divide when education is the barrier?..."
http://tinyurl.com/kr5ns

Accessibility's Impact On Search
By Rob Garner.
"While the company (Target) asserts that it has designed the site 
within all applicable laws, it is difficult to understand why it 
omitted key design attributes at the expense of search engine 
visibility and sales. The e-commerce industry is extremely competitive 
in both paid and natural search, and to most e-commerce marketers, the 
use of alt-text on images and image maps is Search Engine Optimization 
101. By not using the basic design tactics used by many of its 
competitors, this ecommerce retailer is being left in the dust..."
http://tinyurl.com/hehj4

Ambient Signifiers
By Ross Howard.
"When navigating a complex system-be it a website or a large transport 
network-it's easy to get lost. Ross Howard points out how subtle 
signifiers can make a big difference."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/ambient_signifi

Index Me, Baby!
By Russ Weakley.
"I've just come away from a day long seminar on SEO where hiding text 
was described as a bad practice - regardless of the purpose or CSS 
method used...it is better to experiment rather than hypothesize. The 
four pages below have unique keywords, the same link value (there is 
currently only one link to these pages anywhere on the web), the same 
page title value, the same number of keywords mentioned on each page 
and the same character count on each page. Each of them uses a 
different method to display or hide content. Will Google treat these 
pages differently (refusing to index them?) or is this just a crude and 
badly executed test?..."
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2006/09/15/index-me-baby/


+09: PHP.

Highlighting What Section of a Website the User Is In
By Eli White III and Jonathan Eisenhamer.
"Although a site may not always warrant a full multilayer navigation 
menu, most websites usually have at least a few different sections. 
Often many pages have links back to the top pages of each section, and 
therefore it is useful to highlight which section the user is currently 
in. Listing 9.2.1 looks at the URL of the current web page and, based 
on that, determines what section of the website it is in and changes 
the section menu."
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/white-eisenhamer20060911.php3

Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet
By Dave Child.
"Regular Expressions are very powerful, and many people find their 
unusual syntax hard to get to grips with. This A4 reference serves as a 
guide to regular expression patterns and options."
http://tinyurl.com/fx3lw

What Can PHP Learn From Ruby On Rails?
By Chris Hartjes.
Slides from Chris Hartjes' php/db|works conference presentation.
http://tinyurl.com/gokvc

PHP 5 Tutorial
By Kevin S. Floyd.
"This tutorial is designed for students in Web Development classes at 
Macon State College. It assumes that the student already has 
familiarity with the eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), 
basic programming skills, and with the rudiments of database design and 
Structured Query Language (SQL). Example scripts run under PHP 5, 
Apache 2 or IIS 6.0, and Microsoft Windows 2003 Server. XHTML output 
displays properly under current versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer 
or Mozilla Firefox."
http://msconline.maconstate.edu/tutorials/PHP/default.htm


+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Why Standards Still Matter
By Roger Johansson.
"The last couple of years may have seen an increase in the level of 
interest and action around web standards. But it still isn't filtering 
down to the mainstream..."
http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/why-standards-still-matter

The Web Standards War is Far From Over
By Robert Nyman.
"...You may know everything there is to know about web standards, but 
remember that you are indeed a minority. Spread the word to other web 
developers, use best practices and show system developers and decision 
makers all the benefits of using web standards. Most people are 
interested in a lot of time saved and money gained and/or saved, so it 
shouldn't be hard to sell..."
http://tinyurl.com/eqnrt

It's Time To Kill Off Transitional DOCTYPES
By Jack Pickard.
"...A Strict DOCTYPE only removes the chance to use presentational or 
behavioral elements and attributes. If you aren't using these anyway - 
and you shouldn't be - then you've no reason to avoid the Strict 
DOCTYPE..."
http://accessites.org/gbcms_xml/news_page.php?id=23#n23

W3C Change: Outreach
By Eric A. Meyer.
"My first suggestion for improving the W3C is this: every Working Group 
should have one member whose primary (and possibly sole) responsibility 
is outreach."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2006/09/15/w3c-change-outreach/

W3C Change: Working Groups
By Eric A. Meyer.
"The second area where I think the W3C could be improved is in how 
Working Groups are populated and managed."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2006/09/17/w3c-change-working-groups/


+11: TOOLS.

