+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 01, July 02, 2004 An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 01 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: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TOOLS. 13: TYPOGRAPHY. 14: USABILITY. 15: XML. SECTION TWO: 16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessible HTML/XHTML Forms By Ian Lloyd "Ian has somehow managed to write an excellent article on creating accessible web page forms. You'll learn the benefits of the fieldset element, the common accessibility pitfalls of Javascript-enabled forms, and other handy tips. So choose a section 'beginner, intermediate, or advanced' and read on." http://tinyurl.com/3evrg What is an accessible website? - an answer in the form of a diagram. By Jim Byrne "A diagram which summarizes my article, What is an accessible website?" http://www.mcu.org.uk/showlog.php?weblogid=78 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins By Ryan Brill "Two- and three-column, liquid page designs with header and footer are easy to dash off using old-school HTML table layout methods. Designing them in CSS is trickier, and can sometimes even require you to structure your page's content elements in a specific (and undesirable) order. Negative margins to the rescue! Ryan Brill whips up two quick CSS layouts to demonstrate the power of negative thinking." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/negativemargins/ HTML and CSS for Mobiles By Patrick Griffiths "To what extent do browsers on mobile phones and PDA's support HTML and CSS?" http://www.htmldog.com/ptg/archives/000055.php What's in a Name part 2 Andy Clarke "Eric Meyer's recent comments about my original What's in a name column have prompted me draw some conclusions from the comments and suggestions made on And All That Malarkey and elsewhere." http://tinyurl.com/2oxcy +03: DREAMWEAVER. Using Insert Div Tag in Dreamweaver MX 2004 By Virginia DeBolt "One of the impediments to taking full advantage of CSS for users of Dreamweaver in the past has been the lack of an way to create a div with anything but the Draw Layer tool. In Dreamweaver MX 2004, Macromedia added a tool called Insert Div Tag for just that purpose. Unfortunately, most of the books I have seen that describe the use of Dreamweaver MX 2004 are not giving enough information about how Insert Div Tag can be used. This tutorial is meant to fill the gap." http://www.webteacher.ws/insertdiv.html +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Selecting scenarios By Donna Maurer "So we printed out all scenarios on index cards. At the beginning of the usability test I asked the participants to put them into 4 piles according to how often they were asked that question - frequent, sometimes, rarely and never. I also asked participants if there were questions that were asked frequently but were not covered. This gave me extra information about what clients ask about and checked that the scenarios were realistic. I chose 4 scenarios from the 'frequent' pile and 4 from the other piles, making sure I didn't double up on topics." http://www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/archives/000557.html +05: EVENTS. IUI 2005 International Conference On Intelligent User Interfaces January 9-12, 2005 San Diego, California, U.S.A. http://www.iuiconf.org +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Designing for Scalability By Jeff Lash "Successful design teams acknowledge that some change is inevitable and balance their short term and long term priorities, creating site architectures that are flexible and scalable. A successful design team will revisit business goals and user needs on a regular basis and make changes as necessary." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/designing_for_scalability/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Trends: Mixed Signals By Jacques Surveyor Given the popularity of the Web and the role JavaScript plays in Web development, one would expect JavaScript to be ranked in the top ten programming languages. But if you take the measure of JavaScript in 2004 you get mixed signals. http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/j_s/column7/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Client vs. Developers Wars By Eric Holter "We wrote our book 'Client vs. Developer Wars' after discovering how radically the power of prototyping can change the dynamics of the web design process. 'Gray screen' or "RaPiD" prototyping (building a simple HTML model of a web site) provides an extremely effective way of communicating a web site's structure, content, and functionality before it's built. Prototyping also overcomes many other difficulties commonly associated with web design, such as managing expectations, communicating effectively, working through the design process, and creating and delivering content." (Free PDF download.) http://www.newfangled.com/about/book.php All hours are not created equal By Jason Fried "$150/hr Standard Rate." "$200/hr if you want it NOW." "$250/hr if you want to watch over my shoulder while I work." "$300/hr if you want to help." "$400/hr if you worked on it first." http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives/000717.php +09: NAVIGATION. Dynamically Conjuring Drop-Down Navigation By Christian Heilmann "Got content? Got pages and pages of content? Wouldn't it be nice if you could offer your readers a drop-down menu providing instant access to any page, without having to sit down and program the darned thing? By marrying a seemingly forgotten XHTML element to simple, drop-in JavaScript, Christian Heilmann shows how to do just that. There's even a PHP backup for those whose browsers lack access to JavaScript. Turn on, tune in, drop-down." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dynanav/ Search Engine Optimization and Non-HTML Sites By Alan K'necht "Since search enginesÑfor now and the foreseeable futureÑwill continue to prefer plain text for indexing, you should follow these guidelines to ensure that your content is spidered by the search engines, and, as a result, will enjoy high rankings in search results. By anticipating the problems and implementing these solutions, you can make your Web site more search engine-friendly and start attracting an audience you might otherwise have never found." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/seo_and_non_html_sites/ Contradictions in Accessibility - Keyboard Usage and Tabindex By Derek Featherstone "Most standards-based web sites don't need to include tabindex for their links. When they are included along with other techniques such as skip to content links, they can hinder functionality and usability." http://www.wats.ca/articles/keyboardusageandtabindex/62 +10: PHP. Building a Site Engine with PHP, Part 2 By James Murray "If you read the first article in this series, you'd know that we're about to start talking about the plug-in and module system for our site engine. Along with the plug-ins and modules, we're also going to be discussing some of the general functions that are needed to make site engine work correctly." http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Building-a-Site-Engine-with-PHP-Part-2/ +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Catching Web Standards By John Allsopp's girlfriend "Web standards are not only sexually transmitted. But if you believe in web standards and you're single, go on and talk about them to a cute member of the Clueless Majority. You may well have a convert, and you never know, you may just get lucky in the process." http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2004/06/catching_web_st.html The Real Reason You Should Care About Web Standards By Andrei Herasimchuk "Generally speaking, standards are a means to apply pressure on corporations to behave in a manner that is beneficial to everyone, not just the shareholders of the corporation." http://www.designbyfire.com/000099.html Embracing Best Practice By Simon Willison "It's time to extend the discussion. Web standards are a small but vital part of a larger solution, something I like to think of as web development best practice...There are plenty of benefits of re-framing web standards in the larger context of best practice." http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/06/11/bestPractice +12: TOOLS. Free accessibility check By hermish.com An online tool. http://www.hermish.com/check_access.cfm Web Developer By Chris Pederick A handy tool for Firefox that "adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. Current tools include converting form POSTs to GETs, hiding images, outlining block level elements, disabling styles and many more. http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/webdeveloper +13: TYPOGRAPHY. Measuring em Widths By Cameron Adams "I've just recently started really focusing on using ems as a way of specifying element dimensions on web pages. Widths, heights, margins, padding; traditionally pixels are used to measure them, but the em is a valid - and in a lot of cases - the preferable unit of measure. Particularly if your designs plan on catering for users who resize their text." http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2004/05/27/ Clarendon is the new Helvetica By Jeffery Zeldman "Like love, Clarendon is all around us. Designed in 1953 by Hermann Edienbenz, the quirky slab serif has been popping up everywhere. Its resurgence may reflect a longing for simpler, less dangerous times." http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0604d.shtml +14: USABILITY. Time for a Redesign: Dr. Jakob Nielsen ByÊBrad Wieners "Dr. Jakob Nielsen, the 'King of Usability,' made his name as a champion of minimal, easy-to-use Web design. The Danish-born engineer believes companies can save $5 million a year and achieve 1,000 percent ROI simply by making their intranets more effective. Nielsen discusses how a solid Web strategy is essential for business, and reflects on a few of his online pet peeves." http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1397,1612183,00.asp Production For Use By Jeffery Zeldman "Design and usability are not enemies. They are really two parts of the same art and science. We separate them because we are a specialist culture, and in so doing, we promote limited thinking, deep misunderstandings, and pointless antagonism between people who should be allies. On the web, graphic design, site architecture, and usability should be understood as component parts of a single thing - I call it web design, you may call it user experience or who knows what." http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0604e.shtml Ten Best Government Intranets Jakob Nielsen "Redesigning an intranet for usability often more than doubled the use of these award-winning designs from ten public-sector organizations." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040621.html +15: XML. XHTML is invalid HTML By Anne Van Kesteren "So if we want to create valid documents people should either switch to application/xhtml+xml or switch to HTML 4.01." http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/06/invalid-html Well-Formed By Anne Van Kesteren "To sum it up: in order to have a well-formed XML document, whether it is 'just' XML, RDF, SVG, Atom or XHTML; your document needs to be in utf-8 or utf-16 and all characters must match that encoding, you must have encoded the five XML entities and last, but not least, your tags need to be opened, closed and nested correctly. If you can't do that, you are an incompetent fool." http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/06/well-formed Why Switch to XHTML? By Lee Underwood "For Web developers, the learning process never seems to end, especially with coding. As the web evolves, so do the standards, which are moving from HTML to XHTML. Learn why you should consider migrating to this new standard sooner than later." http://www.webreference.com/authoring/xhtml/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +16: 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 + SIGN OFF. Until next time, Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]