[webdev] Web Design Update: March 19, 2010

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 38, March 19, 2010.

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

++ISSUE 38 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: DREAMWEAVER.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: EVENTS.
07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: PHP.
10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
11: TOOLS.
12: USABILITY.
13: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Problems with CAPTCHA and Audio CAPTCHA Alternative
By Gregory J. Rosmaita.
  "...as a crowning insult, due to the problems described above, i had 
to wait until i could obtain sighted assistance in order to submit this 
comment."
  http://groups.drupal.org/node/55683

YouTube Auto-Captioning
By Meryl Evans.
"A New Meme Is Brewing: YouTube CaptionFail. This is one of those 
situations where you wonder is it good to have captioning even though a 
lot of it is messed up or no captioning..."
http://meryl.net/ci/2010/03/youtube_auto-ca.html

Draft Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Standards and 
Guidelines
The Access Board has released the draft of the refresh for the Section 
508 standards.
http://access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/draft-rule.htm

Why Websites Shouldn't Accommodate Disabled Users
By Pete Love.
" The notion that websites should accommodate disabled users is one I've 
come across a few times, and though it sounds like a perfectly 
reasonable and nice thing to do, as an approach to designing a website 
it is actually really problematic..."
http://tinyurl.com/ycv6e4v

Why, Why, Why? WCAG 2.0 for Content Writers
By Rachel McAlpine.
"...This series of articles takes you through the most popular 
guidelines, called WCAG 2.0..."
http://tinyurl.com/ydrnsk3

Stop Using JAWS for Web Accessibility Testing?
By John Rochford.
"...Like all screen readers, JAWS is complicated...Web content it reads 
can not be visually tracked...Sighted developers inexperienced with 
JAWS, and sighted people to whom JAWS is being demonstrated, are often 
confounded by the way it reads Web content...JAWS is expensive...Ninety 
percent of blind people don't use a screen reader..."
http://tinyurl.com/yd4l3zf

Cognitive Web Accessibility Assessment: First Attempt, Part 1 of 3
By John Rochford.
"This post describes my first structured attempt to evaluate cognitive 
Web accessibility..."
http://tinyurl.com/yhe9drq


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Dear CSS
By Max Kanat-Alexander.
"I love you, man. I really do. You're like a brother to me. But you and 
me and these web developers here need to sit down and have a little 
intervention with you..."
http://avatraxiom.livejournal.com/101850.html

Meet the Pseudo Class Selectors
By Chris Coyier.
"Pseudo class selectors CSS selectors with a colon preceding them. You 
are probably very familiar with a few of them..."
http://css-tricks.com/pseudo-class-selectors/

Focus on the Hover
By Anton Peck.
"Add the :focus psuedo-class to everything that has a :hover style in 
your CSS, so that keyboard users get the same visual goodness that you 
give people who use a mouse..."
http://antonpeck.com/journal/article/focus_on_the_hover/

Opera Browser Standards Support Chart
By Zi Bin, Cheah.
"...We thought it would be nice to provide you with a comparative list 
of standards support across our three browsers..."
http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/2010/03/16/opera-standards-chart

CSS Specificity Part 2 -Lacking Proximity
By Niels Matthijs.
In last week's article on fuzzy css specificity I presented a case that 
illustrated the difference between regular specificity and css 
specificity. While it's interesting to review these cases, it's even 
better to get to the very core of them. This article will do just that.
http://tinyurl.com/yhhjvmw


+03: COLOR.

Red-Green Color Blindness
By Daniel Fluck.
"You could already learn a lot about the different types of color 
blindness and what color blindness actually is. In this chapter of Color 
Blind Essentials I would like to tell and show you some more and deeper 
details about the most common and also most well known type of color 
vision deficiency: red-green color blindness..."
http://www.colblindor.com/2010/03/16/red-green-color-blindness/


+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Dreamweaver CS4 Basics - Linking to Sound and Video
By Stefan Mischook.
"Yet another Dreamweaver CS4 video...this time on inserting links into 
web pages. Along the way, we also learn a few other things..."
http://tinyurl.com/yk5fnc7

Video on Dreamweaver CS4 Basics - A Look at Built In Template
By Stefan Mischook.
"Dreamweaver has a collection of web design templates to make the web 
design process much easier - all the funky cross browser CSS issues have 
already been solved in the provided templates..."
http://tinyurl.com/yfn9drj


+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Website Usability Testing: Guide To The Best Professional Usability 
Testing Tools And Services
By Robin Good.
"Website usability testing is a troubleshooting methodology that helps 
you discover specific ambiguities, pitfalls or issues in your website 
design and interface that spoil the effective use, legibility and 
navigation of your web pages. If you want to improve the user experience 
on your website, in this MasterNewMedia guide you can find all the best 
paid-for commercial website usability testing tools now available on the 
market..."
http://tinyurl.com/yl34t5c


+06: EVENTS.

