+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 32, February 1, 2008. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 32 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: PHP. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TOOLS. 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. Microsoft Versioning: Accessibility Implications By Bruce Lawson. "...there's one practical problem with the suggestion that pages without the MMM (Magic Microsoft Metatag) become ossified under IE7 for all time. IE7 (and its predecessors) makes some in-page links entirely inaccessible to keyboard users. Yes-completely unreachable to blind people and those with motor impairments..." http://tinyurl.com/2bv7gg Social Networking - Not For Everyone? By Mel Pedley. "AbilityNet's latest State of the eNation Report focuses on social networking websites which, the report claims, are locking out disabled users..." http://accessites.org/site/2008/01/social-networking-not-for-everyone/ Creating Accessible PDFs from Word 2007 By Ability Net. "This article explains how you can use the 'Save as PDF' plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 to create accessible PDFs from Word 2007 documents..." http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/webarticle87 A How To Guide for Accessible Web Design By Jen Rohrig. "Accessible Design is intended to help web designers create accessible web sites, so that they are fully accessible to users with disabilities. It is expected that web designers using this web site already know the basics of designing with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript..." http://jenrweb.com/aDesign/index.php Promote and Make Your Site Sticky with HTML ALT Text Tags By Kevin Onesko. "Here is one simple tact that can improve your search engine ranking, make your site sticky, and increase the accessibility of your site to disabled visitors..." http://tinyurl.com/274ego GSA to Grade Agencies on 508 Compliance By Jason Miller. "The General Services Administration is borrowing a page from the Office of Management and Budget's playbook and will start grading agencies on how well they comply with Section 508 accessibility requirements..." http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151454-1.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Syntax as a Railroad Diagram By Rikkert Koppes. "Rikkert Koppes uses railroad diagrams to capture the rather abstract descriptions of CSS Syntax into drawings that should make it slightly easier for you to understand." http://www.rikkertkoppes.com/thoughts/css-syntax/ Em Based Layouts - Vertical Rhythm Calculator By James Whittaker. "One of the key concepts that we can use within our sites is consistent line-height in CSS terms. If you think of a ruled notebook, the lines are all equal heights. The concept is fairly straight forward but in practice can be confusing especially for a CSS newcomer."The concept is fairly straight forward but in practice can be confusing especially for a CSS newcomer. All sizing needs to be relative to the base size. This allows for easy scaling up or down while keeping the required spacing and layout consistent, this can be refereed to as an elastic layout. To allow this we need to specify measurements in percent or em." http://tinyurl.com/23ftke +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Personas are NOT a Document By Jared Spool. "...Personas are not a document. Persona descriptions can be a document (or a movie or any other practical rendering). But, those are just renderings of what happened during the persona creation process..." http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2008/01/24/personas-are-not-a-document/ +04: EVENTS. Advanced CSS Training February 29, April 4, and May 2, 2008. London, United Kingdom. http://www.webcredible.co.uk/services/css-training.shtml A Very Practical Guide To Testing Against WCAG1.0 and 2.0 March 5, 2008. London, United Kingdom. http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/webpracticaltesting Mix 08 March 5-7, 2008. Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://visitmix.com/2008/default.aspx Web Form Design Best Practices March 15, 2008. Sunnyvale, California, U.S.A. http://involutionstudios.com/?p=113&cat=8 Site Search Analytics for a Better User Experience March 18, 2008. Sunnyvale, California, U.S.A. http://involutionstudios.com/?p=111&cat=8 Usability Testing Training April 2, 2008. London, United Kingdom. http://www.webcredible.co.uk/services/usability-testing-training.shtml Meeting 508 Requirements: Rules and Tools April 8, 2008. Washington D.C., U.S.A. http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/wmu/spring2008/meeting508.shtml +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Paper Prototyping with Morae By David Travis. "Morae makes it easy to log usability tests, create video highlights and allow observers to view a test in progress. But Morae is designed to support usability tests of software, not paper prototypes. This how-to article shows you how to exploit the full functionality of Morae when carrying out a paper prototype test." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/morae-pp.html +06: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Objects: Finishing Strings By James Payne. "In the last tutorial we continued our discussion on String Objects in JavaScript. Hopefully we will wrap it up in this episode..." http://tinyurl.com/2gkdtr +07: PHP. Implementing Destructors with Multiple Objects in PHP 5 By Alejandro Gervasio. "Destructors can be used in all sorts of clever ways in the context of a given PHP 5 application, mostly in those cases where it's necessary to keep track of the status of certain objects prior to their being destroyed by the PHP interpreter. In this second chapter you'll learn how to work simultaneously with multiple classes that concretely implement their respective destructors." http://tinyurl.com/2aqmym 5 Essential Development Facts Every PHP Developer Should Know By Akash Mehta. "There's always a bridge between textbook knowledge