+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 05, July 26, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 05 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: MISCELLANEOUS. 06: NAVIGATION. 07: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 08: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Responsibility for Accessible Content By Alastair Campbell. "A simple rule for good web sites: content is golden. In an accessibility context, structured content is golden. It a core responsibility of the site owner to ensure this is followed (not just the developer). When you examine this issue, you can then understand why few organizations will ever produce accessible PDFs..." http://alastairc.ac/2007/07/responsibility-for-accessible-content/ Practical Plans for Accessible Architectures By Frances Forman. "...While accessibility requires expert web developers to maintain high levels of access (especially on larger sites), it still needs the help of IAs who understand the scope and constraints that lead to accessible design, and who are conscious of the duty to prevent discrimination when making information management decisions." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/practical-plans-for Accessibility and Client Expectations: Selling Accessibility By Joe Dolson. "One routine challenge in being an accessible web developer is convincing clients of the necessity of certain features you've implemented. I don't sell my services specifically on the grounds of accessibility; accessibility is simply a feature of my web sites. As a result, not every client is even aware when the project starts that they're going to end up with an accessible web site..." http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2007/07/selling-accessibility/ Pseudo-Accessibility: Reinventing the Wheel By Joe Dolson. "In my last post, Accessibility and Client Expectations, a major point was on the practice of implementing accessibility as a site 'add-on,' rather than developing a web site from the ground up with accessibility in mind. Some of the features which are implemented in this manner fall into a gross category I'm inclined to describe as 'pseudo-accessibility.' In general, pseudo-accessible features are those which..." http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2007/07/pseudo-accessibility/ Office 2007 PDFs - Not Accessible By Alastair Campbell. "...Given that the Office 2007 PDF pluggin is a free download (once you've paid for Office 2007 of course), I was hoping that most people internally could use that instead of paying the Adobe tax for accessible PDFs. Unfortunately, without providing reasonably accessible output, I can't use or recommend that option." http://alastairc.ac/2007/07/office-2007-pdfs-not-accessible/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Cascading Style Sheets Working Group Blog. "W3C and the CSS Working Group publish information about the specifications under development in various ways. This page is the working group's weblog (blog)..." http://www.w3.org/blog/CSS Seven Common CSS Mistakes and How to Avoid Them By Ivan Pepelnjak. "Learn some of the most common CSS mistakes and how to avoid them." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=774817 CSS Inheritance By David Dorward. "An explanation of how inheritance works in CSS and why CSS doesn't need Object Oriented style inheritance." http://dorward.me.uk/www/css/inheritance/ Taking Conditional Comments Too Far By Jonathan Christopher. "I've come to accept and support conditional comments as a tool to use when it's otherwise impossible to get Internet Explorer to behave desirably. To me, they're much more acceptable than unstable CSS hacks or extensive !important declarations. They're much easier to maintain, and it's the only truly reliable way to target not only Internet Explorer itself, but specify a version as well. The subject of conditional comments comes with great debate that seems to be ongoing. There are good arguments on both sides, but to me, conditional comments seem like the best solution..." http://mondaybynoon.com/2007/07/23/taking-conditional-comments-too-far/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. User Assistance Walkthroughs: Helping Best Practices Emerge By Mike Hughes. "In my previous job as a UX designer, I learned the value of collaborative design walkthroughs. During walkthroughs, the UX designer would step through a user scenario-using the wireframes or mid-fidelity prototypes-with a cross-disciplinary team comprising product management, other UX designers, business analysts, developers, product testers, and technical communicators. The motivation for doing these walkthroughs was to reduce the amount of churn around product requirements that was occurring during coding and testing. No matter how well-written a requirement or use case was, it wasn't until stakeholders could interact with a design within a tangible context that the full implications of a requirement or its lack of sufficient specificity became evident..." http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000211.php +04: EVENTS. Eric Meyer - Professional CSS XHTML Techniques August 13-14, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.carsonworkshops.com/design-dev/meyer/13-14AUG2007.html Future of Web Apps - Expo October 3-5, 2007. London, United Kingdom http://www.futureofwebapps.com/ Future of Web Design November 7-8, 2007. New York, New York, U.S.A. http://www.futureofwebdesign.com/ User Experience 2007 Conference December 2-7, 2007. Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://www.nngroup.com/events +05: MISCELLANEOUS. Byte Sized Interview with Charlie Swinbourne By Paul Crichton. "Charlie Swinbourne, 25, is a deaf director/scriptwriter and researcher on See Hear, the BBC2 series for hearing impaired people. He is hard of hearing, can lip-read and is a British Sign Language user." http://tinyurl.com/37pd28 +06: NAVIGATION. Usability Violation: Link Colors that Don't Change When Visited By Jesper Ronn-Jensen. "Links should change colors when visited to assist the user in navigation. This may be common knowledge to you. Nevertheless, from time to time I run into graphical designers that are not aware of this web convention and why it should be so..." http://tinyurl.com/ys3jlz +07: USABILITY. Blasting the Myth of the Fold By Milissa Tarquini. "...Stop worrying about the fold. Don't throw your best practices out the window, but stop cramming stuff above a certain pixel point. You're not helping anyone. Open up your designs and give your users some visual breathing room. If your content is compelling enough your users will read it to the end...The biggest lesson to be learned here is that if you use visual cues (such as cut-off images and text) and compelling content, users will scroll to see all of it. The next great frontier in web page design has to be bottom of the page..." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of The Best Websites are Useful and Ugly By Gerry McGovern. "Functionality and usefulness are far more important to the success of your website than how nice and elegant it looks." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-07-23-ugly-websites.htm Defeated By a Dialog Box By Jakob Nielsen. "Interaction techniques that deviate from common GUI standards can create usability catastrophes that make applications impossible to use." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/dialog-box.html [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +08: 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.]