[webdev] Web Design Update: August 28, 2009

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 09, August 28, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 09 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: FLASH.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TYPOGRAPHY.
11: USABILITY.


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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Display Size and Resolution Accessibility
By merttol.
"...Various web sites provide statistics on the popularity of the 
possible resolutions, some with stats for free, many for a fee. But be 
aware: These stats are gathered from web sites that may very well have 
completely different user demographics than the demographics for your 
site. Again, you must identify your audience and try to ascertain the 
type of computer systems they are most likely to have before you make 
resolution-dependent decisions."
http://tinyurl.com/nlczpg

Using Title in Basic Form Elements
By Ken Nakata.
"For a long time, I've been an advocate of using <label> whenever 
possible and generally shunning the use of title attributes whenever I 
could use a label.  I felt this way especially about forms buried in 
HTML tables.  In fact, back in 2001 when Doug Wakefield and I were 
running through the testing that developed in the Access Board's 
Guidance on HTML Forms, we told developers to always use explicit 
labels when putting forms into tables..."
http://www.accessibilitywatch.com/?p=175

Disability Style Guide
By National Center on Disability and Journalism.
http://ncdj.org/styleguide/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS 3: Progress
By Alex Russell.
"I've been in a pretty heated email conversation over the past couple 
of days regarding how effective (or not) the CSS Working Group has 
been. I've been pretty brutal in my critique in the past (and much of 
it still stands), but there's reason to hope..."
http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/2009/08/css-3-progress/

CSS 3 Flexible Box Model
By Dion Almaer.
"Alex Russell has been having a really interesting discussion with some 
standards folks about what is wrong on the Web right now, and it 
narrowed down to discuss CSS variables as a case study..."
http://ajaxian.com/archives/css-3-flexible-box-model

CSS Code Structure for HTML 5: Some Useful Guidelines
By Antonio Lupetti.
"In this post I want to illustrate some useful guidelines about how to 
implement a well organized CSS code structure in view of introduction 
of HTML 5 markup language. They are not general rules but simple 
suggestions you can follow in order to improve the readability, 
manageability, and general organization of CSS code. These suggestions 
are especially useful if you have to work on complex CSS files that 
otherwise can be difficult to manage..."
http://tinyurl.com/nhg66f


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

The Value of Web Site Usability Evaluations
By Krause Berg.
"Despite how much I rely on site audits, I'm well aware that some 
companies don't put much stock in them. In fact, many gurus from the 
usability industry don't like them at all. They have a point." (Kim
http://cre8pc.com/archives/1522

Volume is the Wrong Way to Measure Web Success
By Gerry McGovern.
"Are you measuring the right things? Could growth in your page views in 
fact be a negative trend?"
http://tinyurl.com/lpewda

How to Combine Multiple Research Methods: Practical Triangulation
By Patrick Kennedy.
"...triangulation is the act of combining several research methods to 
study one thing. They overlap each other somewhat, being complimentary 
at times, contrary at others. This has the effect of balancing each 
method out and giving a richer and hopefully truer account."
http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/08/practical-triangulation/


+04: EVENTS.

Standards.Next - Cognition and Accessibility
September 19, 2009.
London, United Kingdom
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/4235828/?ps=6

Accessibility 2.0
September 22, 2009.
London, United Kingdom
http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/accessibility2/


+05: FLASH.

Adobe Flash Accessibility: Best Practices for Design
By Erik Johnson.
"Norman Nielsen once said that "About 99% of the time, the presence of 
Flash on a website constitutes a usability disease."[1] However, this 
statement was made in 2000 when Flash lacked many of the accessibility 
functions that are available today..."
http://tinyurl.com/m6akxh


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

ARIA - A Brief Introduction
By Silvia Pfeiffer.
"...Getting straight to the point: ARIA mostly cares about giving 
screen control to the keyboard (away from the mouse) and about exposing 
semantic information, such that vision-impaired people have a way to 
interact with Web content and screen readers can read out useful 
information..."
http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/08/21/aria-a-brief-introduction/

