+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 23, November 30, 2007. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 23 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 05: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TOOLS. 11: TYPOGRAPHY. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Fieldsets, Legends and Screen Readers By Steve Faulkner. "...Due to the nature of the advice in UAAG 1.0 and its implementation in JAWS (legend text being announced before a controlŐs label text), developers should be mindful of the length of legend texts, as lengthy legend texts have been found to make forms difficult to use. Another potential pot hole is the JAWS behaviour when headings are included within a fieldset. In this case JAWS will typically use the heading text in place of the legend text, this is a quirk or bug, which can lead to unexpected and problematic consequences. This needs to be fixed in JAWS, but until it is, perhaps the use of headings within fieldsets should be minimised. The fieldset and legend elements are well supported by many user agents. While it is helpful to have knowledge of some of the quirks and failings of particular user agents, the poor support in software such as Window Eyes must not stop developers using these elements or accessibility practitioners recommending their use. Their use can make it easier for a wide range of disabled users to fill out forms. In order to improve accessibility for all disabled users, web standards must be adhered to so that developers can code for accessibility with confidence. It is the assistive technology vendorŐs job in these cases to fix their implementations." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=3 One Reason Why Section 508 Isn't Working By Mike Paciello. "An area of accessibility that I have been deeply involved in for the past 18 months is the TEITAC (Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee). By the way, it's pronounced 'Tie Tac' not 'Tea Tack'. TEITAC consists of 42 member organizations including government, industry, consumer and international (EU, Canada, Japan, and Australia) representatives. In short, the charter of this committee is to revise the US Federal Section 508 and Section 255 laws. Section 508 involves information technology and Section 255 involves telecommunications. With technology convergence increasingly becoming the norm, is it any wonder why this committee was asked to revise both standards?at the same time???" http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=6 Manual for Apple VoiceOver in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard By Roger Johansson. "Apple's screen reader, VoiceOver, comes bundled with Mac OS X (yes, it's free) and has received a number of updates in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The updates include a new voice, Braille support, and improved navigation and searching..." http://tinyurl.com/2b5era Change the Way You See Disability By Aardman Animations. "Discover the world of Aardman's Creature Discomforts and change the way you see disability." (Hat tip to Gez Lemon) http://www.creaturediscomforts.org/watch Jeffrey Frey on Accessible Podcasts By Dennis Lembree. "Dennis speaks with Jeffrey Frey and discusses accessible podcasting, guidelines on audio/video web accessibility, and Jeff's role at Rice University..." http://tinyurl.com/2hhatq Icons, Symbols and Cognitive Disabilities By Christopher Phillips. "...Perhaps one day there will be an open system that will facilitate the collection and use of symbols in everyday tools. Until then, here are some other project/ideas that are exploring the use of symbols..." http://curbcut.net/standards/icons-symbols-and-cognitive-disabilities/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS3 Media Queries Instead of the Media Attribute By Emil Stenstrom. "...Media queries are a way to check the capabilities of a user-agent instead of checking what kind of media type it claims to be. This makes a lot of sense to me..." http://tinyurl.com/2afqgw Introduction to Safari CSS Reference By Apple. Official documentation covering the CSS properties supported by Safari. http://tinyurl.com/2e33c3 Future-Proof Your Web Site Design by Planning Your CSS In Advance By Christian Watson. "...Let's take a look at the more common page elements a future-proofed site should plan for..." http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000857.php +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. A Structured Process for Transforming Usability Data into Usability Information By Jonathan Howarth, Terence S. Andre, and Rex Hartson. "Much research has been devoted to developing usability evaluation methods that are used in evaluating interaction designs. More recently, however, research has shifted away from evaluation methods and comparisons of evaluation methods to issues of how to use the raw usability data generated by these methods. Associated with this focus is the assumption that the transformation of the raw usability data into usability information is relatively straightforward. We would argue that this assumption is incorrect, especially for novice usability practitioners. In this article, we present