+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 36, February 27, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 36 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: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 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. Design and Accessibility Best Practice By Douglas Bowman and Andrew Kirkpatrick "The single, most important concept to put into practice when making a site more accessible is the use of valid and semantic markup..." http://www.ftponline.com/reports/ddwsf/2004/bowman/ Multimedia Captioning Technology By Jon Gunderson "Creating accessible multimedia materials requires understanding the accessibility features of the major multimedia players and the standards that are used to format the captions. Multimedia standards for the web are not as complete or extensive as other web standards like HTML and CSS...Text tracks are used to create the captioning text for video and audio resources. SMIL has emerged as the standard way to synchronize and position video and text tracks to create captions. SMIL is supported by Quicktime, Real Networks and Internet Explorer, but not Windows Media Player. The text tracks for captions also must be created using different text track syntax." http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/new/multimedia/index.html Spinning an accessible Web By Arie Kahn "How to make your site readable for everyone..." http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/developer/0,39020469,39119092,00.htm Accessibility and usability By Peter-Paul Koch "I hinted at a potentially dangerous 'accessibility vs. usability' question. The time has come to study this question in more detail..." http://tinyurl.com/2wc77 Building in universal accessibility + checklist By e-Envoy http://tinyurl.com/jmug +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Designing for Context with CSS By Joshua Porter "The medium is the message: Imagine providing unique information exclusively for people who read your site via a web-enabled cell phone Ñ then crafting a different message for those who are reading a printout instead of the screen. Let your context guide your content. All it takes is some user-centric marketing savvy and a dash of CSS." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/designingforcontext/ Top 10 Reasons to Learn CSS By Christopher Schmitt "Christopher's so convinced that CSS should be a part of every designer's Web design toolkit, he devoted two lessons in Sessions.edu's updated Web Design I course to creating CSS layouts." http://www.sessions.edu/newsletter/Schmitt_C/interview.html Create Keyboard-friendly Link Effects By Larisa Thomason "Many people with disabilities prefer to use the keyboard to tab between links, form fields, and other page elements because they have problems using a mouse. That means they won't see your cool onMouseOver JavaScript effects or the style definitions for :hover. Maybe it's time to add a little focus to your links and create keyboard-friendly link effects." http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol6/accessibility_no10.htm The CSS box model By Al Sparber One of Al's new tutorials leading up to the launch of PVII CSS Lab http://www.projectseven.com/csslab/boxmodel/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Configure Dreamweaver MX to code XHTML By Damien "Dreamweaver MX is an excellent tool to write valid XHTML code. However Dreamweaver MX does not produce valid code out of the box. It has to be configured to do so. Lets configure Dreamweaver MX to produce XHTML." http://www.dreamlettes.net/tutorials/xhtmldmx/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Usability Test Data By David Travis "People often throw around the terms 'objective' and 'subjective' when talking about the results of a usability test. These terms are frequently equated with the statistical terms 'quantitative' and 'qualitative'. The analogy is false, and this misunderstanding can have consequences for the interpretations and conclusions of usability tests." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/datathink.html Inherent Value Testing By Jared M. Spool "Is your web site chartered with encouraging people to buy or use your product or service? Is it succeeding? It turns out there is a simple usability testing technique that can help you measure how your site communicates your product's inherent value..." http://www.uie.com/articles/inherent_value_testing/ +05: EVENTS. The Elements of User Experience July 22, 2004 New York, New York U.S.A. http://www.adaptivepath.com/events/2004/nyc/ MERLOT International Conference Online Resources: Sharing the Future August 4-6, 2004 Costa Mesa, California U.S.A. http://conference.merlot.org/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Fixing CMS usability issues with JavaScript By Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman "At work over the past few weeks, I've been writing some JavaScript to fix several of my pet peeves with our Vignette-based content management system. There's a lot that can be done with manipulating the DOM. My little scripts aren't remotely innovative uses of the DOM for news sites, but they do let me change some things in HTML that is otherwise out of my control..." http://www.ashbykuhlman.net/blog/2004/02/22/2324 +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Give The Web Some Respect By D. Keith Robinson "A good corporate Web team would have a