+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 34, January 29, 2005 An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 34 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: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: PHP. 10: TOOLS. 11: USABILITY. 12: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Inaccessibility of Visually-Oriented Anti-Robot Tests Problems and Alternatives W3C Working Draft 5 November 2003 By Matt May "A common method of limiting access to services made available over the Web is visual verification of a bitmapped image. This presents a major problem to users who are blind, have low vision, or have a learning disability such as dyslexia. This document examines a number of potential solutions that allow systems to test for human users while preserving access by users with disabilities." http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/ Proposal for an Accessible Captcha Test By standards-schmandards "You have probably been subjected to a captcha test last time you registered for a free e-mail account somewhere. Most likely you were presented with a funny looking image in which you were supposed to find a sequence of numbers or letters which you had to copy to a textfield to prove that you are a human and not a machine. Imagine if you could not see the image. What would you write in the text field? The phrase 'you inaccessible idiots' spring to mind..." http://www.standards-schmandards.com/index.php?2005/01/01/11-captcha Making it Accessible: A look at Weighted Lists By Derek Featherstone "The first in a series of articles on making web content more accessible, we look at weighted lists, the information they convey and how we might make the information available to everyone." http://www.wats.ca/articles/weightedlistsandaccessibility/72 Blind engineering student 'reads' color-scaled weather maps using Cornell software that converts color into sound By Thomas Oberst "Wong, a Cornell University graduate student from Hong Kong who lost his sight in a road accident at age seven, is helping to develop innovative software that translates color into sound." http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Jan05/Wong.software.to.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. DevGuru Cascading Style Sheets Quick Reference Guide By DevGuru "This is a useful 166 page reference source that defines and explains all of the various style sheet properties, values, and displays sample code." http://www.devguru.com/Technologies/css/quickref/css_intro.html Using Proper DOCTYPE to Fix Browser Compatibility Issues By Anthony Hart "Firefox's growing market share provides just one strong argument among many for not designing for a single browser anymore. But how compatible is your website, and what can you do to make it work better with a variety of browsers? Anthony Hart explains the dangers of outdated DOCTYPE, and how to avoid them." http://tinyurl.com/4ry9s +03: DREAMWEAVER. Designing with CSS - Part 4: Defining Columns and Vertical List Navigation By Adrian Senior "In Part 4 you pick up from where you left off in Part 3. It's time to modify the layout of your design by easily making dramatic structural changes to your basiclayout.html page. If you wish, download the files from the link below or simply open your existing files in Dreamweaver and pick up from where you left off, at the end of Part 3." http://tinyurl.com/4zosr Designing with CSS - Part 5: Defining Columns and Vertical List Navigation By Adrian Senior "In Part 5 you will stay with the design you created in Part 4. However, you will make some navigation changes. You will remove the horizontal list and replace it with a vertical navigation so that the new navigation system resides in the left column you added to the design in Part 4." http://tinyurl.com/6zanx +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Not The Usual Suspects: How To Recruit Usability Test Participants By Elizabeth Neal "Isn't usability testing a simple matter of getting pals or colleagues to look over a site in exchange for free pizza? No, it's not! Liz explains how easy it is to gather suitable, site-relevant test participants using a number of possible sampling techniques." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/usability-test-participants +05: EVENTS. California State University Northridge Conference 2005 (CSUN 2005) Technology and Persons with Disabilities March 14-19 2005 Los Angeles, California U.S.A. http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/index.htm +06: JAVASCRIPT. 