+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 2, July 6, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 2 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: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: SITES & BLOGS 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 13: TYPOGRAPHY. 14: USABILITY. 15: XML. SECTION TWO: 16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Data Tables By Peter Rainger "Use the ID attribute with the TH element (table header), with the TD element. The SUMMARY attribute and CAPTION element should also be included within the TABLE element." http://www.techdis.ac.uk/seven/precept4_e.html Tables and frames By Joe Clark "Tables prompt eye-gouging hissyfits among accessibility advocates and Web designers of all stripes, whether oldschool or avant-garde. Both sides are saddled with myths and both argue in large part from ideology. Let's do a reality check, shall we?" http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter10.html Frames Accessibility Issues By Peter Rainger "Some people have difficulty navigating within frames, either because the frames are confusing or because the software they are using simply cannot read frames. Therefore if possible avoid using frames. However, they can be used accessibly and effectively for large 'contents lists'. The key to making frames accessible is to inform the user of their location at all times, describing the purpose of the frames and how frames relate to each other." http://www.techdis.ac.uk/seven/precept1_c.html Designing for Dyslexia, Part 1 By Tim Roberts "Dyslexia affects over 1 in 10 people. The chances are that many of your web site users have dyslexia at some level. Made For All editor, Tim Roberts looks at what we can do to make our documents 'dyslexia friendly'. Part 1 introduces dyslexia and shows how using standards can help." http://www.madeforall.com/tutorials/dyslexia.html Designing for Dyslexia, Part 2 By Tim Roberts "Part two illustrates some techniques for making your site more visually accessible to dyslexic users." http://www.madeforall.com/tutorials/dyslexia2.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The Beauty of Design : SitePoint Community CSS Website Design Competition By Sitepoint This is a new CSS design competition. http://www.sitepointforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=116294 CSS 3 Selectors By Russell Dyer "The CSS 3 Selectors specification has recently become a W3C Recommendation. Russell Dyer charts the development of CSS selectors, and explains which new features are introduced in CSS 3." http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/06/18/css3-selectors.html Using the :target selector By Eric Meyer "As an aid to identifying the destination of a link that points to a specific portion of a document, the Selectors Candidate Recommendation introduces the :target pseudoclass. Netscape 7.1 introduces support for this pseudoclass into the Netscape family, giving authors a new way to assist users keep oriented within large documents." http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/target-selector/ Revealing Accesskey Information By Stuart Robinson "Accesskeys can make a Web page much more usable, but they're usually so thoroughly hidden that nobody knows they're available, let alone what they are. Stuart Robinson shows how generated content can be used to make accesskey information visible, and therefore useful as well as usable." http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/reveal-accesskey/ +03: COLOR. A (CSS) Horse of a Different Color - Part 1 By Keith Schengili-Roberts "Currently, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is working on enhancements and improvements to CSS with the forthcoming CSS3 specification...One of the CSS3 modules deals with color, and if it is fully adopted, it promises to introduce a number of changes in the ways you can set colors on a Web page." http://www.webreference.com/programming/css_color/index.html Understanding Color By Anne Coneen This article from Anne Coneen of the Poynter Institute is a nice overview of color theory. http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=47 +04: DREAMWEAVER. How to Create a Site in Macromedia Dreamweaver By Jennifer Kyrnin "When working with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX for the first time, or on a new site for the first time, you need to define the Web site so that Dreamweaver can work with it. This process includes naming the site, placing the local files on a directory on your hard drive, and showing Dreamweaver where those files will be published on the Web. Follow these easy instructions to define a new Web site for Dreamweaver MX." http://webdesign.about.com/cs/dreamweaver/a/aadwbuildsite_p.htm +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Impatient web searchers measure web sites' appeal in seconds By Margaret Hopkins "Web users are picky and impatient, typically visiting only the first three results from a query, with one in five searchers spending 60 seconds or less on a linked Web document, according to Penn State researchers..." http://live.psu.edu/index.php?cmd=vs&story=3364 +06: EVENTS. International PHP Conference November 2-5, 2003 Frankfurt, Germany. http://www.phpconference.de/2003/index_en.php Web Accessibility Training and Exchange 18 July 2003 Palo Alto, California U.S.A. http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/2003/0718-training.html +07: JAVASCRIPT. Netscape's JavaScript? By Jacques Surveyor "In the complex world of web development, arriving at good, open standards - even for a language as solid as JavaScript - can be a complex process. Author Jacques Surveyor delves into this mystery." http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/j_s/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. RNIB Open Letter By Ben Meadowcroft "Below is an open letter to Julie Howell of the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) concerning the recent redesign of rnib.org.uk..." http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/me/archive/2003/june.shtml#link26th_1 RNIB Redesign Comments By Julie Howell Julie is RNIB's Good Web Design campaign co-ordinator. She was not involved in the redesign but is listening. http://blog.tom.me.uk/2003/06/20/new_rnib_site.php#comment5 Content management: critical skill of modern manager By Gerry McGovern "The Internet has changed how organizations manage. Historically, management was focused on 'walking and talking. Today, 'reading and writing' are becoming more and more central. This trend is reinforced by a recent META Group study, which found that 80 percent of business people choose email as their primary communication tool." