+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 29, December 29, 2004. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 29 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: COLOR. 04: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: FLASH. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 13: TOOLS. 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. The Alt and Title Attributes By Roger Johansson When browser vendors bend the standards and implement something in a different way than what the specification states, they may cause problems, or at least confusion. One example of this is the way certain browsers, the most widely used being Internet Explorer for Windows, handle alt attributes... http://tinyurl.com/6uo99 The Imagination Gap: Making Web-based Instructional Resources Accessible to Students and Colleagues with Disabilities By John Slatin "I offer in this article what I call the AccessFirst Design principle as a way to approach the technical challenge of meeting our ethical and legal obligation to make the Web-based resources we create accessible to all of our students." http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/spring02/slatin.html The Barrierfree Learning Environment By Barrier Free "The Barrierfree toolset takes a story captured in linear video and links a wealth of information, enhancements and perspectives using a synchronized text track derived from the caption and audio description of the video. This provides the viewer with a cohesive interactive experience that is also accessible to people with hearing, visual and physical disabilities. Thus the material becomes more than a collection of multimedia artifacts but integral parts of a rich and multi-dimensional story." http://www.barrierfree.ca/index.htm +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. IOTBS: The Director's Cut By Andy (Malarkey) Clarke "I am pleased to announce the release of the latest incarnation of Invasion of the Body Switchers, cheekily entitled The Director's Cut. For those who have not seen it before, Invasion of the Body Switchers (IOTBS) is a modern style-sheet switcher, which offers independent switching of different media types, and supports an unlimited number of options and controls. It works in all modern graphical browsers except Mac/IE5 (with javascript enabled), and is available in a choice of user-interfaces: 1. Original version published at A List Apart generates the switching controls as forms and selectors. 2. "The Director's Cut" generates the switching controls as definition-lists and links." http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/iotbs_the_directors_cut.html Float Layouts By Tommy Olsson "In our last article we looked a little closer at one of the methods for creating layouts with CSS: absolute positioning. Today we're going to try to illustrate another option: floating elements. At least as misunderstood as positioning, but often much more useful." http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2004/12/10/floating Cross-Column Pull-Outs By Daniel M. Frommelt "Print designers like to wrap text around images that sit between columns. Now you can, too. Daniel Frommelt takes us where no web layout has gone before." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/crosscolumn/ ALA Does Semantic Nonsense By Anne Van Kesteren "It is the fact that they are using a semantically rich element, to be used for indicating changes between different document versions, for a semantically meaningless purpose." http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/12/semantic-nonsense +03: COLOR. Web-Smart Palette By Kirk Franklin "The web-smart palette uses a 16-by-16-by-16 cube of 4,096 colors. The web-smart palette uses any combination of 00, 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99, aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, and ff, and provides a more complete gamut that should display consistently on monitors that support thousands (16-bit) and millions (24-bit) of colors. Most of the colors should dither to the nearest browser-safe color on 256-color monitors." http://www.morecrayons.com/palettes/webSmart/ +04: DREAMWEAVER. JumpStart: Aspen By Sheri German "With a three column liquid-width layout, a base page, and a form page, Aspen employs valid CSS2 and XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup and passes WAI and 508 accessibility checkpoints. Aspen has been tested in numerous browsers." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=E1100 +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Contextual Enquiry - A Primer By Gerry Gaffney "Contextual enquiry is one of the most valuable activities you can undertake, because it helps you understand users and their requirements with relatively little effort." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/contextual-enquiry-primer +06: EVENTS. Syllabus 2005 Conference July 24-28, 2005 Los Angeles, California U.S.A. http://www.syllabus.com/summer2005/ +07: FLASH. Flex and JAWS By Bob Regan "I recently worked on a document with a member of the Flex team discussing how to evaluate Flex applications for accessibility using JAWS. I thought this might be of interest to Flash and Flex developers trying to get started with a screen reader. I posted the document below." http://www.markme.com/accessibility/archives/006666.cfm +08: JAVASCRIPT. Regular Expressions in JavaScript By Alejandro Gervasio "JavaScript is useful for a lot more than opening pop-ups. If you use HTML forms on your website, and want to make sure that your visitors submit valid data on those forms, you might want to consider using some regular expressions in JavaScript. Alejandro Gervasio explains how, with many excellent examples." http://tinyurl.com/5vgfu CSS Properties To JavaScript Reference Conversion By Code Punk http://codepunk.hardwar.org.uk/css2js.htm +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Five for Six: Bold predictions for the savvy designer By Cameron Moll "Without a doubt I'll miss the mark on a few of these, but I'm positive the savvy designer will agree with at least a couple..." http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000031.html Web Design in 2005 By Forty Media "After taking a long, hard look at the past year in web design, we've decided to try our hand at predicting whatÕs in store for next year..." http://www.fortymedia.com/2005-web-design-forecast.fhtml Ten things your web sites should be doing By Nick Finck "Rather than posting about my web predictions for 2005 or rambling off a list of products or tools you must have, etc. I have decided that this year I will post a list of things you should have or be doing on your web site or Intranet. After all, we are living in a modern world, it's time your web sites start acting like it." http://tinyurl.com/3t7h6 +10: NAVIGATION. Your Customer Is A Search Engine By Troy Janisch "While consumer confidence in advertising is at an all-time low their confidence in search engines is growing." http://evolt.org/article/rdf/25/60409/index.html +11: PHP. Three-Tier Development with PHP 5 By Luis Yordano Cruz "Well-factored applications separate data storage, manipulation, and display. For PHP programmers, PHP 5 and PEAR make that easier than ever. Luis Yordano Cruz demonstrates how to combine PEAR::DB_DataObject, Smarty, and PHP 5 to improve the design and maintenance of your applications." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004/12/09/three_tier.html +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Design World Cool-down By Molly E. Holzschlag Molly comments on areas for concern for the contemporary web designer. For instance "There is no such thing as an alt element, no such thing as an alt tag...Structure relates specifically to structural elements in a document, whereas semantic markup refers to the meaning of an element in relation to its content...Table-based layouts are problematic - the biggest hack in HTML history - and we want to get away from them as a layout tool. But tables themselves are extremely useful for marking up tabular data appropriately...Dreamweaver and other visual editors can make web design a far easier task. (But) without an understanding of the languages with which you work - HTML, XHTML and CSS in this context - you are at a disadvantage and probably missing very important nuances by relying on your software to spit out the code for you." http://www.molly.com/2004/12/18/web-design-world-cool-down/ +13: TOOLS. Accessibility Audit of One Page By Operational Control and Analysis for Web Accessibility (OCAWA) This online tool "tests the accessibility of your web site using international accessibility standards." http://www.ocawa.com/Test-your-Web-Site_6_en/ +14: USABILITY. Yeah, but can you give me a reference? 2004 Annual Research Review By Kath Straub and John Whalen "Kath Straub, Ph.D., CUA, Chief Scientist, and John Whalen, Project Director, present our annual summary of usability research." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/dec04.asp#kath More Website Knick Knack By Chris Heilmann "In our second article about useless clutter on websites, Chris Heilmann focuses on websites that try to reinvent the wheel, features that offer a quick 'wow' and little else, and more. Are you guilty of inflicting website knick knack on your visitors? Take a look at the included check list and find out." http://tinyurl.com/3unct Situate Follow-Ups in Context By Jakob Nielsen "Make new or follow-up information easily accessible from the location of the original information or transaction." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20041220.html +15: XML. XML Tutorial By tizag.com "XML is a markup language. They cheated on the name when making the name, as XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. This new markup language has become quite popular since its introduction to the Information Technology sector in the late 90's. The XML standard was created by W3C to provide an easy to use and standardized way to store self-describing data." http://www.tizag.com/xmlTutorial/ [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). As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN guideline 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 U.S.A. 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]