[webdev] Web Design Update: February 12, 2009

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 33, February 12, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 33 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: COLOR.
04: EVENTS.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: PHP.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TOOLS.
11: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future
By Brian Kelly and Liddy Nevile.
"In this paper the authors think afresh about the problems of social 
inclusion and argue that "Web accessibility 3.0" must be very different 
from the WAI WCAG 1.0 and holistic accessibility approaches if it is ever 
to be effective..."
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/addw08/paper-2/html/

Accessibility and Pedagogy in eLearning
By Martyn Cooper.
Martyn provides a few highlights from a new paper that he is writing.
http://tinyurl.com/afph6b

Designing Accessible Websites
By Brooke Marshall.
"For the third-largest minority group in the United States - more than 40 
million people - the vast majority of Websites are partially or 
completely inaccessible..."
http://www.wpdfd.com/issues/87/designing-accessible-websites/

New Technology Translates Lectures into Sign Language
By Stephanie Steinberg.
"For most students, a laptop or a college-ruled notebook is enough to get 
through most lecture classes at the University. For hearing impaired 
students, the process is much more challenging. They need both a 
translator to transcribe the lecture and then extra time to read through 
the notes once class is over. Using a cell phone, two University students 
have a plan to completely change the way hearing impaired students attend 
class..."
http://tinyurl.com/cfnev5

Eyes-Free Interaction
By TV Raman.
"Designing eyes-free interaction on mobile devices presents a fertile 
ground for user-interface innovations. This is because mobile devices 
sport a variety of interesting I/O peripherals that enable the UI 
designer to minimize explicit user interaction. Here are a set of slides 
describing some of this research presently being carried out on the 
Android platform. This talk was given at Stanford as part of a class 
taught by David Jaffey."
http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/publications/stanford-feb-2009/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Aiding Keyboard Usage With :focus Cues
By Mike Davies.
"Knowing where the keyboard focus is at any time is critical for keyboard 
users to navigate through and to a particular page. It's not only screen 
reader users who don't use a mouse, many disabilities leave the keyboard 
as the only viable way to interact with a computer whilst still using a 
monitor..."
http://tinyurl.com/dc8o3o

Reusable CSS Files/Reset and Fonts
By Niels Matthijs.
"This article will handle base css files and will explain (and put into 
focus) the fuzz concerning these type of files a little while back..."
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/reusable-css-reset-and-fonts

A Second Look At CSS Diagnostics
By Neal Grosskopf.
"...I was unaware that this niche in the standards community would be so 
popular. Unfortunately I didn't put as much thought into my initial 
diagnostics other than just trying to improve on Eric's code. Enter part 
2..."
http://www.nealgrosskopf.com/tech/thread.asp?pid=17

CSS Image Framing - An Easy Way To Frame Images Using CSS
By Neal Grosskopf.
"In the old days web workers would run all of their images through 
Photoshop (or insert favorite graphical editing program of your choice) 
and either frame the image with a border, drop shadow, etc. Now with 
browsers supporting CSS to a much better extent we can toss out Photoshop 
and stay in code view more often..."
http://www.nealgrosskopf.com/tech/thread.asp?pid=32

CSS Basics - Class Vs. ID
By Neal Grosskopf.
"A common mistake I see many beginning web designers make is deciding 
when to use a .class and when to use an #ID. The best way to explain it 
is: classes can be used many times while IDs can only be used once per 
page..."
http://www.nealgrosskopf.com/tech/thread.asp?pid=29


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Dear Adobe, Here's an Idea for You
By Virginia DeBolt.
Open letter to Adobe on Dreamweaver and RDFa.
http://tinyurl.com/b73fb5

Code Editing in Dreamweaver
By Mark Fletcher.
"Learn how Dreamweaver CS4 accommodates web coders' workflows."
http://tinyurl.com/b3g5zv


+04: EVENTS.

How to Design Amazing Web app User Interfaces
April 27, 2009.
London, United Kingdom.
http://carsonworkshops.com/2009/ryansinger/index.html

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies 
and Accessibility
May 7-9, 2009.
Hammamet, Tunisia
http://www.icta.rnu.tn/

In Control
June 11-12, 2009.
Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A.
http://incontrolconference.com/

Online Teaching Conference
June 11-12, 2009.
Aptos, California, U.S.A.
http://onlineteachingconference.org/

MERLOT International Conference
August 13-16, 2009
San Jose, California, U.S.A.
http://conference.merlot.org/2009/

Agile 2009
August 24-28, 2009.
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
http://agile2009.agilealliance.org/


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Gracefully Upgrading
By Shelly Powers.
"Gracefully degrading is focused on creating a complex work, and then 
ensuring elegant failure, which seems to put too much focus on failure. A 
better approach would be to focus on creating a simple, but elegant work, 
and then gracefully upgrading the work for more capable environments..."
http://tinyurl.com/dhxl2v

jQuery Accessible Tabs - How to Make Tabs REALLY Accessible
By Dirk Ginader.
"...jQuery Accessible Tabs uses a very simple and flexible HTML markup as 
it's base to build upon. All it needs it's a wrapper containing Headlines 
and content elements one after the other. This provides a nice 
non-javascript fallback that does not look like something is missing or 
broken..."
http://tinyurl.com/atamve


