+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 9, August 23, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 9 CONTENTS. ++ANNOUNCEMENT. The Web Design Reference Site now uses CSS for layout and XHTML Strict for structure. 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TYPOGRAHPY. 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. Is Your Site Accessible? Five Simple Tests By Sue Bolander Accessibility is not a new issue, but there is still a great deal of confusion out there about what makes a Web site accessible and why it matters. http://tinyurl.com/jlay Web Site Accessibility - Navigation And Data Tables By Sue Bolander "Making your navigation consistent helps all users to find their way around your site. Whether you choose to put your links across the top, down the left or right side, or somewhere else is up to you, but make them easy to find and use." http://tinyurl.com/h3d7 Creating Accessible Tables By Isofarro "This short article (it's the example markup that makes it look long - honest!) details a method for creating accessible tables. We'll take a simplified table and add structural and logical markup, introducing one element at a time." http://www.isolani.co.uk/articles/accessibleTables.html 2.3 Content Versus Navigation By Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission "Despite considerable work done by Adobe, PDF remains a relatively inaccessible format to people who are blind or vision-impaired. Software exists to provide some access to the text of some PDF documents, but for a PDF document to be accessible to this software, it must be prepared in accordance with the guidelines that Adobe have developed. Even when these guidelines are followed, the resulting document will only be accessible to those people who have the required software and the skills to use it. The Commission's view is that organisations who distribute content only in PDF format, and who do not also make this content available in another format such as RTF, HTML, or plain text, are liable for complaints under the DDA." http://tinyurl.com/kuyd +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS3 module: Syntax W3C Working Draft 13 August 2003 By W3C This working draft describes how CSS should work. http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-css3-syntax-20030813/ CSS3 module: Presentation Levels W3C Working Draft 13 August 2003 By W3C This draft is designed to help in the creation of page slide transitions and outlined lists. http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-css3-preslev-20030813/ CSS Print Profile W3C Working Draft 13 August 2003 By W3C Details what to do when "printing from mobile devices to low-cost printers" http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-css-print-20030813/ +03: COLOR. Random (usually-)contrasting colors By J. Greely J. Greely's test page demonstrates what people with color deficiencies may see. http://dotclue.org/colors +04: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver MX Tutorial By Site Owners Design http://tinyurl.com/k411 +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Measuring Online Experience: It's About More Than Time! By Bonnie Lida Rogers "... measuring experience level by frequency of use and longevity of use may not be truly representative. Although measures of time and frequency typically show a high correlation, the online user's experience level cannot be adequately evaluated by considering it as a single dimension. A more descriptive measure of experience might be 'how' users experience the Internet rather than 'how often.'" http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/52/experience.htm 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Iterative Design: The Power of Cascading Style Sheets By Jared M. Spool "Sheets for Prototyping is an essential tool for designers. The ability to take a vision, quickly mock it up, and present it for critique and evaluation is critical to developing quality, usable designs." http://www.uiconf.com/8/articles/iterative_design_css.html +07: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Exception Handling By icarus "Wondering why JavaScript doesn't include exception-handling constructs like its bigger cousins? Well, the newest version of JavaScript does - and this article tells you all about it, explaining how you can use the new Error object and the 'try-catch' constructs to trap and resolve errors in script execution. http://www.devshed.com/Client_Side/JavaScript/JavaScript_Exception/ UL to DHTML Menu (v2.0 - Fun with Abstract Hierarchies!) By Gavin Kistner "Just thought I'd share a little side-project I made: with not a lot of CSS or JavaScript, an arbitrarily-deep UL is turned into a top-level navigation (either across the top or vertical, depending on a single CSS class) with dhtml opening and closing submenu pieces. A side benefit of using the natural hierarchy of an unordered list, as opposed to the common implementation of such a menu using a plethora of DIVs, is that the onmouseover/onmouseout event handlers bubble properly to the parent element, vastly simplifying the scripting." http://phrogz.net/JS/ul2menu/ +08: NAVIGATION. Can you build accessible drop down navigation menus? By Bob Regan "This list is accessible, but it is not really usable. Unlike DHTML likes, the pure CSS list read just fine. The problem is that it reads the entire list. This defeats the purpose of the drop down menus. Rather than segmenting the lists into manageable chunks, it forces the screen reader user to listen to the entire list. So to get to the 20th link, you need to listen to the 19 links that come before it. It would pass 508 muster, but it would be hard to call it accessible." http://www.markme.com/accessibility/archives/003027.cfm +09: PHP. PHP, mySQL: common security issues By potentialcreations.com "There are a number of simple steps a PHP developer can take to make a site more secure. Many of them involve the usage of mySQL, others directly relate to PHP. While this article does not cover every aspect of