[webdev] Web Design Update: May 15, 2008

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 47, May 15, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 47 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: JAVASCRIPT.
04: NAVIGATION.
05: PHP.
06: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Call for Review and Participation: WAI-AGE Literature Review and Task 
Force
By Shawn Henry.
"The Web Accessibility Initiative: Ageing Education and Harmonisation 
(WAI-AGE) Project is a European Commission-funded project that focuses 
on education and outreach regarding the requirements of people with Web 
accessibility needs related to ageing..."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2008AprJun/0083.html

Ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with 
Disabilities
By Peter Korn.
"On December 13, 2006 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the 
Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well as an optional protocol 
(see a brief summary of both here). On May 3, 2008 the Convention and 
Optional Protocol entered into force as the Convention had received its 
20th ratification and the Optional Protocol had received its 10th 
ratification. This past Tuesday the UN held a celebration of the 
ratification in New York...."
http://blogs.sun.com/korn/entry/ratification_of_the_un_convention

Hackers' Posts on Epilepsy Forum Cause Migraines, Seizures
By Sydney Morning Herald.
"...The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in 
some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive 
epilepsy can get seizures when they're exposed to flickering images, a 
response also caused by some video games and cartoons. The attack 
happened when hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation's 
publishing software that allowed them to quickly make numerous posts 
and overwhelm the site's support forums..."
http://tinyurl.com/5de27v

Making Twitter Tweet - Using the TPG Notifier
By Steve Faulkner.
"As part of my presentation at the Accessibility 2.0 Conference I 
demonstrated a preferences module conceived by Hans Hillen, Gez Lemon 
and I, as a proof of concept(s) for ways to provide cues to users 
allowing them to benefit from and/or have access to content that 
changes dynamically without a page refresh. This was presented using 
the Twitter character countdown feature, which indicates to users the 
number of characters (140 character limit) they have left to type into 
a textarea..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=65

Understanding Web Accessibility
By Chandan Gokhale.
"Starting this week, I will be addressing the area of Web Accessibility 
- organized in four separate blog entries.  This week we will look at 
the big picture, the meaning of Web Accessibility and its relevance for 
promoting Equal Opportunity..."
http://tinyurl.com/4lhrap


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Understanding CSS Positioning, Part 2
By Kilian Valkhof.
"This is the second part in the Understanding CSS positioning series, 
which will focus on float and more advanced display properties. Float 
is one of the most often used CSS property in current day stylesheets, 
and this article will show that there are quite some more display 
properties than just block and inline."
http://tinyurl.com/6p3nmp

Nested Conditional Comments
By Alastair Campbell.
"In a recent test with Internet Explorer’s conditional comments, some 
of the more complex operators didn't seem to work. For example, trying 
to target IE 6 and 7 defensively, this 'and' operator should work..."
http://alastairc.ac/2008/05/nested-conditional-comments/

line-height: abnormal
By Eric A. Meyer.
"When I first wrote Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, the 
part that caused me the most difficulty and headaches was the line 
layout material. Several times I was sure I had it all figured out and 
accurately described, only to find out I was wrong. For two weeks I 
corresponded with Ian Hickson and David Baron, arguing for my 
understanding of things and having them show me, in merciless detail, 
how I was wrong. I doubt that I will ever stop owing them for their 
dedication to getting me through the wilderness of my own 
misunderstandings..."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/05/06/line-height-abnormal/

Override Inline Styles from the Stylesheet
By Natalie Jost.
"You read that right. I said override inline styles, and no, I have not 
been drinking. For the longest time it has bugged me that there was no 
way to override what someone else had done with inline styles. I 
understand they're supposed to be the override, and I get why, to a 
certain extent, but I also think there should be an override to certain 
overrides when those overrides are abused. Make sense?..."
http://tinyurl.com/47vbkv


+03: JAVASCRIPT.

Is Your JavaScript Library Standards Compliant?
By Kevin Yank.
"One of the things JavaScript libraries like jQuery, Dojo, and YUI can 
do for you is add support for features in the latest Web standards long 
before they are built into browsers. But are some libraries going too 
far?..."
http://tinyurl.com/5f6s7b


+04: NAVIGATION.

Link List Color
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Lists of links are an intermediate case between content-embedded links 
and menu items. Showing listed links in blue or in the site's main link 
color is the recommended design - and the one most intranets follow."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/link-list-color.html

Searching More is Not Always Better
By James Robertson.
"Driving enterprise search to cover ever more content does not 
necessarily deliver better results."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_searchmore/index.html

Friendly Web Addresses
By Paul Boag.
"When redesigning boagworld considerable time was spent formatting the 
sites' web addresses. In this post I explain why so much time was taken 
and introduce you to the tools I used..."
http://boagworld.com/technology/friendly_urls/


+05: PHP.

Useful In-Browser Development Tools for PHP
By Troels Knak-Nielsen.
"While debuggers exists, there isn't much of a tradition for using them 
in PHP. People have largely come to rely on injecting debugging code 
directly into the program, for inspecting program scope. The infamous 
var_dump have served for this purpose and version 4.3.0 of PHP brought 
us another equally useful function - debug_backtrace."
http://tinyurl.com/4cjmuh

PHP5 - Slow on the uptake?
By Emily.
"As a developer I always have in the back of my mind the importance of 
new technologies, and I am constantly thinking ? “what should I learn 
next?” There is no doubt that web technologies move quickly - that’s a 
given - but after its initial release in 2004, why is PHP5 only just 
starting to take off? Well, ever since the release of our new PHP5 
hosting platform I've been doing my research..."
http://www.nublue.co.uk/blog/php5-slow-on-the-uptake/


+06: USABILITY.

Intranets Are Not Information Dumps
By Gerry McGovern.
"The first step in creating a genuinely useful intranet is to ban the 
intranet team from using the word 'information'."
http://tinyurl.com/3ln7jv

Don't Try to Boil the Content Ocean
By James Robertson.
"Too many approaches to improving intranet content are destined for 
heroic failure."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_boilocean/index.html


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+07: 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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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.]