[webdev] Web Design Update: January 3, 2008

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 28, January 3, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 28 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: EVENTS.
04: JAVASCRIPT.
05: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: PHP.
07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
08: TOOLS.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

10 Common Errors When Implementing Accessibility
By Trenton Moss.
"Web developers attempting to build accessible websites often make the 
same mistakes time and time again. Although they're trying their 
hardest sometimes their overzealousness gets in the way and actually 
hinders the accessibility of their websites..."
http://tinyurl.com/yrvtw5

ADA Restoration Act of 2007
By American Association of People with Disabilities.
"The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) is the 
largest national, nonprofit, cross-disability member organization in 
the United States, dedicated to ensuring political empowerment and 
economic self-sufficiency for the more than 50 million Americans with 
disabilities."
http://adarestoration.blogspot.com/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Best Bets for Browser Bug Bashing
By Molly E. Holzschlag.
"One of the most frustrating, time consuming and challenging aspects of 
managing cross-browser rendering of CSS is dealing with bugs along with 
incomplete implementations. Examining helpful resources such as 
position is everything and QuirksMode, it becomes profoundly clear that 
today's front end web designer and developer must be pretty adept at 
dealing with this core problem..."
http://www.molly.com/2007/12/28/best-bets-for-browser-bug-bashing/

How to Create Drop Shadow Boxes with Minimal Markup
By Thierry Koblentz.
"Two solutions..."
http://tjkdesign.com/articles/drop-shadow_and_AlphaImageLoader.asp


+03: EVENTS.

CUSEC 2008 Canadian University Software Engineering Conference
January 17-19, 2008.
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
http://2008.cusec.net/en/index.php

PHP CakeFest
February 6-8 2008.
Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.
http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/cakefest-2008-02-06-orlando-fl

LIFT 08
February 6-8, 2008.
Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.liftconference.com/lift08-homepage

Design and Emotion Conference 2008
October 6-9, 2008.
Hong Kong, China
http://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/de2008/


+04: JAVASCRIPT.

JavaScript: It's Just Not Validation!
By Colin Morris.
"The term 'JavaScript validation' is misleading! As Colin explains, 
JavaScript really provides input assistance, and that assistance is 
best achieved if it's tied closely to the back-end code that actually 
performs the validation."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/javascript-just-not-validation

JavaScript Functions are Variables
By Jesse Skinner.
"JavaScript functions are variables, and this is a big difference 
between JavaScript and many other programming languages. It can be a 
bit of a paradigm shift for people new to JavaScript, but it allows for 
some really cool things you can't do in many other languages..."
http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/blog/javascript-functions-are-variables

Let's Make 2008 the Year of Embracing the Server Side with Ajax
By Christian Heilmann.
"I am always fascinated by the amount of Ajax tutorials and examples 
out there that totally ignore the backend part of an Ajax app. A lot of 
times you'll find page-long ravings about the 6-7 lines of JavaScript 
that allow the client to make an HTTP request but when it comes to 
talking about the proxy script needed to allow for cross-domain 
requests a lot is glossed over as 'you don't need to know this, just 
use this script'..."
http://tinyurl.com/2xcg6p


+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

The Life and Times of Cool
By Ron Scott.
"As a visual trend, Web 2.0 had a slightly immature look to it. But the 
decline of this style has helped the design world to mature and 
increase in depth...Whether knowingly or unknowingly, we have modeled 
and treated the internet like our lives outside of computers - where 
fads come and go, but certain things remain..."
http://fadtastic.net/2008/01/02/the-life-and-times-of-cool/

Interview with Luke Wroblewski
By WebGuild.
"Visual organization is the deliberate prioritization of meaning within 
a visual design. It's the process of applying the principles behind 
perception - how we make sense of what we see - to illuminate 
relationships between content and actions."
http://www.webguild.org/2007/05/thanks-luke-for-doing-this-follow-up.php


+06: PHP.

Secure and Accessible Contact Form v3
By Mike Cherim.
"I'm happy to announce the availability of version three of my GBCF-v3 
Secure and Accessible Contact Form..."
http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=238

Why PHP Should Never be Taught
By Ka-Ping Yee.
"Suppose A equals B, and also B equals C. Any reasonable person would 
expect that A equals C, right? Oh yeah?..."
http://zestyping.livejournal.com/124503.html

Why Should PHP Ever be Taught in School?
By John Lim.
"This posting by Ka-Ping Yee on why PHP should never be taught is 
precisely why PHP should be taught. If something is popular but hard to 
understand then we need an education process. To just shake our heads 
and give up is simply immature (or trolling). Otherwise we might as 
well say that English (or any other spoken language for that matter) 
should not be taught, because spoken languages are illogical, imprecise 
and therefore useless..."
http://phplens.com/phpeverywhere/?q=node/view/244


+07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

The W3C Cannot Save Us
By Alex Russell.
"...Put simply, Zeldman is hurting you and only you can make it stop. 
Neither the CSS WG nor the HTML 5 WG nor, indeed, any W3C working group 
can define the future. They can only round off the sharp edges once the 
future becomes the past and that's all we should ever expect of them. 
As much as they tell us (and themselves) that they can, and as much as 
they really would like to, the W3C cannot save us."
http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/?p=642

Alternative Text for Significant Images
By Joe Dolson.
"In the comments from my most recent article, 'Supporting Standards 
that Support Accessibility,' a number of interesting thoughts were 
raised concerning the requirement (or lack thereof) of the alt 
attribute in HTML 5."
http://tinyurl.com/27qyvq

Opera vs Microsoft Reprise
By Andy Budd.
"...The issue isn't about supplying a PC to end users that doesn't come 
with a browser pre-installed. That would obviously be stupid. The issue 
is about allowing computer manufacturers, and by extension their end 
users, to choose what browser or browsers come pre-installed. Whether 
people choose to exercise that right is another matter."
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2008/01/opera_vs_micros_1/

Web Icon Set to be Discontinued
By BBC.
"Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported 
after 1 February 2008, the company has said. In the mid-1990s the 
browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers 
have slipped to just 0.6%..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7163547.stm


+08: TOOLS.

IE Tab
By mozdev.org.
"IE Tab is a Firefox extension that allows you to switch to a new tab 
to see how a website looks in Internet Explorer. If you like to develop 
websites with Firefox then this useful add-on allows you to quickly 
view how your site is looking in Internet Explorer as you develop."
http://ietab.mozdev.org/

iPhone Test Simulator
http://iphonetester.com/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+09: 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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+ 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.]