+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 22, November 22, 2005. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 22 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. 15: XML. SECTION TWO: 16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Introduction to Web Accessibility By Paul Bohman. "Most people today can hardly conceive of life without the Internet. It provides access to information, news, email, shopping, and entertainment. The Internet, with its ability to serve out information at any hour of the day or night about practically any topic conceivable, has become a way of life for an impatient, information-hungry generation. Some have argued that no other single invention has been more revolutionary since that of Gutenberg's original printing press in the mid 1400s. Now, at the click of a mouse, the world can be 'at your fingertips' - that is, if you can use a mouse... and if you can see the screen... and if you can hear the audio in other words, if you don't have a disability of any kind." http://www.uigarden.net/english/introduction-to-web-accessibility Macromedia Breeze By National Center on Disability and Access to Education. "Currently, a screen reader user's experience with Breeze Meeting will range from confusing to completely inaccessible. Although Macromedia is working to resolve this issue, Breeze Meeting by its very nature does not lend itself to screen reader accessibility. It does not exist as a linear page, but changes constantly based on user interaction. Not only does information change constantly, it changes in so many places. Each pane (or pod) in Breeze meeting is in essence its own program, and it is difficult to manage many programs without scanning them visually. The same can be said about keyboard accessibility. Many of the features in Breeze Meeting are difficult, or even impossible, to access without using a mouse. While keyboard control can be improved on, some features, such as the collaboration (whiteboard) pod, may always require the use of a mouse. Despite some limitations, Breeze Meeting has some strengths..." http://ncdae.org/tools/factsheets/breeze.cfm Got Alt? By Eric Tribou. "I've been going back and forth a little bit with Ian Hixie who is the man behind the alt text spec among many other things..." http://weblog.bridgew.edu/ruthsarian/archives/000207.html Selling Accessibility to Programmers By Joe Clark. "I have read the paper by Chris Law et al., 'Programmer-Focused Web[-S]ite Accessibility Evaluations'..., and I don't think it provides really substantial advice, but at least it has a set of advice to which we will now actually have a published reference..." http://blog.fawny.org/2005/11/08/programmers/ Accessibility...Who Does It REALLY Help? By Darrel Austin. "Whenever the topic of accessibility comes up amongst web designers, there's always a few who insist on seeing some numbers. The argument usually consists of Ôwhy should I do X to accommodate the small insignificant group Y'. Of course, this fails to take into consideration the fact that accessibility isn't specifically about accommodating some minority groups, but, rather, accommodating a large range of users. Yet, people like numbers. And it's something I honestly haven't ever gotten around to digging up. I recently came across a few websites that do offer some numerical insights." http://mnteractive.com/archive/accessibilitywho-does-it-really-help/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS-Only, Table-less Forms By Jeff Howden. "Most of the CSS-only, table-less forms available suck. So, not wanting to stoop to mediocrity, I decided to take on the task of coming up with something better. This is the result of my efforts..." http://jeffhowden.com/code/css/forms/ The Cascade: Part 1 By Lachlan Hunt. "One of the most important yet, arguably, one of the least understood aspects of CSS is the cascade. Sure, most people will know that CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, but do you know what cascading really means and how it affects the way style sheets work?" http://lachy.id.au/log/2005/10/cascade1 Semantics in the Wild By John Allsopp. "...based on the data here, and also your own experiences, what class and id values are (or at least should be) commonly used? In essence, what's missing from HTML/XHTML in terms of semantics - not in theory, but in the practical sense of the kinds of constructs developers use all the time..." http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2005/11/real_world_sema.html CSS Shorthand Guide By Dustin Diaz. "Ok. Let's set the record straight. There is no official guide for each and every CSS shorthand property value. So let's work together and put one together shall we' Ok. Straight to the business. Anytime I've ran into a specification (besides the confusing mess at the W3C), it turns into showing off a couple of examples and you're supposed to be set on your way. Well well. Over the years, I've found quite some interesting unknown quirky facts about these shorthands... hence this Guide was born." http://www.dustindiaz.com/css-shorthand/ Who Is Up For a CSS Challenge? By Christian Heilmann. "I hinted for some time now, that I was working on a Zen Garden-type site that simulates a CMS environment..." http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=189 +03: COLOR. Luminosity Contrast Ratio Algorithm By Gez Lemon. "Guideline 1.4 of the draft version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 requires that it is easy to distinguish foreground information from background images or sounds. The guideline suggests a luminosity contrast ratio algorithm to help determine the contrast between foreground and background colours. To help understand the algorithm, I have provided a Luminosity Contrast Ratio Analyser, along with example luminosity contrast ratios..." http://juicystudio.com/article/luminositycontrastratioalgorithm.php +04: DREAMWEAVER. Creating Your First Website with Dreamweaver 8 - Part 1: Setting Up Your Site and Project Files By Jon Varese. "Set up your Dreamweaver environment for the website you will create." http://tinyurl.com/ca27f +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Eight Guidelines For Usability Testing By Tim Fidgeon. "In professional web design circles, the usability testing session has become an essential component of any major project. Similar to focus groups in brand development and product launches, usability testing offers a rare opportunity to receive feedback from the very people the website is aimed at - before it's too late to do anything about it. But how can you get the most from these usability testing sessions?..." http://tinyurl.com/8ccub +06: EVENTS. CHI 2006, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 22-27, 2006. Montreal, Canada http://www.chi2006.org/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Design Leads and Wireframes By Luke Wroblewsk. "By popular request and with permission, Functioning Form is publishing some of Jim Leftwich's writings on design." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?240 +08: JAVASCRIPT. Who Really Turns Off JavaScript? By Tom Dell'Aringa. "I am playing a bit of a devil's advocate here. I don't believe you should build certain JavaScript functionality into a page (such as a menu system) without having an alternative - that would be foolish. My point is being made more toward enhanced functionality (such that Ajax can provide) for the user. Also, I'm not concerned about people who code mouse trails, animations and so forth into their pages. I'm talking about professional development, not hobby or personal sites." http://tinyurl.com/asd4z JavaScript Newbies: Beware of Libraries By Dustin Diaz. With the vast emergence of JavaScript libraries like Prototype and those of which extend it like Open Rico, Behavior, Scriptaculous, and even Moo.fx which was built on a light version of prototype; I feel the need to warn Web Developers that have been decoupled from the world's most misunderstood language to backoff just for a little while. This is no way intended to veer developers away from such brilliant frameworks that can immensely aid in the development process for web applications, but the fact of the matter is: That's what these libraries are for; Web Applications. Instead, I would recommend just one little piece of advice before adding 100k to your web documents. Learn JavaScript First..." http://www.dustindiaz.com/javascript-newbies-beware-of-libraries/ The Dangers of Frameworks By Jeremy Keith. "I'm sure there's nothing wrong with the many JavaScript frameworks out there. The problem comes when they are used without being understood. As long as everything works as advertised, everything's hunky-dory. But as soon as something goes wrong, you're up the creek. If you treat a framework like some magical black box, then you're not going to be in a position to tinker with it...earn the language first. If you then want to use a framework and you understand how and why it works, then by all means do so. If you don't understand the inner workings, then you run the risk of becoming a cargo-cult programmer." http://domscripting.com/blog/display/33 Proudly Presenting AJAX-S! By Robert Nyman. "Eric Meyer's S5 rapidly become the tool of choice for presentations at web conferences. Now there's some competition: AJAX-S by Robert Nyman It uses Ajax to display a presentation." http://www.robertnyman.com/2005/11/13/proudly-presenting-ajax-s/ AJAX-S, Release 2! By Robert Nyman. http://www.robertnyman.com/2005/11/18/ajax-s-release-2/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Good, Evil and Technology: A Fun Philosophical Inquiry By Scott Berkun. "...Every tool has an implied morality. There is a value system that every machine, program, or website has built into it that's comprehendible if you look carefully. As two polarizing examples, look at these two things: a machine gun and a wheelchair. Both of these have very clear purposes in mind and behind each purpose is a set of values. The wheelchair is designed to support someone. The machine gun is designed to kill someone (or several someones). Many of the products we make don't have as clearly defined values. However as I mentioned earlier, the absence of value is a value: not being explicitly evil isn't the same as being good. If I make a hammer, it can be used to build homes for the needy, or to build a mansion for a bank robber. I can be proud of the hammer's design, but I can't be certain that I've done a good thing for the world: the tool's use is too basic to define it as good or bad. It's common to see toolmakers, from search engines to development tools, take credit for the good they see their tools do, while ignoring the bad. This isn't quite right: they are equally involved in the later as they are in the former...Nothing prevents us from making sure the tools we make, and skills we have, are put to good use: donated to causes we value, demonstrated to those who need help, customized for specific purposes and people we think are doing good things. It's only in those acts that we're doing good: the software, website or machine is often not enough. Or more to my point, the best way to do good has less to do with the technology, and more to do with what we do with it." http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay48.htm Set Your Priorities By Joel Spolsky. "Custom development is that murky world where a customer tells you what to build, and you say, 'are you sure?' and they say yes, and you make an absolutely beautiful spec, and say, 'is this what you want?' and they say yes, and you make them sign the spec in indelible ink, nay, blood, and they do, and then you build that thing they signed off on, promptly, precisely and exactly, and they see it and they are horrified and shocked, and you spend the rest of the week reading up on whether your E&O insurance is going to cover the legal fees for the lawsuit you've gotten yourself into or merely the settlement cost. Or, if you're really lucky, the customer will smile wanly and put your code in a drawer and never use it again and never call you back." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/SetYourPriorities.html Avoid Starting Without Proper Scoping By D. Keith Robinson. "Determining the scope of any project isn't an exact science. There is a whole lot of educated guesswork that goes into it. If that weren't enough, there's often negotiation that needs to happen, as a potential client might not place the same value on things as you do....My advice is to be very careful about doing any project that hasn't been thoroughly scoped out in advance. Even if you're starving for work. By 'thoroughly' I mean that you, the client, your mom and your dog all know in fairly granular detail what's expected and when. Have a statement of work that everyone is agreed to before you start. Be specific as you can when it comes to review cycles and iterative design or development. In my experience if you leave any wiggle-room you'll end up wiggling. The more specific you can be, the happier you'll be when you've come up against something that doesn't quite fit." http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives05/2005/11/scoping-projects Teams and Stars By Scott Berkun. "It's hard to understand good teams until you've been on both good and bad ones. You can often find frustrated people on good teams and happy people on bad teams: they don't have enough perspective to see where they are for what it is. Some stars, people of high talent, are poor judges of teams because they're tempted by the desire to stand out rather than the desire to succeed. Despite this, a common managerial temptation is to hire big talents, challenging the balance of needs for a successful team." http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay47.htm +10: NAVIGATION. Global Site Navigation: Not Worthwhile? By Jared Spool. "Marjorie caught me. During my UI10 presentation, The Essence of Scent, I made an offhand comment about how global navigation is 'unnecessary and rarely helpful.' I thought I had gotten away with it." http://tinyurl.com/bnj93 +11: PHP. The Total Cost of Using PHP? By Dan Zambonini. "What is the total cost of using PHP for web software development, in relation to other relevant programming languages? Here are some first thoughts to start you off..." http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7949?CMP=OTC-6YE827253101 +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web APIs Working Group Programming Interfaces For Web Application Development By W3C. "The W3C Web API Working Group is chartered to develop standard APIs for client-side Web Application development. This work will include both documenting existing APIs such as XMLHttpRequest and developing new APIs in order to enable richer Web Applications." http://www.w3.org/2006/webapi/ Web Application Formats Working Group Developing Languages For Web Applications By W3C. "The W3C Web Application Formats Working Group is chartered to develop languages for client-side Web Application development." http://www.w3.org/2006/appformats/ WaSP Microsoft Task Force Update: Upcoming Products, XAML, Acid2, SXSW, and IE7 Revealed By Molly E. Holzschlag. "The WaSP Microsoft Task Force held another face-to-face meeting with available members on Tuesday. We met in a Starbucks along the waterfront in rainy Seattle. While the setting might have been a bit predictable, the conversation was unique and at times, very encouraging." http://tinyurl.com/8b2lv WaSP: Blah By Anne Van Kesteren. First they bash the Opera 9 alpha release stating that the new controls (date pickers etc) are completely inaccessible by keyboard which is just not true. (They are not really usable, but they are accessible, certainly.) The Web Standards Project never made any rectification with regard to this. Blah. On the other hand, (early) beta releases from Microsoft are easily defended. They even have a Task Force together with Microsoft..." http://annevankesteren.nl/2005/11/wasp +13: TOOLS. CSSTidy By Florian Schmitz. "CSSTidy is an open source CSS parser and optimizer. It is available as executable file (available for Windows, Linux and OSX) which can be controlled per command line and as PHP script (both with almost the same functionality)." http://csstidy.sourceforge.net/ CSS Formatter and Optimiser Online version of CSSTidy. http://cdburnerxp.se/cssparse/css_optimiser.php +14: USABILITY. It's Not About Size, It's About Context - Radio Buttons Or Drop-Downs By Donna Maurer. "I've spent an extraordinary amount of time this week thinking about radio buttons. And I'd like to tell you what I've concluded." http://www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/archives/000658.html Ryanair Success has Strong Web Lessons By Gerry McGovern. "...A prospective student wants a prestigious, well recognized degree from a top ranking university, and they want to know what that will cost them. Try getting these basic facts from many university websites. Not easy. Observe human nature. Get out and talk to people, but watch out to read between the lines of what they are saying to you. There is no greater skill a web manager can develop than a gut instinct for what your customer really needs. Gut instinct is something you develop by a process of constant repetition, of constant observation. The Web is a simple place, really. Ryanair sells cheap flights, Amazon.com discounts; Skype gives free phone calls, and eBay is the world's largest yard sale. Get to know what your customer needs. Get to know what they really care about." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt-2005-11-14-ryanair.htm Web Usability For Older People By Joe Clark. "Two authors, Sri Kurniawan (a treasure trove of citations) and Panayiotis Zaphiris, put a lot of effort into a paper entitled 'Research-derived Web design guidelines for older people.' Sadly, I have issues with it, as they say." http://blog.fawny.org/2005/11/12/elder/ +15: XML. HTML or XHTML? By Robert Nyman. It seems like the eternal question amongst web developers: HTML or XHTML? Wherever I look there seems to be posts in forums raising the question, web developers asking me or other people write blog posts about what they believe is the right way to go. I'm not writing this post to tell you what the ultimate choice is, but rather to inform you about the consequences of what you choose. So, let's take it from the top..." http://www.robertnyman.com/2005/11/02/html-or-xhtml/ [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.]