+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 26, December 20, 2003. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 26 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: 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. Accountability in Accessibility Testing By John Foliot "While Accessibility Testing tools exist, all too often the testing process is incomplete, and many pages which claim conformance to a declared standard fail." http://tinyurl.com/zn51 Design Science Awarded NSF Grant to Research Mathematics Accessibility; Plans to Bring Math Web Content under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act By Bruce Virga "Design Science announced today it has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to research ways of making mathematical content accessible to people with vision disabilities." http://tinyurl.com/zmoq +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Writing Efficient CSS By John Gallant and Holly Bergevin "This article is intended for people familiar with CSS syntax and usage." http://tinyurl.com/y9f0 Two columns with color By Russ Weakley This article will discusses how to make "a two column CSS layout with color in either column that spreads to the full height of the page." http://nemesis1.f2o.org/articles Night of the Image Map By Stuart Robertson ALA has an article which covers all the secret ingredients you'll need to resurrect the image map using CSS and structurally sensible XHTML. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/imagemap/ +03: COLOR. Color Harmonies By Easy RGB "Search for colors complements to your RGB values. Create color harmonies, combinations and themes. From your main (or background) color select trim and accents tones." http://www.easyrgb.com/harmonies.php +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Quality control: The importance of website testing By Julie Price "A website needs to be as close to perfect as possible before it is presented to the intended audience, and the adherence to a formal test plan and test procedures will assist in making sure that all bases are covered before the site is launched." http://tinyurl.com/z0es Eyetracker Study gives Guidance on how to Place Ads, Etc. By Ann Light "The Usability Company and Eyetracker recently conducted an eyetracking study to provide more information on where designers should place elements, such as logos, search boxes and advertisements on a website, by determining where people look on a page." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1454.asp +05: EVENTS. ETech O'Reilly's third annual Emerging Technology Conference. February 9-12, 2004 San Diego, California U.S.A. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/create/ord_et04 Computerworld 5th Annual Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference March 7-9, 2004 Palm Desert, California U.S.A. http://www.premier100.com/ Introductory Usability Evaluation Workshop March 11, 2004 Canberra, Australia http://www.steptwo.com.au/seminars/040311/index.html Adaptive Hypermedia Conference August 23-26, 2004 Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands http://www.ah2004.org/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. The Visual Vocabulary Three Years Later: An Interview with Jesse James Garrett By Dan Brown "In October 2000, Jesse James Garrett introduced a site architecture documentation standard called the Visual Vocabulary. Since then, it has become widely adopted among information architects and user experience professionals." http://tinyurl.com/z0dk +07: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Core Objects, Part 2 By Ellie Quigley This article covers the Wrapper, String, Number, Boolean and Function Objects. These core objects are consistent across different implementations and platforms and have been standardized by the ECMAScript 1.0 specification, allowing programs to be portable. http://www.webreference.com/programming/java_core/2/ Enhancing Structural Markup with JavaScript By Simon Willison "Well structured markup opens the door for additional site enhancements based around that long-abused third leg of the client-side Web - Javascript. Simon explains two ways in which well-strucutred markup and JavaScript can work together in this eye-opening tutorial." http://www.sitepoint.com/article.php/1259 +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Building a Vision of Design Success By Christina Wodtke "A common view of vision is that it's something handed down by a leader to the troops. When a redesign goes awry, the troops complain, 'There was no vision.' But the problem goes deeper than either scenario; the problem is that there was no shared vision." http://tinyurl.com/z0ei An interview with Chris Hofmann By Craig Saila This interview is with The Mozilla Foundation's Chris Hofmann. He answers questions about Mozilla, the Mozilla Application Suite, Firebird, and Thunderbird. http://tinyurl.com/z0kt +09: NAVIGATION. An interesting navigation idea By Adrian Holovaty "The site's home page content, a complete index of the day's news, is repeated nearly in full at the bottom of individual story pages....Hence, reading the news is a matter of clicking the top headline, reading its story, scrolling down that article page, clicking the second headline, and so forth..." http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2003/12/11/0040 +10: PHP. Using data structures in PHP By roblimo "A data structure is simply a representation of data within a computer..." http://www.newsforge.com/programming/03/12/12/1618257.shtml +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Using standard markup to increase accessibility - an introduction By Jim Byrne "There have been many different versions of HTML since Tim Berners Lee 'invented' the World Wide Web was in the early 90s. The 'rules' for using each version are encapsulated in the standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium; the standards dictate the tags publishers are allowed to use (and in what order), and how those tags should be interpreted by browsers and 'user clients' (i.e treat the text within header tags as a heading, treat paragraph tags as a paragraph)..." http://www.gawds.org/show.php?contentid=36 Web Design - The Ultimate Balancing Act By D. Keith Robinson "Web design is easy. Good Web design is very, very hard." http://tinyurl.com/yrfu +12: TOOLS. Widgetopia By Christina Wodtke "Want to learn how to do web design that makes sense architectually? Christina Wodtke has created a great resource called Widgetopia that does just that. Check out a stock pile of UI widgets for good design. It's like the Design Not Found for IA." http://www.eleganthack.com/widgetopia/ +13: TYPOGRAPHY. Relative font sizes and inheritance By Russ Weakley "There are many methods of setting font size on a page using Cascading Style sheets, each with positives and negatives..." http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/relative/ +14: USABILITY. Overweight Travel Sites Delay Holiday Travelers By Andrew B. King Optimization Week compares the home pages of Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity for speed and accessibility. http://www.optimizationweek.com/reviews/travel/ +15: XML. XML Basics By Liviu Tudor "Do you cringe when you hear the words 'XML'? Are you just not sure what the heck this acronym is all about? Not to worry! In this article, Liviu introduces us to XML, the various ways it can be created and parsed, as well as a brief introduction to XML and the way it came to be." http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/XML/XML_Basics_-_Part_One/ [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. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates. + 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.]