+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 33, February 6, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 33 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: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TOOLS. 11: TYPOGRAPHY 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. Accessibility humanized By Henrik Olsen "Most web developers act in blindness when they design accessible websites, since they know next to nothing about disabled people and the technology they use. Accessibility guidelines and validation tools don't provide this insight. Accessibility for disabled users should be approached from a user centred perspective." http://www.guuui.com/issues/01_04.php The Business Case for Web Accessibility By Andy Budd "In this article I hope to give a brief outline about exactly what web accessibility is, and then explain how building an accessible website can have a positive impact on your business, both in terms of PR and ROI." http://www.andybudd.com/blog/archives/000143.html Adding Tags to PDF improves accessible By Jim Byrne "A screen reader is not a particularly useful tool if it cannot not read out the text of a document in the correct order, or if it cannot distinguish between structural elements such as headings, links or paragraph text. With this in mind Adobe has, adopted a strategy of 'marking up' the structure of PDF documents using tags; much in the same way tags are used to markup HTML pages. Marking up the PDF document enables compatible screen readers to read the text in the appropriate order (i.e. the order of the tags is the reading order of the document), and to make use of the information provided about document structure in a way that helps increase accessibility for users..." http://www.mcu.org.uk/show.php?contentid=76 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Design: Custom Underlines By Stuart Robertson "While web designers generally have a great deal of control over how a document should be presented, basic CSS doesn't provide many options for the style of underlines below the links on a page. But with a few nips and tucks, you can take back creative control of the way your links look. Frequent ALA contributor Stuart Robertson shows how." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/customunderlines/ Focus and not By Paul Scrivens "So :focus would not be helpful when used with links, but it can be very useful on form inputs. When clicking on a textbox you can change the property of that textbox." http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/css_focus/focus_and_not.php First-line and first-letter By Paul Scrivens "In this second edition of CSS Focus we will look at the ::first-line & ::first-letter pseudo elements. These are really effective if you wish to give your content a more artsy, graphic design type feel..." http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/css_focus/firstline_amp_firstletter.php The IE Factor By Douglas Bowman "When working with semi-complex layouts, I frequently encounter challenges that end up slowing me down. I'm getting familiar with these road blocks, and can often predict where I'll find them. Having patience, or knowing what to try to get around them prevents head from going through monitor." http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/01/26/ie_factor.html Definition lists - misused or misunderstood? By Russ Weakley "What are definition lists? When are they appropriate? And how to style them to look like tables, image galleries, calendar of events and more." http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/definition/ CSS from the Ground Up By Joe Gillespie "A new series of tutorials that assumes no knowledge of Cascading Style Sheets whatsoever. If you are a bit nervous of dabbling in things that you don't understand, this is definitely for you!" http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/basics/index.html +03: DREAMWEAVER. Hand-Coding PHP with Dreamweaver By Gareth Downes-Powell, Tim Green, Bruno Mairlot This is an excerpt of chapter 12 of "Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development". http://tinyurl.com/2srfs +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Keep Online Surveys Short By Jakob Nielsen "To ensure high response rates and avoid misleading survey results, keep your surveys short and ensure that your questions are well written and easy to answer. " http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040202.html +05: EVENTS. Computer Supported Cooperative Work Conference November 6-10, 2004 Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. http://www.acm.org/cscw2004/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Simple Tricks for More Usable Forms By Simon Willson "Web developers loathe the task of building forms almost as much as users loathe having to fill them in. Simon explains how some smart JavaScript and intelligent CSS can help remedy the situation." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1273 +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Jeffrey Zeldman Is Not Obsolete By sxsw.com "Basic CSS is the easiest web technology you'll ever learn. What's not so easy at first is using CSS to replicate the kinds of designs we've learned to create with tables." http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/tech_report/recent_interviews/j_zeldman/ All About Accessibility with Sharron Rush By sxsw.com "Accessible design, it turns out, is simply good design." http://tinyurl.com/28lwl Don't design on spec By Jeffrey Zeldman "Three reasons never to submit free designs when responding to a Request for Proposal." http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0104h.shtml#spec How to manage smart people By Scott Berkun http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue28.htm +08: PHP. Develop rock-solid code in PHP: Part three By Amol Hatwar "This tutorial is intended for both amateur and professional PHP programmers who want to design and write quality functions. To complete this tutorial, you must have a basic level of working knowledge with PHP, and know how to define functions. " http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/tut-hatwar3.php Cookies in PHP By Timothy Boronczyk "A cookie is a small bit of information stored on a viewer's computer by his or her web browser by request from a web page..." http://codewalkers.com/tutorials/60/1.html The PHP Anthology Volume 2, Chapter 1 - Access Control By Harry Fuecks Control user access to your site using both basic HTTP authentication and application level authentication. Harry also explains how to implement a user registration system and create a fine-grained access control system with users, groups and permissions in this, the latest instalment of The PHP Anthology. http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1279 +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Interface Design Issues #02: Consistency and standards By Andrei Michael Herasimchuk "Consistency is one of the golden rules of interface design. There can be no question about this. It's important on many levels. When applied effectively in a design, consistency creates a foundation for a user to interact with the product in a predictable manner. Consistency creates usage patterns, offering users the opportunity to succeed in the face of an unknown feature encountered for the first time." http://www.designbyfire.com/000040.html +10: TOOLS. Color Schemes (color tool) By pixy "This application generates color schemes of several types. Every scheme is based on one (base) color, which is supplemented with additional colors making together the best optical imperssion - using one of the authentic algorithms." Start using the color tool right now. Be sure to note the help link in the corner." http://www.pixy.cz/apps/barvy/index-en.html 11: TYPOGRAPHY Accessible Web Typography - an introduction for web designers By Jim Byrne The full text of Jim's book, Accessible Web Typography, an introduction for web designers is now online. http://www.scotconnect.com/webtypography/ +12: USABILITY. Andrew's Usability in the Real World: Looks, or Brains? By Andrew Swartz "What do you do when people prefer a pretty interface to a usable one?" http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1415.asp Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do) By Pat Holt "The list also could be called, "10 COMMON PROBLEMS THAT DISMISS YOU AS AN AMATEUR," because these mistakes are obvious to literary agents and editors, who may start wording their decline letter by page 5. What a tragedy that would be." http://www.holtuncensored.com/ten_mistakes.html What makes a great website? By Gerry McGovern "What makes a great website is focus and clarity of purpose. A great website is unpretentious. It doesn't pretend to be what it is not. It never wastes your time because it always gets to the point. A great website helps you to act." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_02_02_ms.htm +13: XML. XForms Institute: Interactive XForms School By The XForms Institute "Like XHTML, SVG, and RSS, XForms is an XML-based language written with tags that can be identified by surrounding angle brackets. (XML purists prefer to call these elements) Learning XForms is largely a matter of understanding what individual elements do, as well as how they interrelate. One difference is that XForms provides several more elements than form authors might be accustomed to. As a result, several tasks that would have otherwise required complicated scripting can be accomplished declaratively, just by putting the right elements in place." http://xformsinstitute.com/ XForms: XML Powered Web Forms: Chapter 1 By T.V. Raman "XForms - XML-powered Web forms - are set to replace HTML forms as the backbone of electronic commerce. With XForms, programmers can create durable and dependable feature-rich forms accessible from multiple platforms and devices and available in multiple languages and modes." http://www.webreference.com/programming/awxml3/ XForms Basics, Part 3Ê Ê Ê By Harish Kamath "In this concluding article, find out how to use the xforms' bind element to perform calculations on form input values, integrate XPath expressions into your XForms model and get a crash course in the XForms event model." http://www.devshed.com/c/a/XML/XForms-Basics-3/ [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. 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.]