PHP/mySQL security, it does introduce you to many common security issues and should get you started on the path to more secure PHP development." http://www.potentialcreations.com/articles/security.php File Download Security By Higherpass "Protect your downloadable content by storing the files outside your webroot. This is an easy solution to online subscription content protection." http://www.higherpass.com/PHP/content.php?id=6 PHP Fundamentals By Higherpass "Covers the basic structure, variable handling, and loops. Aimed at beginners wanting to start learning PHP." http://www.higherpass.com/PHP/content.php?id=5 +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Design Patterns: An Evolutionary Step to Managing Complex Sites By Jared M. Spool "When your organization's web site or intranet has hundreds of contributors, how do you ensure that every page is high quality and extremely usable? Especially, if these contributors have never designed a web page before?" http://www.uiconf.com/8/articles/landay_vanduyne_article.html Patterns home page By hillside.net "Welcome to the patterns home page. It is a source for information about all aspects of software patterns and pattern languages." http://hillside.net/patterns/ Website Patterns By Portland Pattern Repository "The applicability of patterns to Web sites struck me after the recent launch of the site for a local hospital. Not even a week later, we found another recently launched hospital site that shared the same structure. Looking at the two side-by-side, I was struck by the thought that the other site's team certainly experienced the same forces we did. It's not quite the RuleOfThree, but I'm positive I could find another example." http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WebsitePatterns Pattern Languages for Usability: An Investigation of Alternative Approaches By Michael J. Mahemoff and Lorraine J. Johnston "The best way to ensure usability is to treat human factors as an input to design, rather than merely evaluating prototypes or design documentation. The capability of pattern languages to facilitate the design process, improve communication, and record design philosophies suggests that they may assist the user-centred design process..." http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~moke/papers/candidate/ +11: TYPOGRAHPY. Text instead of images By W3C "Content developers should use style sheets to style text rather than representing text in images. Using text instead of images means that the information will be available to a greater number of users (with speech synthesizers, braille displays, graphical displays, etc.). Using style sheets will also allow users to override author styles and change colors or fonts sizes more easily." http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-CSS-TECHS/#text-not-images FONT tag considered harmful! By W3C "Many filters from word-processing packages, and also some HTML authoring tools, generate HTML code which is completely contrary to the design goals of the language. What they do is to look at a document almost purely from the point of view of layout, and then mimic that layout in HTML by doing tricks with FONT, BR and   (non-breaking spaces). HTML documents are supposed to be structured around items such as paragraphs, headings and lists..." http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#guidelines A Comparison of Two Computer Fonts: Serif versus Ornate Sans-Serif By S. Morrison & J. Noyes "The findings from this study support the findings of Bernard et al. (2001) that serif fonts can be read faster than ornate sans serif fonts..." http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/52/UK_font.htm +12: USABILITY. A More User-Friendly Direction By Ben Shneiderman "According to some studies, we are frustrated from 30 to 40% of the time we spend in front of our computers. Ben Shneiderman says we need to strive for 'universal usability' to get to the 'new computing.' An excerpt from 'Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies.'" http://www.darwinmag.com/read/070103/computing.html Simplified Form Errors By Adam Kalsey Adam Kalsey kicked off Simplified, a new series on web usability, with some thoughts on creating usable web forms. http://kalsey.com/simplified/form_errors/index.html Forms that make Sense By Paul Scrivens Forms continue to be a topic of discussion on Paul Scrivens blog. http://www.itnextgen.net/pseudo/archives/000052.html Better Web Forms By D. Keith Robinson D. Keith Robinson also has some tips on better form design. http://www.7nights.com/dkrprod/gwt_four.php +13: XML. XHTML 1.0: Marking up a new dawn By Molly Holzschlag "Still writing your documents in HTML? If you are, you're not complying with current standards. On January 26, 2000, XHTML 1.0 became a recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). HTML, according to the W3C, is no longer the Web markup standard. Instead, XHTML 1.0 has replaced our old favorite, marking up the dawn of a new and exciting time in communications technology." http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/w-xhtml.html Fast and Easy XHTML By Shirley Kaiser This is a short tutorial on the basics of XHTML. http://www.websitetips.com/info/xhtml/basics.shtml Syndicating Learning Objects With RSS And Trackback By Alan Levine, Brian Lamb and D'Arcy Norman "Learning objects repositories are growing in number with no end to arguments about definitions, meta-data, granularity, etc. The discovery process is ultimately limited to what one can search within a single collection. We propose that, with very little technical effort, the content of these repositories could be easily "syndicated" in numerous formats with existing RSS standard formats." http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/show/merlot03/ RSS Hitting Critical Mass By Dan Gillmor Dan Gillmor talks about the power of news syndication and aggregators with RSS. http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001285.shtml [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.]