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead
By Karl E. Wiegers.
"...Retrospectives provide a structured opportunity to look back at the 
project or phase you just completed..."
http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/Retrospectives.html

Stevie Wonder Interview
By Richard Taylor.
"Modern tech seduces us with its sheer good looks, draws us in with its 
desirability - it is all about a new, improved user-experience. But have 
you ever tried using a touch-screen when you are not actually looking at 
it? Take away visual contact, and that vaunted user interface becomes 
next-to-useless..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7861818.stm

10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites
By Paul Boag.
"...In any case, here are our 10 harsh truths about websites of large 
organizations..."
http://tinyurl.com/c22w9r


+07: NAVIGATION.

Starting from Zero: Winning Strategies for No Search Results Pages
By Greg Nudelman.
"...very few publications focus on improving the search experience from 
the customer's perspective. My new Search Matters column aims to fill 
this gap by focusing on..."
http://tinyurl.com/d6brbg

3 Tips for Making Your Hyperlinks More Usable
Glenda Watson Hyatt.
"...Web designers and bloggers can easily improve hyperlink usability by 
implementing the following three tips..."
http://tinyurl.com/cbjx55


+08: PHP.

5 Tools Every PHP Developer Should Master
By Cal Evans.
"Cal Evans has put together a list of five things he thinks that every 
PHP developer out there should be equipped with in their development..."
http://tinyurl.com/bpvmqy


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

W3C Workshop on the Future of Social Networking Report
By W3C.
"...The participants drew the following conclusions and felt that actions 
by the community are warranted..."
http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/report

Web Directions Presentation
By Michael(tm) Smith.
Michael's slides on HTML5 Markup from his Ed directions presentation are 
available.
http://tinyurl.com/crk7e4

On Letting Specifications Bloom...
By Arun Ranganatha.
"...HTML5: The Markup Language is a useful document, and makes for 
interesting reading. It's status, however, remains controversial 
(normative or merely informative?). Time will tell, of course, how 
specifications bloom."
http://tinyurl.com/co9vdr

Stop Developing for Internet Explorer 6
By Robert Nyman.
"This proposal might seem a bit drastic, but please allow me to present 
my case..."
http://tinyurl.com/c6t5q6

This Week in HTML 5 - Episode 21
By Mark Pilgrim.
"The big news this week is more major work on the non-normative section 
on rendering HTML documents, including a lot of reverse-engineered 
documentation of legacy (invalid) attributes that users expect browsers 
to support..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html-5-episode-21


+10: TOOLS.

AccessibleTwitr
By Dennis Lembree.
"Web accessibility for the Twitter web application..."
http://www.checkengineusa.com/twitter/

XHTML / CSS Style Guide
By Ross Johnson.
"...If you are one of the many developers who use some sort of CSS reset, 
and/or provide content management systems to clients then your should 
really consider using this style guide to make sure the most common HTML 
elements have proper styling and flow with your design. Often it is easy 
to forget to style an HTML element only to find a client has used it on a 
page and the design simply doesn't fit."
http://workshop.3point7designs.com/style-guide/


+11: USABILITY.

New Usability Standard Punches Its Weight
By Tom Stewart.
"The international human-Centred design standard ISO 13407 is being 
revised and the draft of the new version is now out for public comment."
http://tinyurl.com/d469g4

Writing Usability Requirements and Metrics
By Janet M. Six.
"In this installment of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss how to write 
effective usability requirements and metrics for the redesign of a legacy 
public sector system..."
http://tinyurl.com/cpeoy8

Zoomable User Interfaces
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"Imagine for a moment how you would work on a real desk..."
http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/02/09/zoomable-user-interfaces/

Speed Matters
By Henrik Olsen.
"Apparently, speed - in terms of milliseconds - matters..."
http://www.guuui.com/posting.php?id=2204

17 Usability Tips to Make Your CMS Rock
By Patrick Kennedy.
"...All the usability tips you see here link back to general usability 
principles, and they apply to any software package or web application, it 
just seems that they are an issue in most CMS implementations..."
http://tinyurl.com/d3gm6o

Research Lab Combines Psychology with Technology
By physorg.
"A unique laboratory has been established at The University of Alabama in 
Huntsville that combines psychology with technology to focus on the 
interaction between humans and complex systems..."
http://www.physorg.com/news152885499.html

Apple's Flatland Aesthetic, Part 1: The Mac
By Bruce Tognazzini.
"How a simple idea is causing complexity...Go for visual and behavioral 
simplicity where it works, but be prepared to back off."
http://www.asktog.com/columns/075AppleFlatlandPart1.html


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+12: 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.

WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to 
subscribe and unsubscribe please visit:
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist
The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates.


+ TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN).

As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the 
accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines.  Please let me know if 
there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN 
guideline information please visit:
http://www.headstar.com/ten


+ 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.]