[webdev] Web Design Update: October 5, 2007

Fri Oct 5 06:18:41 CDT 2007

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 15, October 5, 2007.

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

++ISSUE 15 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: COLOR.
03: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: TOOLS.
08: USABILITY.
09: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Disability Rights Advocates Case: NFB v. Target
The order from Judge Marilyn Patel.
http://dralegal.org/downloads/cases/target/target-order.txt

Suit Against Target Over Access
By Kevin Kingsbury.
"A federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit alleging that 
Target Corp. is breaking California and federal law by making its Web 
site essentially unusable for the blind..."
http://tinyurl.com/33jszq

National Federation of the Blind vs. Target - An Important Decision
By Jim Thatcher.
"...Why is the ruling important? First, every avenue that the Target 
Corporation has taken to try to defuse the case has been turned down; 
the suit should move forward to be decided on the merits - the 
accessibility of the Target.com web site, at the time the action was 
filed (February 2006). Second, as has been suggested to me by someone 
familiar with the case, the Judge let the complaint move forward based 
on California laws (The Unruh Civil RIghts Act and the Disabled Persons 
Act) independent of any physical store. In other words, a resident of 
California, who saw themselves injured by the inaccessibility of a web 
site of a U.S. company could sue that company for damages under 
California law - independent of whether or not there is a related 
physical store and independent of where the company is located."
http://www.jimthatcher.com/law-target2.htm

Target Lawsuit Goes Ahead
By Mel Pedley.
"The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has been given the go-ahead 
to proceed with a class action against Target Corp. over the 
inaccessibility of their web site, target.com. The NFB initially 
approached Target in 2005 to try and resolve the site's problems but, 
when discussions failed to reach a mutual agreement, filed a lawsuit 
under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)..."
http://blackwidows.co.uk/blog/?p=150

Court Ruling Says California Disabled Rights Law Applies to the Web
By Sandra Clark.
"One step forward for disability rights, another step backwards for 
Target. An interesting aspect of this ruling, besides the fact that it 
opens the door to a class action lawsuit, is the finding of the judge 
that Web sites such as target.com are required by California law to be 
accessible..."
http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.display_entry&id=180

Suing Companies Over Inaccessible Websites
By Christian Montoya.
"...Let's talk about suing companies over inaccessible websites..."
http://tinyurl.com/24tbxj

Accessibility Is About Minimizing Requirements
By Jesse Skinner.
"What are the minimum requirements for using the web?..."
http://tinyurl.com/yqo6mz

Hearing Loss Group Says Apple Didn't Ensure the iphone Works with 
Hearing Aids, Violating Disabilities Laws
By Gregg Keizer.
"A group representing people with a hearing loss filed complaints with 
the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month, accusing 
Apple Inc. of not making its iPhone compatible with hearing aids."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137433-c,iphone/article.html

+02: COLOR.

The Mother of All Color Charts
By Texas Precancel Club.
"This chart's objective is a comparison of hue names..."
http://tx4.us/mr/mr000.htm

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Requirements Analysis
By Chris Baker.
"There is, as Ansel Adams is supposed to have said "nothing worse than 
a sharp image of a fuzzy concept". Requirements analysis is the bit of 
a project in which we try to reach a coherent and complete vision of 
what the finished project will be like, and ensure that we all have the 
same image! It is very hard to do well and very easy to discover later 
that document describing the requirements has something important 
missing or some error, for all that everyone was willing to sign it off 
at the time.  This post examines some of the problems and suggests a 
tool or two..."
http://tinyurl.com/2bf93p

Surveys - What is an Acceptable Response Rate?
By Caroline Jarrett.
"It's been a while since I ranted on about  response rates on surveys. 
In that article, I took the view that "2% is a terrible response rate" 
and had a few reasons why and tips for doing better. Recently, I've had 
a couple of challenging questions on the topic. So here goes at trying 
to answer them..."
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4209.asp

Ten Steps to Personas
By Leone Nielsen.
"Any project that uses personas does not necessarily need to follow all 
10 steps as long as the responsible party knows the consequences of 
skipping a step."
http://www.hceye.org/HCInsight-Nielsen.htm

