[webdev] Web Design Update: September 4, 2008

Thu Sep 4 06:28:05 CDT 2008

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 10, September 4, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 10 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: PHP.
10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
11: TOOLS.
12: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Call-to-Action: Save the UT Accessibility Institute
By James Craig.
"The University of Texas is closing its Accessibility Institute today. 
Non-profit Knowbility has started a petition to save it..."
http://www.webstandards.org/2008/08/29/save-the-accessibility-institute/

The Helen Project
By American Foundation the Blind.
"The Helen Project is a 21st century extension of Helen Keller's impact 
on the rights and opportunities of people with disabilities. As part of 
our responsibility to fulfill her legacy, we wonder 'What would Helen 
do?' if she were confronted with the opportunities and obstacles that 
the Internet presents to people who, because of their disability, do 
not have full access to the Internet due to accessibility limitations 
that exist on many web sites..."
http://www.afb.org/aap.asp

Web Accessibility Gone Wild
By WebAIM.
"This article presents a wide variety of mistakes, misconceptions, 
over-indulgences, intricacies, and generally silly aspects of modern 
accessibility."
http://www.webaim.org/articles/gonewild/

Google Chrome Accessibility
By Steve Faulkner.
"...This release of Google Chrome does not appear to have been 
developed with the needs of users with disabilities taken into account, 
apart from limited keyboard shortcuts, basic support required for 
accessibility is absent."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=92

How Captcha was Foiled: Are You a Man or a Mouse?
By Tim Anderson.
Captcha systems to stop automated posting have been "completely broken" 
by spammers, experts say. So what's the alternative?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/internet.captcha

What The Target Settlement Should Mean To You
By Matt May.
"It's a question many of us in accessibility have been waiting for 
years to be answered. Does the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to 
the web? Sadly, accessibility's ultimate cliffhanger once again reaches 
an awkward denouement, leaving us deflated, and looking at yet another 
boring sequel..."
http://tinyurl.com/6b63vl

Targeting Accessibility
By Glenda Sims.
"The National Federation of the Blind and Target made accessibility 
history today when they announced a $6 million class action settlement. 
The lawsuit originated when the NFB sued Target alleging that 
target.com is not accessible to people with disabilities using 
screenreaders. Highlights of the settlement include..."
http://www.glendathegood.com/blog/?p=284

Target Lawsuit Settled - Exactly As It Should Be
By Bob Easton.
"There was no 'settled law' when the suit was brought against Target, 
no legal precedent to stand upon. That was likely one of the strong 
motivations for the National Federation of the Blind to bring the suit; 
to force settled law, and to clarify (actually greatly extend) the 
Americans with Disabilities Act. There's still no settled law and I 
think that's a very good outcome..."
http://tinyurl.com/6kuvmy

Does Target Settlement Really Hit the Target?
By Ian Lloyd.
"Following comments on Twitter, one might think that the case of the 
National Federation of the Blind v. Target lawsuit ended up with a big 
win for accessibility..."
http://accessify.com/news/2008/08/target-accessibility-case-settled/

Target Acquired: Four Cheers!
By Jack Pickard.
"...So I'll offer four cheers, to make up for the one Bruce held back 
on. The site will be accessible to a wider range of people than ever 
before; they will have yearly user testing and technical assessment, 
they will give their developers accessibility training. As far as I can 
see, the case has achieved precisely what it should have: an accessible 
website..."
http://tinyurl.com/6bufqm

Target Settles Accessibility Lawsuit for $6 Million
By Matthew Magain.
"...The very fact that this lawsuit existed in the first place is 
reason enough to conclude that Target is far from 'a leader in online 
accessibility'...
http://tinyurl.com/573ndr

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

min-height
By Eric Tribou.
"If you set an element's height with a percentage value you have to ask 
yourself, 'A percentage of WHAT?' If an element's height is 50% what is 
this 50% value based on?..."
http://weblog.bridgew.edu/ruthsarian/archives/000516.htm

CSS Organization Methods and Writing Style
By Jonathan Christopher.
"It's only natural to have preferences. Personal preferences help 
define your character, your style. Each day, you apply your personal 
preferences to nearly everything you do, right down to the way you 
write your code. Some developers don't even know they're doing it, 
while others are outright forceful when it comes to a conversation 
about whitespace..."
http://tinyurl.com/5584eq

CSS Constants with SSI: CSSI
By Dave Everitt.
"I was thinking the other day (after working on a WordPress-based site 
with crazy long CSS) how good it would be to have CSS colours stored in 
variables that were all held in a single file, so you could change 
every instance throughout a site, across multiple stylesheets. So I 
posted a message to the "Transcending CSS book group" Facebook group..."
http://ecoconsulting.co.uk/training/css_includes.shtml

Mobile Style - CSS Mobile Profile 2.0
By David Storey.
"In this article, David Storey looks at CSS Mobile Profile 2.0, the 
W3C’s recommended subset of CSS that should be used for styling your 
documents if you intend them to be viewed across mobile devices. He 
lists what is supported under the Mobile Profile, how it differs from 
CSS 2.1, and some advice on progressive enhancement (applying more 
advanced styles to more capable devices)."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/mobile-style-css-mobile-profile-2-0/

Microsoft Breaks IE8 Interoperability Promise
By Hakon Lie.
"Microsoft said the right things, then blew it..."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/29/hakon_lie_ie8_interoperability/

