+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 2, Issue 47, May 14, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 47 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: USABILITY. 14: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Don't use the statistics defense as a reason to exclude people from your content By Jim Byrne "We can't argue that we won't accommodate disable students because they only make up a small percentage of the student population. Equally we shouldn't argue that we won't accommodate users with particular browsers because they are part of a minority. In relation to the particular case of Netscape 4, it is legitimate to ask users to upgrade so that they get both the content and the good design - but not legitimate to argue that they won't get the content if they don't upgrade." http://www.mcu.org.uk/show.php?contentid=89 Designing Pages Accessible to Limited Textual Comprehension Users By Kynn Bartlett "The goal of this document is to provide clear and simple steps that a web author can take in order to increase the understandability of her site for users with limited textual comprehension." http://kynn.com/access/ltcu.php +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Iterative Design -- The Power of Cascading Style Sheets By Jared M. Spool "Almost by accident, CSS turns out to be a tremendously valuable prototyping tool. It allows for very fast design changes of both the content and the control and flow of a page, giving the design team incredible power during the iterative-design stages of development." http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/articles/iterative_design_css/ High-Powered Style By Eric A. Meyer This is Eric's presentation material from NOTACON (Northern Ohio Technological Advancement conference. http://tinyurl.com/297gj Uberlink CSS Rollovers 2004 By Al Sparber "What if you could make a great looking CSS navigation bar that looked and behaved like an image swapping menu? And what if it used just two images to power an unlimited number of links? If you'd like to learn how to make such a menu, please read on." http://www.projectseven.com/tutorials/css/uberlinks/index.htm CSS Link Styles 2004 By Al Sparber "Want to know how to create CSS link styles (pseudoclasses)? It's easy! Just follow along and you'll be a master in no time." http://www.projectseven.com/tutorials/css/pseudoclasses/index.htm CSS from the Ground Up - 4 By Joe Gillespie This article provides information on using DocTypes to help validate pages, taking CSS definitions out into external style sheets and styling tables. http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/wpd0504news.htm#feature The Basics of Positioning By Adrian Senior "In this tutorial, we will take a look at how we can position elements with CSS. This technique is commonly referred to as CSS-P. We will look at how we can position elements using margins, absolute, relative, and static positioning." http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=3B56F +03: COLOR. Oops! Nielsen did it again By Andrei Herasimchuk "This time around, Nielsen discusses the idea that web sites should use different colors for visited and unvisited links. Something he has done often times in the past. According to Nielsen, different colored links will save the user from insufferable navigational problems...The question the designer has to ask themselves when designing a solution for a web site is how useful is this 'clicked' concept of a visited page in the context of an active web? In my work on browser-based enterprise applications, I found it had little value or long term use." http://www.designbyfire.com/000088.html Colour and Contrast Accessibility Issues: for the design of e-learning materials By E. A. Draffan and Peter Rainger "This paper provides an insight into the issues of colour choices and colour contrast design requirements when developing on-line learning materials for people with colour discrimination difficulties as in colour blindness and visual impairment and for those who find different colours helpful for reading. The material covered by this paper forms part of the TechDis wider range of research into usability and accessibility issues of electronic educational content." http://www.techdis.ac.uk/seven/papers/colour-contrast.html +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Casting Your User Research By Peter Merholz Adaptive Path's Peter Merholz discusses how designers can ensure they recruit the right users for their research. http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/articles/casting_user_research/ How Much Interaction is Too Much? By Clifford Anderson "I've been doing usability testing for almost 20 years. Although I haven't been exposed to that many other facilitators, the ones I had seen facilitated very much like I did, which also seemed to be very much 'by the book'. Here, was someone with a very different approach." http://www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/0404-howmuchinteraction.html +05: EVENTS. HCI 2004: Design for Life September 6-10, 2004 Leeds Metropolitan University Leeds, United Kingdom http://www.hci2004.org/ User Interface 9 October 11-14, 2004 Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Focus on the Student: How to Use Learning Objectives to Improve Learning By Wendy Cown "If information architecture is a fairly new field, then the practice of teaching information architecture is even newer. Often instructors are experienced information architects who have little to no teacher training, and they must teach students with a wide range of experience and learning goals. Learning objectives are one tool that can make information