+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 8, August 16, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 8 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 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. Understanding Web Accessibility By Joe Clark "People with disabilities can and do surf the Web, often with the use of adaptive technology that compensates for particular disabilities. But for Web sites to be reasonably accessible, Web authors have to take certain care in the way they create pages. The article explains the basics of Web accessibility; explores the range of disability groups involved, with population statistics; and provides references for accessible Web authoring." http://www.joeclark.org/access/webaccess/JVoluntAdmin.html How To Make Non-text Elements Accessible - Some Notes By Jim Byrne "Making non-text elements, particularly images, accessible is fundamental to accessible web design; even if you attended to this issue alone, you would make a big impact on the accessibility of your site." http://tinyurl.com/h3cs Get your 'character encoding' sorted By Jim Byrne "Creating valid HTML is one of the most important steps you can take when designing accessible websites. If you do not provide the appropriate character encoding this could lead to characters in your page not displaying correctly, which of course will have an impact on the accessibility of your content." http://www.mcu.org.uk/showlog.php?weblogid=28 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Dueling Declarations: Following the Cascade By Porter Glendinning "...this time we're going to examine what happens when rules collide. When two or more different rule sets select the same element in the document tree and have declarations that try to set the same property, how does the browser know which one to apply? Which declaration will override the others? These are the questions that put the "cascade" in Cascading Style Sheets." http://nemesis1.f2o.org/aarchive?id=4 Successful inline lists in Netscape 4 By Bill Mason "One of the still (fairly) recent innovations in coding is the horizontal inline list. That is, a list (typically a ul) whose rendering is changed via CSS to display as a non-bulleted, horizontal line of text. It has come into vogue as a means for rendering horizontal navigation bars while maintaining semantically correct coding. Taming Lists gives a solid rundown of the basics of the inline list technique." http://tinyurl.com/jsga A Web building tip... How are inline lists created? By Craig Saila "Using an inline list is a simple way to structure horizontal navigation. And unlike some elements of CSS, this only takes online and works even if the browser was rudimentary style sheet support..." http://www.saila.com/usage/tips/defn.shtml?list_inline +03: COLOR. Color Contrast Guidelines By Hewlett-Packard "Two colors provide good color visibility if the brightness difference and the color difference between the two colors are greater than a set range. Color visibility can be determined according to the following formulas..." http://h10014.www1.hp.com/accessibility/color_contrast.htm +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Field Studies: The Best Tool to Discover User Needs By Jared M. Spool "While techniques, such as focus groups, usability tests, and surveys, can lead to valuable insights, the most powerful tool in the toolbox is the 'field study'. Field studies get the team immersed in the environment of their users and allow them to observe critical details for which there is no other way of discovering." http://www.uiconf.com/8/articles/field_studies_article.html +05: EVENTS. WWW2003 5th annual conference on World Wide Web Applications September 10-12, 2003 Durban, South Africa http://www.udw.ac.za/www2003/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Cognitive Psychology & IA: From Theory to Practice By Jason Withrow "...having a background in cognitive psychology supports the practice of information architecture, and it is precisely those interconnections and support that will be explored." http://tinyurl.com/jsa7 (Not) Defining The Damn Thing By Louis Rosenfeld "Labels and definitions inevitably vary from context to context. But is it unethical to consciously provide different answers to the same questions? No, but it is a bit two-faced and can sometimes make one feel a bit uncomfortable. Just remember: we're always speaking different languages in different contexts. It's simply a requirement for effective communication." http://tinyurl.com/jsaf +07: JAVASCRIPT. Rethinking JavaScript Objects By Nicholas Zakas "Nicholas leverages his Java experience to make dealing with JavaScript objects less arduous and more enjoyable in this step-by-step tutorial. http://www.sitepoint.com/article.php/1194 JavaScript 2 By javascript-2.com Search over a dozen JavaScript archive depositories from one page. http://www.javascript-2.com/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. E-Learning Needs Analysis A hands-on approach to figuring out where you need to expend your training energies. By John Sloan "Creating e-learning content should not simply be about throwing your course books onto a website. Instead look at how the Web can enhance and improve the content of a course book." http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080103/needs.html Why Designers Matter Learn to value these critical colleagues By Roy Peter Clark "The central act of journalism is reporting, the gathering and rendering of important information. But don't stifle your journalistic imagination. If you think of reporting as only a writer's act, you're missing the big play. A graphic artist who researches a diagram of how a new vaccine