Tails Export FireFox Extension
By Robert de Bruin.
An extension for showing and exporting microformats.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2240/


+12: TYPOGRAPHY.

Set Opening Paragraphs Flush Left
By Richard Rutter.
"he function of a paragraph indent is to mark a pause, setting the 
paragraph apart from what precedes it. If a paragraph is preceded by a 
title or subhead, the indent is superfluous and can therefore be 
omitted..."
http://tinyurl.com/zaamr


+13: USABILITY.

800x600, Should I Really Care?
By Martin Ringlein.
"I believe we should approach screen resolution much like we do 
JavaScript. How many people have JavaScript disabled; come-on, do we 
really care? However, best-practice tells us to 'degrade, degrade, 
degrade!!' We should be degrading our layouts for screen resolution 
just as we do for the technology running our sites."
http://www.marylandmedia.com/2006/08/800x600-should-i-really-care.html

Optimal Width for 1024px Resolution?
By Cameron Moll.
"Let's face it: The jump from developing for 800x600 to 1024xn is 
inevitable; not only inevitable, but just around the corner, too..."
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/001220.html

Why Is It So Hard to Grasp Scrolling?
By Ethan Kaplan.
"...Flash is like retrofitting a perfectly good industrial building. 
Sure, its not pretty, but with the right tools, the right people and 
the right knowledge, it can be made into anything you'd like it to be. 
100% flash, 4:3 websites, and their ilk are the gaudy exteriors on 
otherwise serviceable canvases. Not necessary, and terribly tacky...or 
the sake of information, let us scroll...Long live XHTML. Long live 
CSS."
http://tinyurl.com/sybal

Let Your Users Scroll
By Roger Johansson.
"There are certain design choices that are very effective in making me 
want to leave a website as quickly as possible. One of the best is when 
the designer has decided that the entire layout should use a fixed 
width and height. With very few exceptions doing that is a really bad 
idea."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200609/let_your_users_scroll/

Fixing Your Width: What's the Optimal Size for a Site?
By Joe Dolson.
"Just in the last few days I've been struggling with a design which 
just wouldn't quite work the way I wanted. A somewhat unusual layout - 
four columns, fluid."
http://tinyurl.com/pnhlh

New Brown University Home Page: Breaking Too Many Rules?
By Christian Watson.
"It's quite a departure from the traditional university home page and 
it's certainly cool to wave your mouse around for a while and watch the 
different 'bands' of content slide up and down. But does it work? 
Without doing some proper user testing it's impossible to say for sure. 
However, I have my concerns..."
http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000284.html


+14: XML.

Understanding HTML, XML and XHTML
By Maciej Ceglowski.
"It's easy to get confused about HTML and XHTML, and many of the 
experts out there give misleading advice on the subject. Fortunately, 
most of the time it doesn't matter. But sometimes it does, and can 
badly break your content. So make sure you understand the difference, 
and serve up some good clean markup."
http://webkit.org/blog/?p=68

Profiling XML Schema
By Paul Kiel.
"Five years after XML Schema's release, it has matured into a key XML 
technology, despite its warts and arguably superior competitors. But 
how are people actually using it? Paul Kiel's article this week answers 
that question."
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2006/09/20/profiling-xml-schema.html

hCard
By microformats wiki.
"This page contains useful tips and guidelines for how to author 
hCards, either from scratch, or by adding markup to existing content..."
http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-authoring

hCalendar
By microformats wiki.
"hCalendar is a simple, open, distributed calendaring and events 
format, based on the iCalendar standard...suitable for embedding in 
(X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. hCalendar is one of several open 
microformat standards..."
http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar

SVG-Wiki
"This is the place for help on Scalable Vector Graphics. This wiki is 
open for the entire SVG community to edit and use freely, under the 
conditions of this wiki's license. But, of course, feel free to 
acknowledge the author of the code and the SVG-Wiki."
http://wiki.svg.org/Main_Page


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+15: 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:
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 at d.umn.edu


[Issue ends.]