[webdev] Web Design Update: September 28, 2007

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 14, September 28, 2007.

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

++ISSUE 14 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: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: PHP.
09: TYPOGRAPHY.
10: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Virtual Worlds Open Up to Blind
By Geoff Adams-Spink.
"...IBM believes that virtual worlds are going to be the next big 
evolution of the web and if this happens...it's not right for blind 
people to be missing out on what the rest of us have available."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993739.stm

Ten Quick Tests To Check Your Website For Accessibility
By Trenton Moss.
"...There are a number of basic tests you can make to address some of 
the main issues that provide a good start in increasing accessibility 
to your site visitors..."
http://tinyurl.com/2z4ubw

Companies, Courts Debate Whether ADA Applies to Web Sites
By Sherry Karabin.
"Does the Americans with Disabilities Act apply in cyberspace? Without 
clear guidance from the courts, companies are deciding for themselves. 
Pressured by advocacy groups, some businesses have already taken steps 
to make their Web sites more accessible to the disabled. But other 
companies have said that while they'll voluntarily alter their sites, 
they aren't required to do so by the ADA..."
http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC.jsp?id=1188982951454


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

User Agent Style Sheets: Basics and Samples
By Jens Meiert.
"CSS budgets for default formatting of documents by the more or less 
known user agent style sheet concept. It means that a web browser, for 
example, doesn't just present a line of text when it's fed with an HTML 
document that has no styling information attached, but instead serves 
it using minimal formatting..."
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20070922/user-agent-style-sheets/

Using Cascading Style Sheets on Your Web Site
By Rob Johnson.
"Cascading style sheets give you more control over the appearance and 
presentation of your pages. Using cascading style sheets, you can 
extend the ability to precisely specify the location and appearance of 
elements on a page and create special effects. You can specify 
individualized style sheets for specialized browsers and output 
devices. Another advantage of using cascading style sheets on your Web 
site is the ability to reuse them across multiple pages. And by using 
an external style sheet, you can quickly change all the styles on your 
site by altering a single style sheet. This makes updating and 
maintaining your site much easier..."
http://www.indelv.com/using-cascading-style-sheets-on-your-web-site.html

Color, Filters, and Other Style Sheet Properties
By Danny Goodman.
"Continuing with our multi-part series on style sheet properties, this 
fourth part of the series covers color, filters, and more..."
http://tinyurl.com/2yt89g

Floats, Fonts, and Other Style Sheet Property References
By Danny Goodman.
"In the latest part of our continuing series on style sheet properties 
you'll learn about floats fonts and more."
http://tinyurl.com/2dr6qn

Setting the Default Style Sheet language on Your Web Site
By Karl Dubost.
"...If you want to set up a default style sheet language for your Web 
site, there are a few choices..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/09/setting-default-style-sheet.html


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

How Do Users Really Feel About Your Design?
By Paul J. Sherman.
"Perhaps you've done contextual inquiries to discover your users 
requirements and understand their work flows. You may have carried out 
participatory design sessions, usability tested your design, then 
iterated and improved it. But do you know how users really feel about 
your design? Probably not..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000223.php

Usability Tests with 30 Observers
By Jared Spool.
"Often times, the clients we're working with have never conducted a 
usability test before. Since it's not part of the regular process, 
almost no one in the organization has been exposed to watching users. 
We've found it's critical to the adoption of testing in the 
organization for people to quickly see the benefits. We've also found 
there's no better way to show the benefits of testing than to observe a 
test firsthand. Because there's a large number of design agents and 
stake holders involved and often a small number of available tests to 
observe, we can find ourselves in a situation where we need to have 
many observers in one session. It's not unusual to have 30 or more 
observers sitting in a single usability test. Here's how we pull it 
off."
http://tinyurl.com/2us5aj


+04: EVENTS.

Practical Usability Testing
October 3-4, 2007.
Des Moines, Iowa U.S.A.
http://www.humanfactors.com/training/DesMoines2007.asp

User Focus, 2nd Annual User Focus Conference
October 12, 2007.
Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
http://www.upa-dc-metro.org/conference/2007/index.php

The Science and Art of Effective Web and Application Design
October 23-25, 2007.
Des Moines, Iowa U.S.A.
http://www.humanfactors.com/training/DesMoines2007.asp

Putting Research into Practice
November 6-7, 2007.
Des Moines, Iowa U.S.A.
http://www.humanfactors.com/training/DesMoines2007.asp

D.C. PHP Conference 2007
November 7-9, 2007.
Washington D.C., U.S.A.
http://www.dcphpconference.com/