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_06_30_email.htm +09: NAVIGATION. Pie Menus By Juan C. Dursteler "Pie menus show a certain superiority over the ubiquitous linear menus we are so fond of. Why aren't they proliferated more showing up only on some applications?" http://www.infovis.net/E-zine/2003/num_124.htm Determine the Best Elements for Web Navigation By Jeffrey Linwood "Navigation is only one segment of a Web site's information architecture, but it is the most visible segment to the end user." http://builder.com.com/article.jhtml?id=u00320030702jlin01.htm +10: PHP. Developing a Dynamic Document Search in PHP Part 1/2 By Murali Dharan "...Murali discusses how to implement a complete document content search using only PHP and MySQL..." http://www.devarticles.com/art/1/599 NewsFactor: How Far Can Zend Take PHP? By Vincent Ryan "PHP has taken off so strongly because it is built exactly for dynamic Web applications," Brad Young, Zend's director of product marketing, told NewsFactor. "That's what it was meant for from the start..." http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21795.html PHP Coding Contest By codewalkers.com Ę "Here is a new PHP Coding Contest." http://codewalkers.com/php-contest.php PHP Output Buffering By Michael Bailey "Wondering about output buffering? This new tutorial from Michael Bailey will explain the ins and outs of it for you." http://codewalkers.com/tutorials/44/1.html +11: SITES & BLOGS. Official Launch: ThisIsBroken.com By Mark Hurst This site tries to improve customer experiences everywhere. It compiles pictures and stories of places, things, and websites that are just *broken*. http://www.thisisbroken.com +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Will Microsoft's browser engine backfire? By Munir Kotadia "The bottom line is that consumer-facing Web sites have been remiss in supporting the latest standards, and unresponsive to the needs of many users. It's time to reassess that approach, and Microsoft's decision is a good spur to doing just that." http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1022119.html Designing & Building With Standards Lecture By Jeffery Zeldman "The Web Standards Project is built with XHTML 1.0 Strict. CSS is used for layout. There is no Palm version. There is no WAP version. Multiple versions are not needed. When you design and build with standards, one document serves all." http://www.happycog.com/lectures/standards/ What are Web Standards? Eric Meyer Interview By Richard Hulse "The difference in moving to CSS driven design is that you need a structural markup, where if you want a paragraph you make it a paragraph element, and you donŐt separate it with two line break tags which is what people used to do. If you have a heading you donŐt use a ..." http://www.radionz.co.nz/digitallife/archives/series3/meyer.html +13: TYPOGRAPHY. Great Web Typography By Wendy Peck This is Chapter 6, "CSS menus", of Wendy's new book. http://wpeck.com/type/art/537008%20Ch06.1.pdf Please note this is a Portable Document Format (PDF) acrobat file. If you do not have acrobat you can download the arrobat viewer from adobe from: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html This download is for people who do not have Acrobat installed on their computers. It allows you to open and view a PDF file. Additional Adobe free tools are available to assist visually impaired users at: http://access.adobe.com/ +14: USABILITY. Using the 5Es to Understand Users By Whitney Quesenbery "Usability starts with a philosophy - a belief in designing to meet user needs and to focus on creating an excellent user experience - but it is the specific process and methodology that produce the real goal of usability." http://www.wqusability.com/articles/getting-started.html Usability != User Experience Peter Merholz "...In attempting to expand their mandate, though, usability practitioners were dissatisfied with simply testing what others have created. And so they've attempted to re-define usability in order that it be, well, more interesting. A case in point: Whitney Quesenbery's 5E's Of Usability, Effective, Efficient, Engaging, Error Tolerant, and Easy to Learn. At first blush, it all sounds fine and good. At second blush, one word pops out as not belonging: 'engaging'..." http://www.peterme.com/archives/000100.html Usability 101 By Tristan Louis Though focused on open source projects, this piece does have some web connotation for basic usibility reagrding learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors and satisfaction. http://www.tnl.net/blog/category/usability Writing for the Web - How to Write Web-Friendly Content for your Site By Steve Lee "A key element in the success (or otherwise) of any Website is the information it provides. If you want your site to stand out from the Internet crowd, you need to provide the most Web-friendly content you can. And given the volumes of text on the Web, making sure that what you write is Web friendly is obviously important." http://www.freepint.com/issues/050603.htm#feature Frequently Asked Questions on Usability By William Hudson "What is usability?...Why do I need it?...Doesn't it increase my development costs?...How can I get some?" http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/articles/usefaq.htm +15: XML. Transforming XML with PHP By Bruno Pedro "Bruno Pedro examines the two main APIs for transforming XML from the PHP web scripting language: XML_Transformer and XSLT" http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/06/18/php-xml.html DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide By Bob Stayton "Bob Stayton has released DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide, an online book covering 'all aspects of DocBook XML publishing tools, including installing, using, and customizing the XSL stylesheets and processing tools.' " http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +16: 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.]