+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 18, October 26, 2007.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development.

++ISSUE 18 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: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: PHP.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TOOLS.
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.

Accessibility: Making It All Worthwhile
By Jack Pickard.
"Sometimes being someone who is committed to web accessibility feels like it's not a good thing. You get the feeling people feel you're some kind of zealot (even if you aren't); you get the feeling that other people think that when you raise the issue of accessibility you're being awkward or causing problems, that it's something unwanted, that's an extra chore you're forcing them to add on to their developments. That's not what I feel, but it's what I sometimes think other people feel..."
http://tinyurl.com/2y9m78

Alternative Text for Images: the ALT attribute
By Estelle Weyl.
"For a webpage to validate and be accessible, all images must have a value for the alt attribute, even if that value is empty..."
http://tinyurl.com/27r94w

Avoid the Hidden Barriers - Presentation Download
By Bim Egan.
"At Techshare 2007 I had the honor of being allowed to speak on one of my hot topics within the field of web accessibility. The presentation, on how to avoid some of the hidden barriers that make web sites difficult for disabled people who don't have the benefit of screen readers was well received, (phew), and I promised to make it available as a download..."
http://tinyurl.com/ywrrvr


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Branding Your CSS Stylesheets
By Johan.
"I am not sure this is only a fad that has following in the web standards community; since CSS is part of their world. What am I talking about? Designers that add the color scheme of their personal website to their stylesheets. What motivates them? Let's scratch the surface a little bit..."
http://fadtastic.net/2007/10/20/branding-your-css-stylesheets/

Doing it with (User) Style
By Derek Featherstone.
"...I created some user styles for both the WCAG Guidelines and the WCAG Checklist to make them easier to read at-a-glance, I made the numbers for the checkpoints bigger, added in some line-height and removed anything else I thought got 'in the way' of me being able to reference them quickly and efficiently..."
http://tinyurl.com/2kpyzf

Liquid Faux Columns With Background-Size
By Peter Gasston.
"Until the Advanced Layout and Grid Layout modules are implemented, we have to get by with the existing tricks of the trade. One of those is the use of faux columns, a background image which simulates equal-height columns. This is a good technique, but the drawback is that it only works with fixed-width columns..."
http://www.css3.info/liquid-faux-columns-with-background-size/

CSS Floats to Display Columns in Any Order
By Christopher Schmitt.
"With my publisher's permission, I'm sharing the following excerpt from my latest book, CSS Cookbook, Second Edition, which discusses a neat trick for designing multi-column layouts in any order..."
http://tinyurl.com/36jffn


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Group Usability Testing: Evolution in Usability Techniques
By Laura L. Downey.
"This paper introduces a formative method called 'group usability testing.' It involves several to many participants individually, but simultaneously, performing tasks, with one to several testers observing and interacting with participants. The idea for group usability testing arose as an answer to limited time resources and the availability of many users gathered together in one place. The approach is described via a case study. Data characteristics, benefits and drawbacks of group usability testing are discussed. Additionally it is compared/contrasted with individual usability testing, co-discovery, task-based focus groups, and cooperative usability testing."
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2007may/group-utests.html

Expanding Usability Testing to Evaluate Complex Systems
By Ginny Redish.
"This essay discusses ways that usability professionals can expand usability testing to evaluate complex systems, such as intelligence gathering and medical decision-making, that do not lend themselves to more traditional laboratory-based usability testing. In the essay, Redish explains what complex systems are, why they don't lend themselves to traditional usability test methodologies, and what other techniques are available for gathering and analyzing the data. The essay also discusses the importance of involving domain experts in the design of the test to ensure that both the components and the system as a whole are being adequately tested."
http://tinyurl.com/33vc9n

Usability Studies and the Hawthorne Effect
By Ritch Macefield.
"This paper provides a brief review of the Hawthorne effect, a discussion of how this effect relates to usability studies and help for practitioners in defending their studies against criticisms made on the basis of this effect."
http://tinyurl.com/2t7236

Making Usability Recommendations Useful and Usable
By Rolf Molich, Robin Jeffries, Joseph Dumas.
"This paper evaluates the quality of recommendations for improving a user interface resulting from a usability evaluation. The study compares usability comments written by different authors, but describing similar usability issues. The usability comments were provided by 17 professional teams who independently evaluated the usability of the website for the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. The study finds that only 14 of the 84 studied comments (17%) addressing six usability problems contained recommendations that were both useful and usable. Fourteen recommendations were not useful at all. Sixteen recommendations were not usable at all. Quality problems include recommendations that are vague or not actionable, and ones that may not improve the overall usability of the application. The paper suggests characteristics for "useful and usable recommendations," that is, recommendations for solving usability problems that lead to changes that efficiently improve the usability of a product."
http://tinyurl.com/ywoyzt


+04: EVENTS.

