+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 6, Issue 40, March 28, 2008. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 40 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: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Understanding How JAWS Reads Text By Steve Faulkner. "Making public statements based on limited knowledge of an assistive technology and with little understanding of how it is used, can lead to incorrect conclusions and poor implementations..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=50 Views From a Screen Reader User By Mike Cherim. "As it concerns using lists and other non-form structural elements to lay out web forms, my feelings have been known. They haven't changed, but after interviewing an experienced screen reader user about this very subject recently, I do have new insights into it -- his perspective anyway. It was a revealing interview. Offering without a doubt relief to some, and probably disappointment to others. Any earned responses will likely determine that." http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=262 Using titles on Form Fields By Mike Davies. "Form elements provide a decent range of accessibility options: label elements match up label text with their corresponding field elements, fieldsets group together similar input elements and the legend provides a succinct title for these groupings of fields. With those elements alone, forms are fairly simple to mark up in an accessible manner..." http://www.accessibilitytips.com/2008/03/25/using-titles-on-form-fields/ HTML/XHTML Accessibility Features By Ian Lloyd. "The topic of web accessibility is a long and complicated one and cannot be covered fully in this reference. However, many of the HTML elements covered in this reference are there for the purposes of improving the accessibility of the content, or may have specific attributes that do the same. Where these occur, we mention in the reference for that element or attribute that it's an accessibility feature..." http://reference.sitepoint.com/html/accessibility Reference Card for Accessible PDF Creation from Word By Andrew Kirkpatrick. "There is a lot of PDF that is generated though Adobe's PDFMaker plug-in for Microsoft Word. You can quite easily create PDF documents that meet the majority of accessibility needs with very little effort, if you know how. For the CSUN conference, we created a one-page document that helps guide users who may not know much about accessibility so that they can more easily address accessibility in their documents..." http://tinyurl.com/2dmphx +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. How and Why: Styling Text Links By Andy Rutledge. "Poorly styled text links can detract from or ruin an otherwise well-designed page, while appropriately styled text links can add significant support to the brand and enhance the user experience. Since text links are a significant feature of the online experience, it's an element of design worth getting right..." http://www.andyrutledge.com/styling-text-links.php CSS Positioning By Fabian van Luyn. "There are many ways to position your elements in CSS. Relative positioning, absolute positioning or a combination of both. I'll explain those ways with some clear examples..." http://www.onyx-design.net/weblog2/css/css-positioning/ Shorthand CSS - not only because it is shorter By Niels Matthijs. "CSS is tricky, no doubt about that. And when working on a big site, keeping a clean css file is pretty hard to manage. Time constraints, browser bugs and change requests can make a downright mess of your nicely tailored css. As time passes, things will only get worse. That's why it is important to keep your css as clean as possible from the start." http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/css-shorthands +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Results of Online Usability Study of Apollo Program Websites By Tom Tullis. "An online usability study of two websites about the Apollo Space Program (NASA and Wikipedia) was conducted. Each participant attempted four tasks from a full set of nine using one of the sites. A total of 130 people completed the study. Task completion status and task time were automatically recorded, as were responses to a variety of post-study rating scales and open-ended questions, including the System Usability Scale (SUS). All performance metrics (task completion, task time, task efficiency) showed that the participants performed significantly better using the Wikipedia site. Similarly, all but one of the self-reported metrics showed that the Wikipedia site was perceived as being significantly easier to use. The one exception was that the NASA site was rated as marginally more visually appealing. Extensive comments on both sites are consistent with these findings and give additional insight into aspects of the sites that could be improved." http://www.measuringuserexperience.com/Apollo/ The Persona Non Grata Article is a Gift. Really. By Tamara Adlin. "Here's the deal... he's got a great point, and I actually kinda furiously like the article because it reflects what annoys me about persona efforts (not personas themselves)." http://www.adlininc.com/corporate_underpants/?p=28 Extreme User Research By Daniel Lafreniere. "What is the biggest problem I face almost every time a client hires me to do something about a web project going awry? They don't know a thing about their users. They don't have a clue, whatsoever. Unbelievable but true!..." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/extreme-user +04: EVENTS. On-Line Web 2.0 Accessibility Course using the W3C ARIA Specifications April 15 - May 8, 2008. http://web20online.cita.uiuc.edu/ Higher Education Web Symposium July 15-16, 2008. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. http://www.med.upenn.edu/uiconf/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. We Tried To Warn You: The Organizational Architecture of Failure By Peter Jones. "There are many kinds of failure in large, complex organizations - breakdowns occur at every level of interaction, from interpersonal communication to enterprise finance. Some of these failures are everyday and even helpful, allowing us to safely and iteratively learn and improve communications and practices. Other failures - what I call large-scale - result from accumulated bad decisions, organizational defensiveness, and embedded organizational values that prevent people from confronting these issues in real time as they occur." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/we-tried-to-warn-you +06: JAVASCRIPT. aria-templateid Explained By David Bolter. "I wondered when an aria-templateid might be used so I asked Richard Schwerdtfeger..." http://mindforks.blogspot.com/2008/03/aria-templateid-explained.html Easy ARIA Tip #1: Using aria-required By Marco Zehe. "...The first attribute I'd like to cover is called aria-required. It is one of the universal aria attributes, which means, as stated, that it can be used on any conventional HTML element such as input or select...." http://www.marcozehe.de/2008/02/29/easy-aria-tip-1-using-aria-required/ Easy ARIA tip #2: aria-labelledby and aria-describedby By Marco Zehe. "...The solution is in an ARIA attribute called aria-labelledby. Its parameter is a string that consists of the IDs of the HTML or XUL elements you want to concatenate into a single accessible name. Yes, you read right, this not only works in HTML, but in XUL, too! A second attribute that works very similarly is called aria-describedby..." http://tinyurl.com/yugml5 ARIA in HTML5 Integration: Document Conformance (Draft) By Henri Sivonen. "This is a draft written by Henri Sivonen. This is not a spec and has not been endorsed by anyone. For context, please refer to this companion email." http://hsivonen.iki.fi/aria-html5/ Simple JavaScript Inheritance By John Resig. "I've been doing a lot of work, lately, with JavaScript inheritance - namely for my work-in-progress JavaScript book - and in doing so have examined a number of different JavaScript classical-inheritance-simulating techniques..." http://ejohn.org/blog/simple-javascript-inheritance/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Webstock Recordings "Here are all the recordings from Webstock 08 and Webstock 06. These recordings will be permanently archived at the following links. Where there is no recording for a particular session, that was the decision of the speaker and we fully respect that. (...) We'd love to hear from you if you find these recordings useful. Please drop us a line and let us know, especially if you weren't at Webstock and/or are from locations other than New Zealand. Enjoy!" http://webstock.org.nz/past/recordings.php +08: NAVIGATION. Tap is the New Click: Designing Gestural Interfaces By Dan Saffer. "Even though the technology has been around for decades, only now are we starting to see mass production and adoption of touchscreen and gestural devices for the public. Jeff Han's influential 2006 TED demonstration of his multitouch system, followed by the launches of Nintendo's Wii, Apple's iPhone, and Microsoft Surface, have announced a new era of interaction design, one where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking." http://en.oreilly.com/et2008/public/schedule/detail/1801 The Externalities of Search 2.0 By Michael Zimmer. "Web search engines have emerged as ubiquitous and vital tools for the successful navigation of the growing online informational sphere. As Google puts it, the goal is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful' and to create the 'perfect search engine' that provides only intuitive, personalized, and relevant results. Meanwhile, the so-called Web 2.0 phenomenon has blossomed based, largely, on the faith in the power of the networked masses to capture, process, and mashup one's personal information flows in order to make them more useful, social, and meaningful. The (inevitable) combining of Google's suite of information-seeking products with Web 2.0 infrastructures - what I call Search 2.0 - intends to capture the best of both technical systems for the touted benefit of users. By capturing the information flowing across Web 2.0, search engines can better predict users' needs and wants, and deliver more relevant and meaningful results. While intended to enhance mobility in the online sphere, this paper argues that the drive for Search 2.0 necessarily requires the widespread monitoring and aggregation of a users' online personal and intellectual activities, bringing with it particular externalities, such as threats to informational privacy while online." http://tinyurl.com/2bqng9 Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry By Aarron Walter. "Findability is to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as "web standards" is to 'table layouts.' In a web whose vastness exceeds comprehension, sites with findable content win. The good news is that everyone on your team can help make your site findable. Get a taste for this essential discipline from Aarron Walter, author of Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/findabilityorphan +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Specifications, Standards, Guidelines and Recommendations By Mel Pedley. "...Don't be a slave to a standard. Following a standard simply because it is a standard isn't enough. That kind of single-minded approach can create more problems than it cures..." http://tinyurl.com/26jlal +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Should We Continue To Use Relative Units Vs. Relying On Page Zooming? By Robert Nyman. "Looking at the upcoming releases of different web browsers I started to wonder whether specifying fonts in relative units, such as ems etc, will be a common approach in the future." http://tinyurl.com/2q27wq +11: USABILITY. Resist Redesign By Gerry McGovern. "Redesign is classic organization-centric thinking. It rarely has much to do with making things better for the customer." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-03-24-redesign.htm Cues, The Golden Retriever By Jamie Owen. "How our natural responses to stimuli can inform the design process..." http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/cues-the-golden Warning: Third-party Usability is Bad for your Health By Frank Spillers. "There is a huge problem in the software and web services industry: 3rd party applications, widgets, dashboards or site add-ons can kill your usability efforts. Poor user experiences with 3rd-party applications can undermine or make your usability efforts look bad. Vendors such as PeopleSoft, Vignette and many others are notorious for providing "clunk-ware", 'vapor-ware' or 'sneaker-ware' as one of our clients at Experience Dynamics put it. Let's explore why this is a major problem that..." http://tinyurl.com/2dhuc5 Sign Up Forms Must Die By Luke Wroblewski. "You load a new web service, eager to dive in and start engaging, and what's the first thing that greets you? A sign-up form. We can do better, says Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Via a technique of "gradual engagement," we can get people using and caring about our web services instead of frustrating them (or sending them to a competitor's site) by forcing them to fill out a sign-up form first." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/signupforms Form Follows Function and Achieving Thereof By Govert Adriaan Kolbach. "Forms can be dreadfully tricky to style and structure properly. Several articles that are out there focus on best practices for building forms using HTML en CSS. This article focuses in a non technical fashion on the use of meaningful nomenclature and how form semantics relate to elements that current markup standards have to offer. It may help you recognize structural patterns and to compose forms properly." http://www.cornae.org/articles/form-follows-function [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: 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.]