2005: The year of the DOM By Simon Willison "The challenge, of course, is accessibility: while JavaScript technologies allow for much improved interactivity they remain unavailable to a significant portion of user agents. The solution is to treat JavaScript as a tool for enhancing the user experience for those who can benefit from it, while avoiding cutting off access to others." http://www.sitepoint.com/blog-post-view?id=222195 DHTML is Dead. Long Live DOM Scripting By Jeremy Keith "Just in case I haven't completely hammered the point home lately, I have a feeling that 2005 is going to see a big surge in the use of the Document Object Model with JavaScript." http://adactio.com/journal/display.php/20050114024033.xml +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Andy Budd Speaks By Justin Goodlett "I think there is a bit of a misconception that you need to sell web standards. It's not like web standards are a supplemental service that clients either buy or don't buy. Rather, web standards - like accessibility - should simply be part of your process. Rather than say to your clients, 'if we build this site using web standards it will be better for it's search engine positioning' you should say 'The way we plan to build your site will mean it's more likely to do well in the search engines'". http://skinnyj.com/archives/000044.html +08: NAVIGATION. Thinking Differently About Site Mapping and Navigation By D. Keith Robinson "Thoughts about sitemaps, navigation, IA deliverables and the root problems with organization and content on the Web." http://tinyurl.com/539cs +09: PHP. Using the PHP Crypt Function By Chris Root "The PHP crypt function is a one-way encryption function that lets you confirm that an entered password matches a stored encrypted one -- without having to decrypt anything. Chris Root explains how it works." http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Using-the-PHP-Crypt-Function/ Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0 (Online Book) By W. Jason Gilmore "This book from APress is available for sale, but the author and the publisher decided to post the contents online as well. Look for the sidebar on the right for freely available chapters in PDF format." http://www.apress.com/book/supplementDisplay.html?bID=3&sID=10 +10: TOOLS. Color Palette Generator By Jeff Minard "You can use this php script to generate a color palette based on an image. You may upload an image, or choose one from the list. If you upload an image, it will be kept on the server and can be used again." http://www.creatimation.net/extra/photopalette/index.php +11: USABILITY. Ten Most Persistent Design Bugs By Bruce Tognazzini "Welcome to the Over the Hill Gang, design bugs that have been around so long that we've begun to think of them as folk heroes. However, the usual requirement for turning a public enemy into a folk hero is death, not longevity, and so it should be for these worthies: Their executions are long overdue." http://www.asktog.com/Bughouse/10MostPersistentBugs.html How to Write Summaries for Web and Intranet Pages, and Why By Rachel McAlpine "The first text in most web and intranet pages should be a summary of 1-2 sentences. That's a good rule of thumb. The starter-summary has several important functions." http://www.webpagecontent.com/arc_archive/174/5/ Web Application Form Layout By Luke Wroblewski "Quite rare is the Web application that doesn't make extensive use of forms for data input and configuration. But not all Web applications use forms consistently. Variations in the alignment of input fields and their respective labels can support different aspects of user behavior." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?144 Andrew's Usability in the Real World: Predictive Usability By Andrew Swartz "We usability researchers are curious by nature, perhaps even well-intentioned voyeurs at heart. Once, a couple of years ago, a neighbor caught me skulking around our local grocery store with a digital camera in hand taking pictures of a small colony of interactive kiosks that had popped up in the entryway. Red-faced, I explained that we were studying how people used these kiosks. I'm not sure she believed me, but in any case she didn't report me to the authorities." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article2185.asp Measuring Value of Web Content By Gerry McGovern "The way to make web content more valued is to make it more measured. The more ways you can measure the value your content delivers, the more your career will be valued." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt_2005_01_24_measure.htm +12: XML. XForms XPIs Coming Soon By Doron Rosenberg Doron Rosenberg has announced an add-on to enable support for XForms in Gecko. The browser can be extended in its core features' list by a downloadable extension (XPI). This is amazing. We're not speaking of a new menu or an extra preference here; we're speaking of adding XForms' knowledge to the kernel of a browser (it is a bit more complex than that but the visible effect is that one). http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/doron/archives/007390.html XForms: XML Powered Web Forms (Online Book) By T. V. Raman "W3C XForms - XML powered Web forms - is an overhaul to HTML forms from 1993. On-line forms are critical to electronic commerce on the Internet, and the HTML forms design from 1993 is now beginning to show its age. The advent of XML on the Web, and the subsequent move to Web Services as a means of connecting disparate information technologies to deliver end-to-end customer solutions has now made XML documents central to the fabric of the Web." http://safariexamples.informit.com/0321154991/book.html [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]