+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 31, January 23, 2004 An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 31 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: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: TYPOGRAPHY 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. University Web Accessibility Policies: A Bridge Not Quite Far Enough By Paul Bohman "Most university Web accessibility policies fall short of achieving their purpose. The Web sites of these universities often fail to meet minimum Web accessibility standards. Part of the problem lies with the policies themselves. Many of them fail to delineate a specific technical standard, fail to indicate whether compliance with the policy is required, fail to indicate a timeline or deadline for compliance, fail to define a system for evaluating or monitoring compliance, and fail to enumerate any consequences for failure to comply." http://www.webaim.org/coordination/articles/policies-pilot Are PDF documents really accessible to all? By Paul Bohman "The answer is an ambiguous perhaps. It is true that with the new Acrobat Reader 6.0 PDF documents are more accessible but it has not eliminated the need for authors to create accessible PDF files. Most people associate the inaccessibility of PDF files with blind users. However, there are other considerations to make regarding other major disability groups." http://www.webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/ Review of Macromedia Contribute as a HTML Editor By Eoin Campbell "Contribute claims to support the generation of accessible HTML pages, but this support seems very limited...It is possible to paste text from Word into Contribute, but the visual presentation is incorrect, and manual cleanup is invariably required. The inserted markup is also quite poor, as it contains extra superfluous markup (font specifications, etc.), and styled Word text (lists, headings) are not mapped correctly into equivalent HTML markup." http://www.xmlw.ie/services/mmcontributereview.htm +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Minimizing Flickering CSS Background Images in IE6 By Ryan Carver "Internet Explorer 6 for Windows is a sore spot for many users of CSS. Besides its countless rendering problems, it has the annoying habit of causing background-image styled elements to flicker when moused over. This article will cover a few things I've found that will eliminate that flicker." http://www.fivesevensix.com/studies/ie6flicker/ Printing Web documents and CSS By Jim Wilkinson "This document describes some of the issues concerning the use of CSS to reformat Web documents for printing. We also discuss those aspects that CSS is not able to control or even influence." http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=PrintStylesheets Media Types and Their Uses By Stephanie Sullivan "Using Media types, can open up a whole host of opportunities for restyling your content to cater to a variety of different devices. These days, not all users will be viewing your web site on a computer screen." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=ABF3A308E78096A1 Fractional Styles By Eric A. Meyer http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/200401.html#t20040114 +03: DREAMWEAVER. Troubleshooting FTP issues By Macromedia This is a very helpful document even if you don't use Dreamweaver. It discusses how FTP works and how to troubleshoot problems. http://tinyurl.com/2ok6k From Screen to Print: Creating a Print CSS By Stephanie Sullivan and Adrian Senior "Make your web pages printable by using CSS in Dreamweaver." http://tinyurl.com/22yap +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Usability Lab as Teaching Playground By Davis Marasco "At IBM, the Hursley Product Usability Design Group tailored standard usability activities and invited some school students in to try them out, writes Davis Marasco." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1450.asp +05: EVENTS. Extreme Markup Languages 2004 August 2-6, 2004 Montreal, Canada http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme/index.html Assets 2004 The sixth international ACM SIGCAPH conference on Assistive Technologies. October 18-20, 2004 Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A. http://www.assets.acm.org/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Designing for Limited Resources By Laura S. Quinn "Good online experience design must accommodate real-world limitations." http://tinyurl.com/243m9 +07: JAVASCRIPT. The Behavior Layer By Peter-Paul Koch "In the past JavaScript has been much abused, mainly because people misunderstood its purpose. Many sites used JavaScript for presentation only, for instance in ubiquitous and ultimately boring DHTML interfaces. The average DHTML site is not very accessible, to put it mildly, and the countless 'revolutionary' interfaces turned out not to be