+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 1, Issue 46, May 9, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 46 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: FLASH. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 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. Test the accessibility of your web page with your own web browser By Jim Byrne "An important aspect of accessible web design is giving users the ability to change the presentation of the page to suit their own needs - if they can't do that then this should alert you to accessibility issues with your site." http://www.mcu.org.uk/weeklytips/testwithbrowse.html Why blind users can't register at Slashdot By Kynn Bartlett "There may be a need for this kind of security with the prevalence of bots on the Web which are up to nefarious purposes. However, any solution which excludes users with disabilities -- as Slashdot's does -- must be classified as a very poor way to solve this problem. Widespread use of these techniques can render large sections of the Web, from Hotmail addresses to Yahoo groups, unusable by some of the audience who can benefit most from them." http://www.maccessibility.com/archive/000535.php +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Units By elated.com http://www.elated.com/tutorials/authoring/css/units/ Web Style Sheets CSS tips & tricks By W3C http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/ Defending Structural Markup By Simon Willison "...I've been using CSS for long enough now that I'd started to forget about the legions of web developers out there who haven't yet realized what they're missing. Instead of getting stuck in to dissecting other people's complaints I'm just going to lay down a few of my own core beliefs." http://tinyurl.com/b1hz +03: COLOR. Reliable Web Page Colour By Ian Winter An interesting solution in matching colors and making these closer between Mac and PC web color. http://www.homepage.net/webcolour/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Discount Usability: Time to push back the pendulum? By David Travis "Discount usability techniques are a great way to eradicate usability problems. But they can never answer the question, "How usable is this system? We blow the dust off some techniques commonly used in the early days of usability testing to see if they can provide an answer." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/discount.html Usability Testing: Learning from the Work of Others By Will Schroeder This article describes the work that Rolf Molich has done with his CUE studies. CUE stands for Comparative Usability Evaluations. These studies pit usability experts against each other, allowing us to compare the practices and results. http://uiconf.com/8/articles/learning_from_others.html +05: EVENTS. TODCON: The Other Dreamweaver CONference June 2-4 2003 Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://www.todcon.org/ +06: FLASH. Describing an Entire Flash Movie By Bob Regan http://www.markme.com/accessibility/archives/002395.cfm Accessible Flash Part 2 - Bookmarking Flash By James Ellis http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1116 +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. An update on breadth vs. depth By Kath Straub and Susan Weinschenk "During the last 5 years a controversy has been brewing concerning the breadth vs. depth in menu design for Web sites. Which is best? A site that is broad and shallow, presenting a lot of choices to the user right away, but only requiring a few layers? Or is it best to have narrow and deep, which means presenting only a few choices at a time, but requiring many layers in? As is usually the case, the answer turns out not to be so simple. In this issue of the newsletter we explore the variables that are emerging as important in the debate." http://tinyurl.com/b1l4 +08: JAVASCRIPT. Venkman, the new JavaScript Debugger for Netscape 7.x By Robert Ginda and Ian Oeschger "A powerful new tool is available for web developers in Netscape 7.x. The JavaScript debugger, also called Venkman, has been a part of the Mozilla browser and the community of web and script developers there for some time. This article provides an overview and some practical examples of using the JavaScript debugger in web applications and web page scripting." http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/venkman/01/ Using Breakpoints in Venkman By Robert Ginda and Ian Oeschger "Get the lowdown on setting breakpoints in JavaScript and how to use Venkman, the JavaScript debugging application for Netscape 7, to set and examine both basic and advanced breakpoints in your code." http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/venkman/01/ +09: PHP. PHP should be considered a top Web dev contender By Vincent Danen http://tinyurl.com/awqz User Friendly Forms in PHP By jesteruk Ê "In this tutorial I'll show you a way to make your forms more friendly with PHP, so users don't have to keep filling forms in if they make a mistake." http://tinyurl.com/b4be +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Why we wonÕt help you By Mark Pilgrim Mark Pilgrim discusses four good reasons to validate. "Validation may reveal your problem...Validation may solve your problem...Valid markup is hard enough to debug already...Validation is an indicator of cluefulness." http://tinyurl.com/b4ea The American Megatrends web site has redesigned using CSS for layout, XHTML 1.1 for structure. http://www.ami.com/ Among their rational for redesigning for web standards are reduced download time for images and text, increased accessibility, a more flexible interface, simpler search and navigation tools, and greater portability. http://www.ami.com/news/pressshow.cfm?PrID=123 +11: TOOLS. The Eater of Meaning By Leonard Richardson This handy online tool will convert the text on a web page into random text. This is similar to providing greeked mock-up web pages or mock-up web pages with the real text substituted with "lorem ipsum" Latin text. The "eat in Latin" option uses "lorem ipsum" as a source for words. http://www.crummy.com/devel/eater/ +12: USABILITY. Writing for the Web: Part 2 By Gerry McGovern "Writing for the Web requires careful planning. Your content needs to fit well within the context of your website. When a reader finds your content, they need to be able to scan it quickly. That's what metadata is about. In order for your website to be found, you need to write for how people search." http://tinyurl.com/b1l1 University of Maryland HCIL Open House Video Reports By The Open Video Project "The HCIL video reports contain short demonstrations of HCIL prototypes. The demonstrations are part of the annual presentation of research studies and inspirational prototypes from the world-famous Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland" http://www.open-video.org/collection_detail.php?cid=1 CHI Video Retrospective By The Open Video Project "Each year the CHI conference prepares a videotape containing video presentations from researchers. This collection assembles a variety of videos from previous years' CHI Video Proceedings. The selected videos were digitized and assembled in this collection as part of the CHI 2002 Conference, which celebrates a 20th year birthday" http://www.open-video.org/collection_detail.php?cid=8 User Experience Themes, Part I: Craft and Engineering By Peter Merholz "In the field of user experience the products we develop must, above all else, *work*. What I mean is that they must function in order to support their users. Before it looks good, before it conveys the latest business direction, before it satisfies the designer's artisanal desires, the product must enable users to support their tasks at hand. Such a functional approach, by necessity, requires an engineering approach." http://www.peterme.com/archives/000066.html Making Web Advertisements Work By Jakob Nielsen "Web users are highly goal-driven, and ads that interfere with their goals will be ignored. To succeed, ads must work with the medium, as well as with the user's aims and mindset." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030505.html +13: XML. At Microsoft's Mercy By Kendall Grant Clark "The future of XML editing is pretty much in Microsoft's hands, writes Kendall Grant Clark, reporting on community reaction to the news that Microsoft Office 2003's much-hyped XML features will be restricted to the higher-end versions of the suite." http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/04/23/deviant.html The XHTML 100 By Evan Goer "...here are the results of testing 119 XHTML sites for standards compliance." http://www.goer.org/Journal/2003/Apr/index.html#29 [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. 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. As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) Standard. 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.]