+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 7, Issue 25, December 19, 2008. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 25 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: COLOR. 04: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVENTS. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TOOLS. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. (The New) WCAG 2.0 Theme Song By David MacDonald. "This is the theme song for the new WCAG 2.0 which is a W3C recommendation. Accessibility consultant David MacDonald wrote it during a Face to Face WCAG meeting in Los Angeles. He did the instruments, programming, vocals and mixing in his home studio. Words are below. A video will be out in the coming days. (Note the old WCAG theme from 2002 is below this one on this page.)" http://www.eramp.com/wcag_theme_song.htm Accessibility Supported Web Content Technologies in WCAG 2.0 By Henny Swan. "A new concept in WCAG 2.0 is accessibility supported web content technologies. This has confused a few people and also raised the wider question of what technologies are in fact accessibility supported?..." http://tinyurl.com/58fyoa Assistive Technology By Access Technologists Higher Education Network (ATHENS). "This section provides a space for documenting frequently asked questions, tips, strategies, etc. related to deployment of specific assistive technologies (AT) in higher education computing environments." http://www.athenpro.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Assistive_Technology Accessible Forms By Ted Page. "The importance of understanding screen reader 'forms mode' and more..." http://www.pws-ltd.com/sections/articles/2008/accessible_forms.html Three Video Captioning Tools By Claude Almansi. "So how to choose a tool? As with knitting, first make a sample with a short video using different tools: the short descriptive lists above cannot replace experience. Then choose the most appropriate one according to your aims for captioning a given video, and what are your possible collaborators' availability, IT resources, and abilities...Or Combine Tools..." http://tinyurl.com/56g8wk Recruiting Participants for Captioning Study By David Fourney. Centre for Learning Technologies at Ryerson University is recruiting participants for a captioning study. http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/accessibility/2008-December/000269.html Designing Accessible Websites By Brooke Marshall. "For the third-largest minority group in the United States - more than 40 million people - the vast majority of Websites are partially or completely inaccessible..." http://www.wpdfd.com/issues/87/designing-accessible-websites/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Pseudo Pseudo-Classes By Chris Casciano. "Some of the most powerful CSS2 and CSS3 selectors defined in the specs are avoided by web developers because they're not supported by commonly used web browsers. Sometimes in order to work around these shortfalls solutions with large overhead such as javascript libraries are used or code becomes littered with many specialized classes and sites become difficult to maintain..." http://chunkysoup.net/article/341/PseudoPseudoClasses The First Tool You Reach For By Kevin Yank. "Microsoft recently announced that Internet Explorer 8 will be released in the first half of 2009. Compared to the standards support of other major browsers, IE8 will not be especially great, but it will finally catch up with the state of the art in one specific area: support for CSS tables. This milestone has the potential to trigger an important change in the way you approach web design..." http://24ways.org/2008/the-first-tool-you-reach-for Making Modular Layout Systems By Jason Santa Maria. "For all of the advantages the web has with distribution of content, I've always lamented the handiness of the WYSIWYG design tools from the print publishing world. When I set out to redesign my personal website, I wanted to have some of the same abilities that those tools have, laying out pages how I saw fit, and that meant a flexible system for dealing with imagery..." http://24ways.org/2008/making-modular-layout-systems Pressed Button State With CSS By Dmitry Fadeyev. "There is certain anchor state in CSS that I don't see used very often - actually, it's something I haven't really used myself, but something which I now realize can be very useful. I'm talking about the 'active' anchor state." http://www.usabilitypost.com/2008/12/16/pressed-button-state-with-css/ Shiny Happy Buttons By John Allsopp. "Since Mac OS X burst onto our screens, glossy, glassy, shiny buttons have been almost de rigueur, and have essentially, along with reflections and rounded corners, become a cliche of Web 2.0 'design'. But if you can't beat 'em you'd better join 'em..." http://24ways.org/2008/shiny-happy-buttons Changing HTML Images on Hover/ A Quick CSS Trick By Niels Matthijs. "Hovers on html images are not too common, as most images in html are purely content images and are not related to the actual design. One important exception is the site logo, which is best placed in html instead of css. It's common practice to put a home link on the site logo and when hovered, it's nice to see a hover state indication, subtle as it might be. To summarize what it is we want to do exactly..." http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/changing-html-images-on-hover/ +03: COLOR. Example Luminosity Contrast Ratios By Gez Lemon. Gez updated this document to use the new WCAG 2.0 acceptable minimum color contrast ratios. http://juicystudio.com/services/coloursaferatio.php Minimum Color Contrast Ratio Changed in WCAG 2 By Joe Dolson. "In the final release of WCAG 2, the acceptable minimum color contrast ratio was changed from 5:1 to 4.5:1..." http://tinyurl.com/6f79vr +04: DREAMWEAVER. Working Within the Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Environment By Steve Johnson. "Get to know the Dreamweaver authoring environment so you can be more effective and efficient as you create Web pages and manage Web sites..." http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1312598 Understanding Unobtrusive JavaScript in Dreamweaver CS4 By Roman Villarreal. "Dreamweaver CS4 supports a new command that makes it easy to build clutter-free web pages for modern browsers: Externalize JavaScript. This new command enables you to do two things..." http://tinyurl.com/5hrl8h Dreamweaver's Form Validation Behavior By Paul Davis. "This quick video shows how to use the form validation behavior in Dreamweaver. Approximate download size: 14MB." http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=A6B65 +05: EVENTS. MinneUX Book Club February 11, 2009. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://tinyurl.com/5hrj38 EDUCAUSE Midwest Regional Conference 2009 March 23-25, 2009. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://net.educause.edu/mwrc09 +06: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Timers - Using Functions and Scope By Robert Nyman. "Today I thought I'd introduce you to timers in JavaScript and how to use scope to make your life easier..." http://tinyurl.com/5lysog +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Six Questions: Eric Meyer on CSS3 By Jacob Gube. "Eric A. Meyer knows a thing or two about standards-based CSS and HTML development. He's a distinguished expert on CSS and HTML, an author of numerous books on CSS, co-founder of An Event Apart, a coveted guest speaker, a member of the A List Apart crew, and founder of Complex Spiral Consulting..." http://sixrevisions.com/interviews/six-questions-eric-meyer-on-css3/ +08: PHP. JSON is Everybody's Friend By Ed Finkler. "JSON, while valid JavaScript code, is actually a very effective serialized data format for exchanging data between applications written in a variety of languages. And as of PHP 5.2, we have native support for JSON encoding and decoding..." http://phpadvent.org/2008/json-is-everybodys-friend-by-ed-finkler PHP Meritocracy By Andrei Zmievski. "...I want to briefly talk about the process of how PHP gets developed and why things are the way they are..." http://phpadvent.org/2008/php-meritocracy-by-andrei-zmievski +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. This Week in HTML 5 - Episode 16 By Mark Pilgrim. "...HTML 5 also includes a section on using the alt attribute, but in general you should defer to WCAG 2.0 because it was written by experts." http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html-5-episode-16 Attaching Subtitles to HTML5 Video By Silvia Pfeiffer. "During the last week, I made a proposal to the HTML5 working group about how to support out-of-band time-aligned text in HTML5. What I mean by that is basically: how to link a subtitle file to a video tag in HTML5. This would mirror the way in which in desktop-players you can load separate subtitle files by hand to go alongside a video..." http://tinyurl.com/67hwa7 AccessForAll Meta-data Specification By Inovation Adoption Learning. "The AccessForAll Meta-data specification is intended to make it possible to identify resources that match a user's stated preferences or needs. These preferences or needs would be declared using the IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP specification. The needs and preferences addressed include the need or preference for alternative presentations of resources, alternative methods of controlling resources, alternative equivalents to the resources themselves and enhancements or supports required by the user. The specification provides a common language for identifying and describing the primary or default resource and equivalent alternatives for that resource." http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/ +10: TOOLS. Accessibility Toolbar (Updated) By Gez Lemon. It now has a great new summary feature which summarized failures at the start of the report. It has been updated to use the new WCAG 2.0 acceptable minimum color contrast ratios to boot. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9108 Contrast Ratio Analyzer (Updated) By Gez Lemon. Updated for WCAG 2.0 acceptable minimum color contrast ratios. http://juicystudio.com/services/luminositycontrastratio.php Inline Code Finder Firefox Extension By Robert Nyman. "When I first coded and released Obtrusive JavaScript Checker, I had some more ideas with it, as well as some great feedback I have received and wanted to see to. The result is Inline Code Finder, which looks for inline styling as well as what the Obtrusive JavaScript Checker offered, and it comes in two versions!" http://tinyurl.com/5ackgx Validator Donation Program: Day 2 By Olivier Thereaux. Yesterday, W3C launched a new donation and sponsorship program offering Web-people and Organizations a chance to show their support for Web Standards and Open source: the Validator Donation Program. http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/12/validator_donation_program.html [Announce] Amaya 11 By Irene Vatton. The W3C's Web editor/browser has been released. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-amaya/2008OctDec/0104.html +11: USABILITY. The Discipline of Content Strategy By Kristina Halvorson. It's time to stop pretending content is somebody else's problem. If content strategy is all that stands between us and the next fix-it-later copy draft or beautifully polished but meaningless site launch, it's time to take up the torch-time to make content matter. Halvorson tells how to understand, learn, practice, and plan for content strategy." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/thedisciplineofcontentstrategy Content-tious Strategy By Jeffrey MacIntyre. "Every website faces two key questions: 1. What content do we have at hand? 2. What content should we produce? Answering those questions is the domain of the content strategist. Alas, real content strategy gets as little respect today as information architecture did in 1995. MacIntyre defines the roles, tools, and value of this emerging user experience specialist." http://www.alistapart.com/articles/contenttiousstrategy Interaction Elasticity By Jakob Nielsen. "Usage goes down as interaction costs increase. User motivation determines how fast demand drops, following an elasticity curve..." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/interaction-elasticity.html [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.]