+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 19, October 21, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 19 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: FLASH. 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. The People in the Neighborhood and Modus Operandi Two Web Essentials Presentations. By Joe Clark Web accessibility, a subset of web standards, is the one aspect of the evolving maturity of Web development. Learn just how wide the true web audience is, who's affected by web accessibility, and what accessibility is and is not. Then learn some practical issues in designing and developing Web sites that actually provide accessibility for the disabled groups. http://www.joeclark.org/essentials/ Pokemons in the Amazon Jungle: Web Accessibility, Disability Discrimination, And the WOW Factor A Web Essentials Presentation. By Bruce Maguire "There are two conclusions we can draw from this discussion. Firstly, any business, company, organization, or government department should ensure that their website contains clear and accessible contact information, and that someone within the organization is assigned specific responsibility for handling feedback about accessibility issues. Second, discrimination affects ordinary people living their day-to-day lives." http://we04.com/resources/pokemon/index.cfm Secret Benefits of Accessibility Part 2: Better Search Ranking By Trenton Moss "One of the main benefits of Web accessibility is that a Website that's more accessible to people is also usually more accessible to search engines. The more accessible your site is to search engines, the more confidently they can guess what the site's about, giving your site a better chance at the top spot in the search engine rankings." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/accessible-search-friendly-site Don't Use the Statistics Defense As a Reason to Exclude People from Your Content By Jim Byrne http://www.gawds.org/show.php?contentid=107 Web Accessibility: Ensuring Access for All By Bill Raschen "...despite its increasing importance, web accessibility remains a subject that at best is relatively poorly understood by many information professionals, and at worst attracts some wholly wrong misconceptions. What follows is an attempt to clarify the issue, discussing the implications of accessibility for both web designers and web users in general..." http://www.freepint.com/issues/141004.htm#tips Speaking up for Accessibility, Open standards and Good Design Joseph Denne "Embracing standards may mean retooling for some...but isn't that a price worth paying for an Internet open to everyone?" http://tinyurl.com/5eaqr +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Negotiation and a Sanity Saving Shortcut By Andrew Krespanis "I offer a walk through of how I start every new CSS styled site and my preferences for CSS hacks negotiation." http://leftjustified.net/journal/2004/10/07/css-negotiation/ Styling Even More Form Controls By Roger Johansson "In short, this is a reference that shows how differently form controls are rendered by different web browsers and operating systems. It also shows that little can be done to make form controls appear the same across browsers and platforms." http://tinyurl.com/4cmby Dynamic HTML Lab: Fun with Mozilla Border Radii By Peter Belesis "The Mozilla people have jumped the gun on CSS3 and added support for curved elements and borders. Here's a preview of what to expect in CSS3, and a demonstration of what you can do right now in Gecko browsers." http://www.webreference.com/dhtml/column70/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver MX 2004 Site Management By Matthew Pizzi and Zak Ruvalcaba "Dreamweaver is best known as a web design tool, but it can also be a great tool for website management. Learn about the tools built into Dreamweaver for just this purpose in this chapter from Matthew Pizzi and Zak Ruvalcaba." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=337155 Building a Blog in Dreamweaver with PHP and MySQL Part 3: Creating a Search Feature and Archiving Your Blog By Marius Zaharia "In this article, I will explore the hand-coding features in Dreamweaver by creating two useful add-ons for your blog: an archive calendar and a search engine. The last sections will also cover conditional regions and navigation bars that will make your blog slimmer and reader-friendly." http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/articles/php_blog3.html +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Use of Questionnaire Methods for Usability Assessment By J. Kirakowski "Gives details of how the SUMI questionnaire was developed, the five usability dimensions it measures, and how it works. Eight early case studies are summarized. Some historical background about usability questionnaires designed to be filled out by end users is given. Such questionnaires are contrasted with survey-type instruments and checklists. Issues of reliability and validity are addressed." http://www.ucc.ie/hfrg/resources/qfaq1.html Pete Gordon on Portable Usability Labs By Pete Gordon "Look at Linux, MySQL, PHP, Perl, and so much more (I personally love Mac OS X Desktop Manager--Richard Wareham you are amazing!) these are great examples of where developers develop for themselves, and the community at large benefits amazingly. The other side is when developers develop for themselves and it only meets a small portion of the user needs; or even worse the code (solution or whatever you want to call the product) goes in the wrong direction from meeting the primary users needs in favor of the few." http://dot.kde.org/1097763942/ Introduction to Quicklists for Web Communication By Thea van der Geest and Jan H. Spyridakis "Excerpted from 'Developing Heuristics for Web Communication: An Introduction to This Special Issue'." http://tinyurl.com/67pcx +05: FLASH. Standards-compliant JavaScript Flash Detection By Geoff Stearns Geoff Stearns published an article on Web Standards-compliant Flash Detection using JavaScript. He summarizes the issues you can run into when you embed a Flash object into a page, and provides the source code for a JavaScript library that embeds Flash objects and handles all of the cross-browser issues. http://tinyurl.com/5q4b4 +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Multidimensional Scaling By Nathan Curtis "Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyzes participant's judgments of the similarities or differences between items (such as cards serving as pages within an architecture)..." http://www.iawiki.