of programming - syntax, procedure etc. - and the real world knowledge that you get from actually developing real applications. Here are five things every PHP developer should be familiar with before they begin developing web applications in PHP" http://tinyurl.com/36mmux Object Oriented Programming in PHP: The Way to Large PHP Projects By Luis Argerich. "This article introduces Object Oriented Programming (OOP) in PHP. I will show you how to code less and better by using some OOP concepts and PHP tricks...." http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/luis20000420.php3 +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. The First Working Draft of HTML 5 is Here By Anne van Kesteren. "On January 22nd 2008 the W3C published the First Public Working Draft of HTML 5 - this is a great step forward, as this draft has been in the works for several years. It was initially just being developed the WHATWG, with the W3C HTML Working Group coming on board to help out with it in March 2007. Alongside the HTML 5 draft a HTML 5 differences from HTML 4 document has been published, which gives a high-level overview of what new functionality HTML 5 brings..." http://tinyurl.com/23mcjp Acid 3 Browser Test Completed, Available Now By Nicholas Shanks. "Ian Hickson, the Google employee tasked with creating the next generation of acid test, has completed his work, which is now available for public consumption at its new home, acidtests.org. Unlike the first acid test, which focused on the box model, and the second acid test, which covered a broad variety of basic HTML and CSS features, Acid3 covers 100 of the nooks and crannies of HTTP, HTML, CSS, ECMAScript, SVG and XML, all through the medium of DOM scripting, a critical requirement for any modern web application..." http://www.css3.info/acid3-completed/ The IE Compatibility/Versioning Firestorm Continues at Length: A Reasoned Response to X-UA-Compatible By nevali. http://nevali.net/2008/01/a-reasoned-response-to-x-ua-compatible/ Almost Precedent By Henri Sivonen. http://hsivonen.iki.fi/almost-precedent/ Almost Target By Eric A. Meyer. http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/01/24/almost-target/ Asymptotically Converging on Standards By Sam Ruby. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2008/01/28/Asymptotically-Converging-on-Standards Compatibility and IE 8 By Jens Meiert. http://meiert.com/en/blog/20080128/compatibility-and-ie/ HTML5 DOCTYPE By John Resig. http://ejohn.org/blog/html5-doctype/ IE8 and Doctype Switching By Emil Stenstrom. http://friendlybit.com/css/ie8-and-doctype-switching/ IE8, Version Targeting, and the Ruckus it's Causing By Jonathan Christopher. http://tinyurl.com/2gratv Internet Explorer Reality By Mike Davies. http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/standards/InternetExplorerReality Me, IE8 and Microsoft Versioning By Molly E. Holzschlag. http://www.molly.com/2008/01/24/me-ie8-and-microsoft-versioning/ Microsoft: Fish, or Cut Bait By Shelly Powers. http://realtech.burningbird.net/standards/fish-or-cut-bait/ Still Broken By Jeremy Keith. http://adactio.com/journal/1403 So What Happens Now? By Rachel Andrew. http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2008/01/26/377/ The Default Value of the Versioning Switch By David Dorward. http://blog.dorward.me.uk/2008/01/28/versioning-switch-default.html The Meta Freeze IE Drops the Bomb (again) By Niels Matthijs. http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/IE-meta-switch The Versioning Switch's Default is Correct By Peter-Paul Koch. http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2008/01/the_versioning_1.html The War Within Web Standards: Pragmatists Versus Purists By Jeff Croft. http://tinyurl.com/26kn6z Tyranny of Microsoft By Shelley Powers. http://realtech.burningbird.net/standards/tyranny-of-microsoft/ Version Targeting and JavaScript Libraries By Drew McLellan. http://tinyurl.com/25agzx What Should Microsoft Do Instead? By David Baron. http://dbaron.org/log/2008-01#e20080124a What's Best for Web Standards? By Mike Cherim. http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=247 Why the DOCTYPE Switch Isn't Broken By Joe Dolson. http://tinyurl.com/2bj6zr X-UA-Lemur-Compatible By Kate Bolin. "As portrayed by toy lemurs..." http://www.katemonkey.co.uk/article/48/x-ua-lemur-compatible X-UA-Compatible: Moving Past Thoughts of the Children By Lachlan Hardy. http://tinyurl.com/2d48k4 +09: TOOLS. Semantic HTML Graphs By Joe Dolson. "The output of this Java applet has very limited accessibility. If you are using a screen reader or mobile device without Java support, you will not be able to make use of the information. If you are color blind, the value will be limited..." http://www.joedolson.com/semantic-html-graph/ Also: Graph the Semantic HTML Structure of Your Web Page http://tinyurl.com/2dzsyl +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Examples of Typographic Style on Commercial Web Sites By Christian Watson. "There's something special about opening a page that uses great typography and layout. The headline pops out at you, drawing you in. Through good use of spacing the text looks readable and inviting..." http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000900.php +11: USABILITY. Gone in Sixty Seconds or Less By Amit Gupta. "Your most intuitive, meaningful, and devastatingly clever design is worthless - unless it's shallow enough to appeal in the first five seconds. Most of the time, that's all you'll get before they walk, click, or turn away..." http://abriefmessage.com/2008/01/25/gupta/ Magnetic Websites By Miraz Jordan. "Does your website attract visitors or repel them? This month we mention a couple of website traps that can send visitors hurrying away before they've got to know you..." http://mactips.info/blog/2008/01/magnetic-websites +12: XML. XHTML and Search Engines By David Dorward. "Research into what search engines do with documents served as application/xhtml+xml." http://dorward.me.uk/www/xhtml/search/ [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.]