+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 5, Issue 12, September 15, 2006. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 12 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: FLASH. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 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. The Effectiveness of the Web Accessibility Audit as a Motivational and Educational Tool in Inclusive Web Design. By David Sloan. David Sloan finished his PhD in summer 2006. You can download a copy of it. http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/staff/dsloan/phd_downloads.htm Are Accessibility Evaluation Tools Useless? By Roger Johansson. "It is understandable for designers, developers, and content producers to want accessibility checking to be as easy as validating HTML. Either it validates or it doesn't, and you can let a free, automated tool do the work for you. Unfortunately it isn't that easy to evaluate accessibility. Since Web accessibility is meant to make sure that humans can use websites, a machine cannot (yet) be trusted to determine how accessible a site is..." http://tinyurl.com/za6k5 The Usefulness of Accessibility Audits By Jack Pickard. "..So there you have it. Accessibility audits won't just make your site more accessible, they'll increase your understanding of the needs of disabled users, and this information will help you with future developments...accessibility audits are useful. If you can afford one, and you're willing to listen and learn from one, and actually take whatever actions are needed, then go get one." http://tinyurl.com/gdgug Too Much Accessibility By Bim Egan. "Before being accused of blasphemy, let me explain. It's my view that some HTML attributes, or techniques designed to improve accessibility, are often over-used or over-helpfully chosen, resulting in content that is less, rather than more, accessible." http://tinyurl.com/zqrfh Questions and Proposed Approaches for Baseline Specifics By Gregg Vanderheiden. "In looking at the baseline issue, three questions have arisen that aren't covered well in current documentation on it...The following is a pass at answering these questions. Posted here for discussion. " http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2006JulSep/0185.html Accessibility of CAPTCHA By Gez Lemon. "Completely Automated Public Turing test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) is a technique that attempts to differentiate between humans and machines on ability alone. Whether it's sensory, mobility, or cognitive ability, testing the user's ability will always create barriers that are insurmountable to some people, particularly when you consider than many people with sensory impairments rely on machines such as screen readers to overcome their sensory impairments. What online services that attempt to protect their resources actually want to know isn't the ability of the person at the other end of the connection, but whether or not they are trustworthy. This article looks at social networking to see if the problem of trustworthiness can be solved without relying on the user's ability." http://juicystudio.com/article/accessibility-of-captcha.php National Federation of the Blind v. Target By Disability Rights Advocates. "Federal judge sustains discrimination claims against Target; precedent establishes that retailers must make their websites accessible to the blind under the ADA...details, including links to downloadable files are found at the bottom of this page." http://www.dralegal.org/cases/private_business/nfb_v_target.php Complaint: http://tinyurl.com/joo22 Judge's Order: http://tinyurl.com/zdvoh Tarzhay By Joe Clark. "...NFB didn't win the case and might lose it. All that happened was that a motion to dismiss the whole thing failed. The ADA has not been definitively ruled to include Web sites, let alone commercial Web sites. Target, after submitting a seriously half-arsed expert-witness assessment, managed to find several screen-reader users who could operate the site just fine. It does indeed seem open to dispute that the site is inaccessible to blind people..." http://blog.fawny.org/2006/09/09/tarzhay1/ Target Hit - But is it a Bullseye? By Ian Lloyd. "So, the case is not over yet. Target may not have had it thrown out, but they have not yet lost the battle overall. Regardless, there's a lesson for any US web site owners who may have uttered statements like 'Ah, they're just full of hot air - no-one's ever actually been sued for this' in the past. I imagine that the big retailers' legal departments are, right now, preparing some fairly detailed question sheets for their web teams to find out just how vulnerable they are." http://accessify.com/news/2006/09/target-case-outcome/ Websites For The Blind: Is This The Next 'Year 2000 Compliant' Requirement? By Linda Markus Daniels. "...This is clearly a case headed to the U.S. Supreme Court on both issues raised by Target unless Congress elects to amend the ADA during the several year period before this case would reach the Supreme Court..." http://www.localtechwire.com/printstory.cfm?u=14999 Court Denies Target.com Plea for Dismissal By Matt Bailey. http://tinyurl.com/emhlh Blind Customer Applauds Court Ruling on Target Web Site By John Croman. http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=134144 Blind Patrons' Lawsuit Against Target Proceeds By Josh Richman. http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_4305423 Target Accessibility Case Will Go Forward! By Joe Dolson. http://tinyurl.com/z2mnq +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Browser Support for CSS By Kynn Bartlett. CSS rules are always interpreted by Web browsers, just as the HTML pages those rules style are interpreted. The HTML and CSS standards give specifics on how browsers should display those rules-but they're not always followed. To design pages with CSS, you not only need to know the standards, as presented in the CSS specification, but also understand how browsers' quirks and flaws will affect your Web design results." http://www.webreference.com/authoring/style/sheets/browser_support/ A Positive Attitude to Development By John Oxton. "The best way to ensure your CSS is going to work properly is from the ground up. John Oxton sets the standard for his series on development with CSS. Are you ready to keep up?..." http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/a-positive-attitude-to-development Awesome Form v2 By Paul Armstrong. "Using simple and semantic HTML, this method uses comprehensive CSS to create visually pleasing and extremely accessible web page forms for all purposes. Why not stop using tables and other extraneous markup in your forms, while still keeping them easy to use and visually pleasing?..." http://paularmstrongdesigns.com/examples/css/awesome-form.html Class and ID Naming Conventions By Mike Cherim. "First of all I will state that I had this article in my drafts, started with a single line: 'What's in a name?' I was going to offer something I felt was logical topic of conversation regarding naming classes and IDs for what they are so as to remember them and so they would make sense to you and your client. However, between then and now I had an unintentional but highly valuable discussion with some fellow Web Standards Group members. The topic will remain the same, but the advice I'm going to offer has been altered..." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=117 Stackable CSS Columns By Jonathan Snook. "Source order is fairly important for me. I like to make sure the order makes sense and is practical. For a recent project, I ended up using something quite handy. Something I like to call Stackable Columns..." http://www.snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/stackable_css_c/ Highlight Microformats with CSS By Jon Hicks. "Those that use Firefox with the Tails extension, read no further. This is not for you. You have it given to you on a plate, you don't know how lucky you are. This is for those of us using Camino, Safari or Omniweb..." http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/highlight-microformats-with-css Easy CSS hacks for IE7 By David Hammond. "At all costs, you should avoid hacks that rely on browser bugs, because you can bet on those bugs being fixed in some future version and thus causing problems with your code. But still, a lot of people were upset when they heard that Internet Explorer 7 was going to have the * html quirk fixed. Give us some way to detect IE7 in CSS, the people pled. Well, I certainly don't approve of using these kinds of hacks (the most appropriate way to detect Internet Explorer and specific versions thereof is to use IE conditional comments), but I happen to have discovered a few new CSS hacks that work in Internet Explorer 7 and they'll be revealed sooner or later, so I might as well spill the beans now..." http://nanobox.chipx86.com/blog/2006/04/easy-css-hacks-for-ie7.php +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. User Testing is Not Entertainment By Jakob Nielsen. "Don't run your studies for the benefit of the people in the observation room. Test to discover the truth about the design, even when user tasks are boring to watch." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-testing-showbiz.html +04: EVENTS. International PHP Conference 2006 November 5-8, 2006. Frankfurt, Germany http://phpconference.com/ Forms That Work November 16 or 17, 2006. Melbourne Australia http://www.infodesign.com.au/training/formsthatwork.asp AUIC (Australasian User Interface Conference) 2007 January 30 - February 2, 2007. Ballarat, Australia http://auic2007.tinmith.net/ Workshop on HCI and Information Design to Communicate Complex Information February 16-17, 2007. Memphis, Tennessee U.S.A. https://umdrive.memphis.edu/malbers/public/HCIWorkshop/cfp.htm Educause Midwest Regional Conference 2007 March 12-14, 2007. Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. http://www.educause.edu/mwrc07 +05: FLASH. Flash Development Using Progressive Enhancement By Bobby van der Sluis. "Learn how to create Flash experiences that are visible for search engines and accessible to the biggest target audience possible." http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/progressive_enhancement.html +06: JAVASCRIPT. Scope in JavaScript By Mike West. "JavaScript is rife with unexplored nooks and crannies that can trip up even the most seasoned programmers. Digital Web Magazine Managing Editor Mike West investigates one of the deepest: the basic question of scope and context. As he builds up from first principles of variable scope to a detailed discussion of advanced context-manipulation techniques, you'll gain the knowledge necessary to keep careful track of this essential aspect of your scripts." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/scope_in_javascript/ Will Federal Court Ruling Over target.com Effect Ajax Development? By Hari K. Gottipati. "So do you think all these sites can be sued as per the ruling? Oh! boy this is scarier than I can imagine!..." http://tinyurl.com/s692e New Web Leaving Millions Behind By David Senf. "However, there is a transition underway from mostly text to a more whiz-bang graphics-intensive Web. Heralded as Web 2.0, the next generation Web boasts of AJAX-enriched sites built from mashups (the combination of multiple online sources of information and functionality). Incredible user experiences are being developed in this manner by the likes of Google, for example. But what is a new frontier on the Web risks creating severe limits for disabled surfers." http://tinyurl.com/pwkgu Securing Ajax By Scott Dietzen. "...we wanted to offer some general thoughts on securing Ajax applications gleaned, of course, from our Zimbra experience..." http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2006/09/securing_ajax.html +07: MISCELLANEOUS. WebAxe Podcasts By Dennis Lembree. "Practical web accessibility tips..." http://webaxe.blogspot.com/ Interview with Jared Smith of WebAIM (Podcast) By Dennis Lembree and Ross Johnson. "Interview with Jared Smith, Associate Director of WebAIM, a highly recognized organization which promotes web accessibility. Dennis and Ross have a great conversation with Jared, who's a very knowledgeable and vital member of the excellent web accessibility organization." http://tinyurl.com/f9cy2 Flashforward Conference Podcasts By Lynda Weinman. "This podcast series features interviews with Flashforward speakers, who discuss the conference, film festival and the current state and future of Flash." http://www.lynda.com/podcasts/ +08: PHP. Introduction to Regular Expressions By Rob Williams. "One of the most common tasks as a programmer that you'll end up coming across is string manipulation. You can run from it, you can hide from it, but eventually you're going to have to end up doing it (and usually on a fairly frequent basis!). Fortunately, a special set of tools commonly called "regular expressions" can often save you a great deal of time and effort, helping you achieve goals that you never thought possible. The downside, of course, is that you have to learn how to use these "expressions", and they can be quite confusing at times. In this article we'll take a beginner's look at what regular expressions are and see through examples how they can help you in your day to day tasks." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=5BF7B No More Cryptic Error Messages with PHP Custom Error Handlers By Melonfire. "PHP comes with built-in tools to let the developer trap script errors and divert them to their own user-defined error handler. You can program this handler to display a more informative error message, log the error to a file or database and/or take remedial action." http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6113787.html +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. W3C Change: Introduction By Eric A. Meyer. "...If the W3C can get back on track, I wouldn't want to see it replaced. If it can't, then it will be replaced, no matter what I or anyone else has to say. That doesn't mean it would cease to exist, of course. It would simply become less and less relevant. I have some ideas about how the W3C might avoid such a fate, but they aren't things that I can cover in a single post. Instead, I'll do it in three parts, and the three topic areas..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2006/09/14/w3c-change-introduction/ Teaching Web Design, Part 2 By Christian Montoya. "This past week, the flood gates opened: intro to CSS. Not CS:S or CSS, but CSS? the one I really like. We knew it would be tough. Introducing a fresh technology to students who know very little about computer science and still think far too visually when it comes to websites is never easy..." http://www.christianmontoya.com/2006/09/09/teaching-web-design-part-2/ eGovernment Site Credibility: Comparing Speed, Accessibility, Typos, and Validity By Andrew B. King. "In our opinion, all of the five government sites tested had credibility problems. All five sites failed our size and download time guidelines, all had typographic errors, all failed our accessibility tests and WCAG Level 3 (although only one failed Bobby's Section 508 test), and only one site, Canada, passed the W3C's (X)HTML validator." http://www.optimizationweek.com/reviews/egovernment/ A Standardista's Alphabet By Jack Pickard. "'A is for Aaron, who fell down the stairs. K is for Kevin, menaced by bears.' No wait, those are just the notes from our last staff meeting. Jack Pickard offers a lighter look at the world of web standards." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alphabet +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Text-Resize Detection By Lawrence Carvalho and Christian Heilmann. "Chris Heilmann and Lawrence Carvalho serve up a way to detect your visitors' text size settings using JavaScript." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fontresizing +11: USABILITY. Why People Persist with Using Paper Forms By Caroline Jarrett. "Have you ever wondered why your shiny new online form isn't getting the use it deserves, and the boring old paper still keeps poring in?..." http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3385.asp Streamlining UX Increases Conversion by 20 Percent By Jared Spool. "More evidence that streamlining the user experience can impact the bottom line..." http://tinyurl.com/ozypn When the Web Team Gets it Totally Wrong By Gerry McGovern. "...Too many web teams exist in a vacuum, and they end up creating websites that are essentially acts of vanity publishing. There's organization focus, organization-speak and an assumption that customers will just love to read sentences that begin with the name of the organization. Web teams are often obsessed with the mechanics of what they do. Conversations are filled with design-speak, techie-speak, usability-speak, and information architecture-speak. It is necessary to understand the mechanics but it is much more necessary to understand the customer. It's not enough to occasionally test your customers like you were monitoring whether they had contacted some rare disease yet. You've got to learn to live in their world, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, view the website with their limited experience. You've got to learn to really care about your customers, and, most importantly, to realize that what you care about, they really couldn't care less about." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2006/nt-2006-09-11-wrong.htm +12: XML. Microformats Cheat Sheet By Dave Child. "The Microformats cheat sheet is designed to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper and live by a designer or developer's desk, to make life a bit easier. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size Microformats cheat sheet." http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/cheat-sheets/microformats-cheat-sheet/ The Anatomy of an RSS Feed By Kris Hadlock. "RSS has become the standard data format for communicating syndicated information to a large audience. RSS is an XML format that consists of designated elements that conform to the XML 1.0 specification. This week we look at the elements in this structure." http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/feeds/ Wherefore Art Thou, SVG? By Kurt Cagle. ...Adobe this week made an announcement that was, while not unexpected, yet another blow - they were choosing to stop supporting the Adobe SVG Viewer in any fashion, to make it unable for download by the end of the year and to effectively dismantle the last vestiges of SVG outside of the fairly secondary roles that that standard plays in Adobe products in favor of their own FLEX language, acquired from Macromedia during the merger last year. Meanwhile, work has effectively stopped on the Mozilla Firefox SVG implementation, at least until after the release of Firefox 2.0, and while it is certainly hoped that the program will be continued the rumors at this point are somewhat grim, with the very real possibility that SVG is considered to be disliked politically by certain factions within the organization in favor of the WHATWG Canvas specification." http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/09/wherefore_art_thou_svg.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.]