works is a reporter. A photographer who captures images from a war zone is a reporter. The designer is a reporter." http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=34871&sid=11 Interview with Eric Meyer By The Opera Journal "...Opera Journal had the chance to speak to Eric Meyer who is kindly sharing some personal thoughts and perspectives with us." http://www.operajournal.com/articles/eric.html The evolution of large websites By Gerry McGovern "If you're part of a large organization, your website will probably have been started by a small group of evangelists. It will have grown in a very ad hoc manner. Gradually, senior management will have become more involved. Finally, the website will have been viewed as just another business tool, and managed as such." http://tinyurl.com/jsge +09: NAVIGATION. Website Breadcrumbs By Bob Bailey "The researchers concluded that the overall use of breadcrumbs (in their study) was low. They observed that not all participants even understood the function of breadcrumbs. Even regular breadcrumb users were not found to be more efficient than users who did not use the breadcrumbs. These participants preferred using other navigational methods to find information, such as the Back button, the navigation bars, and searching. Even though the previous two studies suggested that breadcrumbs did assist users, this study did not find that to be the case." http://tinyurl.com/jsgd Breadcrumb Navigation: Further Investigation of Usage By B. Lida Rogers & B. Chaparro "Location of the breadcrumb trail did have an effect on usage. Breadcrumb trails positioned under the page title (at eye level and closer to other links on the page) were used more than breadcrumb trails positioned at the top of the page. It is recommended, therefore, that breadcrumb trails be positioned in this location rather than at the top of the page." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/52/breadcrumb.htm +10: PHP. Introduction to Interceptors I: Implementing Delegation By Sebastian Bergmann "Zend has started a new series to throw the spotlight on different features of the upcoming PHP5 release. This article, their first in this series, is one from Sebastian Bergmann about Interceptors in PHP5. You will learn how to use the _call() interceptor method that has been introduced in PHP 5 to implement delegation. Delegation is about the passing of responsibility from one logical grouping of code to another, for instance, from one method to another. It is a common theme in OOP and the foundation of numerous Design Patterns, such as the Strategy Pattern." http://www.zend.com/zend/php5/php5-delegation.php File And Directory Manipulation In PHP (part 1) By icarus "PHP comes with a powerful and flexible file manipulation API that allows developers (among other things) to read and write files, view and modify file attributes, read and list directory contents, alter file permissions, and retrieve file contents into a variety of native data structures. Find out more, inside." http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/File_Manipulation/page1.html +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. CSS, Markup and Standards: Back to the Future By Mark Newhouse This is Mark Newhouse's WebVisions 2003 presentation. http://realworldstyle.com/portland03/ Between excess and temperance By Craig Saila "An effective, standard-compliant page can be created by remembering three simple rules and one big caveat: 1. Respect the elements. 2. Be selective. 3. No one Web page will look the same everywhere. 4. Don't let purity limit you." http://www.saila.com/usage/moderation/ +12: TOOLS. Web Color Visualizer http://entries.the5k.org/171/visualizer.html +13: USABILITY. Information Pollution By Jakob Nielsen "Excessive word count and worthless details are making it harder for people to extract useful information. The more you say, the more people tune out your message." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030811.html Usability Professionals Must Disappear By Mark Hurst "In short, a good user experience practitioner is a facilitator - someone who quietly (having disappeared) guides the process, allowing knowledge to emerge, from users and the company alike. Instead of coming in with the answers, or the framework, or (my personal favorite) 'the 200 rules of user experience design,' they should come in with their auditory organs turned up to eleven. Listening." http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/03/0808.disappear.html +14: XML. XForms 1.0 Proposed Recommendation By W3C "XForms is an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. By splitting traditional XHTML forms into three parts Forms model, instance data, and user interface it separates presentation from content, allows reuse, gives strong typing reducing the number of round-trips to the server, as well as offering device independence and a reduced need for scripting." http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/PR-xforms-20030801/ Use XML to Build Services Cheaply Using PHP and MySQL By Laurence Moroney "Web services are all about two things: XML and WSDL. When you build a Web service in a commercial platform such as Microsoft .NET or J2EE, you are building a smart server that can describe itself with WSDL, be invoked using a HTTP-Get, or SOAP, and return an XML payload...This article will step you through building such an XML delivery server using PHP and MySQL, both of which are open source and free. In addition, the software will run on an Apache platform, giving you an end-to-end open source experience." http://tinyurl.com/jsgi [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. 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.]