+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 17, October 18, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 17 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 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. Accessible Showcase By Ian Lloyd University of Minnesota Duluth's Web Design Reference Site made the list. http://tinyurl.com/q665 Attitudes to Web Accessibility By John Knight "During the summer of 2003, we ran an online questionnaire, conducted interviews and carried out a literature review on Web accessibility. One hundred and seventeen respondents participated and they included designers, information officers and accessibility advocates. This initial set of results are intended to encourage debate on the subject." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1321.asp PDF and Public Documents: A White Paper By Janina Sajka and Joe Roeder "The many problems associated with accessing PDF documents constitute a burden on the person with visual impairments that is significantly greater than the burden placed on non-disabled persons with regard to PDF files...We call on Adobe and other developers to commit to accessible XML practices, as identified by the XML Accessibility Guidelines (XAG) currently in public draft. Proprietary technologies should be avoided when they may have certain visual benefits but add little to the core information content and create accessibility obstacles for public documents...By far, the preferred approach is for the government to use open, consensus-based, non-proprietary formats. Today, well designed web content, authored in HTML, is meeting the test of accessibility. Accessible XML holds out the promise of expanding information access for persons with disabilities to where it will become, not a technology wonder, but a common, everyday experience." http://www.afb.org/info_document_view.asp?documentid=1706 Semantic Markup By James Craig http://www.cookiecrook.com/AIR/2003/train/semantics.php Tables Refresher By James Craig http://www.cookiecrook.com/AIR/2003/train/tables.php Forms Refresher By James Craig http://www.cookiecrook.com/AIR/2003/train/forms.php +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Floatutorial By Russ Weakley This is a very valuable collection of CSS float tutorials. Floats are one of the most powerful constructs offered by CSS, but they are also difficult to master. Russ does a terrific job in his explanation. http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/ Positioning Properties At-A-Glance Guide By Nigel Peck "This article is aimed at experienced CSS developers who need a reference for the properties related to positioning in CSS 2. Each section of this article includes a link to the relevant section of the CSS 2 Specification." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1231 CSS Basics By James Craig http://www.cookiecrook.com/AIR/2003/train/cssbasics.php CSS Accessibility By Jim Allan http://www.tsbvi.edu/technology/accessible-css.htm +03: COLOR. Testing The Readability Of Web Page Colors By Chris Ridpath, Jutta Treviranus, Patrice L. (Tamar) Weiss "...These results demonstrate that it is possible to judge the readability of web pages based on their color specifications. However, the judgement, based on brightness difference and color difference, is not entirely accurate. There are other factors that influence readability that call for further investigation..." http://www.aprompt.ca/WebPageColors.html +04: DREAMWEAVER. Updating Your Template to MX format By Joyce J. Evans "There may come a time when you realize that your Dreamweaver 4/UltraDev 4 (DW4) templates do not migrate smoothly forwards into Dreamweaver MX (DMX).Ê You most likely discover this because of persistent DMX error messages regarding changes to locked regions, or other 'seemingly unrelated' prompts when you attempt to edit your child pages. At this point, it might be worth asking: 'What do I need to do to make my template 100% DMX friendly?' The answer is quite short and the solution is easy to implement as long as you do each step in turn and only save the changes to the page when advised by this tutorial. http://www.dreamweavermx-templates.com/tutorials/tutupdate.cfm +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Basics of Conducting Focus Groups By Carter McNamara "Focus groups are a powerful means to evaluate services or test new ideas. Basically, focus groups are interviews, but of 6-10 people at the same time in the same group. One can get a great deal of information during a focus group session." http://www.mapnp.org/library/evaluatn/focusgrp.htm User Interface Evaluation in an Iterative Design Process: A Comparison of Three Techniques By Pamela Savage "This paper compares the results of three different user interface evaluation techniques: expert reviews, user reviews, and interactive usability testing. Results from these techniques were obtained during the iterative design of a graphical user interface for an interactive multimedia messaging application. User reviews resulted in significantly more redesign of the user interface (UI), however, they also involved the most expense and effort to conduct. Expert review feedback tended to identify areas that required further user testing. A comparison of these techniques and the user interface design changes resulting from their feedback is discussed. The relative benefits and limitations of the techniques are addressed within the framework of an iterative design process." http://tinyurl.com/reec +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Information architecture: webpage mental maps emerge By Gerry McGovern "When people come to your website they have a mental map of how their 'ideal' webpage should be. They expect to see certain things in certain places. They expect to read