architecture courses easier for teachers and more rewarding for students." http://tinyurl.com/2kocj +07: JAVASCRIPT. Presentational JavaScript By Bobby van der Sluis "In the last years the discussion about web standards has mainly focused on XHTML, CSS and their proper application, possibilities and limitations. The rapid evolution of the use of these technologies and concepts now appear to have implications for the use of other web standards like JavaScript and the W3C DOM." http://www.bobbyvandersluis.com/articles/presentationaljavascript.php Inserting at the cursor using JavaScript By Alex King This is a method for enhancing the usability of forms. http://tinyurl.com/3eqkm +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success By Jonathan Boutelie "User-centered design professionals pay special emphasis to one type of stakeholder the users of the system-arguing that user experience needs to be carefully crafted to satisfy user needs. While understanding user needs and goals is certainly necessary, it is often not sufficient for producing a successful design. Apart from an understanding of user needs and perspective, design needs to incorporate the goals and perspective of other stakeholders in order to get their buy-in and be considered a success in the corporate workplace." http://tinyurl.com/293eh Ten questions for Anne van Kesteren By Russ Weakley "Anne van Kesteren lives in Zeist in The Netherlands where he runs his own web development company, Limpid. However, Anne, is more widely known through his Weblog about markup style, where he explores the depths of XML, XHTML and CSS." http://webstandardsgroup.org/features/anne-van-kesteren.cfm +09: NAVIGATION. Guidelines for Visualizing Links By Jakob Nielsen "Textual links should be colored and underlined to achieve the best perceived affordance of clickability, though there are a few exceptions to these guidelines." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html +10: PHP. A Beginner's Crash Course into Object Oriented Programming By John Collins "The purpose of this article is to give a novice programmer the basic idea of what OOP is, as implemented using PHP. Readers should have a basic knowledge of programming ie what variables are, variable types, basic methods of writing comments, and how to enter code into a text editor." http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6788 User-Friendly Form Validation with PHP and CSS By Jeff Cogswell "Any non-trivial web application processes form data, and every secure web application has to validate that data on the server. Balancing security with user-friendliness can be tricky. Jeff Cogswell demonstrates one approach." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004/04/22/php_css_forms.html +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Usability Guidelines By the Massachusetts Institute of Technology "These guidelines include most factors to consider during a usability evaluation of a web site. Not all factors apply to every site." http://web.mit.edu/ist/usability/usability-guidelines.html +12: TOOLS. Style Sheet Optimizer v2.0 - Beta By flumpcakes "Online CSS optimizer, helps compress a style sheet for faster loading...It now optimizes the following (where possible): 1. Shortens hex values 2. Shortens short hand attibutes like margin and padding 3. Converts multiple padding/margin/font/background attributes into a single short hand attribute" http://flumpcakes.co.uk/css/opt/ W3C Markup Validator Upgraded "W3C is pleased to announce an upgrade to the W3C Markup Validation Service. The new release is easier to use and install. It features new documentation and navigation, and offers helpful explanations and recovery mechanisms instead of fatal errors. Managed by a team of volunteers and the W3C Quality Assurance Activity, and supported by a large community, this validator is the single most popular resource on the W3C Web site." http://validator.w3.org/ +13: USABILITY. WAI self-examination By Joe Clark "I was surprised and delighted to read last week that the Web Accessibility Initiative commissioned a usability study of its Web site. Done pro bono by the American Institutes for Research, the study demonstrated what we knew already - and then some." http://axxlog.wordpress.net/archives/2004/05/04/wai-usability/ Eight web usability killers By Steven Streight "Your website seems great to you. You're proud of the fact that you're online and getting hits. But are your site users happy with your site? Are they successful at obtaining the information, completing the tasks, or finding and purchasing the products they need?" http://tinyurl.com/393zk Tell me the story... The unifying role of scenarios in conceptual design By Kath Strau This article discusses the importance of scenarios in user interface design. http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/apr04.asp Accessible Doesn't Mean Usable By Sara Michael "An e-government initiative Web site that complies with the law's requirements for accessibility is not necessarily usable by people with disabilities. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act lays out technical requirements to ensure accessibility but stops short of linking that to usability, which guarantees a site is efficient and satisfying, said Sanjay Koyani, senior usability specialist in the Department of Health and Human Services." http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0419/feat-access3-04-19-04.asp +14: XML. Getting Friendly With (X)HTML By Eric A. Meyer This is Eric's presentation material from NOTACON (Northern Ohio Technological Advancement conference. http://tinyurl.com/3eh9a [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.]