+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 7, August 9, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 7 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: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: USABILITY. 11: XML. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Section 508? That's for the government or something By Jeffery Zeldman The slides of Zeldman's newest Section 508 lectures are online. http://www.happycog.com/lectures/dwws/ Accessibility Testing Software Compared By Steve Faulkner "...All the software tools evaluated will assist the accessibility quality assurance process, however none of them will replace evaluation by informed humans. The user needs to be aware of their limitations and needs a strong understanding of accessibility issues and the implications for people with disabilities in order to interpret the reports and the accessibility issues or potential issues flagged by the software tools..." http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw03/papers/arch/paper.html Getting Started with Accessibility Assessments By Andrew Arch, Sofia Celic, Steve Faulkner and Brian Hardy "Vision Australia Foundation has developed considerable experience and expertise over the past four years in assessing the accessibility of a wide variety of web sites. The W3C has recently developed "Evaluating web sites for accessibility" to assist people new to this task; Vision Australia contributed to this document. In this poster paper we will highlight the basic techniques that people can apply to identify many of the accessibility issues commonly observed. Applying a range of simple techniques means it is often unnecessary to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on automated tools." http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw03/papers/arch2/ Surfing the Web with a Screen Reader By AccessIT "In the video 'Surfing the Web With a Screen Reader,' Debbie a blind user, visits a university's web pages and demonstrates how she surfs the web with a screen reader and Braille display. The video illustrates some of the most important principles in accessible web design, and demonstrates the challenges users of screen readers experience every day." Scroll to the bottom of the page for a free sample clip via Windows Media Player or Real Player. However, both the video and DVD require payment. http://www.washington.edu/accessit/surfing.php +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Building Printer Friendly Pages By Lauri Harpf "Ensuring that your site is printer friendly can be done in many ways. Personally, I prefer to use CSS for the job. While it is not supported by some older browsers, CSS is a good choice because it eliminates the need to create separate 'printer friendly' versions of your pages. The same page can have one layout for browsers and another one for printers!" http://tinyurl.com/jhn7 CSS dotted borders in IE By kalsey.com "One of the many irritating things about CSS support in Internet Explorer is that it incorrectly shows dashed borders instead of dotted borders." http://kalsey.com/2003/07/css_dotted_borders_in_ie/ Looking ahead to CSS3 By Tom Gilder Tom Gilder has started a series of posts regarding CSS3. http://blog.tom.me.uk/css3/ Styling forms By Lachlan Cannon Lachlan Cannon shows off some nifty tricks for styling forms with minimal markup on the freshly redesigned illuminosity. http://illuminosity.net/thoughts/archives/2003/July/21/22:46:45/ +03: COLOR. Colours on the Web By Donald Johansson This site is about color theory and color matching. http://www.webwhirlers.com/colors/index.asp +04: DREAMWEAVER. How To Add a Dreamweaver MX Extension Using the Extension Manager By Jennifer Kyrnin The extension manager is a standalone program that works with Dreamweaver to help you manage your extensions. The extension manager will help you install and remove extensions, turn them on and turn them off. Plus it works with Flash and Fireworks to manage their extensions as well. http://webdesign.about.com/cs/dreamweaver/ht/htdwextension.htm How To Disable a Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Extension By Jennifer Kyrnin Macromedia Dreamweaver MX offers extensions to improve the functionality and scope of Dreamweaver, but if you install too many extensions, it can slow Dreamweaver down. So it is important to disable extensions you don't use a lot to keep Dreamweaver functioning optimally. http://webdesign.about.com/cs/dreamweaver/ht/htdwdisableext.htm +05: EVENTS. Make IT Easy 2003 October 15-16, 2003 Toronto, Canada http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/3234 +06: JAVASCRIPT. ECMAScript. It's the standard JavaScript, but... By Brad Edwards "What good is a standard when Microsoft and Netscape add non-standard features to JavaScript?" http://www.lantimes.com/ltparts/discuss/discuss24.htm ECMAScript scripting reference http://tecfa.unige.ch/guides/vrml/vrml97/spec/part1/javascript.html +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Quality publishing is about saying no By Gerry McGovern "Are the people who have least to say in your organization publishing most on your intranet or public website? Are the people who have most to say publishing least? You're not alone. Organizations are slowly realizing that managing a website is as much about what you don't publish as what you do." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_08_04_no.htm How Long Does it Take? Estimation Methods for Developing E-Learning By Karl M. Kapp "Over the years, vendors and clients have struggled to find an effective method for estimating the amount of time it takes to develop e-learning. Here are four methods for developing estimations..." http://www.learningcircuits.org/2003/jul2003/kapp.htm +08: PHP. PHP Survey Results By Zend Over 10,000 people responded to this survey. An interesting question was "What do you think the PHP community lacks most?" The top 3 factors (excluding those who say PHP lacks nothing) are: 26% PHP Certification, 19% Material to promote PHP to decision makers and, 18% Legitimacy with large organisations. http://www.zend.com/zend/php_survey_results.php PHP5: Coming Soon to a Webserver Near You By Harry Fuecks "If you have more than a little to do with PHP, the InternetÕs most popular server side programming language, you'll no doubt be aware that the successor to the current PHP version 4 is waiting in the wings..." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1192 PHP Security, Part 1 By John Coggeshall If you have users, you'll undoubtedly have bad guys trying to break things. As a PHP developer, it's your responsibility to make sure your code is secure. John Coggeshall demonstrates one common PHP error that can leave you vulnerable, and he explains how to think like a bad guy to prevent these mistakes in the first place." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/07/31/php_foundations.html +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. What is a good standard? An essay on W3C's design principles By Bert Bos "This essay tries to make explicit what the developers in the various W3C working groups mean when they invoke words like efficiency, maintainability, accessibility, extensibility, learnability, simplicity, longevity, and other long words ending in - y." http://www.w3.org/People/Bos/DesignGuide/introduction.html Standards, Semantic Markup, Distributed Authorship and Knowledge Management By D. Keith Robinson "XHTML is, at it's most basic, much simpler and easier to learn that traditional HTML 4.0.Ê With a simple styleÊguide, standard markup andÊCSS stylesÊyou can accomplish almost all the formatting a content author would need, just by knowing a handful of markup tags...I mean, really, how hard is is to learn 10 or so tags?Ê Team this technique with a tool like Contribute and you've got a nice, simple and cheap process that, while doesn't store you content in a database, keeps it in a clean, standard form you can repurpose down the road." http://tinyurl.com/iynr Designing With Web Standards By Jeffery Zeldman The slides from Zeldman's Web Design World keynote on designing with web standards design are online. http://www.happycog.com/lectures/dwws/ +10: USABILITY. The Times They Are A-Changin' Ñ So Are The HCI Paradigms By Gerd Waloszek "Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and its 'parent' cognitive psychology have long been dominated by the information-processing paradigm. Currently, however, there are signs that we are experiencing a shift to new HCI paradigms. This editorial offers a glimpse into the future of HCI." http://www.sapdesignguild.org/community/editorials/editorial_02_2003.asp Why Pop-Ups Are Pop-Bad By Lauri Harpf "The third problem with using pop-ups is born out of the two previous ones, the hatred users feel towards them and the fact that they are spreading like wildfire." http://www.webpronews.com/wpn-26-20030723WhyPopUpsarePopBad.html Flexible design of web sites By Stephen Poley "This page discusses what flexible design (otherwise known as liquid design, fluid design or any-size design) is, why it is a good idea, and why it is much easier than many web-designers seem to think." http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/flexdesign.html +11: XML. Using XHTML/CSS For an Effective SEO Campaign By Brandon Olejniczak "Search engine optimization (SEO) can generate more traffic than banner ads or pay-per-click methods. ItÕs not voodoo or rocket science. The techniques many of us already use to lower bandwidth, comply with standards, and follow accessibility guidelines turn out to be some of the best things we can do to enhance our search engine rankings. New contributing writer Brandon Olejniczak tells how.." http://www.alistapart.com/stories/seo/ Making Headlines with RSS Using Rich Site Summaries To Draw New Visitors By Jonathan Eisenzopf "RSS is an XML grammar for sharing data. That means that an RSS file contains placeholders for data, which are identified by a starting and ending tag. The first task required to RSS-enable your site is to create such a file on your Web server." http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2000/02/eisenzopf/ Making a RSS feed By Danny Sullivan "RSS is a method of distributing links or syndicating content in your web site that you'd like others to use. It can be an easy way to draw attention to your material, bringing you some traffic and perhaps a little net fame, depending on how good your information is." http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175271 RDF: Ready for Prime Time By Shelley Powers http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/07/30/practicalRDF.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. 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.]