+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 3, Issue 06, July 27, 2004.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. 

++ISSUE 06 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: EVENTS.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
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.

Ten Quick Tests to Check Your Web Site for Accessibility
By Trenton Moss
"The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) says that web sites must be made accessible to disabled people. So how can you check that your web site is up to par? There are a number of basic tests you can make to address some of the main issues. The following list includes guidelines that provide a good start in increasing accessibility to disabled people..."
http://www.accessify.com/tutorials/ten-quick-tests.asp

MathPlayer 2.0 Makes Math in Web Pages Accessible to Visually Impaired Readers
By Bruce Virga
"Design Science announced today the release of version 2.0 of its free MathPlayer mathematics display engine for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0 web browser. MathPlayer enables Internet Explorer to display, and now speak, mathematical notation embedded in HTML and XHTML web pages using MathML. Its new features include math-to-speech technology, compatibility with screen reader software used by the visually impaired to read web pages, increased cross-browser compatibility via XHTML support, and improved mathematical formatting. MathML is an XML-based language for representing mathematical notation standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1998."
http://www.dessci.com/en/company/press/releases/040722.htm

Accessibility and the Web
By Lee Underwood 
"There are several things that can be done to make a Web site more accessible. Some are relatively simple; others require a little work..."
http://tinyurl.com/4ouzk


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Advanced CSS Rendering
By George Chavchanidze
The purpose of present site is to demonstrate how Cascading Style Sheets can be used in scientific web publishing. In particular, site explains how to render and style mathematical articles with CSS."
http://geocities.com/csssite/index.xml

Creating Great Looking Logos for Your Print Stylesheet
By juicedthoughts.com
"Well, if you are part of the "web standards" community, then you should know how to implement a print stylesheet. If not, you have probably been living under a rock. Well, I have recently come across a great way to implement a great looking logo that prints out at a very high quality resolution, but it only does this for when you print the page. So essentially you have two logos you will use."
http://tinyurl.com/4u7nw

A Navbar Using Lists
By Maxine Sherrin
"It's pretty uncontroversial these days that if you need to create a navbar you need to mark up this navbar as a list, using <ul> and <li> elements. This is the only semantically correct way of doing this, and we all know that semantically correct = correct..."
http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/tutorials/quick/list_navbar/

Getting your DIVs to behave like TABLEs
By Jonathan Snook
"Oh, the complexity of those multi-column layouts! It was so much easier with tables!" I hear you say. You'd be surprised at just how easy it can be to put together a multi-column layout with CSS2.1."
http://www.snook.ca/archives/000177.html

Tables Are Gone, My Code Is Valid, Now What?
By D. Keith Robinson
These are slides from Keith's WebVisions presentation. 
http://www.7nights.com/presentations/webvisions_2004/


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Dreamweaver MX 2004: Your Connection to the Internet
By Tom Muck and Ray West
"The way to become the best Web developer and Dreamweaver user you can be is to study as if you plan to become a professional, and that includes a review of the basics. This is chapter 1 from Dreamweaver MX 2004: A Beginner's Guide..."
http://tinyurl.com/63ls6


+04: EVENTS.

Experiencing Technical Communication
Usability at the STC Annual Conference
May 8-11, 2005
Seattle, Washington U.S.A.
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/activities/conference.html


+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture Second Annual Report
By AIfIA
"As the second year of the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture comes to a close, we can look back to see an organization that has grown beyond our early expectations...."
http://aifia.org/news/000362.php


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Getting started with JavaScript
By webdevtips.com
"This guide will help get you started on writing your own scripts with simple examples and explanations."
http://www.webdevtips.com/webdevtips/js/learning/index.shtml

Gecko DOM Reference
By mozilla.org
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/domref/


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

How to Use Mind Mapping Software for Project Management
By Chuck Frey
"Mind mapping software can be a powerful tool for managing your projects, your goals and even your to-do lists. Mind maps are very visually oriented, and enable you to gather, manage and share a large variety of information and resources quickly and easily -- making them an ideal tool for managing projects."
http://www.innovationtools.com/Articles/ArticleDetails.asp?a=148


+08: NAVIGATION.

Writing effective link text
By Trenton Moss
"Hypertext links are what connects web pages together and are at the very core of the Internet. As they're so important it's essential that your link text is effectively written and displayed - find out how."
http://evolt.org/article/rdf/4090/60343/index.html


+09: PHP.

Building a Site Engine with PHP, Parts 3, 4, and 5 
By James Murray
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Building-a-Site-Engine-Using-PHP-Part-3/
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Building-a-Site-Engine-with-PHP-Part-4/
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Building-a-Site-Engine-with-PHP-Part-5/


+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Standards Vs. Sensible Design
By Christian Heilmann
"There is, however, one thing that everyone's worried about, and people are likely to listen to you when you bring it up. Money. That's the point at which we can start to make clients aware that good Web design to standards makes sense. Point out flaws and problems in designs and tell the client truthfully how much more time it'll take you to eradicate these browser-specific bugs. Show the benefits of a layout that is independent of text, language, or the number of elements in the navigation system."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/standards-sensible-design


+11: TOOLS.

aDesigner
By ibm.com
"The aDesigner is a disability simulator that helps Web designers ensure that their pages are accessible and usable by the visually impaired."
Platforms: Windows 2000; Windows XP.
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/adesigner

IBM Tool Has An Eye For The Blind
By Jim Wagner 
"IBM's (Quote, Chart) emerging technologies site, alphaWorks, now features a Java-based application that lets developers see how their site looks and sounds to a person with low-vision impairment or blindness..."
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3381491


+12: USABILITY.

Top 10 Usability Blunders of the Big Players
By Trenton Moss
"In March 2003, Philippe Randour pointed out the Top 7 Usability Blunders Of The Big Players here on SitePoint. Since then, Web usability practices have become even more commonplace, and knowledge of the many Web usability benefits has become more widespread. The big players must surely have improved since then, right? Let's find out..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/usability-blunders-big-players

Defensive Design, Part 1: Elastic Design
By Paul Griffin
"What does Elastic Design mean? It means giving your design a certain amount of space to expand and contract. It means that you strive to make your layout resilient and flexible in as many situations as possible. After all, the rigid shell of an egg shatters when you throw it against the wall. A tennis ball, on the other hand, will change its shape, absorb the impact, and rebound without damage. Likewise, more rigid your design, the more brittle it becomes..."
http://tinyurl.com/3zhes


+13: XML.

Why isn't XHTML2 backwards compatible?
By W3C
"It is, but in a different way to how previous versions of HTML were backwards compatible..."
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq#backwards

XHTML 2.0 Draft Update, Debate Ensues
By Molly Holzschlag
"The W3C has released the sixth (that's right, sixth) draft of XHTML 2.0. Despite its draft status, the release re-ignited the ongoing HTML vs. XHTML debate...The point is to author documents that are well-structured, folks, and that can be done in HTML 4.01 just as efficiently as it can in XHTML 1.0. And leave the drafts to draft status, okay? There's a reason they're called drafts, after all."
http://tinyurl.com/5q8kl


[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


+ 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.]