+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 47, May 15, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 47 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: JAVASCRIPT.
04: NAVIGATION.
05: PHP.
06: USABILITY.

SECTION TWO:
07: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Call for Review and Participation: WAI-AGE Literature Review and Task Force
By Shawn Henry.
"The Web Accessibility Initiative: Ageing Education and Harmonisation (WAI-AGE) Project is a European Commission-funded project that focuses on education and outreach regarding the requirements of people with Web accessibility needs related to ageing..."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2008AprJun/0083.html

Ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
By Peter Korn.
"On December 13, 2006 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well as an optional protocol (see a brief summary of both here). On May 3, 2008 the Convention and Optional Protocol entered into force as the Convention had received its 20th ratification and the Optional Protocol had received its 10th ratification. This past Tuesday the UN held a celebration of the ratification in New York...."
http://blogs.sun.com/korn/entry/ratification_of_the_un_convention

Hackers' Posts on Epilepsy Forum Cause Migraines, Seizures
By Sydney Morning Herald.
"...The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they're exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons. The attack happened when hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation's publishing software that allowed them to quickly make numerous posts and overwhelm the site's support forums..."
http://tinyurl.com/5de27v

Making Twitter Tweet - Using the TPG Notifier
By Steve Faulkner.
"As part of my presentation at the Accessibility 2.0 Conference I demonstrated a preferences module conceived by Hans Hillen, Gez Lemon and I, as a proof of concept(s) for ways to provide cues to users allowing them to benefit from and/or have access to content that changes dynamically without a page refresh. This was presented using the Twitter character countdown feature, which indicates to users the number of characters (140 character limit) they have left to type into a textarea..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=65

Understanding Web Accessibility
By Chandan Gokhale.
"Starting this week, I will be addressing the area of Web Accessibility - organized in four separate blog entries.  This week we will look at the big picture, the meaning of Web Accessibility and its relevance for promoting Equal Opportunity..."
http://tinyurl.com/4lhrap


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Understanding CSS Positioning, Part 2
By Kilian Valkhof.
"This is the second part in the Understanding CSS positioning series, which will focus on float and more advanced display properties. Float is one of the most often used CSS property in current day stylesheets, and this article will show that there are quite some more display properties than just block and inline."
http://tinyurl.com/6p3nmp

Nested Conditional Comments
By Alastair Campbell.
"In a recent test with Internet ExplorerÕs conditional comments, some of the more complex operators didn't seem to work. For example, trying to target IE 6 and 7 defensively, this 'and' operator should work..."
http://alastairc.ac/2008/05/nested-conditional-comments/

line-height: abnormal
By Eric A. Meyer.
"When I first wrote Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, the part that caused me the most difficulty and headaches was the line layout material. Several times I was sure I had it all figured out and accurately described, only to find out I was wrong. For two weeks I corresponded with Ian Hickson and David Baron, arguing for my understanding of things and having them show me, in merciless detail, how I was wrong. I doubt that I will ever stop owing them for their dedication to getting me through the wilderness of my own misunderstandings..."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/05/06/line-height-abnormal/

Override Inline Styles from the Stylesheet
By Natalie Jost.
"You read that right. I said override inline styles, and no, I have not been drinking. For the longest time it has bugged me that there was no way to override what someone else had done with inline styles. I understand they're supposed to be the override, and I get why, to a certain extent, but I also think there should be an override to certain overrides when those overrides are abused. Make sense?..."
http://tinyurl.com/47vbkv


+03: JAVASCRIPT.

Is Your JavaScript Library Standards Compliant?
By Kevin Yank.
"One of the things JavaScript libraries like jQuery, Dojo, and YUI can do for you is add support for features in the latest Web standards long before they are built into browsers. But are some libraries going too far?..."
http://tinyurl.com/5f6s7b


+04: NAVIGATION.

Link List Color
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Lists of links are an intermediate case between content-embedded links and menu items. Showing listed links in blue or in the site's main link color is the recommended design - and the one most intranets follow."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/link-list-color.html

Searching More is Not Always Better
By James Robertson.
"Driving enterprise search to cover ever more content does not necessarily deliver better results."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_searchmore/index.html

Friendly Web Addresses
By Paul Boag.
"When redesigning boagworld considerable time was spent formatting the sites' web addresses. In this post I explain why so much time was taken and introduce you to the tools I used..."
http://boagworld.com/technology/friendly_urls/


+05: PHP.

Useful In-Browser Development Tools for PHP
By Troels Knak-Nielsen.
"While debuggers exists, there isn't much of a tradition for using them in PHP. People have largely come to rely on injecting debugging code directly into the program, for inspecting program scope. The infamous var_dump have served for this purpose and version 4.3.0 of PHP brought us another equally useful function - debug_backtrace."
http://tinyurl.com/4cjmuh

PHP5 - Slow on the uptake?
By Emily.
"As a developer I always have in the back of my mind the importance of new technologies, and I am constantly thinking Ð Òwhat should I learn next?Ó There is no doubt that web technologies move quickly - thatÕs a given - but after its initial release in 2004, why is PHP5 only just starting to take off? Well, ever since the release of our new PHP5 hosting platform I've been doing my research..."
http://www.nublue.co.uk/blog/php5-slow-on-the-uptake/


+06: USABILITY.

Intranets Are Not Information Dumps
By Gerry McGovern.
"The first step in creating a genuinely useful intranet is to ban the intranet team from using the word 'information'."
http://tinyurl.com/3ln7jv

Don't Try to Boil the Content Ocean
By James Robertson.
"Too many approaches to improving intranet content are destined for heroic failure."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_boilocean/index.html


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+07: 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.


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+ 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.]