+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 22, November 21, 2007. 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: DREAMWEAVER. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Use the Label Element to Make Your HTML Forms Accessible By Roger Johansson. "There are plenty of articles and tutorials that describe how to create accessible HTML forms out there. Despite that it is common to come across forms that do not use a single label element and forms that use label elements but do so incorrectly..." http://tinyurl.com/ysju7g Cherished Lies of the Blind By Joe Clark. "New year's resolution for 2008: Every blind person with an interest in technology should vow never to reiterate these lies." http://blog.fawny.org/2007/11/19/blindlies/ An Example of Automated Accessibility Testing By Joe Dolson. "...On the whole, I find the Functional Accessibility Evaluator to be quite interesting and to provide good value. It's a great natural-language approach to identifying potential accessibility problems. However, despite this, the automated nature of the testing exposes numerous of the standard difficulties with any kind of automated results. Namely, at any point where they deviate from precise guidelines, they expose private bias on the issues; and they are not capable of making fine distinctions between pass and fail." http://tinyurl.com/yo9nvy Business Reasons for Web Accessibility By Dennis Lembree. "An accessible web site decreases costs, increases sales, and increases positive image." http://tinyurl.com/2x34jt +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS3 and the Death of Handheld Stylesheets By Russell Beattie. "...By choosing to default to non-handheld views, I have to agree with Phil that Opera seems to have given up the fight on this particular battle, and is instead banking on more sites using CSS3 instead..." http://tinyurl.com/2b4wbt How Many CSS Properties Can You Name in 5 Minutes? By justsayhi. A quiz. http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/css_quiz What's Not to Love About CSS Frameworks? By Jeff Croft. "Over the past several weeks, I've been bombarded (in e-mail, in person, and over IM) with questions about CSS frameworks. I guess I wrote the book on this topic (and contributed, if inadvertently, to one of the most notable CSS frameworks out there), so it's completely understandable people would come to me with these questions. The question almost always sounds something like this..." http://tinyurl.com/2qrjk7 +03: DREAMWEAVER. Adobe Spry 1.6 Improves Standards Support, Adds Progressive Enhancement By Roger Johansson. "...Spry 1.6 has in fact improved support for both Web standards, accessibility and progressive enhancement..." http://tinyurl.com/24a6ap Spry and Web Standards By Adobe. "The 'Web 2.0' world presents a leap forward in web functionality and user experience. The bar has officially been raised, and the rapid adoption of Ajax is proof that "next-generation" web interfaces are in high demand. In many ways, this trend is an "of course" moment. Of course Google Maps is the way that mapping is supposed to work. When you first experience, when first experienced, make you wonder why it took so long to be. While the underlying technologies of Ajax have been around for a while now, the recent explosion of Ajax-powered pages and applications has brought to light some limitations of XHTML, browsers, assistive technologies and standards." http://tinyurl.com/27na9z Progressive Enhancement with Spry By Adobe. "...This document will give examples of how to use the various components within Spry in a progressive enhancement scenario and introduce some techniques and utilities that will hopefully make it easy.." http://tinyurl.com/ytdsku Separating Behavior from Structure - Unobtrusive Spry By Adobe. "...This document will give you a brief introduction of the "unobtrusive javascript" technique and some utilities within Spry that aid with separating behavior from structure..." http://tinyurl.com/2epacq Validating Spry By Adobe. "Code validation is gaining more importance these days. HTML coders and their clients want to know that their code is done correctly. While the debate over standards and validation is a large one, the Spry team has taken steps to ensure that Spry pages will pass W3C validation." http://tinyurl.com/2b3vgq Hash Those Passwords By Pete Freitag. "Spry recently had an embarrassing security breach, in which several email addresses and passwords were stolen..." http://www.petefreitag.com/item/660.cfm +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Personas vs. User Descriptions; Apples vs. Tomatoes By Jared Spool. "In my mind, Christopher is clearly confusing Personas with User Descriptions. User descriptions are what-we-think-we-know-now writeups of who uses our design and why. Personas, on the other hand, are carefully researched and crafted personalities we create to focus the design energy..." http://tinyurl.com/yuzaak +05: JAVASCRIPT. The AxsJAX Framework for ARIA By Gez Lemon. "Charles L. Chen and T. V Raman announced an open source framework called AxsJAX. The framework inserts ARIA properties into web applications to make them accessible to assistive technologies." http://juicystudio.com/article/axsjax-framework-aria.php AxsJAX Frequently Asked Questions By Google. http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/ Advanced JavaScript III By Howard Feldman. "Howard Feldman completes his voyage through the world of JavaScript hacking with this article. This time around, he tackles dynamic tables, switching out form elements, and putting prompting text in text boxes." http://tinyurl.com/24qpvd +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Understanding Web Design By Jeffrey Zeldman. "We'll have better web design when we stop asking it to be something it's not, and start appreciating it for what it is. It's not print, not video, not a poster-and that's not a problem. Find out why cultural and business leaders misunderstand web design, and learn which other forms it most usefully resembles." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingwebdesign Web Customer Rejects Silo Mentality By Gerry McGovern. "Organizations have an overwhelming desire to own and control. Even within organizations, each unit/department is constantly trying to prove that it is important." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-11-19-dell.htm RFP, R.I.P. By ideasonideas. "As a studio matures, one of the nicest benefits is in the luxury of actively 'choosing' which projects to engage in and which ones to pass on. In our first years of business, I would have scoffed at such a notion, but after some experience, we've learned that some business isn't worth having. The worst kind of business, in my humble opinion, is that which beckons in the form of an RFP. For those who aren't familiar with RFPs ? I can't imagine many who aren't ? the acronym is derived from 'Request For Proposals'. Talk to most experienced design managers and they'll feel similarly: RFPs simply don't work when it comes to purchasing design services..." http://www.ideasonideas.com/2007/11/rfp-rip/ Bruce Tognazzini on Human-Computer Interaction By e-consultancy "Bruce Tognazzini was Apple's 66th employee, developing the company's first usability guidelines and founding its Human Interface team. Almost thirty years later, he's a principal at Nielsen Norman Group and still making his feelings known when companies commit design errors. Here, 'Tog' gives us a variety of thoughts on interface design, freedom, the future of computing, the iPhone's place in world history and why he travels around in a 400 sq ft motorhome while towing a 4x4 and two Segways..." http://tinyurl.com/2q3dwp Dilbert Does Usability By Peter J. Meyers. "...One of these days, we network engineers, security specialists, designers, marketers, SEOs, and usability folks need to wake up and realize we all need each other..." http://www.usereffect.com/topic/dilbert-does-usability +07: NAVIGATION. Improving the Usability of Within-Page Links By Bruce Lawson. "...None of the techniques above can be classed as advanced, but in combination they show that good document structure combined with CSS and JavaScript can enhance the user experience with some visual reinforcement. Users with screenreaders get no visual reinforcement, of course, but the most poplar screenreaders already prefix within-page link with an announcement of "this page link" so the user understands the context. And, of course, those people using older, less advanced browsers are not disadvantaged in any way." http://tinyurl.com/2hla52 Search Engine Spam By Frederick Townes. "Most of us think of spam as junk email. Search engine spam is different. Search engine spam is any means of manipulating search engine spiders to artificially boost a website's page rank or positioning on search engine results pages. In other words, search engine spam is any tactic employed by site owners to fool search engine spiders. Not a good idea..." http://tinyurl.com/2y9khk +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Keep Browser Lock-Out a Thing of the Past By Roger Johansson. "...even if your site uses technology that is not supported by all browsers, don't actively prevent people using other browsers from entering. Build your website with web standards and progressive enhancement in mind instead..." http://tinyurl.com/2zxkvz +09: TYPOGRAPHY. How to Size Text in CSS By Richard Rutter. "It's a tug-of-war as old as web design. Designers need to control text size and the vertical grid; readers need to be able to resize text. A better best practice for sizing type and controlling line-height is needed; and in this article, Richard Rutter obligingly supplies one." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/howtosizetextincss Text Sizes and Screen Resolution By Mel Pedley. "According to clickdensity, there appears to be a link between user screen resolutions and text size settings..." http://tinyurl.com/yp5gac +10: USABILITY. Web Form Design Best Practices By Luke Wroblewski. "In my Web Form Design Best Practices talk at User Interface 12 in Boston, MA, I walked through the importance of Web forms and a series of design best practices culled from live to site analytics, usability testing, eye-tracking studies, and best practice surveys. My Slides from the talk..." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?602 Procedures: The Sacred Cow Blocking the Road By Mike Hughes. "Users do not remain in online Help for long periods of time. So, not only must Help topics be modular and self-contained, elements within topics must be directly accessible and self-contained as well. Procedural information must accommodate a reader, for example, who has already figured out how to complete steps 1 through 4 before ever going to Help and would be discouraged from continuing to read the Help if she felt she must wade though instructions on how to do stuff she has already done or information she already knows." http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000242.php Trust in the Little Things By Steve Baty. "When we embed a link in our content, our aim is to encourage visitors to explore beyond the bounds of the information on the current page by following the link we've provided. By doing so, we provide both a richer experience for visitors and greater value to them through their relationship with us. However, abbreviated URLs do have some disadvantages..." http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000240.php [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: 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.]