+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 4, Issue 34, February 12, 2006. 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: FLASH. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 13: TOOLS. 14: TYPOGRAPHY. 15: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 16: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. National Federation of the Blind v. Target By Disability Rights Advocates. "The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has filed a class action suit in California's Alameda County Courthouse against Target Corporation, the nationwide discount retailer which operates more than 1,300 stores in 47 states..." http://www.dralegal.org/cases/private_business/nfb_v_target.php Blind Cal Student Sues Target By Henry K. Lee. "Suit charges retailer's Web site cannot be used by the sightless." http://tinyurl.com/bvm43 Taking Aim at Target(.com) By Derek Featherstone. "Ten months is more than enough time to fix the issues, or at least get started doing so. (Word to the wise - if you are making accessibility changes to your site based on feedback - make sure you document your process so that you can at least show that you're doing something to address the issues, and if you are doing it incrementally make some sort of public announcement with each improvement you make, ok? You know - that would make good business sense.) here's quite a few areas that are described as problematic in the official NFB v Target case documents but the main points are..." http://tinyurl.com/dvq7q Staying on Target By Derek Featherstone. "A lot can happen in 24 hours. In the time since yesterday's post, Taking Aim at Target(.com), the Target.com web site has been changed to address at least the image based submit buttons on the Target Pharmacy sign in page. It no longer requires a mouse click to submit the forms. They literally fixed this overnight. If it took so little time to fix, why now and not ten months ago when the US National Federation of the Blind originally complained to Target?..." http://www.boxofchocolates.ca/archives/2006/02/10/staying-on-target Photosensitive Epilepsy By Gez Lemon. "Photosensitive epilepsy is a form of epilepsy that is triggered by visual stimuli, such as flickering or high contrast oscillating patterns, and it's believed that around 3% to 5% of people with epilepsy are susceptible to photosensitive material. Photosensitive epilepsy is usually triggered where the flicker rate is between 16Hz to 25Hz, although it's not uncommon for seizures to be triggered by flicker rates between 3Hz to 60Hz. The condition most commonly effects children, and is usually developed between the ages of 9 and 15 years, and most prevalent in females." http://juicystudio.com/article/photosensitive-epilepsy.php Zoom Zoom, Layouts for Visual Impairment By Alastair Campbell and Leonie Watson. Alastair and Leonie's Techshare 2005 presentation. http://presentations.nomensa.com/techshare2005_zoom/ Zoom Layouts Update By Joe Clark. "Right, so zoom layouts have had the better part of a year to take off, and they haven't. That's OK; they are an experimental Web standard within established Web standards, and it is now demonstrable that most Web sites are not standards-compliant. Zoom layouts remain a tool that can be..." http://blog.fawny.org/2006/02/04/zlu/ Seven Accessibility Mistakes (Part 2) By Christian Heilmann. "In this final installment of his two-part series, contributing author Christian Heilmann shares habits four, five, six and seven of the seven habits that fail to deliver accessibility." http://digital-web.com/articles/seven_accessibility_mistakes_part_2/ Logo Claims about Website Accessibility belie Reality By Fraser Hamilton. "The presence of an accessibility statement or logo on a website does not necessarily give an accurate picture of that website's accessibility, according to research conducted by Helen Petrie, Director of Research at London-based user experience consultancy Designed for All..." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article2909.asp +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS 3 Column Layout - the Holy Grail!? By Stefan Mischook. "...It gets me 'hot under the collar' when I see articles that promote the use of CSS hacks - this is bad practice for obvious reasons. I've been warning about this for some time before the IE7 problem. None of these web standards zealots paid me much attention before the IE7 problem came to light; and now after this problem has been well publicized, it seems that these people still have their heads in the sand!..." http://www.killersites.com/blog/2006/css-3-column-layout/ Epicycles: Are Complex CSS Layouts the New Nested Tables? By Bruce Lawson. "A discussion piece on whether sometimes CSS layouts are more complicated than their table-based equivalents, and whether CSS as it stands is up to the jobs we need it to do..." http://tinyurl.com/87bxd What's New for CSS in Beta 2 Preview? By Markus Mielke. "We have heard all your feedback asking us for