a structured process for transforming raw usability data into usability information that is based on a new way of thinking about usability problem data. The results of a study of this structured process indicate that it helps improve the effectiveness of novice usability practitioners." http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2007november/howarth.html Clustering for Usability Participant Selection By Juan E. Gilbert, Andrea Williams, and Cheryl D. Seals. "User satisfaction and usefulness are measured using usability studies that involve real customers. Given the nature of software development and delivery, having to conduct usability studies can become a costly expense in the overall budget. A major part of this expense is the participant costs. Under this condition, it is desirable to reduce the number of participants without sacrificing the quality of the experiment. If a company could use a smaller participant pool and get the same results as the entire pool; this would result in significant savings. Given a participant pool of size N, is there a subset of N that would yield the same results as the entire population? This research addresses this question using a data-mining clustering tool called Applications Quest." http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2007november/gilbert.html +04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Intranet Information Architecture (IA) By Jakob Nielsen. "In analyzing 56 intranets, we found many common top-level categories, labels, and navigation designs, but ultimately, the diversity was too great to recommend a single IA." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia.html Make Tools By Victor Lombardi. "In my keynote talk at the 2007 IA Konferenz in Stuttgart, Germany this month, I argued we need to create fewer artifacts and more tools. We're already doing this, but it's easy to get stuck in a make-more-web/mobile-sites rut and that could lead to irrelevance." http://noisebetweenstations.com/personal/weblogs/?p=2123 +05: JAVASCRIPT. The Rules of Unobtrusive JavaScript By Roger Johansson. "One of the most important things to keep in mind when writing JavaScript for the Web is to make it unobtrusive, since You cannot rely on JavaScript being available. Sadly, there are many developers who do not seem to spend any energy at all on considering how to do that. Instead they choose to blindly forge ahead and assume that everybody who comes visiting will have full support for JavaScript and use a mouse..." http://tinyurl.com/2xf3uj This Was @mediaAjax 2007 By Chris Heilmann. His slides and thoughts on the conference. http://tinyurl.com/2hcpxd @media Ajax 2007 By Peter-Paul Koch. "This entry discusses the conference and gives links to my slides and example application." http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2007/11/media_ajax_1.html @media Ajax 2007 By Stuart Langridge. "Finally returned from @media Ajax 2007, and I had a great time. I was a presenter, talking about How To Destroy The Web, which I thoroughly enjoyed doing. My slides are here..." http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2007/11/22/media-ajax-2007 @media Ajax - The Presentations By Robert Nyman. "As promised in my @media AJAX - Journeys and stories post (now updated with pictures!), this one will focus on the presentations during the conference..." http://tinyurl.com/2594rm Transcript of the Paris Web 2007 Workshop on Unobtrusive JavaScript By Chris Heilmann. "This is a step-by-step description accompanied by code examples of the 'Unobtrusive JavaScript' workshop at Paris Web 2007 in Paris, France..." http://tinyurl.com/2foslb High-Performance JavaScript By Joseph Smarr. A set of slides from a talk given by Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo, at Oscon. http://www.slideshare.net/pureclone/highperformance-javascript ECMAScript 3 Regular Expressions: A Specification That Doesn't Make Sense By David Andersson (Liorean). "So, what was that A quick JS quiz for anybody who think they know regex thing that I posted all about? It was about a flaw, a nonsensical behavior that the ECMAScript specification makes standard. Let me expand a bit on what ECMAScript 3 does wrong..." http://tinyurl.com/2bo55m JavaScript Events By James Payne. "In our last article we left off with a glimpse of JavaScript Events. In this tutorial we are going to go through each one and learn how to use them to create more dynamic web sites. So slap on your seat belts and get your helmets ready. This is gonna be an action-packed episode..." http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/JavaScript/JavaScript-Events/ JavaScript Shortcut Notations that Shouldn't Be Black Magic to the 'Average Developer' Christian Heilmann. "When publishing articles about JavaScript development you run into many rules set by publishers and editors. This is a great thing as it keeps us authors on our toes and makes us understand more about how much work successful publishing really is. However, it can also be terribly annoying, especially when older idioms just stick. One of them is that 'the average developer' does not quite understand JavaScript shortcut notations. Now, if you are 'the average