+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 19, November 7, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 19 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: DREAMWEAVER.
03: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: EVENTS.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TOOLS.
11: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

With Real World Implementations WCAG 2.0 Steps Closer to Expected December 2008 Publication
By Shawn Henry.
"Today W3C WAI published WCAG 2.0 as a "W3C Proposed Recommendation". This means that the technical material of WCAG 2.0 is complete and it has been used successfully in real websites. Up next: final publication as a Web standard "W3C Recommendation", which we expect in December..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/11/with_real_world_implementation.html

President Elect Barack Obama on Disabilities
By Peter Korn.
"I am so very proud to say that the next President of the United States, Barack Obama has one of the most thoughtful, detailed, and well articulated set of policies on people with disabilities I have ever seen. I encourage you to read them on his website. His key stated initiatives include..."
http://blogs.sun.com/korn/date/20081104


+02: DREAMWEAVER.

Using Dreamweaver to Work With Drupal Modules
By Ray West.
"...This article is for those of us who still love Dreamweaver for its interface, its design view, and its built-in site management and FTP, but need to work with Drupal module files with the .module, .install, .info and other file extensions. To Dreamweaver, these are not recognizable files and it will not want to open them. Even when you get them opened, Dreamweaver will not use its normal PHP color coding and you will just get black text. This can make it tough to find things in your files and tell when things are comments, among other issues. This article will show you how to get Dreamweaver to open these files from the site manager and how to use Dreamweaver's built in PHP color coding for all these weird file extensions."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=966FB

It's Goodbye and Good Riddance to .style1 in Dreamweaver CS4 
By Kim Cavanaugh.
"If you've been fooling around with web pages as long as I have, you've seen a real revolution when it comes to the methods that are used for styling pages. From the early abandonment of frame-based sites, to the more prevalent reliance on CSS-positioning versus table-based layouts that we see, these days there has been a constant change in the world of web site design. Perhaps the last, really nasty throwback to earlier times was the way that Dreamweaver wrote styling information for text when the Properties inspector was used. Beginning in Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia moved away from the use of font tags (Yeah!) for styling text and moved towards a method that used CSS. But the truly ugly means they used to do this was to create, by default, numbered class rules named .style into the head of the document. Every time you styled text, even just a little, a new .style rule was created. Within minutes of the release of Dreamweaver the Web was awash in thousands of .style1's, .style2's, .style3's and so forth."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=8AAE7

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

What is Ethnography and How does it Aid Customer Understanding?
By Simon Pulman-Jones.
"Despite often being perceived as a bit of a black art, ethnography can provide unparalleled insight into any given experience from your customers' point of view. So what is it and how is it different from 'normal' research?..."
http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133973


+04: EVENTS.

OZCHI 2008
December 8- 12, 2008.
Cairns, Australia
http://www.ozchi.org/mediawiki/index.php/OZCHI_2008

Web-Blast
December 12, 2008.
Sydney, Australia
http://webblast.org/

Web Directions North
February 2-7, 2008.
Denver Colorado, U.S.A.
http://north.webdirections.org/
Ed Directions North (full day workshop)
http://tinyurl.com/5k2szk


+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Prototyping with XHTML
By Anders Ramsay and Leah Buley.
"While prototyping with XHTML isn't tied to a specific design process, iterative development seems to effectively leverage its strengths. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the most significant is that in both cases the prototype, and later the application itself, doubles as a specification. We'll explore what that means in a bit, but first let's walk through a suggested process for prototyping with XHTML."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/prototyping-with

Is there an Architect in the House?
By Adam Kallis.
"What was intriguing about this particular conference was the diversity of people, both in professional and geographic terms. There were graphic designers, interaction designers, technical leads, managers, and oh yes... 'information architects'. What was interesting about the attending information architects was that they came from so many backgrounds to become an information architect. There were actual classically trained architects that became IA's, there were designers that were IA's and so on."
http://spill.tanagram.com/2008/10/22/is-there-an-architect-in-the-house/


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Progressive Enhancement with JavaScript
By Aaron Gustafson.
"Our introductory series on progressive enhancement and the ways it can be implemented concludes with a look at the mind set needed to implement PE in JavaScript, and a survey of best practices for doing so."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/progressiveenhancementwithjavascript

Internet Explorer 8 - Fix Event Handling, or Don't Release It
By Robert Nyman.
"Something which have troubled web developers for a long long time is the proprietary event handling implementation in Internet Explorer. In IE 8, this really has to go..."
http://tinyurl.com/67xoyt

Accessibility of Rich Internet Applications
By Jared Smith.
"This new article provides an overview of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and demonstrates how it can be used to resolve many of the accessibility issues found in dynamic, complex web applications and widgets. Additional ARIA documentation and examples will be coming to the WebAIM site in the near future."
http://webaim.org/techniques/aria/

Accessible View: An ARIA for Web Search
By T.V. Raman.
"From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful."
http://tinyurl.com/5awgaq


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

All Web Directions South 2008 Slides and Podcasts Now Online
By Maxine Sherrin.
"Thanks to a huge effort by Guy, we now have all the slides and podcasts from WDS08 available at the site, which means it is officially 'a wrap'..."
http://tinyurl.com/6jucxq


+08: NAVIGATION.

Links in Context - or Not?
By WebAIM Thread.
"One of our Web managers has asked me for advice on this topic..."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=3675


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

This Week in HTML 5 - Episode 11
By Mark Pilgrim.
"...Dates and times loom large in this week's updates..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html-5-episode-11

The Road to HTML 5 - Episode 1: The Section Element
By Mark Pilgrim.
"Welcome to a new semi-regular column, "The Road to HTML 5," where I'll try to explain some of the new elements, attributes, and other features in the upcoming HTML 5 specification. The element of the day is the <section> element..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/the-road-to-html-5-episode-1-the-section-element


+10: TOOLS.

Image Analyser
By Gez Lemon.
"This service examines all images found on a web page to check for any accessibility issues. The width, height, alt, and longdesc attributes are examined for appropriate values..."
http://juicystudio.com/services/image.php

Firebug - Part 1: The What and Why
By Estelle Weyl.
"In this multi-part series, we are going to learn all about Firebug, the premier (and free) web development tool for Firefox. Part 1 is an overview of the  Firefox browser, and Firebug, the Firefox plugin. Learn how to install Firefox and Firebug, and learn how to run the application and change preferences. In future sessions will show you how to work with and troubleshoot CSS, HTML and Javascript."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=6B0D6


+11: USABILITY.

Aspects of Design Quality
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Usability scores for 51 websites shows some correlation between navigation, content, and feature quality, but no connections to other usability areas."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/quality-correlations.html

How to Grow and Nurture Your Community
By Kathy Sierra.
"Our job is to get our users up the curve as quickly as possible." Future of Web Apps London 2008: Full video Kathy's presentation.
http://www.viddler.com/explore/carsonified/videos/78/

Common Visual Design Misconceptions
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Recently, I had the opportunity to reflect on common misconceptions about the role of visual design that are still prominent in the beliefs of executives, product leaders, engineering managers, and marketing professionals. Is there anything team members can do to illustrate certain beliefs are wrong? What could they do to demonstrate the truth about visual design to coworkers and stakeholders?"
http://dev.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000344.php

Writing Content That Works for a Living
By Erin Kissane.
"Most web copy is still being written by people who aren't writers and don't have time. The good news? Anyone who touches copy can make a difference by insisting that every chunk of text on the site do something concrete..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writingcontentthatworksforaliving


[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.]