+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 39, March 19, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 39 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: BOOKS. 03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 04: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Spoken Interface By Apple.com All of the assistive technology vendors abandoned the Mac, so Apple is building its own. OS X is getting an built-in screen reader. http://www.apple.com/accessibility/spokeninterface/ High Accessibility, High Design - CSS to the Rescue By Joe Clark "Anyone with good graphic-design skills can use Web standards to produce attractive Web sites that function adequately for nearly all viewers and very well for most viewers - including people with disabilities. This article will explore a few details concerning the interplay of accessibility and Web design. We'll learn of new methods of ensuring that even Web sites that take appearance very seriously can function adequately for people with a few relevant disabilities. Along the way, we'll learn why it's necessary to allow some visitors to completely override the graphic design you chose - though that doesn't mean you have to lose the design for everyone else..." http://www.naarvoren.nl/artikel/high_accessibility.html Optimizing Your Chances with Accessibility By Brandon Olejniczak "...A second important but often neglected benefit of accessible Web sites is the ease with which search engine spiders process and rank compliant, accessible code..." http://www.digital-web.com/features/optimizing_accessibility.shtml Word to xHTML Revisited By Kirk Biglione "...While it's tempting to segregate Web production standards from day-to-day clerical functions, it's important to understand that poorly trained front-line staff can have a direct impact on your website's accessibility without ever touching your CMS (or whatever tool you may be using to publish your website). If you haven't done so already, it's time to take a holistic view of your organization's content. Inaccessible web content frequently starts out as a poorly produced Office document..." http://www.alttags.org/archives/2004/03/10/26/ Presenting the Case for Web Accessibility By W3C "This document is an initial draft..." http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/bcase/Overview.html User Responsibility for Web Accessibility By James Craig "If we use several accessibility techniques to 'enable' a disabled user, at what point do we put the responsibility for access on the user, and not the designer or developer? How far is far enough?..." http://cookiecrook.com/sxsw/2004/demo/ +02: BOOKS. Meyer, Eric. A. Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition, O'Reilly & Associates, 2004. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Dealing with differences in CSS floats in IE and Netscape By Michael Meadhra "An annoying problem that Web builders contend with is the varying interpretations and renderings of the same CSS code by different browsers. Here's a workaround to one problem: the differences in how variable-width floats are rendered in IE and Netscape." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371-5164730.html A print alternative without the extra work By Tony Patton "In this article, I'll concentrate on the print option and cover the screen option as well. You can associate a media type with style sheet elements using a variety of methods..." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371-5160220.html IE7 (compliance patch) By Dean Edwards Dean Edwards has been working on improving CSS support in IE. He says, "This is an attempt to make Microsoft Internet Explorer more compliant when it comes to web standards". Although the project is entitled 'IE7,' there is no real connection to any official release. It is a DHTML hack which turns CSS into a form that IE/Win5.5+ can render as intended. http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/ +04: DREAMWEAVER. DW MX 2004 Updater - Expect Better Performance! By Heidi Bautista "Macromedia faced strong criticism last September when it released Dreamweaver MX 2004. Many long-time users complained of poor performance and decided against upgrading from the MX version. If you're in that camp, take heart. Macromedia listened. Released just last night, the Dreamweaver MX 2004 Updater is a significant improvement over last September's release..." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=0673F Creating Toggle - O - Matic Menus in Macromedia Dreamweaver MX By Angela Buraglia "How the menus look is entirely up to you; they're all CSS-driven. Simply put, the CSS display property is set by way of some crafty little JavaScript...." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=102616 +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Eyetrack Is Not a Solution By Howard I. Finberg "Today, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies releases the results of its important research project: Eyetrack III. Eyetrack is an effort to show how online news users process information on a Web page. We look through the eyes (literally) of a group of consumers as they view broadband-era news websites and multimedia editorial content. It's the third eye-tracking study conducted by Poynter since 1991. For media company managers and staff, this Eyetrack research will provoke important discussions and help guide sites in redesign and navigation decisions. It is likely that there will be some findings that will raise questions and concerns. Fundamentally, however, the Eyetrack results are just one more tool to help journalists do their jobs better." http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=62501 +06: EVENTS. International PHP Conference 2004 Spring Edition May 3-5, 2004 Amsterdam, Netherlands http://www.phpconference.com/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Forms Processing Emergence - JavaScripted By Jacques Surveyer "2004 has already been dubbed the Year of Linux, the Year of the Portlet, and the Year of Home PC media centers. However, Web and JavaScript developers in particular will want to pay attention to form processing because developments are coming fast and furious into the Web world..." http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/j_s/column6/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Get Control! An Introduction to Process and Documentation Part 1 - Documentation By Dave Hecker "Scope creep, inaccurate specs, grumpy clients and tiny margins should *not* be a feature of the Web developer's daily life. Daves series explains how and why Web process and documentation can help you work efficiently and profitably. Make the leap of faith and embrace process documentation (and its benefits!) today..." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/process-and-documentation +09: NAVIGATION. Debating The Page Paradigm By Mark Hurst "..Happily, most responses were positive. These came from the growing community of user advocates, doing good work online, based on observations of users in a natural, non-directed lab setting. The few negative responses came from information architects who were concerned that the Page Paradigm might encourage people to stop using so-called 'breadcrumb links' - or worse, devalue information architects who get paid to create those links. My response is simple: if you're creating a website or any other kind of customer experience in business, there's only one thing that matters: Did the customer have a good experience?..." http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/04/0308.pp.html +10: PHP. Will PHP 5 Live Up to Its Billing? By Vincent Ryan "PHP 5 is slated for a May 2004 release, promising object-oriented programming, native XML support, and more efficient SQL queries." http://tinyurl.com/38w43 An Intro to PHP 5's rewritten DOM, XSLT, and XPath extensions By Adam Trachtenberg "Every Web developer needs a few key skills: processing forms, querying databases, and parsing XML. While PHP makes it easy to solve the first two tasks, its XML support has been uneven. With PHP 5, this deficiency with first-rate XML utilities has been remedied. Of the many new XML features, this piece covers the DOM extension because it's the largest and most versatile of the XML specifications. It also shows how to use DOM with XSLT and XPath. Read this article to see the future of XML in PHP 5." http://tinyurl.com/2pu54 A Practical Approach to Object-Relational Mapping in PHP By Kieran Mathieson "This paper offers a practical solution to the object-relational problem in PHP. 'Practical' means an approach meeting the constraints that usually apply in application development..." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/mathieson20040309.php3 +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Code is food By Matthew Mullenweg "HTML is the ingredients and CSS is the world-class chef that takes the ingredients and arranges them in an attractive, delicious way....The web should be efficient, standards-based, and accessible. No site is perfect, but some try and some don't..." http://photomatt.net/archives/2004/03/10/code-is-food/ +12: USABILITY. How to Design a Website for the Tunnel Reader By Gerry McGovern People may initially scan read on the Web; their eyes moving quickly across a page. However, when they find the keywords they are interested in, they tend to tunnel read. What this means is that they focus on a specific set of content. They basically don't see anything else on your website. http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_03_15_tunnel.htm The complexity principle By Andrei Herasimchuk and Donna Driscoll "Overly complex interfaces significantly impact usability and must be avoided. While there are plenty of studies researching this issue and plenty of data to point to how complexity hurts a product, in order to truly address the root of problem..." http://www.designbyfire.com/000063.html Redesign Case Study By D. Keith Robinson "I thought it might be fun and helpful to document my redesign process for this latest version of Asterisk*. I've also been asked quite often about my process, and how I go about working on a new project. My hope is that I can record some lessons learned for the next time I want to redesign as well as share my experience for others to learn from..." http://tinyurl.com/2f65m [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]