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Using Hash for JavaScript Debugging
By Jesse Skinner.
"No, I don't recommend smoking hash before doing your JavaScript 
debugging :) But I did figure out a technique which you can use to 
switch a page in and out of debugging mode..."
http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Evidence-Based Website Management
By Gerry McGovern.
"...Opinion, emotion and gut instinct are dangerous things when it 
comes to managing websites. Invariably they lead to creating websites 
that are organization-centric and full of vanity publishing. These 
sorts of decisions are compounded further when senior managers get 
involved, who often have no deep experience of Web, thus making their 
opinions even more likely to be wrong."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-09-24-evidence.htm

Hat Heads vs. Bed Heads
By Keith LaFerriere.
"Every team and office includes people with potentially conflicting 
personalities and working styles. By applying the right relationship 
management techniques, you can calm tension, communicate more easily, 
and run your projects more efficiently. Keith LaFerriere shows us how."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hatheadsvsbedheads


+07: NAVIGATION.

Search Optimization, Accessibility, and Images: Best Practices
By Joe Dolson.
"One common suggestion concerning the search optimization of images is 
to use the alt attribute to place keywords relevant to the image 
contents..."
http://tinyurl.com/28fpd2


+08: PHP.

Becoming PHP 6 Compatible
By bitfilm.net.
"If you want to make use of PHP 6 when it comes, you're going to have 
to write your new scripts so they are compatible, and possibly change 
some of your existing scripts. To start making your scripts PHP 6 
compatible, I've compiled a list of tips to follow when scripting..."
http://bitfilm.net/?p=18

7 Reasons I Switched Back to PHP After 2 Years On Rails
By Derek Sivers.
"I spent two years trying to make Rails do something it wasn't meant to 
do, then realized my old abandoned language (PHP, in my case) would do 
just fine if approached with my new Rails-gained wisdom."
http://tinyurl.com/2saql7


+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

Calibri
By Ruthsarian.
"Calibri is a typeface that's part of Microsoft's Cleartype Font 
Collection. It was developed especially for e-mail, text messaging, and 
website use and it shows as it's been gaining popularity among online 
users for the last couple years. It's the new default typeface for 
Office 2007 and is packaged with Vista (and Office 2007)..."
http://weblog.bridgew.edu/ruthsarian/archives/000484.htm


+10: USABILITY.

John Maeda: Simplicity Patterns (video)
By Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED).
"The MIT Media Lab's John Maeda lives at the intersection of technology 
and art -- a place that can get very complicated. Here, he talks about 
paring down to basics, and how he creates clean, elegant art, websites 
and web tools. In his book Laws of Simplicity, he offers 10 rules and 3 
keys for simple living and working -- but in this talk, he boils it 
down to one simply delightful way to be."
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/172/

Reading Revisited: Evaluating the Usability of Digital Display Surfaces 
for Active Reading Tasks
By Meredith Ringel Morris, A.J. Brush, and Brian Meyers.
"A number of studies have shown that paper holds several advantages 
over computers for reading tasks. However, these studies were carried 
out several years ago, and since that time computerized reading 
technology has advanced in many areas. We revisit the issue of reading 
in the workplace, comparing paper use to state-of-the-art hardware and 
software. In particular, we studied how knowledge workers perform 
reading tasks in four conditions: (1) using paper, (2) using a 
dual-monitor desktop system, (3) using a pen-enabled horizontal display 
surface, and (4) using multiple tablet computers. We discuss our 
findings, noting the strengths and shortcomings of each configuration. 
Based on these findings, we propose design guidelines for hybrid 
horizontal + vertical systems that support active reading tasks."
http://tinyurl.com/yr7ytd

The Help Landscape: A Mile Wide and 30 Seconds Deep
By Mike Hughes.
"Two questions any writer must deal with are: 'What do I write about?' 
and 'How much do I say about it?'.  Essentially, these questions deal 
with the scope and the depth of a document. Technical communicators 
have a tendency to want to document a topic as completely as possible, 
and we carry this instinct with us when we architect and write Help 
files. In this column, I challenge that prevalent instinct and offer an 
alternative way of thinking about the scope and depth requirements of 
Help systems. The benefits of this approach are, I hope, better Help 
for users and, for our clients and employers, a more efficient use of 
technical communicators time. First, I'll discuss three principles that 
underpin my perspective, then I'll give some practical advice about 
writing Help that people will actually use."
http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000222.php

10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of
By Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz.
"...In this article we take a look at some of the usability nightmares 
you should avoid designing functional and usable web-sites. At the end 
of the article you'll also find 8 usability check-points you should 
probably be aware of..."
http://tinyurl.com/2gwafm

[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.

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+ TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN).

As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the 
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+ 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.]