+04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Information Design of the New Web
By Melissa Kris.
"People are changing the way that they consume online information, as 
well as their expectations about its delivery. The social nature of the 
Web brings with it an expectation of interaction with information and 
modern Web design is reflecting that. There are now alternate forms of 
navigation including the ability to browse by user, tag clouds, tabbed 
navigation etc. Advances in technology along with these shifts in user 
expectations are affecting the way that information is laid out on a 
web page. Today's websites are aiming for intuitive and usable 
interfaces which are continuously evolving in response to user needs. 
Website designers are approaching information design differently and 
designing simple, interactive websites which incorporate advancements 
in Web interface design, current Web philosophies, and user needs. 
Information design for the New Web is simple, it is social, and it 
embraces alternate forms of navigation."
http://tinyurl.com/22pq3q

Building Block Definitions (Containers)
By Joe Lamantia.
"Joe Lamantia dives deep into the components of the building block 
system. Each has a place in his design framework for dashboards and 
portals. Get full coverage on how you too can  use these same elements 
in  your work."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/building-block

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

AJAX, Accessibility and the User
By Henny Swan.
"Early in September I presented at the Irish Design for All 
e-Accessibility Network on accessibility and AJAX. It was a great 
opportunity to meet people and discuss issues as well as a chance to 
listen to presentations given by Steve Faulkner from The Paciello 
Group, Joshua O'Connor from National Council for the Blind of Ireland 
and Des Traynor from iQcontent. I was going to forward the presentation 
to the delegates and thought I may as well also post it here as well. 
Read the presentation on screen or get the full text transcript here..."
http://tinyurl.com/2yw26m

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Interviews: Roger Johansson
By Gene Crawford.
"This is the first in a series of interviews that we'll be doing. 
Focused on design and web professionals, hopefully this will serve as 
an educational and informative insight into how people work, what 
inspires them and how they got where they are. We'll start off with 
Roger Johansson, of www.456bereastreet.com, web standards and usability 
expert..."
http://tinyurl.com/2ugz8n

Opinions Seem to Change Once You're Hired by a Large Company
By Robert Nyman.
"I would sincerely like to give these people an advice: Step back. Get 
some perspective. Try to see it from another person's or company's 
opinion. Another angle. Get some distance. If you don't, your 
credibility and the value of your work will soon diminish. So, are you 
with us 'ordinary' people or against us?..."
http://tinyurl.com/yous2c

+07: TOOLS.

CSS Sprite Generator
By Ed Eliot and Stuart Colville.
An automated Generator for CSS Sprites. Upload a zip of graphics and it 
will spit out a single image and a block of CSS.
http://spritegen.website-performance.org/

+08: USABILITY.

Seven Usability Guidelines for Websites on Mobile Devices
By Abid Warsi.
"Usability and page design for websites on mobile devices is very 
different to that on PCs. Webcredible has conducted research amongst 
mobile phone users to uncover 7 key usability guidelines for websites 
on this medium. Ensure your site adheres to these important guidelines 
and watch its usability on mobile phones soar!"
http://tinyurl.com/27gr49

Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Introductory text on Web pages is usually too long, so users skip it. 
But short intros can increase usability by explaining the remaining 
content's purpose."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/intro-text.html

Killer Web Content Examples
By Gerry McGovern.
"...'99 cents per download, no restrictions' is the essence of what
people want today. They want an immediate answer to the question: 
What's in it for me? They want brutal, pared down content that gets to 
the point immediately. Your website is not a murder mystery. It is 
certainly not a place for we-we content. Short, sharp, second person 
and active; that's web content. Get to the point. Then stop."
http://tinyurl.com/ywqlhw

Web Form Design in the Wild, Part I
By Luke Wroblewski.
"In this week's UIEtips, we're publishing the first part of an article 
written by Luke Wroblewski, a Principal Designer at Yahoo!, where he 
discusses tips for improving web forms and impacting user success."
http://www.uie.com/articles/forms-fairmont-hotel/

+09: XML.

When Did People Stop Caring About Application/xhtml+xml?
By Robert Nyman.
"Remember a couple of years ago, when serving XHTML with a text/html 
MIME type was the worst you could do if you were serious about your 
trade?..."
http://tinyurl.com/2fcgso

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+10: 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.

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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.]