+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 21, November 4, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 21 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: FLASH. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 14: USABILITY. 14: XML. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Bring on the Tables By Roger Johansson "Something that often seems to confuse people that are new to CSS-based layouts is the use of tables. I've seen plenty of cases where people interpret 'avoid using tables for layout' as 'don't use tables at all'. It's important to remember that tables are still perfectly fine to use if used correctly. Do your best to avoid using tables for layout, but for tabular data, tables are what you should use." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200410/bring_on_the_tables/ Accessible and Usable Forms By Mike Foskett Guidelines, examples and JavaScript tricks. http://www.websemantics.co.uk/tutorials/form_guidelines/ Accessible Forms By Roger Hudson "The aim of this document is not to provide an introduction into making forms for the Web and it does not consider how the information obtained by a form is collected, processed and presented. The many books, Websites and online tutorials devoted to preparing forms will help you do this. This document is concerned with what the user of a Website form 'sees' and interacts with. It outlines how you can create forms for the Web that are more accessible and describes the appropriate use of label for and id to associate form elements,
and to group form elements, tabindex to set the tabbing order." http://www.usability.com.au/resources/forms.cfm PDF and Accessibility By Roger Hudson "Is PDF accessibility still an issue? The short answer is YES". http://www.usability.com.au/resources/pdf.cfm UUP Uncovers Deficiencies In Accessibility For Disabled Workers, Students By United University Professions "Disabled students and faculty find it difficult, if not impossible, to perform efficiently and effectively at most State University of New York (SUNY) campuses, according to a survey by United University Professions (UUP)...Deficiencies in the classroom included the lack of listening and amplification devices and lack of Web accessibility for the visually impaired." http://www.eisinc.com/release/storiesh/UNTNYS.599.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The Practice of CSS Column Design: Boxes in Columns By John Gallant, Holly Bergevin "This tutorial expands our discussion about making accessible layouts using divs for basic page construction blocks. Using CSS, we'll show how to build a column of separate bordered boxes, each with a colored header, similar those currently in use on the CMX main page (as of July, 2004). We'll also discuss collapsing and escaping margins, and a few other things to look out for on our way to some nicely styled Bordered Boxes." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=CB7B3 Resetting Default Padding and Margin By Richard Rutter "At first glance it may seem the global reset method requires you to subsequently style the margins and padding of each HTML element that you intend to use resulting in verbose and wasteful code. However you can zero margins and padding in the one rule set and then set all block level items with margins in a second rule set, resulting in identical rendering across all browsers." http://www.clagnut.com/blog/1287/ Full CSS Property Compatibility Chart By Keith Schengili-Roberts "The following chart shows all CSS 1, CSS2 and Internet Explorer CSS extensions and grades the level of support each receives in a given browser." http://www.corecss.com/properties/full-chart.php +03: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver MX Teachertalk By Virginia DeBolt "This site includes sections on A Sample Workspace, Setting Preferences, Defining the Site, Understanding Overflow, Using Library Items, Using Templates, More than Behaviors, Working with Forms, Getting it Online, and Search Engine Placement" http://www2.austincc.edu/vdebolt/ht/dwmx_contents.html +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Usability Test Reports - Your Chance to Influence a New Standard By Caroline Jarrett "So I'm delighted to report on progress that's being made on a standard for usability test reports, to be precise 'a common industry format for reports of formative usability tests'." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article2013.asp Using Personas to Create User Documentation By Steve Calde "Personas and other user-modeling techniques are often solely discussed as tools for product definition and design, but they are useful tools in other arenas, as well. Technical writers responsible for creating user documentation can benefit greatly from a well-defined persona set, too." http://tinyurl.com/6evxv +05: EVENTS. W3C DAY: The Semantic Web Evolve Conference 2004 December 7, 2004 Brisbane, Australia http://evolve.dstc.edu.au/w3cday.html +06: FLASH. Flash And Accessibility By Roger Hudson As the Web has evolved, new software and applications have been developed for use on Websites. Many of these new applications are proprietary products that don't use standard features recognized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The use of non-standard formats can cause significant accessibility problems for some people." http://www.usability.com.au/resources/flash.cfm +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Wireframe Annotations in Visio : Special