+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 09, August 24, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 09 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 13: TOOLS. 14: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 15: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility with Firefox By Patrick H. Lauke. "Patrick H. Lauke outlines how Mozilla Firefox can be used in conjunction with the Web Developer Toolbar to carry out a preliminary accessibility review." http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue44/lauke/ Accessibility Building Blocks By Ian Lloyd. Ian's slides from @media 2005. http://www.dotjay.co.uk/atmedia2005/ian-lloyd/ Improving Usability for Screen Reader Users By Webcredible. "Simply ensuring your website is accessible to screen reader users is unfortunately not enough to ensure these users can find what they're looking for in a reasonably quick and efficient manner. Even if your site is accessible to screen reader users, its usability could be so incredibly poor that they needn't have bothered coming to your site." http://tinyurl.com/a28ua +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Creating Indented Navigation Lists By Michael Meadhra. "A vertical navigation bar is a familiar feature on many Web sites- and no wonder, it's a great way to organize a list of links. At its simplest, the navigation bar may be a list of plain text links. However, it's increasingly common for Web builders to make the list items behave like buttons, complete with CSS rollover effects that make the full button face clickable." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5810696.html Creating Multicolumn Lists By Michael Meadhra. "The standard formatting for an HTML list is for the list items to be stacked, flush left, indented from the left margin, and preceded by a bullet or number. That works fine for a typical list, in which each item consists of a sentence or two of text. However, when the list items are very short (e.g., a long list of items composed of a word or two each), you end up with a tall, narrow column of text on the left side of your Web page with a big empty space to the right. That's when many Web designers start looking for ways to break a long list into multiple side-by-side columns instead of a single long column." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5810687.html +03: COLOR. An Explanation of Colorblindness By Jon Hicks. "I get a lot of people asking me what its like to be colour blind. It usually takes the form of 'Can you see this colour? Can you see this one ? Is everything black and white??? '. This is the best explanation I've come across yet..." http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/an-explanation-of-colorblindness +04: DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver 8 Style Rendering Toolbar - A Sneak Peek By Adrian Senior. "Dreamweaver 8 has a very interesting and very cool new feature, the Style Rendering tool bar. The style rendering toolbar allows you to easily design for various media types, such as screen, handheld and print which we will look at in this preview. Other media types that are catered for are Projection, TTY - Television Type Devices, and TV media types. Dreamweaver 8 also provides the ability to toggle on and off all CSS rendering via the toggle CSS display button." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=EDF1F The CSS Styles Panel in Dreamweaver 8: A Sneak Peek By Zoe Gillenwater. "One of the great new CSS tools in Dreamweaver 8 is the new, unified CSS Styles panel. All style information for all the elements on your pages is stored in this one central location. As with previous versions of Dreamweaver, you can use the panel to create, view, edit and remove style rules, as well as attach style sheets. Now, however, properties are laid out in a grid for easy editing, and the cascade for all your rules is displayed for you, to help you understand how each rule is affecting your page. You can select any element on your page and instantly see what rules are affecting it and what properties have been set for it. The CSS Styles panel provides the ease of use for those new to CSS, with a depth of information that advanced CSS users will appreciate." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=81B54 +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Usability Specialist's Favorite: Heuristic Evaluation By Joanna Bawa. "To measure the usability of an interface design, you'll need to use one of the many evaluation techniques available. Here we look at one favored by usability professionals..." http://uk.builder.com/manage/project/0,39026588,39257400,00.htm +06: EVENTS. Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps September 28, 2005. Sydney, Australia http://webessentials.org/veen/ Euro IA Summit Europe's First Information Architecture Summit October 15-16, 2005. Brussels, Belgium http://www.euroia.org/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. IA in Germany: Chances and Perspectives By James Kalbach. "Andrew Dillon declared in his closing keynote speech at the Montreal IA Summit (2005) that IA was entering its second phase. IAs are seeing more and more job opportunities as well as more professional recognition, and the field itself seems to be progressing. Not so in Germany. Here, IA is barely on the map." http://tinyurl.com/9wxpx Information Scent: Helping People Find the Content They Want By Iain Barker. "Information scent is a concept that should be well-understood by everyone designing intranets and information-rich websites." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_informationscent/index.html +08: JAVASCRIPT. How to Develop Web Applications with Ajax, Pt. 1 By Jonathan Fenocchi. In the past, web applications were limited because a web page had to be reloaded (or another page loaded in its place) in order for new data to be obtained. Recently, a new method, known as 'Ajax' (Asynchronous Javascript and XML applications) asynchronously retrieves XML data via JavaScript. Ajax will allow you to take your web applications to the next level. http://tinyurl.com/b9bel Using the XMLHttpRequest Object and AJAX to Spy On You By Earle Castledine. "While the XMLHttpRequest object and AJAX can provide huge user and developer benefits, there are some issues you probably haven't thought about yetÑbut it's time everyone did." http://www.devx.com/webdev/Article/28861?trk=DXRSS_WEBDEV JavaScript Cheat Sheet By Dave Child. The JavaScript cheat sheet is designed to act as a reminder and reference sheet, listing methods and functions of JavaScript. It includes reference material for regular expressions in JavaScript, as well as a short guide to the XMLHttpRequest object. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size JavaScript cheat sheet..." http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/javascript/javascript-cheat-sheet/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Top Ten Things You Don't Want To Hear From New Clients By Travis. "We have met a lot of new and potential clients, and heard some funny things over the years, together with some things we never want to hear again. For new designers out there, if you hear any of the following comments when meeting clients for the first time, just run, leave the laptop, save yourself and run in the opposite direction..." http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=135770#135770 Hagan Rivers Interview: Deconstructing Web Applications By Christine Perfetti. "Hagan Rivers is a recognized pioneer in the area of Web Application Design. Hagan worked on some of the very first web based interfaces and she continues to push the envelope of web application design in her current role as a partner at Two Rivers Consulting. UIE's Christine Perfetti recently had the opportunity to talk with Hagan about some of the biggest challenges in the web application space." http://tinyurl.com/dj675 +10: NAVIGATION. Problems in Navigating Online Help: Clues from User Search Patterns By Robert Krull and Angela Eaton. "Specifically, participants had difficulty in searching for topics because their terminology differed from the terminology used by the help system, and they became lost in the unclear structure of the system. Specific results and discussion are provided below." http://www.winwriters.com/articles/navigation/index.html hasLayout Property Characterizes IE6 Bug By Jim Thatcher. Internet Explorer 6 has a bug which interferes with the correct working of in-page links when they are selected via the keyboard. Jim has an explanation of the issue and work around. http://jimthatcher.com/news.htm#haslayout Keyboard Navigation and Internet Explorer By Gez Lemon. "Internet Explorer 6 has very poor support for in-page navigation. In-page navigation is an important accessibility requirement for several groups, including those with some types of mobility problems. This article investigates the problem with in-page links and Internet Explorer, with some possible solutions." http://juicystudio.com/article/ie-keyboard-navigation.php +11: PHP. Introducing Recursive Functions in PHP By Rob Williams. "One of the basic building blocks of any object-oriented programming language is the function. Functions allow you to reuse blocks of code and perform common tasks from other points within a script. In addition to straight calls though, functions can also be created to act recursively, adding a whole new dimension and power to this basic programming building block. In this article we'll take a look at what recursion is and why it's useful. We'll also create a recursive function to convert PHP arrays to JavaScript ones." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=7CD16 Mature Design Theory in Web Development By Sherri Wheeler. "This article is intended for experienced web developers and development companies who are looking for a way to move from small applications up to medium to large projects, and are interested in improving the quality of their application design. If you still use a set of distinct web pages for each application function, this article will explain why a better methodology is needed, and give some guidance as to how it can be accomplished." http://www.zend.com/php/design/mature-design.php Fundamentals of PHP Superglobals Ian Gilfillan. This month's article is aimed at PHP developers who're not yet familiar with the PHP superglobals. Usage of superglobals is fundamental to PHP web development, but, with all the recent changes in PHP, there are still many outdated tutorials, books, and sadly, still much confusion. http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/ian_gilfillan20050801.php3 +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. A Standards Truce in the Browser War? By Paul Festa. "When Microsoft 'technical evangelist' Robert Scoble complained in his blog about being snubbed at a Texas conference, he probably didn't think he was laying the groundwork for a truce in the long-running war over Web browser standards." http://tinyurl.com/d5kjp Apologizing When You Aren't Wrong By Joe Clark. "...A collaboration between Microsoft and the Web Standards Project has a lot going for it, but Scoble's whining about being excluded from a meeting of a group he never belonged to should not be regarded as actually important." http://blog.fawny.org/2005/08/05/snub/ +13: TOOLS. Nvu Site Manager Extender By Peter Macej. "This free Nvu extension adds some new functionality to Nvu Site Manager. It adds new 'Site Manager' preferences page after installing..." http://www.vbdocman.com/free/siteme/ +14: USABILITY. Journal of Usability Studies By Usability Professionals' Association. The Journal of Usability Studies (JUS) is a peer-reviewed, international, online publication dedicated to promoting and enhancing the practice, research, and education of usability engineering. http://usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/journal/index.html Users, Activities, Practices etc. By Anne Galloway. "...activity theory is always already part of user-centred design, and vice versa. They are part of the same tree: a mental or cybernetic species. Whether modeling users or activities, the models are systemic, relatively stable, quantifiable, hierarchical, discrete, and often predictive. More importantly, they make it difficult to imagine other ways of understanding." http://tinyurl.com/djxgz International Sites: Minimum Requirements By Jakob Nielsen. "Users from other countries have special needs related to entry fields for names and addresses, measurements and dates, and information about regional product standards." http://useit.com/alertbox/20050808.html Seven Screen Reader Usability Tips By Trenton Moss. "Simply ensuring that your Website is accessible to screen reader users is, unfortunately, not enough to guarantee that these users can find what they're looking for in a reasonably quick and efficient manner. Even if your site is accessible to screen reader users, its usability could be so poor that they needn't have bothered stooping by in the first place." http://www.sitepoint.com/article/screen-reader-usability-tips [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). 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.]