[webdev] Web Design Update: July 26, 2007

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Jul 26 06:26:09 CDT 2007


+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 05, July 26, 2007.

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

++ISSUE 05 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: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Responsibility for Accessible Content
By Alastair Campbell.
"A simple rule for good web sites: content is golden. In an 
accessibility context, structured content is golden. It a core 
responsibility of the site owner to ensure this is followed (not just 
the developer). When you examine this issue, you can then understand 
why few organizations will ever produce accessible PDFs..."
http://alastairc.ac/2007/07/responsibility-for-accessible-content/

Practical Plans for Accessible Architectures
By Frances Forman.
"...While accessibility requires expert web developers to maintain high 
levels of access (especially on larger sites), it still needs the help 
of IAs who understand the scope and constraints that lead to accessible 
design, and who are conscious of the duty to prevent discrimination 
when making information management decisions."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/practical-plans-for

Accessibility and Client Expectations: Selling Accessibility
By Joe Dolson.
"One routine challenge in being an accessible web developer is 
convincing clients of the necessity of certain features you've 
implemented. I don't sell my services specifically on the grounds of 
accessibility; accessibility is simply a feature of my web sites. As a 
result, not every client is even aware when the project starts that 
they're going to end up with an accessible web site..."
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2007/07/selling-accessibility/

Pseudo-Accessibility: Reinventing the Wheel
By Joe Dolson.
"In my last post, Accessibility and Client Expectations, a major point 
was on the practice of implementing accessibility as a site 'add-on,' 
rather than developing a web site from the ground up with accessibility 
in mind. Some of the features which are implemented in this manner fall 
into a gross category I'm inclined to describe as 
'pseudo-accessibility.' In general, pseudo-accessible features are 
those which..."
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2007/07/pseudo-accessibility/

Office 2007 PDFs - Not Accessible
By Alastair Campbell.
"...Given that the Office 2007 PDF pluggin is a free download (once 
you've paid for Office 2007 of course), I was hoping that most people 
internally could use that instead of paying the Adobe tax for 
accessible PDFs. Unfortunately, without providing reasonably accessible 
output, I can't use or recommend that option."
http://alastairc.ac/2007/07/office-2007-pdfs-not-accessible/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Cascading Style Sheets
Working Group Blog.
"W3C and the CSS Working Group publish information about the 
specifications under development in various ways. This page is the 
working group's weblog (blog)..."
http://www.w3.org/blog/CSS

Seven Common CSS Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
By Ivan Pepelnjak.
"Learn some of the most common CSS mistakes and how to avoid them."
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=774817

CSS Inheritance
By David Dorward.
"An explanation of how inheritance works in CSS and why CSS doesn't 
need Object Oriented style inheritance."
http://dorward.me.uk/www/css/inheritance/

Taking Conditional Comments Too Far
By Jonathan Christopher.
"I've come to accept and support conditional comments as a tool to use 
when it's otherwise impossible to get Internet Explorer to behave 
desirably. To me, they're much more acceptable than unstable CSS hacks 
or extensive !important declarations. They're much easier to maintain, 
and it's the only truly reliable way to target not only Internet 
Explorer itself, but specify a version as well. The subject of 
conditional comments comes with great debate that seems to be ongoing. 
There are good arguments on both sides, but to me, conditional comments 
seem like the best solution..."
http://mondaybynoon.com/2007/07/23/taking-conditional-comments-too-far/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

User Assistance Walkthroughs: Helping Best Practices Emerge
By Mike Hughes.
"In my previous job as a UX designer, I learned the value of 
collaborative design walkthroughs. During walkthroughs, the UX designer 
would step through a user scenario-using the wireframes or mid-fidelity 
prototypes-with a cross-disciplinary team comprising product 
management, other UX designers, business analysts, developers, product 
testers, and technical communicators. The motivation for doing these 
walkthroughs was to reduce the amount of churn around product 
requirements that was occurring during coding and testing. No matter 
how well-written a requirement or use case was, it wasn't until 
stakeholders could interact with a design within a tangible context 
that the full implications of a requirement or its lack of sufficient 
specificity became evident..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000211.php


+04: EVENTS.

Eric Meyer - Professional CSS XHTML Techniques
August 13-14, 2007.
London, United Kingdom
http://www.carsonworkshops.com/design-dev/meyer/13-14AUG2007.html

Future of Web Apps - Expo
October 3-5, 2007.
London, United Kingdom
http://www.futureofwebapps.com/

Future of Web Design
November 7-8, 2007.
New York, New York, U.S.A.
http://www.futureofwebdesign.com/

User Experience 2007 Conference
December 2-7, 2007.
Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
http://www.nngroup.com/events


+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

Byte Sized Interview with Charlie Swinbourne
By Paul Crichton.
"Charlie Swinbourne, 25, is a deaf director/scriptwriter and researcher 
on See Hear, the BBC2 series for hearing impaired people. He is hard of 
hearing, can lip-read and is a British Sign Language user."
http://tinyurl.com/37pd28


+06: NAVIGATION.

Usability Violation: Link Colors that Don't Change When Visited
By Jesper Ronn-Jensen.
"Links should change colors when visited to assist the user in 
navigation. This may be common knowledge to you. Nevertheless, from 
time to time I run into graphical designers that are not aware of this 
web convention and why it should be so..."
http://tinyurl.com/ys3jlz


+07: USABILITY.

Blasting the Myth of the Fold
By Milissa Tarquini.
"...Stop worrying about the fold. Don't throw your best practices out 
the window, but stop cramming stuff above a certain pixel point. You're 
not helping anyone. Open up your designs and give your users some 
visual breathing room. If your content is compelling enough your users 
will read it to the end...The biggest lesson to be learned here is that 
if you use visual cues (such as cut-off images and text) and compelling 
content, users will scroll to see all of it. The next great frontier in 
web page design has to be bottom of the page..."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of

The Best Websites are Useful and Ugly
By Gerry McGovern.
"Functionality and usefulness are far more important to the success of 
your website than how nice and elegant it looks."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-07-23-ugly-websites.htm

Defeated By a Dialog Box
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Interaction techniques that deviate from common GUI standards can 
create usability catastrophes that make applications impossible to use."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/dialog-box.html


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+08: 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.]




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