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MultiDimensionalScaling IA Trends Survey Results and Analysis By Louis Rosenfeld "Future trend: The numbers of both in-house and agency IAs will decline; this drop will be partially countered by growth in self-employed consultants." http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000307.html Card Sorting Tools - Final Summary By Donna Maurer "I posted a short summary of card sorting tools last week. At the time, I had looked at all of the tools and entered cards into the two that I thought would allow me to go further. I didn't intend on getting real users to use the tools - I ran a sort as part of a workshop and entered the outcomes into the tools myself. I used two tools - IBM's USort/EzCalc and CardZort. A summary of how they went for results entry and analysis:" http://www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/archives/000586.html +07: JAVASCRIPT. Unobtrusive Javascript By Chris Heilmann "On the following pages we will discuss and see how we can use Javascript, but still maintain accessibility. The technique to completely separate Javascript from the other two layers of web development has become commonly named 'unobtrusive Javascript', as 'accessible Javascript' does not quite cut it. You can have a perfectly separated Javascript and still be totally inaccessible..." http://www.onlinetools.org/articles/unobtrusivejavascript/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Aaron Leventhal on Mozilla Accessibility By Mozilla links "Aaron Leventhal, leader of Mozilla Accessibility provides us an insight of what Mozilla has to offer to people with disabilities and where Mozilla as a project is heading." http://nostalsong.com/mozillalinks/html/links23_full.html#community +09: NAVIGATION. Do You Hear What I Hear?... By Kath Straub "The resistance to using breadcrumbs is perplexing. They increase efficiency. They support site learning. They reduce the user's "where-was-I?" memory burden by providing a list of recently visited pages. They make it easier to cross levels of the navigation decision tree within the browse environment. Breadcrumbs make site learning and navigation more efficient. And it's the designer's job to enhance efficiency, right? So we continue to design sites with breadcrumbs. But breadcrumbs are only beneficial if users notice them. And largely, they don't. Or maybe they do and they are telling us something." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/oct04.asp#kath The Optimal Layout of Search Result Pages By Henrik Olsen "The authors of this article have studied the optimal layout of search result pages. Their findings suggest that categorizing search results improve users' performance significantly." http://www.guuui.com/posting.php?id=1585 +10: PHP. PHPitfalls: Five Beginner Mistakes to Avoid By Daryl L. L. Houston "Cruising through developer forums, we've all seen it: A new post with a subject line that reads: 'newbie needs URGENT help' and body text something like: 'omg iv been working on this for 4 days solid and afraid im going to get fired. i dont know php and my boss asked me to write a shopping cart. i cant seem to make it work and keep getting errors can you PLEASE PLEASE help me. i have to finish this today.'" http://digital-web.com/articles/phpitfalls/ +11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. In Search of Validation... By Ben Henick Valid markup is a prerequisite for genuine standards compliance. http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2004_10.html#a000462 Committed to Sincere Progress, Not Perfection By WaSP "The Web Standards Project endorses the ABC News site as proof that separation of presentation, content, and structure can be achieved today on large, highly visible projects with several vocal sponsors, and applauds the team that developed the site for their success. However, the failure of the ABC News site to validate, the reasons given for that failure, and the nature of the discussion that has followed prove that there's still a long way to go before people can use a web on which standards compliant sites are the rule, and not the exception...." http://www.webstandards.org/opinion/ Why Adopt Web Standards? By Christian Vinten-Johansen "The benefits of adopting W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) web standards are significant in terms of the user experience, and in terms of the economy and efficiency of web production and maintenance." http://webstandards.psu.edu/articles/whyWebStandards.cfm Standards By Anne Van Kesteren "The problem is: there is more. Besides CSS and not using tables (for layout) things like HTTP exist. And although many people don't acknowledge it or simply don't know it, don't want to explain it or whatever, you need to know it." http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/10/standards Web Standards: A Business Perspective By Patrick Griffiths "A new article outlining the benefits that web standards can bring to business." http://vivabit.co.uk/articles/wsbp/ +12: TOOLS. Site Check By Jens Meiert "Fill out only one form instead of dozens when checking a site." http://uitest.com/en/check/ The PHP Function Index for Mac OS X By ARTIS Software "The PHP Function Index (PHPfi) is a simple browser to quickly look up any PHP function. Its search offers realtime-filtering of the function list and its AppleScript interface lets you look up functions easily from within your favorite editor (like BBEdit or any other scriptable app)." http://www.artissoftware.com/phpfi/ +13: USABILITY. Liquid Layout By Jenifer Tidwell "...you can't predict the conditions under which the user is going to view your UI. Screen size, font preferences, other windows on the screen, the importance of any particular page to the user -- none of this is under your control. How, then, can you decide the one optimal page size for all users? Giving the user a little control over the layout of the page makes your UI more flexible under changing conditions. It may also make the user feel less antagonistic towards the UI, since they can bend it to fit their immediate needs and contexts." http://time-tripper.com/uipatterns/index.php?page=Liquid_Layout No Website is Better than a Bad One By Gerry McGovern "If your website isn't working, then fix it or get rid of it, but don't just leave it up there and ignore it. Every day, real people with real tasks come to your website. If your website wastes their time then you risk damaging the reputation of your organization. No website is better than a bad website" http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_10_18_egovernment3.htm +14: XML. The Secret Life of XForms By Kurt Cagle "If this sounds a lot like traditional event-based programming, that's because it is. The only difference is that the event handlers, the event notifiers, and everything else are built with XML; you handle processing with XPath expressions, describe the model using XML schema, and fire events using the XML Events architecture." http://www.devx.com/xml/Article/17714/0/page/1 IBM and Novell Join Mozilla for XForms By Sean Michael Kerner "The Mozilla Foundation, Novell and IBM announced...the formation of a project to implement the W3C's XForms 1.0 recommendation, which is part of the consortium's XHTML2 specification. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3393711 [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.]