Deliverable #11 By Dan Brown "Few information architects tap the full power of Visio. For the IA, Visio is a means to an end?a mechanism for capturing some ideas on paper before they are transformed into graphics, HTML, and code." http://tinyurl.com/3zwlx +08: JAVASCRIPT. Simple Javascript and Forms By Mike Davies "Adding Javascript validation to forms without hindering accessibility." http://www.isolani.co.uk/articles/simpleJavascriptAndForms.html +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Introducing Project Requirements By Martin Burns "Without a doubt, the most significant thing you can get wrong in running a web development is to mess up the requirements. Get this wrong, and every thing you do after that is doomed. Without the right effort in gathering, documenting, agreeing and keeping to requirements, you won't deliver the thing that the client wants, and in many cases, you either won't get paid this time, or you'll never be hired again by the client. This article will teach you how to avoid this poison chalice and be on the first step of the road towards consistently delivering effective projects." http://evolt.org/article/rdf/20/60393/index.html +10: NAVIGATION. Why Categorize? By Susan Feldman "The human brain is a wonderful information processor. We take in innumerable details with every glance, sound or touch. Yet we are seldom overwhelmed with the magnitude of the information we are processing. One reason that we are able to cope with so much input is that we categorize it all. We look for what is new, what is different, what has changed. Then we try to match the new information to the categories that already exist in our minds." http://tinyurl.com/6954z +11: PHP. Introduction to PHP Classes By William Brandon "Hello, fellow Webmonkeys! Today we will take on one of my favorite subjects in programming: saving time while building functional web pages." http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/04/40/index4a.html +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The Four Essentials of Modern Web Design By Jason Foss Jason penned a bit of a summary of some of the things he learned at WE04. http://www.sitepoint.com/article/essentials-modern-web-design Making News with Web Standards By Jim Ramsey "The spacer gif alone accounted for over 90 MB of bandwidth." http://digital-web.com/articles/making_news_with_web_standards/ +13: USABILITY. What is Usability? By Donna Maurer "There is some confusion about what usability is and whether businesses are 'doing usability' or not. There are many aspects to usability - more than just running a usability test at the end of a project. This article provides an overview of what usability is (and what it is not). It provides ideas on how to include more usability activities in projects and the types of activities that are needed in order to create more usable systems. What is usability?" http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_whatisusability/ Proper Usage of Check Boxes and Radio Buttons By Michael Meadhra "My inspiration for this week's column comes from reading yet another one of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox articles. In this case, the topic is the proper (and improper) use of check boxes and radio buttons on Web forms" http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5418918.html Is Usability Repeatable? By Kevin Cheng "When one hires a carpenter, one can expect similar results between a any skilled carpenters. They all have a basic set of tools: hammers, saws, screwdrivers. All of which are used to help them do their jobs right every time. Usability has a pretty impressive toolkit as well: contextual inquiries, think aloud testing, personas, interviews, focus groups, etc. So if someone hires a competent usability consultancy, they should expect mostly the same results as the next, right?" http://tinyurl.com/4ncap +14: XML. Joining the XHTML vs HTML Discussions By David Andersson (liorean) "An XHTML document that is not XML well formed is not XHTML, so the argument that you should serve XHTML1 documents as HTML to allow for bad formed content is void. An XHTML document should never be served as HTML if it can't be served as XHTML or XML - it should either be modified so that it can be served equally well in either of those two forms as it can in HTML form, or it should not have been XHTML in the first place. There are incompatibilities between XHTML1 documents served as XML, XHTML and HTML that should not be forgotten. These incompatibilities make XHTML1 documents less useful on the web. Essentially XHTML1 documents should either only target XHTML1 savvy user agents, or they should be made for XHTML1 user agents, tweaked to HTML compatibility. HTML compatibility is a bonus, not something that comes with the XHTML1 format. If you have HTML compatibility as a major factor, use HTML4 instead." http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001448.php It's all in the MIME By Gez Lemon "There have been a lot of articles recently about web standards; in particular, using XHTML and serving it as text/html. Personally, I'm not that bothered whether people serve XHTML as text/html, but think it's important that authors understand why this is wrong. Although I'm not bothered about content developers serving XHTML as text/html, I don't agree with people encouraging content developers to deliver XHTML as text/html." http://juicystudio.com/all-in-the-mime.asp [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.]