+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 13, September 9, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 13 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: FLASH. 06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: PHP. 11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 12: TYPOGRAPHY. 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. Assistive Technology: Alternative Pointing Devices By Mel Pedley "Not everyone can use a standard mouse..." http://www.gawds.org/showcategory.php?categoryid=19 Best Practices in Online Captioning By Joe Clark "The better part of a year in the making, and created in conjunction with the TILE project, I've written 21 chapters on the topic of best practices in online captioning." http://joeclark.org/access/captioning/bpoc/?axx +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Pocket-Sized Design: Taking Your Website to the Small Screen By Elika Etemadand Jorunn D. Newth "Among the many websites that are out there, few are standards-compliant. Among those few, only a handful sport style sheets adjusted to the needs of handheld devices. Of those which do offer styling for handhelds, not all will fit the smallest, lowest-resolution screens without presenting the user with the ultimate handheld horror: namely, horizontal scrolling. This article presents a set of general suggestions for creating a handheld-friendly style sheet that works well even on handheld screens no wider than 120px..." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/pocket/ Absolutely Relative By Joe Gillespie "The concepts of absolute and relative CSS positioning are often misunderstood. This article clears-up some of the gray areas and shows how they can be used together to great effect for creative layouts." http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/wpd0904news.htm#feature Liquid Bleach By Douglas Bowman Doug Bowman posts some information on working with liquid CSS layouts. http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/09/03/liquid-bleach.html Sliding Faux Columns By Eric A. Meyer "A while back, in the summary to his article 'Throwing Tables Out The Window', Doug asserted: There's no longer any reason to use tables for layout, nor is there reason to maintain multiple versions of a site solely for different desktop browsers. Throw the tables out first. Trust us, they're not..." http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/09/03/sliding-faux-columns/ CSS Gridlock By Eric A. Meyer "I mentioned in my post that the only CSS grid layout capability is styled tables. Then I said that the only 'pure CSS' grid layout approach being to apply table-related display values to non-table elements. In one sense, I said the same thing twice, but in another sense, I contradicted myself. When I read the post again, I decided that a little clarification was in order. " http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/09/05/css-grids To Be Tabled By Eric A. Meyer "Hopefully, this will serve as the third of three posts on tables and layout, and not the third of more than three..." http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/09/06/to-be-tabled/ Ten CSS tricks you may not know By Trenton Moss http://evolt.org/article/rdf/17/60369/index.html Ten CSS tricks - corrected and improved by Tantek Celik "Recent Evolt article Ten CSS tricks you may not know, is seeing plenty of discussion, so it deserves a bit of a critique. Note: The criticisms contained in this post are intended as ways to improve the tips in the article, nothing more, and should be taken as such" http://tantek.com/log/2004/09.html#d07t1434 +03: DREAMWEAVER. Web Standards in Dreamweaver, Part 2 By Costas Hadjisotiriou, with Rachel Andrew and Kevin Marshall "This article walks you through setting the preferences for working with CSS in Dreamweaver, how to work with the CSS style panel, linking to the stylesheet, improvements to the property Inspector, how to create new XHTML documents and more." http://tinyurl.com/4pyw6 +04: EVENTS. Web Design for Usability Workshop November 3, 2004 London, England http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/webdesign.shtml +05: FLASH. The Flash Hall of PR Shame By Tom Murphy "If a visitor takes the time to type your URL, or if they click on a link to your company, why do you think they would be interested in sitting through an advert? Why do people insist on abandoning sensible, familiar HTML navigation for Flash buttons that have no names and take ages to load? Or worse take over my browser and/or Windows? Flash has its place. It is very effective for presentations, demonstrations and tutorials, but it's not a replacement for good web site navigation and it shouldn't be an excuse for forcing a visitor to sit through an advert..." http://www.natterjackpr.com/Flash/hall_of_fame.html +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Site Diagrams: Mapping an Information Space By Jason Withrow "Site diagrams can be quite helpful in answering all kinds of hard questions. How to create the right diagram became a personal challenge for Jason Withrow. He shares his story through tips and techniques..." http://tinyurl.com/56cqj +07: JAVASCRIPT. Dynamic Elements - cloak and dagger web design By Chris Heilmann "There are not many aspects of web design that seem to ignite the same fascination in developers as making elements dynamic by hiding and showing them on user interaction. Collapsible lists, maps with hover elements and multi level drop-down navigation still