Inappropriate Uses
By Chris Coyier.
Database is for content. HTML is for describing and displaying content. 
CSS is for design. JavaScript is for functionality.
http://css-tricks.com/inapproprite-uses/

eduWeb 2009: JavaScript For People Who Don't Code
Christopher Schmitt.
Christopher's presentation slides.
http://tinyurl.com/nk9ot2


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

What Developers Want from HTML5  (Bruce Lawson Interview)
"Lachy caught up with the world famous Blorsen (aka. Bruce Lawson), one 
of Opera Software's developer relations guys, about what developers 
want from HTML5. Bruce and Lachy also discuss recent happenings in the 
W3C's HTML Working Group, such as new alternative drafts, and a few of 
the open issues faced by the group..."
http://standardssuck.org/what-devs-want-from-html5

SpoolCast: The Web as a Conversation
By Jared Spool.
"Guest Ginny Redish speaks about writing on the web."
http://tinyurl.com/m3q3n6


+08: NAVIGATION.

Take My Hand: Faceted/Guided Navigation
By Sarah Selser.
"There are times when the majority of users agree on how an item should 
be classified, but when dealing with an extensive list of items, this 
is rarely the case.* Faceted, or 'guided' navigation works well in 
these situations because it allows the user to access the item via 
multiple 'facets'. Here are a few good examples.."
http://uitrends.com/2009/08/25/take-my-hand-facetedguided-navigation/


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

New Co-Chairs for HTML Working Group
By Tim Berners-Lee.
"As you may know by now, Chris Wilson (Microsoft) has stepped down
as co-Chair of the group..."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/1293.html

HTML 5 - What I'm Watching
By Wendy Chisholm.
"I have recently become glued to my computer monitor as the latest 
reality show "HTML 5" unfolds. Since I was a participant in previous 
W3C reality shows (both seasons of WCAG), I understand some of the 
history and sympathize with many of the participants/actors. Here's my 
take on where things are and where I hope they are going..."
http://sp1ral.com/2009/08/html-5/

HTML 5: What's Hot, What's Not
By Bruce Lawson.
"As HTML 5 hurtles towards Last Call (or 'first last call' as co-chair 
Sam Ruby called it) there has been a lot of tidying up of the spec..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2009/html-5-whats-hot-whats-not/

Willful Violation of the Spec
By Sam Ruby.
"At the present time, the front page of my weblog does not validate. 
>From what I can tell, I am using an extension point in a manner 
totally consistent with the intent of that grammar, and in a way that 
produces useful results, at least with Firefox.  My only sin is that 
I'm using that attribute in a way that was unanticipated by the authors 
of the SVG..."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/08/21/Willful-Violation-of-the-Spec

HTML5 RDFa Arguments
By Jeni Tennison.
"When I came back from holiday, I caught up with the recent discussions 
around RDFa and HTML5. It's exhausting reading so many posts 
repetitively reiterating the positions of people who all have the best 
of intentions but fundamentally different priorities. And such a shame 
that so much energy is spent on fruitless discussion when it could be 
spent at the very least improving specifications, if not testing, 
implementing, experimenting or otherwise in some very minor way 
changing the world..."
http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/124

Maxwell's Silver Hammer: RDFa and HTML5 's Microdata
Shelley Powers.
"...Confusion. Confusion because the HTML5 specification is being 
drafted specifically to counter several initiatives that the W3C has 
been nurturing over the last decade:  Microdata over RDF/RDFa; HTML 
over XHTML; Reverse DNS identifiers over namespaces, and URIs; the 
elimination of non-visual cues, not only for metadata, but also for the 
visually challenged. And respect. There is no respect for the W3C among 
many in the HTML Working Group. And I know I lose more respect for the 
organization the closer we get to HTML5 Last Call...In fact, HTML 
Working Group is a bit of a misnomer. We don't have HTML anymore, we 
have a Web OS...Accessibility shouldn't be added begrudgingly, 
woodenly, resentfully. It should be integrated into the HTML, not just 
pasted on to quiet folks because LC is coming up..."
http://tinyurl.com/nudptr

Real-World Usage Sometimes Includes Things You Don't Like
By Ben Adida.
"...In other words, at this point, If HTML5 fails to specify how to 
include RDFa markup, then the HTML Working Group has failed to capture 
real-world usage..."
http://tinyurl.com/lubl5j