full CSS compliance. With the now public available Beta 2 Preview build on XP, we get a big step closer to this goal. Chris talked about our priorities for IE7 before, but I want to give more detail on our work with CSS..." http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/02/523679.aspx CSS Hacks in IE7 By Andy Budd. "The closer Internet Explorer 7 gets to an official launch, the more concerned the IE dev team seem to be about the effect of CSS hacks. It started simply enough, with a few passing remarks that certain CSS bugs had been fixed and therefore hacks that use those bugs wouldn't work on IE7. As things have progressed, these remarks started to sound a little more worried while the last few remarks actually sound seriously concerned." http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2006/02/css_hacks_in_ie7/index.php IE7 Beta 2 CSS Bugs By Al Sparber. "Microsoft has released a public preview of IE7 Beta2. Please note the language. The released browser is not Beta2 - it is a preview of Beta2. It has CSS bugs. This section will endeavor to demonstrate some of the bugs and provide temporary solutions..." http://www.projectseven.com/csslab/ie7/ Charting IE7b2 By Eric A. Meyer. "So IE7 beta 2 is out. As you might expect in a beta, it has some things that don't work as one might hope, whether due to long-standing behaviors or brand new bugs. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: don't panic..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2006/02/03/charting-ie7b2/ IE7 By css-discuss Wiki. http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=IE7&version=15 CSS Standards Compliance in Internet Explorer 7 By Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy. "There has been much anticipation and intense hype surrounding the release of Internet Explorer 7. Improvements range from better security issues to customization of user features; but the excitement in some web developers has been prompted by the compliancy standards of CSS that IE 7 embraces." http://tinyurl.com/dsj7o Writing Cross-Browser CSS By Roger Johansson. "Almost without exception, web professionals new to CSS run into problems trying to get their CSS to work as expected in all browsers. It doesn't have to be like that though." http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200602/writing_crossbrowser_css/ +03: DREAMWEAVER. Applying CSS from Screen to Print to Handheld - Part 5: Cross-Browser Compatibility By Adrian Senior. "The previous parts in this series have shown you how to style your content. Now it is time to make your design compatible across browsers..." http://tinyurl.com/9cudr Applying CSS from Screen to Print to Handheld - Part 6: Simplified Design and Printability By Adrian Senior. "In Part 6 of this series, you will move on to creating a style sheet for the print media type." http://tinyurl.com/a3kpy Is There Room For Another Web Editor From Adobe? By Vicki Berry. "...I think that Stephanie Sullivan and Al Sparber hit the nail on the head. Stef said that even a tool that outputs standards-compliant and accessible code in the hands of an experienced and knowledgeable professional will in all likelihood churn out horrible code when used by someone who doesn't understand HTML. Al pointed out that 'easy' editors (ones that don't require the user to know or understand HTML) actually prohibit or at least deter a user from learning. It seems to me, however, that there are ample editors on the market that already churn out 'easy' and horrible code, so I can't see any need for another. However, I'm wondering if the idea of a 'Dreamweaver Elements' does, in fact, have merit. It need not necessarily (in fact, should not) be a tool that does everything for the user..." http://tinyurl.com/77zrc +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Get Out of Your Lab, and Into Their Lives By Peter Merholz. "I want to reiterate that nothing proposed here is new or revolutionary. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a research technique more rudimentary than 'watch people in their own environments.' But there's this unfortunate inertia in design practice that leads to the continuing use of ill-suited methods. Shake off your complacency and engage with your users more honestly. You'll be amazed at what you find." http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000569.php Eye Tracking as Silver Bullet for Usability Evaluations? By Mark. "When reading articles on usability evaluation, talking to other usability professionals and clients, one can get the impression that eye tracking is perceived as silver bullet for conducting usability evaluations. After all, the method allows us to directly assess how users perceive an interface, which parts they pay attention to and which parts they miss. And all this just by getting them seated in front of the interface and tracking their gaze. Right?...So, eye tracking is no silver bullet for investigating usability issues. It may be an excellent marketing instrument, but