very interesting or useful, except for highlighting the cleverness of their programmers. This abuse has given JavaScript a bad name. It's high time to reverse that trend. In my opinion JavaScript can form a valuable addition to an accessible Web site, as long as we take a few precautions. In this column I'd like to take a look at the relationship between the JavaScript behavior layer and the structural and presentation layers. We'll find a few simple, general rules that can help us keep a site accessible while allowing full scope to JavaScript's power..." http://digital-web.com/columns/keepitsimple/keepitsimple_2004-01.shtml The Perfect 404 By Ian Lloyd Ian Lloyd explains how to create a user-friendly error 404 page with JavaScript. However, to avoid JavaScript-dependence the best way to do this is with server-side scripting. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Jeffrey Zeldman Interview By undertheiron "...Some people mistook the propaganda that accompanied the ALA 2001 CSS redesign and The WaSP Browser Upgrade Campaign as a set of commandments. In fact it was intended merely to wake designers up to the fact that browsers had changed and standards-compliant methods (including CSS layout) could and often should be used. See, WaSP had been able to persuade browser makers to support standards; but many designers still acted as if the software through which sites were experienced had not changed since 1998..." http://iron.wootest.net/jeffrey_zeldman.php +09: NAVIGATION. Grokker, or Visual Navigation By Juan C. Dursteler "The advent of increasingly visual and better structured browsers like Vivisimo, Grokker or TouchGraph is beginning to shake up a world that seemed to be static. A definitive reference point appears to still be beyond the horizon, but we are definitely closer." http://www.infovis.net/E-zine/2004/num_138.htm What are Menu Transitions? By Joshua Kaufman "Here's the lesson: if users aren't sure what idea the menu transitions convey, or if they're gratuitous, don't use them. Either don't use any menu transitions or improve the menu transitions by using them to support the overall experience." http://unraveled.com/archives/2004/01/menu_transitions +10: PHP. The PHP Anthology Volume I, Chapter 3 - PHP and MySQL By Harry Fuecks "Chapter 3 of The PHP Anthology provides you with all the essentials of MySQL, PHP's favorite database. From the basics of avoiding SQL injection attacks, Harry steps us through to the more advanced issues of MySQL's FULLTEXT search facilities, corrupt table repair and database back up, and much more" http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1272 +11: TYPOGRAPHY Type: the Extra Mile By Dave Shea "A few typographic terms before we get started..." http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/01/18/type_the_ext/index.php +12: TOOLS. Simple CSS - A Free CSS Authoring Tool By HostM.com "Simple CSS is a free and easy-to-use CSS authoring tool that manages multiple CSS projects, imports existing style sheets, and supports CSS2." http://www.hostm.com/css/ +13: USABILITY. Five ways to identify intranet usability issues by Donna Maurer "This article provides five techniques to identify likely usability problems in your intranet. Some techniques provide indications about where the main problems lie, others provide concrete evidence." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_intranetusability/index.html How Big is the Difference Between Websites? By Jakob Nielsen "The average difference in measured usability between competing websites is 68%. This is smaller than expected, but makes sense given the dynamics of design within individual industries." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040119.html Shipping Bits: Who's Faster on the Web? FedEx, UPS, or DHL? By Andy King "Shipping speed in the offline world is measured in days. But on the Web, users absolutely have to have it within 8 to 10 seconds. How did FedEx, UPS, and DHL stack up when it comes to web delivery speed? Read on to see who won the online speed derby." http://www.optimizationweek.com/reviews/shipping/ +14: XML. XML and JavaScript in Mozilla By Premshree Pillai "Premshree explains how to read and use XML file data using JavaScript in Mozilla. Learn how to display tag values, tag attribute values, and more in this hands-on tutorial." http://www.sitepoint.com/article.php/1268 Using XML with Legacy Business Applications: Chapter 1 By Michael Rawlins "Businesses running legacy applications that do not support XML can face a tough choice: Either keep their legacy applications or switch to newer, XML-enhanced applications. Here, author Michael Rawlins shows you how to build XML support into legacy business applications using Java and C++" http://www.webreference.com/programming/awxml2/ [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. 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.]