What Improvements to Accessibility are Offered by HTML5?
By Austin Cheney.
"Some stuff that comes to mind - there's probably lots more..."
http://tinyurl.com/mb8eyr

Spec/HTML5 Alignment
By netsurf.
"The way HTML's align attribute interacts with CSS properties is only 
really explained in the HTML5 spec. However, the explanation there is 
quite opaque. Here there is a clearer version with more explanation..."
http://wiki.netsurf-browser.org/Spec/HTML5_Alignment

25+ Great HTML 5 Resources to Get You Started
By Tripwire.
"...In this article tripwire magazine provides you with the resources 
you need to get overview of what HTML 5 is, to get started and to 
understand how you can benefit from it at this early point in time..."
http://tinyurl.com/l6p2n6

Why is HTML Suddenly Interesting?
By Simon St. Laurent.
"Web developers couldn't stop talking about HTML and its evolution 
during the 1990s. New features were usually tempting, though not always 
workable, and the Browser Wars meant that vendors competed by providing 
and copying features. The HTML standardization process had its twists 
and turns, moving from the IETF to the W3C, developing standards that 
reflected immediate needs and tried to channel developer energy in more 
productive directions..."
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/why-is-html-suddenly-interesti.html

Absent Elements and Validation
By Richard Clark.
"We received the below question from Guy Carberry who was wondering 
what affect changing the doctype on your HTML or XHTML pages to the 
HTML 5 doctype will have on those elements that are deprecated current 
draft..."
http://html5doctor.com/absent-elements-and-validation/

This Summer in HTML 5 - Episode 33
By Mark Pilgrim.
"...So what new and exciting stuff has been added to HTML 5 this 
summer?..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-summer-in-html-5-episode-33



+10: TYPOGRAPHY.

A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces
By Jason Santa Maria et al.
"In a nutshell, Typedia is a community website to classify typefaces 
and educate people about them. Think of it like a mix between IMDb and 
Wikipedia, but just for type. Anyone can join, add, and edit pages for 
typefaces or for the people behind the type..."
http://typedia.com/


+11: USABILITY.

Web form design guidelines: an eyetracking study
Chui Chui Tan.
"Forms can be found on almost every website; from contact or feedback 
forms in small websites to bank details in commerce websites, from 
registration to communication, from banking to searching."
http://tinyurl.com/dnygyl

Managing UI Complexity
By Brandon Walkin.
"Interface complexity is an issue every designer wrestles with when 
designing a reasonably sophisticated application. A complex interface 
can reduce user effectiveness, increase the learning curve of the 
application, and cause users to feel intimidated and overwhelmed..."
http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/2009/08/10/managing-ui-complexity/

20 Tips for Writing for the Web
By Eric Reiss.
"There are a lot of writing tips floating around cyberspace. Most deal 
with general writing skills, which are actually less important than you 
might think. The truth is, most online readers don't care much about 
grammar, spelling, and punctuation as long as they get the information 
they need. Here are some of the many tips I give our clients during my 
popular 'Writing for the web' workshop..."
http://www.fatdux.com/blog/2009/08/07/20-tips-for-writing-for-the-web/

Top 10 UX Myths
By Keith Lang.
"...If the Design is a Good One, You Don't Need to Test It...People 
Don't Change...Design to Avoid Clicks...UX Design Stops at the Edges of 
the Product...If you Have Great Search, You Don't Need Great 
Information Architecture...Can't Decide? Make it a Preference...Design 
Always with Implementation in Mind...People Know What They 
Like...People Read...The Design Has to be Original..."
http://carsonified.com/blog/design/top-10-ux-myths/

The Dark Side Of Usability: When Business Goals & User Goals Collide
By Lance Loveday.
"We've all experienced it at some point; the sneaking suspicion that 
those we've chosen to trust may not be entirely worthy..."
http://tinyurl.com/l4j3oc

Twitter Postings: Iterative Design
By Jakob Nielsen.
"We made a timeline message more punchy, credible, and viral through 5 
rounds of redesign."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/twitter-iterations.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.

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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 
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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.]