inappropriately used, it may backfire." http://tinyurl.com/bzh77 +05: EVENTS. Waterfall 2006 April 1, 2006. Niagara Falls, New York U.S.A. http://www.waterfall2006.com/ Geek Cruises http://www.geekcruises.com/ +06: FLASH. Can Flash be Considered Accessible Content? By Xwerx. "In 2000, Macromedia became aware of its obligation to make their flash player more accessible to all users and developed an accessibility development kit for Flash 5. This became common to all versions with the release of Flash MX in 2004 and was improved with Flash 8 in 2005. Currently, Flash uses Microsoft Active Accessibility, MSAA, to send information to screen readers and other devices. The Flash player makes a list of the objects being displayed and sends them to the MSAA data tree, which can then be read out when they are encountered onscreen. As screen content changes, the MSAA is updated and the screen reader restarts again." http://www.accessible.ie/?p=50 Limoges, France: The Vision, The Joy, The Pain By Molly E. Holzschlag. "...Everything, and I do mean everything was done in Flash. Out of about 20 competitors, only one had valid XHTML and CSS along with Flash. Everything else was either pure Flash or table-based layouts with Flash embedded just about everywhere. The ubiquitous Flash design isn't unreasonable I suppose, as the standards message is just now getting into this particular conference, only in its second year. And, the main man fostering the competition is Joshua Davis, who is a passionate designer well known for his interest in Flash, and his deep understanding of the Web. That the group even brought out a posse of standards-oriented people and that our sessions were well attended is truly a comfort. But..." http://www.molly.com/2006/02/04/limoges-france-the-vision-the-joy-the-pain/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Live by the Mockup, Die by the Mockup By Luke Wroblewski. 'The mockup can either sell your design or plummet you into a cyclical tunnel of churn. That's why, like it or not, interface designers often live and die by the mockup.' http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000071.php +08: JAVASCRIPT. Ajax and Progressive Enhancement By Jason Landry. "...A quick way to improve the process is make it work for everyone by default it and then, if your browser is up to the task, allow for some enhanced behavior. This type of development is usually known as ‘progressive enhancement‘: progressively enhance the experience based on the abilities of the browser..." http://tinyurl.com/bp4yu +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Mediocrity by 'Areas of Improvement' By Kathy Sierra. "How many times in your life (school, career, relationships) have you been told about your 'areas of improvement'? How much time and energy have you spent working on those areas? If you're a manager, how much emphasis do you put on those areas during a performance review? Maybe instead of working on our weaknesses, we should be enhancing and exploiting our strengths...What if let ourselves (and those we manage) spend a lot more energy in the areas where we are--or could be--amazing? I suggest taking a very hard look at the 'areas of improvement' list and see if we can rearrange the context so that those things become less important..." http://tinyurl.com/aofe8 Interview with Don Norman By Bjoern Hartmann. "My goal is to put structure to the field of design. Design has no real theoretical structure and I'm trying to find one." http://ambidextrousmag.org/preview/issue2/norman.html +10: NAVIGATION. Alphabetized Links Are Random Links By Jared Spool. "Unless you can be absolutely sure that users will know the exact terms in your list, alphabetical order is just random order, Jared thinks." http://tinyurl.com/9bvxk Search Should Work Like Magic By James Robertson. "Thanks to Google, intranet users expect to be able to type in a word (or two) and find the page they are looking for, preferably in the first few results." http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_searchmagic/index.html +11: PHP. Using PHP Includes By Christopher Jason. "By using PHP server-side includes, you can greatly increase the scalability and ease of maintenance of your Website." http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/using-php-includes/ String Manipulation in PHP By Christopher Jason. The ability to manipulate string variables in PHP is extremely helpful. This tutorial will outline some of the more common situations you'll encounter when working with PHP string variables. http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/string-manipulation-php/ Formatting Money / Currency using PHP By Christopher Jason. "As a web developer, there will come a time when you'll need to work with money. Whether it's for a fully operational shopping cart or a simple calculator, PHP makes this an incredibly simple process." http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/format-money-currency-php/ How Do I Print the Date Using PHP? By