seem to be hot and need to be part of a web site to make it "cool" and to "increase usability". Much like the magician conjuring the rabbit out of the top hat for the 10th time in a row this design stunt does gets a bit stale though. Maybe it is time to take a step back and look at what we do." http://evolt.org/article/rdf/4090/60363/index.html +08: MISCELLANEOUS. How to Give and Receive Criticism By Scott Berkun "Good feedback is rare. It can take a long time to find people who know how to provide useful criticism, instead of simply telling you all the things they think are ÒwrongÓ with you or whatever you've made. A good critic spends as much energy describing what something is, as well as what it isn't. Good criticism serves one purpose: to give the creator of the work more perspective and help them make their next set of choices. Bad criticism uses the opportunity provided by someone elseÕs work to make the critic feel smart, superior or better about themselves: things that have nothing to do with helping the recipient of the critique...Given the difficultly of creative work, it would seem that giving and receiving useful feedback should be an important part of what designers, writers, programmers and others are taught to do. This essay attempts to serve that purpose." http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue35.htm +09: NAVIGATION. IA Heuristics for Search Systems By Louis Rosenfeld "Another day, another project, another set of IA heuristics. A client asked me to kick the tires of their search system, so I decided to expand on the search aspects of the information architecture heuristics that we came up with a couple weeks back. This time, I tried to align and categorize these guidelines with some common steps users take when searching a site. This semi-sequence goes like this..." http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000290.html Web Writing: How to Judge a Good Website From a Bad One By Gerry McGovern "...Good websites tend to have a rich and intuitive link structure. Good web writers think clearly about how each piece of content links up with the rest of the content on the website." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_09_06_web_writing_links.htm Clearly label those buttons By Garrett Dimon "... button labels should communicate what happens when they are pressed and use language that users understand." http://tinyurl.com/4gmce +10: PHP. Setting up a PHP 5 development environment with Apache 2 and MySQL 4.1.3 By Builder.com "I'm going to run you through the process of setting up a cutting-edge development environment for Web scripting with PHP, using PHP 5.0, Apache 2.0, and MySQL 4.1.3. Start your terminals and warm up the compilers. Let's get going!..." http://builder.com.com/5100-6374_14-5290304.html +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Standards in Education and Government Presentation By Dean Jackson "For businesses it's quite straightforward: using Web Standards saves time and money. The same applies to Education and Government, but there are other reasons. Government has the duty to provide the best possible Web content for the community it represents. Educational institutions have the responsibility to teach the right skills, and to set the right examples." http://www.w3.org/2004/Talks/dj-we04-edugov/ +12: TYPOGRAPHY. Using special characters as typographic niceties By Michael Meadhra "It's the small details that give a site the professional polish it takes to rise above the crowd, details like paying attention to typography. Here are a few tips for using special characters and proper punctuation on your Web pages..." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5341208.html +13: USABILITY. Forging a partnership between designer and use By Sarah Horton "To form a successful partnership, both designers and users need to change their approach. First, designers need to think differently about their role. Usability is the primary responsibility of the Web designerÑa Web page that cannot be used successfully is worthless. Designers must work within the medium and deliver content in a format that can be transformed as needed by the user. Second, designers need to respect the boundaries of the user-controlled environment. When these boundaries are crossed, even with the best intentions, usability suffers. And finally, users need to become better acquainted with their Web environment. They need to learn the functions and features that are under their control, and use the available tools to customize their environment." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/designer_user_partnership/ Cognitive load and the rule of seven (or how many is too many) By Nick Finck "Ok, so I have done some deep researching about "how many is too many" (as far as links and information bits on a page) and I thought I would share some of this with the Digital Web Magazine readership." http://www.digital-web.com/news/2004/09/rule_of_seven/ +14: XML. XHTML 2.0 Explained By Sasha Slutsker "Although XHTML 2.0 isn't ready for general use yet, understanding how the changes will affect your writing and code will be key to a smooth transition. With full XForms integration, separation of content and function, and other features, XHTML 2.0 promises to revolutionize the Web when XHTML 2.0 arrives." http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/HTML/XHTML-2.0-Explained/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +15: 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.]