HTML5 Online Conference
April 12, 2010.
Online.
http://carsonified.com/online-conferences/html5/


+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Content Strategy as Information Design
By Will Sullivan.
"Content strategy is in many respects information design. And as Steve 
Jobs famously said, 'Design is not just what it looks like and feels 
like. Design is how it works.' Content, and content strategy are 
experiential - much the same as design. And design requires planning."
http://craftinteractive.com/content-strategy-as-information-design/


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Project Management
By Stephanie Troeth and Denise Jacobs.
"This course covers key competencies in the different facets of managing 
a project, including managing team and client interactions. Students 
will learn essential skills from the ability to provide structure at the 
foundling stages of the project, to estimating and projecting budgets, 
as well as developing and managing a project timeline for ensured 
project success..."
http://tinyurl.com/yz47of6

Why HTML5 is Worth Your Time (Eric A. Meyer Interview)
by Mac Slocum.
"The debate over HTML5 vs. Flash is great for comments and page views, 
but all that chatter obscures the bigger issue: Should developers and 
designers invest in HTML5? According to Eric A. Meyer, an author and 
HTML/CSS expert, the answer is a definitive yes..."
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/why-html5-is-worth-your-time.html


+09: PHP.

Server-side Scripting
By Lars Gunther.
"This course will provide an overview of the PHP scripting language and 
SQL, and how to use these technologies to generate dynamic web sites. It 
will introduce secure and maintainable coding practices..."
http://tinyurl.com/ygkt5gk


+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 Structure - div, section, and article
By  Oli Studholme.
"It seems my HTML5 id/class name cheatsheet article interested a few 
people, so here's the start of an in-depth look at the document 
structures that fall out of the HTML5 spec. First, let's introduce three 
easily confused HTML5 structural elements..."
http://boblet.tumblr.com/post/130610820/html5-structure1

The small and hr Elements
By Oli Studholme.
"...Two more elements that have undergone transmogrification to receive 
semantics in HTML5 are <small>  and <hr>..."
http://html5doctor.com/small-hr-element/

Internet Explorer 9 Preview
By Mircosoft.
"The Internet Explorer Platform Preview Guide for Developers provides a 
'sneak peek' at the features and improvements coming to Internet 
Explorer. Using this guide, Web developers and designers can prepare to 
take advantage of these enhancements..."
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff468705.aspx

Testing the Internet Explorer Platform Preview (IE9) - reviewing the 
good, the bad and the main letdown
By Robert Nyman.
"I've tried to read up about it and play around with the preview as much 
as possible to get any indication of what to expect from IE 9, and 
here's my take..."
http://tinyurl.com/ylb3ftr


+11: TOOLS.

Browser CSS3 Rule Generator
By Paul Irish and Jonathon Neal.
"This element will receive inline changes as you edit the CSS rules on 
the left."
http://css3please.com/


+12: USABILITY.

Usability 1
By Dara Solomon and Dana Wortman.
"This course will introduce students to usability design concepts and 
authentic test methods for interactive media. Usability is grounded in 
tailoring interface design for the most effective user experience. 
Students will design, conduct and analyze usability tests based on 
established principles, research findings and theory. Upon completion of 
this course, students will be able to develop a usability test plan, 
recruit appropriate users, create robust task scenarios, facilitate 
testing, and analyze and communicate the test results..."
http://interact.webstandards.org/curriculum/user-science/usability-1/

Why Isn't User Experience Design Inclusive?
By Lisa Herrod.
"...User Experience Design is not just for able bodied people..."
http://scenariogirl.com/user-experience/inclusiveuserexperiences

When More is Less
By Joe Dolson.
"...Any piece of new functionality adds complexity to a site. It may 
create an undesirable reaction, it may create user confusion - or it may 
be a brilliant idea which turns your home business into a multi-million 
dollar corporation. You shouldn't avoid adding functionality on the 
grounds that anything complicated is going to be a problem; but you 
should certainly take a very close look at every new feature and decide 
whether it will add to the user experience. When making that decision, 
the points to consider are not limited to the value of that feature 
alone. You need to also consider all the other features which will be 
simultaneously available; you may want to add a new feature, but move an 
existing one. It's usually not any given feature which causes problems; 
it's having too many paths to follow which may confuse your visitors. "
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2010/03/when-more-is-less/

Less is More!
By John Lewis.
"There seems to be an upsurge of interest in the philosophy of 'less is 
more'. A couple of recent articles about product design, in general and 
in a specific case, address relevant aspects of this phenomenon..."
http://observations.johnwlewis.info/2010/03/16/less-is-more/

Just Add An Egg - Usability, User Experience and Dramaturgy
By Harry Brignull.
"...I like this story because it nicely sums up the progression in 
thinking from 'just designing for ease and speed' (old-school usability) 
to 'designing an entire experience' (new-school experience design)...The 
egg, therefore, becomes more than an ingredient, and more than just an 
extra pleasurable step. It becomes a prop, enabling the customer to play 
a social role. Goffman's theory of Dramaturgy explains this to some 
extent. It's worth reading about if you don't have much background in 
Social Psychology or Sociology..."
http://tinyurl.com/ygsnogc


+13: XML.

Non-Draconian XHTML?
By Sam Ruby.
"Simple test script - Output with various browsers."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/03/17/Non-Draconian-XHTML

SVG Wow! Demos
"This web site contains links to demos shown during the SVG Wow! session 
at the SVG Open 2009 conference. The purpose of the SVG Wow session is 
to demonstrate features of the SVG format in either pure rendering, 
interactivity, animation, or integration with HTML. Some of the demos 
are also meant to demonstrate advanced, upcoming features. Below is a 
list of the demos that were prepared for the 2009 edition of the 
conference session."
http://svg-wow.org/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+14: 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.]