developer', please give me 5 minutes of your time to get through the following, you'll understand a lot more code out there and also spend a lot less time writing your own scripts." http://tinyurl.com/34nmwh +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Giant Global Graph By Tim Berners-Lee. "...I'll be thinking in the graph. My flights. My friends. Things in my life. My breakfast. What was that? Oh, yogurt, granola, nuts, and fresh fruit, since you ask." http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/215 In Defense of Eye Candy By Stephen P. Anderson. "Bottom line? Visual design is more than styling. It is function. And not only because it communicates, but also because it makes us feel. And between feeling and communication, people find things easier to use." http://www.poetpainter.com/thoughts/article/in-defense-of-eye-candy Don Norman Interview: Tech Design with Thought By Candace Lombardi. "If anyone knows a thing or two about designing for human-computer interaction, it's Don Norman, professor at Northwestern University, author of 'The Design of Future Things', and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group." http://tinyurl.com/ynwd5r The Web's Future: Peering into the Crystal Ball By Kristin Vincent. "In the future, we will see modules on the page that are triggered to appear dynamically as a result of user actions. These modules will contain content from multiple sites. The number and arrangement of modules on the page will be rules based, and the possibilities will be infinite because designers can't possibly predict or plan for the series of user actions that will kick off different combinations on the page. Joshua Davis, the first speaker at the conference, talked about the idea of computational design in art, where he builds design rules and elements of randomness into a program and then runs the program to create artwork. But I'm speculating about a new implementation of computational design that was not influenced by programmatic randomness, but by actions performed by users. And instead of creating art, this would create new transactional e-commerce or learning spaces. " http://tinyurl.com/2e85dr Building the UX Dreamteam By Anthony Colfelt. "...Aimed at managers and those involved in the hiring decision process, this article looks at the facets of UX staff and offers ways to identify the skills and influence that will tune your team to deliver winning results..." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/building-the-ux Consensus is For Losers By D. Keith Robinson. "...I've been designing for years now and it's become crystal clear to me that the very best designs, based on just about any standard of quality you can think of, are not, ever, done by committee..." http://www.dkeithrobinson.com/entry/consensus_is_for_losers/ Slideshows From Parisweb 2007 http://www.slideshare.net/tag/parisweb2007 +07: NAVIGATION. Collecting for Design By Matthew Smith. "'Genius,' Thomas Edison once said, 'is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.' While we can't help with the latter, one way to oil your creative gears is to maintain a collection of inspiring design. Join Matthew Smith on a scientific journey of discovery? all for the sake of a simple navigation bar." http://www.digital-web.com/articles/collecting_for_design/ +08: PHP. Introduction to PHP Programming By PHP Catalyst. Topics covered in the tutorial include: the basics of PHP, variables and data types, expressions, functions, scoping, and strings/arrays. http://tinyurl.com/2zj4h9 Dangers of Remote Execution By PHP Discovery. "...PHP has numerous ways to execute raw PHP code unless you the programmer stops it. Best way in preventing these methods is making sure you check the input of what your users are inputting, and making sure you escape all malicious actions that a hacker,cracker, kiddy scripter might want to do to your website..." http://phpdiscovery.com/dangers-of-remote-execution/ +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. HTML Design Principles, First Public Working Draft By Anne van Kesteren and Maciej Stachowiak, editors. "Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress." http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-design-principles/Overview.html Post your comments to: mailto:public-html-comments@w3.org W3C Seeks Community Support for HTML Design Principles (First Public Working Draft) By HTML Working Group. "The HTML Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of HTML Design Principles. This document describes the set of guiding principles used by the HTML Working Group for the development of HTML5, expected to define the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web. These design principles are an attempt to capture consensus on design approach in the areas of compatibility, utility, interoperability, and universal access. Learn more about the HTML Activity." http://www.w3.org/News/2007#item250 HTML Activity Statement By W3C. "HTML is the family name for the group of languages that form the lingua franca of the World Wide Web..." http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Activity Email Standards Project "The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email." http://www.email-standards.org/ In All Fairness - Internet Explorer Still Stinks By Kevin Yank. "This is the story of how SitePoint tried to give Internet Explorer a fighting chance...and it lost anyway..." http://tinyurl.com/25m3zj Google Can't Code By Joe Clark. "Why do some of the least competent HTML coders on the planet work for Google?" http://blog.fawny.org/2007/11/28/googletags/ Markup Map for hCard Microformat By Christopher Schmitt. "Knowing what elements are available in the hCard microformat is important when trying to apply CSS rules. The main problem is that there are so many elements it's easy to get tripped up on how to best styling an hCard..." http://tinyurl.com/223h58 +10: TOOLS. CSS Editor Bookmarklet for IE By Steve Faulkner. "For times when CSS styles need to be tested, on the fly, in Internet Explorer, the CSS editor bookmarklet can come in handy. It was originally developed from the test styles bookmarklet by Jesse Ruderman. When Internet Explorer 7 came along it ceased to work, but after much fiddling around I was able to get it working in IE 7. The CSS editor has the same functionality as the 'test styles' function on the Web Accessibility Toolbar." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=7 +11: TYPOGRAPHY. One More Time: No text-Resize 'Widgits' By Joe Clark. "One disagrees with his esteemed colleague Grant Broome, who believes text-resize 'widgits' (that's not how it's spelled) really should still be used. His reasons?..." http://blog.fawny.org/2007/11/28/widgits/ +12: USABILITY. Web Form Design: ZIP Codes and Locations By Luke Wroblewski. "People need to parse every question a Web form asks them, formulate their response to that question then enter their response into the space the form has provided. The best way to speed up that process -of course- http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?605 Screen Resolutions and Better User Experience By Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz. "...Don't optimize your web designs for your personal convenience. Don't guess blindly; instead try to estimate the profile of your visitors and leverage your design accordingly. In most cases you can improve the user experience by keeping the width of your layout at most 1000px. Design for your visitors, even if it means that your design looks terrible on your high-resolution wide-screen laptop." http://tinyurl.com/3eymm7 Thinking Web, Not Website By Gerry McGovern. "The Web is the network. The Web is the organization. Your website is not important. Reaching your customers is." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-11-26-organization.htm Meta-Usability: When the Method is Not the Message By Kath Straub. "Kath Straub looks at the gap between what researchers study and what practitioners want - and the gap between what practitioners present and what clients want to hear." http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/nov07.asp 7 Critical Considerations for Designing Effective Applications, Part II By Jared M. Spool. "Our user, a regular business traveler trying to quickly book a flight, was reviewing a selection of flight options supplied by USAir.com. While there were plenty of flights, the user felt these weren't meeting her needs -- either the flight arrived too late or made risky connections. Thinking leaving a little earlier would give her better flights, the user tried hitting the back button only to receive an error message..." http://www.uie.com/articles/designing_effective_apps_part2/ The Joys of Consistent Web Practices By Mike Cherim. Ever since I have been flying the web developer pennant in my occupational corner I have been trying to develop my own best practices based on existing web standards and accessibility requirements, and then applying them consistently. My goal is to gain the ability to perform a task the same way time and time again without having to think about it, meanwhile ensuring my works conform to standardized usability practices to guarantee at least satisfactory experiences for my site's users. Consistency, after all, can be a very good thing for everyone. Let me explain..." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=229 The Fine Line Between Security and Usability By Sunnet Beskerming. "Finding the right balance between security and usability is difficult for any software developer. Recently a set of issues were disclosed where it was apparent that Microsoft had worsened the security situation for their users based on the software provided with Windows, or based on their response to reported problems." http://tinyurl.com/yuussg We Know Security and Usability are Orthogonal - Do You? By Sunnet Beskerming. "...While a greater understanding of secure development practices and security as a part of the design process means that more applications are being created without needing to sacrifice usability for security, many users have been conditioned into thinking that a tightening of security means reduced usability. If you still think that is not the case, consider two recent examples that have affected both Apple and Microsoft..." http://tinyurl.com/yumgdj [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.]