Broken Promises
By Jonathan Snook.
"Over at The Register, Hakon Lie feels that Microsoft has broken their 
promise to ship Internet Explorer in standards mode. There are two 
issues at play here and I'm not sure either is really that big of a 
deal. Or rather more interesting, if you were Microsoft, what would you 
do?..."
http://www.snook.ca/archives/opinion/broken_promises/

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Site Visit Interviews: From Good to Great
By userfocus.
"Site visits are the best method we have of gaining real insight into 
the way customers work - to understand what customers do, rather than 
what they say they do. But to get the most from a site visit you need 
to polish your interviewing skills. Great interviewers show 5 
characteristics from which we can learn..."
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/field_interviews.html

Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing
By Jared Spool.
"Producing a usable design takes time, money, and resources. It also 
requires an organization's dedication to focus on usability testing and 
customer needs throughout the entire design process..."
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2008/09/02/uietips-buyin-techniques/

+04: EVENTS.

TPAC 2008: W3C Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee Meetings
October 20-24, 2008.
Mandelieu, France.
http://www.w3.org/2008/10/TPAC/Overview.html

+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Four Essential Skills for Information Architects: An Interview with 
Donna (Maurer) Spencer
By Jared M. Spool.
"Donna (Maurer) Spencer is a recognized expert in the area of 
Information Architecture and author of an upcoming book on Card 
Sorting. Jared M. Spool recently had the opportunity to talk with Donna 
about the specific skills that separate the best information architects 
from the rest. Here are the highlights of that conversation..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/ia_essential

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

JS and Objects
By Mike Stenhouse.
"Just a quick moment trying to explain the different approaches to 
using objects in JS to a fellow co-worker."
http://www.contentwithstyle.co.uk/Blog/181/js-and-objects/

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Interview with Jeff Veen, User Experience Guru
By Josh Catone.
"Jeffrey Veen is a high-profile author, speaker, and user experience 
consultant who has been involved in the design of such sites as Flickr, 
Blogger, Typepad and Google Analytics. Jeff took some time out with 
SitePoint's Josh Catone to answer a few questions submitted by the 
SitePoint Forums community."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/interview-jeff-veen

A Fresh Take On The Browser
By Karen Wickre.
"At Google, we have a saying: 'launch early and iterate.' While this 
approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to 
our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit 
"send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source 
browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for 
everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find 
it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome 
tomorrow in more than 100 countries..."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

+08: NAVIGATION.

Site Map Usability
By Jakob Nielsen.
"New user testing of site maps shows that they are still useful as a 
secondary navigation aide, and that they're much easier to use than 
they were during our research 7 years ago."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/sitemaps.html

Best Practices in Web Development: Part 3
By Joe Dolson.
"You could say that this part of the series is really breaking the 
concepts of information architecture down into components immediately 
relevant to web development. Practically speaking, I'm going to cover 
the necessities of navigation design, the concept of 'scent of 
information' and the question of design 'noise'..."
http://tinyurl.com/5evk7y

Ten Observations About Search Interfaces
By Christina Wodtke.
"These observations are just that, observations. Not rules or laws..."
http://tinyurl.com/5wtj9w

+09: PHP.

Rasmus Lerdorf - PHP Frameworks? Think Again.
By David Peterson.
"This is the fist time I have heard Rasmus Lerdorf speak and it was 
entertaining to say the least. Refreshing would another way to describe 
it, I enjoy hearing real opinions and not holding back - Rasmus doesn't 
hold back..."
http://tinyurl.com/6qll22

+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

This Week in HTML 5 - Episode 4
By Mark Pilgrim.
"The big news this week is the birth of the W3C's experimental HTML 5 
validator (announcement). It is based on Henri Sivonen's experimental 
HTML 5 validator, although there are still some integration bugs to 
shake out. Related discussion on Sam Ruby's blog..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html-5-episode-4

HTML 5 Editor Ian Hickson Discusses Features, Pain Points, Adoption 
Rate, And More
By Justin James.
"In this interview, HTML 5 Editor Ian Hickson discusses his favorite 
features, the features he thinks might be most contentious, the pain 
points he expects HTML 5 will address, and much more. He also tells 
what he would change in the original HTML spec if he could go back in 
time..."
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=718

+11: TOOLS.

Helen Toolbar Application Download
By American Foundation the Blind.
"We offer you a free downloadable, fully accessible, web site rating 
toolbar application (which we affectionately named 'Helen') that will 
enable you to have your voice heard as you experience problems and/or 
success in using any web site. And, most importantly, Helen will enable 
the collective voice of the user community to be heard by web site 
providers, extending Helen Keller's lifetime efforts and legacy as an 
advocate for those whose voices might not otherwise be heard."
http://www.afb.org/aap.asp?Action=Download

+12: USABILITY.

8 Things You Need To Know About Improving Online Experience- New Study
By Sathish Menon and Michael Douma.
"This report outlines key findings from surveys that explored factors 
that drive online experience as expressed by the three different 
subject groups - nonprofit organizations and cities, web designers and 
firms, and the general public..."
http://www.idea.org/find-information.html

Information is Causing Global Warming
By Gerry McGovern.
"An information tsunami is sweeping the world, eating up vast 
quantities of time and energy."
http://tinyurl.com/5p78wh

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+13: 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.]