certain killer words in your classification and content. The more you meet their mental map, the more successful your website will be." http://tinyurl.com/qv19 The Devil's in the Wireframes By Liz Danzico "Wireframes: At once a singular composition and a collaborative expression, communicating the vision of both an individual and a team. Their visual language must be detailed enough to be widely interpretable, yet particular to different audiences. As a result, wireframes can be stacked with an enormous amount of detail. Are we becoming victims of information pollution in our own wireframes?" http://tinyurl.com/qvde +07: JAVASCRIPT. Event Handlers By James Craig http://www.cookiecrook.com/AIR/2003/train/eventhandlers.php Accessible JavaScript Examples By James Craig "Never use unrequested popups!...Warn user on requested popups." http://www.cookiecrook.com/AIR/2003/train/jsexamples.php +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Communications Between Technical Professionals And Their Managers By Rich Smith "As a manager in charge of technical professionals, I have learned that managing projects with multiple team members requires certain people skills, as well as technical skills. In the world of management, there are many skills required when it comes to the management of people. " http://tinyurl.com/qfoq +09: NAVIGATION. Defining Supplemental Navigation for Web sites By D. Keith Robinson "There are many types of users that come to your Web site. Some like to browse, some like to search, some know what they are looking for and some have no clue what they want or even how they got to where they are. One of the keys to a successful Web site is knowing what your users want and helping them get there..." http://www.7nights.com/dkrprod/gwt_eleven.php +10: PHP. The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) By Joel Spolsky "When I discovered that the popular web development tool PHP has almost complete ignorance of character encoding issues, blithely using 8 bits for characters, making it darn near impossible to develop good international web applications, I thought, enough is enough...In this article I'll fill you in on exactly what every working programmer should know. All that stuff about "plain text = ascii = characters are 8 bits" is not only wrong, it's hopelessly wrong, and if you're still programming that way, you're not much better than a medical doctor who doesn't believe in germs. Please do not write another line of code until you finish reading this article." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Developers gripe about IE standards inaction By Paul Festa "Web developers and makers of Web authoring tools say the software giant has allowed CSS bugs to linger for years, undermining technology that promises to significantly cut corporate Web site design costs." http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5088642.html Checks and Balances of web standards By Eric A. Meyer "When one company owns the medium, everyone else loses." http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/200310.html#t200310009 Examining the Role of De Facto Standards on the Web By Heidi Adkisson "Will the web become more standardized? What are the usability risks of not following a de facto standard on the web?" http://tinyurl.com/qvdo +12: TOOLS. Firdamatic: the Design Tool for the Uninspired Webloggers "Firdamatic is an online tableless layout generator that allows you to create and customise layouts easily only by completing forms, making creating skins for your Firdamatic-based layout a breeze." http://www.wannabegirl.org/firdamatic/ +13: TYPOGRAPHY. Setting Type on the Web By Daniel Will-Harris "If you use CSS to specify the size of your type, do not use points or pixels as your unit of measure. This is a common mistake, and a bad one." http://www.will-harris.com/webtype/setting_type.html +14: USABILITY. Online Readability By Adam Kalsey "You would think that a newspaper would know something about readability, but the Boston Globe is proving otherwise with their Web site. Their articles are set with long lines of text and very little space between each line. This makes the lines blur together as you try to read them. When you reach the end of one line, there are no visual cues to help your eye find the beginning of the next line." http://kalsey.com/2003/10/online_readability/ The Problem With Many Web Applications Is The Front-End By D. Keith Robinson "It's high time people building applications for the Web begin to take notice of things like usability and Web standards. It's in their best interest as in the end will save even more time and money and insure the most potential for success." http://tinyurl.com/pnze Ten Best Intranets of 2003 By Jakob Nielsen "This year's winning intranet designs emphasized workflow support, self-service content management, and offloading tasks from email to collaboration tools. On average, companies spent three years between redesigns, and one year on the redesign itself." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031013.html +15: XML. World Wide Web Consortium Publishes XForms 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation By W3C XForms 1.0 has become a W3C standard. Here is the W3C press release: http://www.w3.org/2003/10/xforms-pressrelease XForms - The Next Generation of Web Forms By W3C http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/ XForms Essentials: XForms Building Blocks By Micah Dubinko XForms Essentials shows readers how to integrate XForms with both HTML and XML vocabularies. If you work with forms, HTML, or XML information, XForms Essentials will provides a simpler route to more sophisticated interactions with users. http://www.webreference.com/programming/xforms/ [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.]