+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 3, Issue 48, May 4, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 48 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: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. 13: XML. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. 100,000 Reasons to Design for Accessibility By Bruce Lawson "So I get a gig writing an accessibility report for a big organization that completely relaunched its website last year. They wanted an external opinion, but were completely confident that everything's fine, as they didn't use any old supplier; they used the same big company that implemented all their payroll systems, their CRM suite etc. Big guys. Big company. Got to be pros, right? Can you guess what happened? Of course, the site didn't even meet WCAG priority one ("A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint..." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/accessreasons Graphics and Structural Markup: Keeping 'Pretties' Out of Content By Dimitri Glazkov "Pet peeve time! Let's talk graphics. You know, the catchy visual dujibobs that have been part of the Internet since the Gopher went south. As far as I know, there are only two types of graphics on the Web: content graphics and presentational graphics..." http://glazkov.com/blog/archive/2005/04/18/430.aspx +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Customizing Styles: User-Controlled Style Sheets, Part III By Alejandro Gervasio "In this third part and final part of our article series about user-controlled style sheets, we will learn how to make switching between style sheets both reversible and persistent across all pages of your website for your visitors." http://tinyurl.com/d7por Alsacreations, creating websites with CSS and (X)HTML : tutorials and lessons By Raphael Goetter "CSS and (X)HTML lessons and tutorials" http://tutorials.alsacreations.com/ CSS Reboot By B. Adam Howell and Matthew Pennell " he May 1st Reboot is a community project that brings together web professionals from all over and encourages them to collectively launch redesigns of their sites on May 1st. The only problem is the entries are all extremely Flash heavy. Sure, Flash has its place -- but where's the CSS and web standards representation?...So this year CSS Reboot will attempt to bring together web professionals who design with CSS and standards in mind to launch their redesigns on May 1st along with all the Flash designers. This way we can both participate and show everyone just how great semantic, accessible design can be." http://www.cssreboot.com/index.php +03: DREAMWEAVER. Creating Accessible Tables for Data Using Dreamweaver MX 2004 By Macromedia "Here's a basic overview of how to create accessible tables using Dreamweaver MX 2004..." http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/accessibility/mx/dw/tables.html +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Formal Usability Reports vs. Quick Findings By Jakob Nielsen Formal reports are the most common way of documenting usability studies, but informal reports are faster to produce and are often a better choice." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050425.html +05: EVENTS. New Challenges in Information Architecture, A Retreat October 7-9, 2005 Briarcliff Manor, New York U.S.A. http://iainstitute.org/news/000431.php Zend/PHP Conference and Expo 2005 October 18-21, 2005 San Francisco, California U.S.A. http://zend.kbconferences.com/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Ten Good Practices For Writing JavaScript In 2005 By Bobby van der Sluis "How to create modern JavaScript code using the latest techniques, like unobtrusive scripting, handy tools and common sense." http://www.bobbyvandersluis.com/articles/goodpractices.php +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Ten Questions For Tommy Olsson By Russ Weakley "Tommy Olsson lives in a tiny hamlet, called Asnorrbodarna, in central Sweden. After 14 years of software development and consulting, he now works as a technical webmaster at the Swedish Companies Registration Office in Sundsvall. In his spare time, he writes about web standards and accessibility on his blog: The Autistic Cuckoo." http://webstandardsgroup.org/features/tommy-olsson.cfm +08: NAVIGATION. Why Are Intranets Structured Like the Organizational Chart? Donna Maurer "Moving from the organizational chart to a more intuitive topic-based structure can be complex. Understanding the reasons this structure is used can help identify solutions that work better in the long term." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_orgchart/ +09: PHP. Developer's Dilemma: PHP or Perl? By Elizabeth Millard "Perl has been around the longest, and because it was not developed for the Web, it was very big, bulky and slow when it first appeared on the scene, according to Keith Greaves, CompTIA manager of Web and electronic initiatives." http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=103006RNACPZ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HOWTO Spot a Wannabe Web Standards Advocate By Henri Sivonen "If there is a match, you have spotted a wannabe." http://hsivonen.iki.fi/wannabe/ +11: TOOLS. ColorTools.NET By A.van Vulpen http://www.colortools.net/ +12: USABILITY. Fixed Fashion By Jeremy Keith "Y'see, I always assumed that the prevalence of fixed-width sites was the result of an informed decision. I imagined that designers weighed up the pros and cons of fixed and liquid design and then, after careful consideration, chose to build a site with a fixed width layout. Now I'm beginning to think that this scenario is wishful thinking. Could it be that most designers are simply making the decision based on what everybody else is doing? If so, that's a disturbing thought. Decisions as important as that shouldn't simply be the result of a sheep-like attitude. This doesn't just refer to fixed width layout. There's nothing inherent in CSS that favors gradients and drop-shadows. Yet those techniques are hugely prevalent in CSS-based design." http://adactio.com/journal/display.php/20050415012704.xml More on Fixed Widths By Richard Rutter "Doug and Dan have responded to the hoohah surrounding the conversion to fixed width layouts of Stopdesign and SimpleBits, both pointing out that the changes are experimental." http://www.clagnut.com/blog/269/ Liquid vs. Fixed Garrett Dimon "We should also take advantage of the strengths. Naturally, one of those strengths is the ability to use liquid layouts. Don't worry that your design may "fail" if somebody's screen is too big, that's the nature of the beast. What should concern you more is that fixed-width designs may be "failing" at larger screen resolutions." http://tinyurl.com/9a5au Arguments For Flexible Webpage Layouts By Mike Davies "Some notes: why are flexible web page layouts a good idea? " http://www.mcu.org.uk/showlog.php?weblogid=15 +13: XML. Steven Pemberton and XHTML 2 By Philipp Lenssen "Yesterday I had the chance to meet Steven Pemberton, who gave an enlightening talk on XHTML 2 and XForms in Sankt Augustin, Germany." http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-04-20-n24.html XHTML2 and XForms By Steven Pemberton Presentation Slides http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/04-19-steven-XHTML2-XForms/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +14: 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.]