+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 1, Issue 43, April 16, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 43 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: FLASH. 08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 09: JAVASCRIPT. 10: MISCELLANEOUS. 11: PHP. 12: TOOLS. 13: USABILITY. 14: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Text Email Newsletter (TEN) Standard By E-Access Bulletin Beginning with this issue of the WEB DESIGN UPDATE newsletter, I am using the new Text Email Newsletter (TEN) standard. The + symbol is used to mark each section and item within a section. Three levels of hierarchy: +++ are used at the very beginning of the issue; ++ for a section heading; and + for an individual item. For more information on the new TEN standard visit: http://www.headstar.com/ten Government faces massive website overhaul By Karl Flinders "Threat of legal action unless 800 sites are rebuilt to cater for disabled people..." http://www.vnunet.com/News/1140056 Accessibility implications of digital rights management By Joe Clark "Digital rights management refers to hardware and software that attempts to control access to and reproduction of digital information. DRM masquerades as a method of protecting authors' copyrights but, in practice and according to published proposals, actually limits the copyright freedoms of the general public, a group that includes people with disabilities and others who rely on accessibility features like captioning, audio description, subtitling, and dubbing. DRM has a number of implications for viewers who require accessibility features. Almost all the implications point to a reduction in usefulness, convenience, and engagement of existing legal rights." http://joeclark.org/access/resources/DRM.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The Mastergrid By Eric A. Meyer Here are Eric's classic Cascading Style Sheet 1 and 2 support charts. As Eric explains the "CSS1 support chart known as 'The Mastergrid' disappeared when Web Review's servers got shut off. That turn of events apparently caused some anguish in the (CSS) community. Anguish no more! The chart is back online now, thanks to Netscape DevEdge. The charts are also now licensed under a Creative Commons license (specifically, Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 1.0) so that they can always be available to the community, regardless of what happens in the future." http://devedge.netscape.com/library/xref/2003/css-support/ +03: COLOR. Web ignored Lessons from Hypertext, says Expert Bernstein By Ann Light "Color is inappropriate for links as it conflates emphasis and linking, while blue is a particularly bad choice as it is the hardest color to read, making the link content less obvious..." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1029.asp +04: DREAMWEAVER. PHP and Dreamweaver MX Video Tutorials By Mark Fletcher "Watch and follow along with these interactive video tutorials to create basic PHP pages in Dreamweaver MX." http://tinyurl.com/9nzv Building a Persistent Shopping Cart with PHP and MySQL By Mitchell Harper "Develop a simple shopping cart that persists across multiple sessions." http://tinyurl.com/9nzy +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Ready, Set, Go: Usability Testing By Leanne Waldal "Usability testing is critical to successful software and web development efforts. Plan effective tests and act on results." http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/articles/usability_testing.html +06: EVENTS. Education, Technology & Curriculum Summit May 12-14, 2003 Columbia University, New York City, New York, U.S.A. http://www.edtechsummit.org/ E-Learn 2003 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education Organized by: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) November 7-11, 2003 http://www.aace.org/conf/elearn/ (Call for participation: April 30, 2003) Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A. http://www.aace.org/conf/elearn/call.htm The Power of Design: AIGA National Design Conference October 23-26, 2003 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://powerofdesign.aiga.org/ +07: FLASH. Flashes of Brilliance and Use-Centered Design By J. Dawn Mercedes "Can Macromedia Flash really add value to a Web site? Or is Flash content on the Web so prone to usability problems that it can never be fully effective?..." http://www.digital-web.com/features/feature_2003-04b.shtml Flash 99% Good: Macromedia Flash Usability By Kevin Airgid & Stephanie Reindel "Balance design and functionality - get the perspective of today's leading Macromedia Flash gurus." http://tinyurl.com/9nzz +08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Paper Prototyping: Getting User Data Before You Code By Jakob Nielsen "With a paper prototype, you can user test early design ideas at an extremely low cost. Doing so lets you fix usability problems before you waste money implementing something that doesn't work." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030414.html +09: JAVASCRIPT. Create a Web form data format mask with JavaScript By Phillip Perkins http://tinyurl.com/9nzp +10: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview with Lou Rosenfeld and Steve Krug on UX By Andy King "If nothing else, UX could also help provide a framework that would enable interdisciplinary conversations. After all, one of the hardest parts of working in a multidisciplinary environment is that we literally don't speak the same language." http://webreference.com/new/030410.html#toc1 +11: PHP. Ten Security Checks for PHP, Part 2 By Clancy Malcolm "The same global access that makes web apps useful means that you have to keep on top of security. Though it's easy to create sites in PHP, it's not immune to sloppy coding. Clancy Malcolm explains how to recognize and fix five potential security holes with PHP in the second of two articles." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/04/03/php_security.html User identification using cookies in PHP/MySQL By Vladmir Krstulja http://www.devarticles.com/art/1/490 What to Expect in PHP 5.0 By Ben Shepherd "This article is split up into two parts Ð Life before PHP 5.0 and the future with PHP 5.0. This will hopefully exemplify how PHP has developed into the powerhouse that it is today." http://www.devarticles.com/art/1/500 Static HTML Generation With PHP By Eric Rosebrock "In this article Eric, expresses how to may reduce the workload of your server by using PHP to CRON your PHP based web site. He will demostrate how this is done by referring to his own web site." http://www.devarticles.com/art/1/510 PHP and Heredocs By Daniel Smith http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/04/10/php_heredocs.html +12: TOOLS. CSS columnar layout tool(s) By CSS Enterprise This page has links to design generators for CSS columnar layouts. It is supplies a variety of Netscape 4 compatible XHTML/CSS 3 column layouts. http://www.fu2k.org/alex/css/ +13: USABILITY. Designing the User Interface, 4e By Ben Shneiderman and Dr. Catherine Plaisant The fourth edition of Shneiderman and Plaisant's seminal book, "Designing the User Interface" is in progress. The book's web site has two chapters and essays available. http://tinyurl.com/9o03 Why organizations think of web content like they think of invoices By Gerry McGovern http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_04_14_invoices.htm Hands Across the Screen Why scrollbars are on the right By Alan Dix "There are good reasons to think that the left-hand side may be the better choice, but in virtually every interface since the Xerox Star the scrollbar has appeared on the right-hand side." http://tinyurl.com/9o06 Reflections on the User Centered Design (UCD) Perspective in Research on Wireless Applications By Michele Visciola "However, limiting the UCD approach in Web-based projects to usability testing and evaluation is considered a too narrow approach to be really influential. Therefore, in order to add value to the development of services, much more should be done than to simply offer evaluation methods." http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/m_visciola_1.html +14: XML. OBJECT of desire By Jeffery Zeldman "XHTML 2 may deliver increased semantic purity at the cost of decreased usability and impaired user-friendliness. This possibility does not seem to disturb most of the framers of XHTML 2. It does not disturb us either - because nobody will be forced to use XHTML 2... http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0303a.shtml#ap1503 [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +15: 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 only. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist + TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN) STANDARD. We try to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) Standard. For example, all items are numbered. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN Standard information please visit: http://www.headstar.com/ten + SIGNATURE. Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]