Christopher Jason. "PHP offers an excellent built-in function for printing dates. Here are some of the most common date formats and how you can print them using PHP." http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/print-date-using-php/ +12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Web Standards. Should my Business Website be Compliant? By Thomas Ashworth. "Web standards is the new buzz phrase on the web. What are web standards? Web standards are basically the use of correct web coding standards as laid out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The web standards which are of most concern to modern business are XHTML and CSS coding practices. In the words of the W3C, 'The XHTML family is the next step in the evolution of the internet.' Should your website comply?" http://evolt.org/web_standards_should_my_business_website_be_compliant Failed Redesigns Update By Joe Clark. "...I should be rather proud if I played a small part in killing off any taste for the abominable sites these people come up with. In 2006, it simply is no longer cool to like these kinds of sites and hold them up as some kind of exemplar. Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust. Right. Shall we update our list?..." http://blog.fawny.org/2006/02/07/failed-update/ IE 7 Preview By Eric Tribou. "So I bit the bullet and downloaded the IE 7 Beta 2 Preview. First thing: this overwrites your old IE 6 install. If you want to be able to use IE 6, do not install this preview." http://weblog.bridgew.edu/ruthsarian/archives/000293.html +13: TOOLS. ScreenGrab By Andy Mutton. Free Firefox extension. "Screengrab saves entire webpages as images." http://andy.5263.org/screengrab/ Page Saver By Pearl Crescent. "...a free extension for Mozilla Firefox that lets you save an image of a web page to a file in PNG format." http://pearlcrescent.com/products/pagesaver/ Podzinger This online tool takes podcast feeds, runs voice recognition over them to produce a full text version of each podcast, and then provides a full text search capability. http://www.podzinger.com/ +14: TYPOGRAPHY. Five Simple Steps to Typesetting on the web: Introduction By Mark Boulton. "It's been quite a while since the last Simple Steps series, but this new series of articles has been brewing for a while. Before I go into the first installment I'd like to clarify what exactly I mean by Typesetting and how that differs from Design, Typographic Design or Typography. Each 'Simple Step' will be just that, clear simple rule(s) to follow..." http://tinyurl.com/9xxjv Five Simple Steps to Typesetting on the Web - Dashes By Mark Boulton. "In this installment I'll be talking about three dashes which are often used, but frequently misused. The Hyphen, the En Dash and the Em Dash." http://tinyurl.com/babsb +15: USABILITY. Selling Older Users Short By Susan Weinschenk. "Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D., CUA, Chief of Technical Staff and Director of Training, looks at recent research on the use of the Internet and hand-held devices by older adults and the impact on user interface design." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/jan06.asp#kath Is Your Content a Waste of Time and Money? By Gerry McGovern. "Most content gets in the way. It's poor quality. Nobody's interested in it, except those who create it. How much of this sort of content are you publishing?..." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2006/nt-2006-02-06-content-value.htm Users Interleave Sites and Genres By Jakob Nielsen. "When working on business problems, users flitter among sites, alternating visits to different service genres. No single website defines the user experience on its own." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/cross_site_behavior.html Interface Design, Web Portals and Children By Andrew Large and Jamshid Beheshti. "Children seek information in order to complete school projects on a wide variety of topics, as well as to support their various leisure activities. Such information can be found in print documents, but increasingly young people are turning to the Web to meet their information needs. In order to exploit this resource, however, children must be able to search or browse digital information through the intermediation of an interface. In particular, they must use Web-based portals that in most cases have been designed for adult users. Guidelines for interface design are not hard to find, but typically they also postulate adult rather than juvenile users. The authors discuss their own research work that has focused upon what young people themselves have to say about the design of portal interfaces. They conclude that specific interface design guidelines are required for young users rather than simply relying upon general design guidelines, and that in order to formulate such guidelines it is necessary to actively include the young people themselves in this process." http://tinyurl.com/cgcr4 [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.]