Paris Web 2007
November 15-17, 2007.
Paris, France.
http://2007.paris-web.fr/


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Object-Oriented JavaScript: Part 2
By Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea.
"Not only can JavaScript functions contain other functions, but they can also be instantiated. This makes JavaScript functions a good candidate for implementing the concept of a class from traditional object-oriented programming."
http://tinyurl.com/2er9vu

Accelerated DOM Scripting with Ajax, APIs and Libraries
By Jonathan Snook.
"The abundance of JavaScript libraries available to developers can be both a blessing and a curse: it's great to have variety, but how do you know which one to choose for which purpose? The venerable Jonathan Snook makes it look easy with an excerpt from his upcoming book, Accelerated DOM Scripting with Ajax, APIs and Libraries."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/dom_scripting_and_libraries/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

The Artisan and the Mass-Producer
By Patrick H. Lauke.
"Creating web pages is not the exclusive domain of those hardcore enough to hand-code anymore. WYSIWYG editors, blogging tools, content management systems and CSS frameworks have helped lower some of the technological entry barriers. Does this spell the end for the traditional craft of the web 'artisan'?..."
http://www.splintered.co.uk/news/99

HighEdWebDev Presentation Materials
http://www.highedweb.org/2007/presentations/
Michael Dame's powerpoint presentation was called 'The Tragedy at Virginia Tech: Crisis Communications on the Web'.
http://tinyurl.com/2b36rx

PPK on the Professionalization of Frontend Engineering
By Eric Miraglia. 
A Yahoo video. "Peter-Paul Koch (PPK) is one of the best-known figures in the world of front end engineering because over the years he has tirelessly tilted against the windmills of browser quirks."
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/10/22/video-ppk/


+07: NAVIGATION.

Breadcrumbs
By Yahoo Design Pattern Library.
"Problem Summary: The user needs to be able to navigate up (towards the root page) and have an understanding of where she is in relation to the rest of the site..."
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/pattern.php?pattern=breadcrumbs

Navigation Tabs
By Yahoo Design Pattern Library.
"Problem Summary: The user needs to navigate through a site to locate content and features and have clear indication of their current location in the site..."
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/pattern.php?pattern=navigationtabs


+08: PHP.

Generic Arrays in PHP
By Maarten Balliauw.
Maarten Balliauw a couple ways on how to implement an ArrayObject supporting generics in PHP5.
http://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2007/10/Generic-arrays-in-PHP.aspx


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Omitting alt Attribute for Critical Content
By W3C HTML Working Group.
"Issue: The img element in the current HTML 5 Editor's Draft allows instances where critical content may have no alt attribute, not just a null alt attribute for eye candy, but no alt attribute for critical content...Alternate text is essential for accessibility. There needs to be a markup solution to indicate whether or not the alternate text of an image is critical to understand the content - omitting such an important attribute is ambiguous, and doesn't help anyone. The problem is differentiating between ignorant and intentional lack of text. At the moment a missing alt is generally an indicator of ignorance (not knowing or caring to add alternative). A null alt either means the author knew enough to not want to put an alternative in (e.g. decorative/spacer image), or it was automatically put in for them...Status: Open Issue..."
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueAltAttribute

What's a Pattern?
By Yahoo Design Pattern Library.
"A pattern describes an optimal solution to a common problem within a specific context..."
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/page.php?page=lifecycle

Comment on the Stick (Standards Enforcement) Approach to Accessibility 
By Sharon Perry.
"Headstar's eAccess Bulletin has the scoop on Accessibility Ultimatum Proposed for UK Government Websites.  Sources claim that government websites will be penalized by being stripped of their 'gov.uk' domain names if they don't meet the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) AA rating.  At the moment, this is still only a draft proposal but if ratified, would mean that all existing government sites would need to have the AA rating by December 2008..."
http://tinyurl.com/2db68y


+10: TOOLS.

MRI
By John Allsopp.
"MRI is a free cross browser tool that lets you test selectors with any web page. Selectors, particularly complex ones can be difficult to get exactly right - MRI lets you experiment with them on any web page (local or online, static or dynamic)."
http://westciv.com/mri/


+11: USABILITY.

Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Active voice is best for most Web content, but using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. This enhances scannability and thus SEO effectiveness."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passive-voice.html

7 Critical Considerations for Designing Effective Applications
By Jared M. Spool.
"Our user, a world-traveling executive with a fondness for the finer things in life, showed tremendous interest in WhiteTie's brand new personal concierge service. While visiting WhiteTie's web site, the executive carefully reviewed the content to learn more about how the service worked and what she'd get for her (very pricey) annual fee..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/designing_effective_apps/


+12: XML.

XForms Thick Clients
By Jack Cox.
"Jack Cox explains an approach to building XForms client applications that work in a disconnected environment."
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/10/17/xforms-thick-clients.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.]