dedicated developer, a dedicated editor, a dedicated producer/designer, a project manager and a writer/content manager at the very least. I realize it depends on the site and corporation, but it seems pretty rare to find a well constructed Web team....A company's Web sites, whether external or internal can, and probably will be, its biggest communication assets. It's time to treat it as such. Until organizations figure this out and are willing to step up to the plate and really give their Web projects what they need to succeed we're still going to see Web sites fail. We're still going to have to deal with mediocre sites with mediocre content that provide a mediocre user experience." http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives/give_the_web_some_respect.php +08: NAVIGATION. The Page Paradigm By Mark Hurst "Users don't much care 'where they are' in the website. So-called 'breadcrumb links,' which show the user the exact hierarchy of the website as they click further down, are a nice but mostly irrelevant technology. It's not that users don't understand the links; it's that they don't care." http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/04/0219.pp.html The Oversimplification of Mark Hurst By Peter Merholz "In his latest "Good Experience" email, Mark offers a series of notes for successfully addressing what he refers to as "the page paradigm." Unfortunately, he's misguided as often as he's on target." http://www.peterme.com/archives/000281.html Breadcrumbs and sense of place By Christina Wodtke "Reading 'The Oversimplification of Mark Hurst' I'm not sure Peter particularly disagreed with any of Mark's key points. And of course it's oversimplification..." http://www.eleganthack.com/archives/003855.html +09: PHP. Using MySQL from PHP By John Coggeshall One of PHP's prime benefits is its close integration with databases, especially MySQL. Having explained the basics of MySQL, John Coggeshall turns his attention to demonstrating how to use MySQL from PHP. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004/02/19/php_foundations.html Compressing your CSS with PHP By fiftyfoureleven.com If you write a CSS file for a medium sized website you may find, depending on the complexity of the site, that the file can get above 10kb quite quickly. Compressing your CSS in the method outlined below has proven (where I have applied it) to reduce the transfer size of the file by up to 75%. There are other ways to do this (see the weblog post outlined above), however they aren't available to everyone. With this method all you need is PHP." http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com/sandbox/compress-css-with-php/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The benefits of Web Standards to your visitors, your clients, and you! By Russ Weakley "The move from traditional to Web Standards based development takes time and practice. Rather than jump in and quickly becoming frustrated, set achievable goals and gradually move towards Web Standards." http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/ +11: TOOLS. MOZiE By zeit.ca "MOZiE is an extremely light-weight, free Windows application that allows web designers the ability to compare page rendering in Mozilla and Internet Explorer by embedding Gecko -- via the Mozilla ActiveX control -- in an HTML page that sits above an iframe displaying MSHTML-rendering, running as an HTA." http://www.zeit.ca/mozie/ Web Page Image Analyser By Gez Lemon "The image analyser tests Web pages to ensure that images have been specified properly." http://www.juicystudio.com/services/image.asp Readability Test By Gez Lemon "The readability test analyses a Web page to determine how readable it is." http://www.juicystudio.com/fog/ +12: USABILITY. Usability: drawing outside the lines By Molly E. Holzschlag "Although one-size-fits-all usability concepts provide a good foundation for designers interested in creating usable sites, a great user experience has far more to do with what you know about your users than what the books tell you. Molly Holzschlag shows you how to draw outside the usability lines and create sites that address the true needs of your site visitors." http://tinyurl.com/2l3jf Helping Your Visitors: a State of Mind By Nick Usborne "Even the simplest website is harder to figure out than a catalog or magazine. With every new site we visit, we have to 'learn' how it works, how its 'pages' turn, how to find what we're looking for. Text that takes visitorsÕ needs into account can help guide them through the maze." http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0204i.shtml Web Design Beyond Usability By Carolyn Wong "Jeffrey Veen, a founding partner of user-experience consulting company Adaptive Path, opened Digital Design World yesterday with his keynote titled, "Beyond Usability: Why Design is Hard and What We're Going to Do About It." Veen said that the assumptions we make about our audience, who our audience is, what they want, and how we can figure that out totally changes the way we do design today. We can no longer risk Web sites not working the first time. Gone are the days of constant Web site experimentation." http://www.ftponline.com/reports/ddwsf/2004/veen/ +13: XML. XForms Validator By XForms Institute "An interactive, Python-powered validator of XForms documents of all sorts. Works with multiple host languages." http://xformsinstitute.com/validator/ [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.]